One Year Ago Today

It was a year ago that I woke up in a hotel room in Brno with H and got ready for a big change to take place. We headed to the clinic where two near perfect embryos were waiting to be transferred into my uterus. After the transfer, H and I headed down to the town square to look around and have lunch. We were officially in the two week wait. A year later I spent the day with our daughter, soothing her through a cranky period this afternoon and loving every minute of it, even if I did get a little frustrated with her crying.

DEIVF was the best decision I ever made. This little girl is exactly who I am supposed to be mothering. Sometimes, when I encounter other women with a similar diagnosis to mine, I want to ask them what they are waiting for? Do they want a biological child or is it really just about being a Mom? To me these women arenot even in the game, when you are dealing with a less than 5% chance, the odds are seriously against you. DEIVF makes things so much more favourable. Hindsight is 20 20. I have to remind myself that moving to DEIVF was not easy for me and that I had to take my path to it, just like these other women have to travel their own paths. By the way, the person who I am really thinking about when writing this does not have a blog, I met her out in the world and really think DEIVF is her best shot. BUT! that is not my call.

4 Month Check Up

Little G will be 4 months old in the 23rd, so I made an appointment for her shots and a check up. The appointment was today and went really well. She is in the 50 th percentile for weight and for the size of her head and is between the 50th and 85th percentile for height. She now weighs 14lbs 5.5oz... she has doubled her birth weight. Evreything looked great and it was time for her shots. H came with us so I had him hold Little G's legs while getting the shots. I tried to distract her with one of her toys, one second she is smiling at me the next is a look of confusion and then one of pain. It breaks my heart! She was fine after a few minutes and has been fine for the rest of the day. We didn't even need to give her any tylenol.

I also had a physical today. I described all of the crap that has been happening to me lately and my dr. listened really well. My heart is fine. She confirmed that the pain that I have been having is muscular and recommended some exercises for me to do. She prescribe an antacid to take twice a day to handle the acid reflux/heartburn and also thinks I may have gall stones. She took my blood pressure which was 110 over 70 and then wrote me a requisition for blood work and an abdominal ultrasound. Miraculously both the lab for the blood work and the office for the u/s were empty and I was able to go straight in. The tech at the u/s lab confirmed that I have at least one gall stone. Hopefully, I will be able to keep it in check with a change in my diet. Otherwise I will have to have an operation to have it removed. And, it will have to be done before I get pg (try to get) again. I go back next week for all of my results. oh yes,I also had a pap today. So I was officially completely poked and prodded. I feel pretty good and I know my dr is taking it all seriously. She tested me flr cholesterol, thyroid, sugars, etc and the abdominal u/s was very thorough. It feels really good to know that I am ok and also not crazy. For a while there I thought that my propensity for anxiety was causing my symptoms.

H was a star and took G and I to our appointments and entertained G while I was off seeing the various people. Even though a chu of it was spent in medical offices, it was a good day.

WTF?

I am one day away from turning 40 and my body has decided to fall apart. I wrote about my heart issues that I have been experiencing, well I decided to order pizza for dinner. Well that led to a gall bladder attack, Gall bladder issues run in my family. I was up until almost 1 am trying to get all of the gas out of my system. Blech! I also have my period, this time my cycle was 23 days, 5 days longer than the prevpus cycle. It started like it used to , medium to heavy flow. Well, today I am using a super tampon per hour. This is crazy! My body feels like it is falling apart. I am in full on perimenopause, and I feel like this should be happening when I turn 50. I am also getting sunspots on my hands. It is like the aging process has gone whacko in my system.

I am not sure what to do about the amount of blood I am losing. Do I need to take iron? I am hoping that it starts to slow down soon.

It feels so weird to be going through all of this crap and being a new mom.

Lordy, lordy, look who's (almost) 40

Last Monday I went to Gym.boree with Little G. She is 14 weeks now! The class was cute, we sang song and did tummy time. We introduced some different textures amd played with the parachute. I think sge enjoyed it, but she was pretty cranky and tired by the time we got to the end of the class. There wer five Moms and babies, G was the only girl, the ages ranged from around 3 months to around 6 months. All of the babies were so cute. We did one exercises where we all sat our babies facing in on an innertube, in the middle was a sheepskin blanket, all the babies had bare feet. It was pretty cute to see their reaction to the blanket on their feet. All of the moms were under 32 I would say. I felt pretty out of place. At the end of the class they have a discussion period. The question was how soon did you know you were pg and how did you change your diet once you knew. And, what would you do differently the next time you get pg. Pretty mundane questions, but it just made me feel so isolated. Still the infertile in the room. I guess you never really lose that feeling.

I initially didn't want to go back because of the way I felt, but it is good for G to see other babies and people.And, it is good for her to experience new things, so I am going to suck it up and go back, I think. It is $73 per month. I find that kind of expensive. Am I crazy?

On a totally different topic, we took Little G to the parens of multiples clothing and gear sale. We were members when we found out we were pg with triplets so we still get the email about the sale - there are two per year. It opened at 7am for members and then is open to the general public at 9. We got there around 10am. I really wanted to see if we could get a good used exersaucer. When we were walking in, we saw a man walking out woth two and I thought, CRAP there go the last two. We went straight to the gear and toys and didn't see any of them, but we did manageto find a neat playmat. G has one, but this one looks a little more interactive. It is in really good shape and we got it for 7 dollars. A woman that was working the sale asked us if she could help us. H told her that we really wanted an exersauce and that I was disappointed to see that they were all gone. Well, she pointed us to the last one there. It was a barely used Baby Ei.nstein activity center. It was on sale for $50, which is on the pricier side for this sale. We snapped it right up, I think it is regularly priced at $130. In all we spent $100ish and got the exersaucer, playmat, 3 books, stacking blocks, a little wooden child's chair, 5 outfits (one thay had the store price tag on it still), astuffed penguin toy for her stroller and a toy that attaches to the stroller or swing it has three stuffed chicks with a bunch if rings and rattles on them. Score!

I guess there is one more thing to write about today, it is my birthday week. I turn 40 on Tuesday. the big 4 - 0. H came home from work yesterday with flowers for me and a stuffed flower for G. He gave me an itinerary for the week. On Tuesday, there is a chef coming to our home to give an interactive lesson and cook a gourmet meal, then on Thursday there is a party at a bar with my group of friends, then on Saturday we are going out to a nice French restaurant and then to the Leafs/Habs game and finally on Sunday, G and I are going to spemd a couple hours just with my girlfriends. I feel truly spoiled and with all of the festivities maybe I won't think too much about how old I am turning. I am not really too concerned about the numbere, but I ahve to admit it is a little daunting. I am middle-aged now, wow! The crazy thing is on the inside I still feel like I am about 25 years old.

Hello Old Friend

The chest pains are back. Fuck. Just like last year I have been feeling it around my rib cageand in the middle of my chest. It is such a mind fuck. We qent to the hospital on Wednesday because, even though I have had these feelings before, it could have been a pulmonary embolism due to the csection I had in December. We got tot the hospital and it was a mess in the ER, there were three stretchers that had just arrived via ambulance and a few people ahead of us. It took about half an hour to be triaged and then half an hlour to have an ecg done. They also took my blood. Then we sat for almost an hour and a half before H decided to talk to the nurse. She told me that it would be two hours for the results from the blood test and 4 hours to see the dr. H asked the nurse to see if I could go home and come back. That didn't go over very well. He told her we habe an infant at home and that may have gotten theough to her because she told us that as soon as the results were back she would send us to a different area where we would npbe seen quicker. Well when the results were in, she sent us over to the ambulatory clinic and also called them to let us know we were coming. They saw me right away, my tests came back negative for a heart attack and also for a pulmnary embolism. The dr examined me and told me I have costochondritis and heart burn, both present with chest pain. Basically the same diagnosis as last year.

I have done a little research about the chest pains, anxiety and linked them with perimenopause. Guess what?! They are symptoms of peri menopause and menopause. I believe that as a result of my POF or DOR, I am in advanced perimenopause and my gift is to have these fuckng symptoms. I can take pain killers and antacids to try to stave off the symptoms, but so far neither helps very much. Also, anxiety kicks in when I have the chest pains, so I have to talk to myself to keep myself calm. So far I haven't had any panic attacks I hope that stays true.

Now I don't trust my body. I logically know that I am fine. But when I go for a walk with Little G if I have to exert myself to go up a hill etc I immediately think i am going to have a heart attack and have to self-talk the whole time. I think the nly way to get over this is to just keep going for walks and living life and dproving to myself that I am fine. On top of everything, now there is Little G to think about and it freaks me out to think about dying and leaving her. This too shall pass, but it could take years. Isn't it ironic that while I was pregnant my body was in balance hormonally and I didn't have any of these issues. But now 3 months post partum, my body is back in its old imbalance. I have to find a way to deal with this.