i fear weight gain

really, i've had issues with my weight since high school. i've often felt i was bigger than i should be, even when i was underweight. when i started college, i started gaining weight and old high school friends said i actually looked healthy instead of like a stick. i became mostly comfortable with my weight when i started playing rugby, because you need to be strong and have some cushion :) except i kept gaining weight until i was over 185. that scared the crap out of me.

i started doing kickboxing and watching what i was eating more. no more sneaking over to mcd's for fries after work. naughty, naughty. i lost 15 lbs. i really wanted to get down to 165 before we got pregnant, but things worked faster than we though :)

now i'm stressing about gaining unnecessary weight. i know that i will gain weight because of the baby growing. but i am sooo afraid of getting close to 200 lbs. i also afraid of after the pregnancy, will i be able to loose it all? this stress is aggravated by the fact i'm hungry so much. yesterday, i was hungry all day, seriously. nothing could satisfy me. i'm being good and not grabbing unhealthy things, but it's hard.

if anyone has suggestions, i would greatly appreciate it. i'm not eating dairy right now. the only allergy i have is to walnuts. i need variety. help! :) off to eat some carrots. oh and that's a picture of me up there as a hungry monkey:)

not so motivated

sorry i've been quiet recently. there isn't much to share. i'm tired. trying to get to bed early (like 9:30). my night sweats are really bothering me. i'm off dairy for a week, as recommended by the accup, for my bloating. otherwise, i am feeling pretty good.

we have a midwife appointment next week. i'll probably have more interesting things to write then :)

sooo tired

oh my god, i just want to sleep all the time. i don't feel like doing anything at work, but i have to because my colleague is gone on vacation. blah. i've done a few things. mostly, i've been sitting, reading or messing around on the computer. oh and peeing. i am peeing so much! i'm trying to drink at least three full bottles at work. my water bottle is 20+ oz. that's a good bit of water, and i feel like i'm peeing every 5 oz. haha:)

also, my jeans are bugging the crap out of me. i think i'm bloated and even though i want to sit down, the waist is digging into my abdomen and annoying me. i feel like wearing a mu mu already. damn what's it going to be like when i actually start growing.

another thing, my abs are sore. in my obliques and right under my ribcage. what's that about? i know that i'm not growing yet. i don't believe it's due to an ectopic pregnancy (i already obsessed about that today). it feels like i did a lot of crunches yesterday and feel the pain today.

i'm actually doing rather well though:) this things are just little annoyances right now, and partly fixable. i think i've figured out my nausea. i just need to treat it like when i had big issues with hypoglycemia. i have a stock pile of things to eat at work. i need to figure out a good variety though. i know i'll get sick of nuts, fruit, carrots and hummus eventually. oh and i'm never eating popcorn again. i felt like a hot air balloon.

I'M PREGNANT

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! BFP (big freakin' positive) we have a BFP. i calculated the due date online:

Your due date is November 28, 2009.

Your baby was conceived around March 07, 2009.Your first trimester begins February 21, 2009. Your second trimester begins May 17, 2009.Your third trimester begins August 30, 2009

we are very very excited, and we feel extremely lucky. i had done a test on tuesday (after finding out the slippery pulse thing from my accup.). it had a very faint line, but it was still a line. i did a blood test that day too and my HCG was 15mIU. above 5 is good, but 25 would have been better. HCG doubles about every other day. i've done at home tests the past two mornings and the line is getting darker. we feel positive enough to tell everyone :) wow, i mean really. wow.

thanks for all the support lovely readers. of course i'm going to keep this blog going with pregnancy updates and photos and all that good stuff :) ok i can't stop smiling!!

slippery pulse

ok, i'm really trying to not get too worked up about this, but a slippery pulse can be one of the earliest signs of pregnancy in chinese medicine. ok, breathe kat.

my acupuncturist had notice last thursday that my pulse had become slippery (sorry can't explain much more because i don't understand it all). it was still slippery today. he hasn't seen it do this before in me.

i had thought something was up because when i asked to buy more fertility teapills last week he said to wait. hmmmm. when i got to work i looked online to see if an acupuncturist could predict a pregnancy. indeed they can. i asked him today about it and he didn't give me a definitive answer until after he did the needles and read my pulse again. he explained that he isn't thoroughly trained in reading everything about pulses yet (he's still pretty green, just two years out of school). but he felt he could tell me that he think i might be pregnant, especially considering other symptoms i'm having.

that's all for now. i'm going to try to not freak out. :)

tww sucks

spelled out- two week wait sucks. that's all for now.

i'm nauseated

hmmm... been nauseated since i woke up this morning. my belly also didn't feel so well when i went to bed last night. i tried to lay on my belly to write in my journal and it was just uncomfortable. could this mean anything??

cd19/dpo7

how to inseminate at home

these are instructions that oneofhismoms.wordpress.com posted. we found them very helpful.

You will need:

Good health insurance (optional)
A wad of cash or credit for sperm, or a really nice, disease-free donor, who seems like he’ll never get all weird on you and who doesn’t mind pleasuring himself at the drop of a hat
A medicine syringe (needle-less, used for giving liquid medicine to an infant) easily purchased at most drug stores
Fertility chart
"Taking Charge of your Fertility" and/or www.fertilityfriend.com
A basal thermometer, ovulation predictor kits, speculum (optional… the speculum)
A good thermos
Hot water
A meat thermometer
Protective eye wear(cheap sunglasses will suffice)
Protective gloves (got any ski gloves?)
Some pillows
Some candles, wine, music or other romantic accoutrement (optional)
A towel
Some paper towels
A tray
A ridiculous and seemingly endless fount of patience

(Whew!) Read all the steps before you begin.

1. First, get to know your menstrual cycle well. This will take several months. Use fertility friend.com or Taking Charge of Your Fertility to figure out when you are ovulating. Read it carefully and be sure you know what you are doing before you spend any money on baby juice. Oh, and invest in ovulation predictor kits. Use them. They usually work.

2. Next, if you have the optional good health insurance, go to a reproductive endocrinologist and get a fertility work-up. This will take one cycle. Be aware that she or he may tell you you have some issues. This step is totally optional, but I wish I had done it in the first place. For reals.

3. Next, ditch the RE.

4. When you feel secure in your understanding of your cycle, acquire sperm. Hopefully, you have found the source of your sperm while waiting the several months to figure out your cycle. Some sperm banks take quite a while to set up your account, so allow time for that and get it over with before you are ready to inseminate. My sperm bank takes two days to ship the baby juice from the time you order it. If you are using a known donor, let him know you’ll be needing his services soon.

4a. Inseminate when you get your first positive OPK, and again 8-10 hours later. The idea is that you should ovulate within 36 hours of the positive OPK. The frozen sperm lasts up to 24 hours. The fresh should last several days. So if you insem twice in the first ten hours, you’ll probably have sperm in you when the follicle releases the egg. If you don’t feel absolutely sure about that, you could extend it to 15 or 20 hours after, to make a bigger window of sperm. Window of sperm. Ha.

5. Set up a tray with paper towels, your thermos, and your syringe, and possibly a glass of water or green tea on it. Stack up some pillows near the center of your bed. Cover it with a towel.The next few steps are for use with frozen sperm. Skip them if you have fresh stuff.

6. Heat some water to the exact temperature for thawing the sperm. (I believe it is 35 degrees Celsius, but check somewhere else… our sperm bank sent a paper with the temperature on it.) Measure the temp with your meat thermometer. Pour the heated water into the good thermos. Put a lid on it.

7. Take the sperm out of the liquid nitrogen tank. Put on your cheap sunglasses and your ski gloves first. Put the sperm vial into the heated thermos (keep it closed!) And let thaw for 10-15 minutes.

8. Snuggle with your honey or your teddy bear. Get yourself prepped for the insemination… as though you were having sex (or have sex… whichever you can.)

9. Once the thawing time is up, get the medicine syringe and extract the droplet of sperm from the teeny-tiny vial. I suggest you practice this beforehand with some other, far-less expensive liquid.

Ok, you can start reading again if you have fresh sperm. Put the fresh sperm into the syringe.

10. Lay back with your pelvis raised up on the pillow stack. You, or your partner, insert the baby juice syringe into your vagina. Get yourself worked up. Push the plunger. Try to have an orgasm. It is said to help the sperm get up inside you a bit further. Plus, it feels really good. Put the syringe onto the paper towel on the tray. Use extra paper towels to wipe the stanky stuff (I mean, baby juice) from your hands, if any got on.

11. Stay there propped up on the pillow stack for a while. We always stayed for at least fifteen minutes. I do know of people who rotated their bodies, like a chicken on a set-it-and-forget-it rotisserie. I prefer to sit still and snuggle and imagine the formation of our future child.

12. Clean everything well. Repeat steps 5-11 in 10 hours.

13. Spend the next two weeks trying not to obsess. Try to ignore every little twinge in your body. Good luck with that.

14. If this fails several times and you think you might die, call your RE back and read my archives. Get ready for trying to get pregnant at the doctor’s office! Hopefully, you will get pregnant the very first time and be spared lots and lots of drama and suckatude.

Disclaimer: I don’t claim to know what I am talking about. What works for some does not work for all. No. If it doesn’t work, I won’t pay for your lost sperm. My credit card is almost maxed out, honey. Sorry. Do read everything you can about this and get lots of opinions. This did work when my honey got pregnant. It did not work for me. Talk to your doctor. I wish you luck.

(thank you oneofhismoms!-kat)

dpo5

(days past ovulation-5) ok so i kept saying that i would blog about the insemination, i just wasn't feeling inspired and mom was in town. maybe it'll flow once i get started.

our package arrived on friday. we held off on opening the tank until we were ready. i did opks throughout the day, and by evening my test line was getting darker. saturday morning, it was much darker than the indicator line. woohoo! ovulation! my bbt had dropped significantly, also. i felt ready.

anna encouraged me to eat and shower before we did anything. i didn't want to:) i just wanted to stay in bed and get started. of course my lovely wifey was right. i would have gotten grumpy and hungry if i hadn't eaten.

first step was opening up the canister. it looked like it had been around the block a few times:) but hey the vials were nice and frozen. the vials themselves were sooo small! the amount of sperm inside measured to about 1 cc (looks like about a quarter of an inch). anna and i donned some winter gloves and sunglasses. we were told in the instructions that the vials should be handled with cryogloves and protective glasses. we stumbled around the internet for a while on friday night trying to figure out what to do, if these things were necessary or what. luckily on oneofhismoms.wordpress.com the author had posted her own instructions. they matched up perfectly with our official instructions with a few adjustments. thus, we wore ski gloves and sunglasses.

even with the gloves on, i could feel how cold the vial was. i held it, upright, in my hands for a while till the frost dissipated. then we set it in a clean shot glass so it was upright. we got our wee syringe, a plate with a paper towel, and a meat thermometer.

on to the bit more personal bit (don't worry becky it's not that personal!) :) after the vial had defrosted, it had cooled down enough to put in my bra. the sperm needed to be warmed up to body temperature, approximately. that was also the reason for the meat thermometer, but it was too large to use in the small sample we had. i set myself up with pillow under my hips.

afterwards, i stayed in bed for around an hour. after about 20 mins i tried rolling to my right and left side to move things around a bit. mostly, i just laid on my back. everything went very smoothly. we felt successful. i hope we were.

the second insem didn't go as well. we were cold and on an air mattress. also i think a little bit of the sample spilled out. oops.

now for how i was/am feeling. after the first insem, i had some mild cramping, as if i was going to get my period. i couldn't think of anything else it would be related to, and cramping does occur for some women after insem. the second time, i fell asleep soon after so i have no idea if i cramped. i haven't noticed much else. i have been rather grumpy in the evening the past two days. kind of snappy with anna. yesterday, i had a weird pinch feeling in my stomach/uterus area on my right side. it didn't go away with stretching, just had to wait it out. it didn't hurt necessarily, just uncomfortable. could be baby-related, could be gas haha:) it was a different feeling though. i'm trying to not obsess about it.

i'm going to post the "how to inseminate at home" instructions from oneofhismoms in my next blog cause this one is getting a little long :)

we did it!

anna and i tried to create a life yesterday:) we inseminated yesterday morning and then late last night. the morning insem went really well. we were excited and nervous but it went easily. the late night insem was a bit more awkward because we were in the spare room, which was cold, and on an air mattress.

i have a lot more to say but we need to get moving with our day. it's really great to have mom here. we're having fun. blow us some baby dust:)

today's the day!

the stars have aligned! no, actually the fertile signs have aligned. my temperature dipped this morning, my opk was positive, i have good fertile mucus, i have crazy ferns in my ovulens. psychologically i'm ready. my right lymph node is swollen (remember how i kept picturing my right side was developing the egg, i was right!). we have the sperm and we know how to use it:)

oh my gosh i'm so excited. i'm not regularly a morning person, but i was all set to get up today. anna is out getting a smaller syringe because the ones my NP gave me are too big (12 cc). we just need a tiny one because the sperm might be at most 2 cc. i am going to take pictures of the tank and such. i'll try to post more later. my mom is coming into town though so we'll probably be busy.

wish us luck!!

it's here!

it's here, it's here!! oh my gosh. seriously i can't contain myself. my temperature is still regular. my opk is still just a faint line, but it's gotten a little darker. i have mucus. phew, this is it. our first attempt.

i'll post more details later once i actually see the container and info. i'm going to be so antsy at work today; i know it.

a much better day

i started the day with acupuncture. it was good, but i had trouble relaxing. i tried to do some yoga breathing to calm down, but to no avail. it's interesting though. the past couple times i've been trying to focus on my uterus and visualizing the egg developing and moving along my tubes. each time i've done this i'm drawn to focus on my right side. i've tried to shift my focus to the left but it doesn't feel right. i know you can tell which side you are ovulating from with ovulation pain, swollen lymph nodes, etc. i don't have any symptoms like that. anyone know of another way? i'm curious to see if i'm right.

after acupuncture and self-restriction, i called the midwife's office at 10:30 (they don't open till 10). i found out that she had called the cryolab and everything was good to go! yippee!! after a yummy lunch, i called and place our order!!! aaaaahhhh!!! i had major butterflies when i was doing it. the lady i talked to was very nice. that was a relief because the bitches i talked to yesterday made me mad.

our package is set to send out tomorrow with a delivery of friday morning. anna is going to stay home to receive it, and i'll be anxiously twiddling my thumbs at work. wow. oh and it cost us 825 bones. well worth it. babyland here we come!!

i'm freaking out a little bit

it's enough that i actually broke down at work while my boss was here. ugh. he's a really nice guy though and understood what i was going through.

the reason why i'm freaking out is because things aren't going as smoothly as i was hoping. on monday i called the cryolab and our midwife. the cryolab had my paperwork but not the midwife's because she needed our address to complete the form. once she had that she faxed the paperwork. unfortunately, since the cryolab is on east coast time, the papers were sent after hours.

well i called today to check on everything and found out they didn't have the papers. i had the midwife's assistant try two more times. nothing. this is what makes me cry. these papers need to be entered so we can do an order. we want to do an order tomorrow. we can do both on the same day, but we were trying to avoid that because we have to pay a "same-day" fee. oh and we need to put our order in by 11, my time, to get the sperm delivered on thursday.

i know i shouldn't beat myself up about this, but dammit if i had just gotten my ass in gear and turned everything in last week. or last month. if i hadn't spent half of yesterday starting and finishing a book, i could have called everyone before 3 and been forewarned of this issue. i don't know why the cryolab hasn't gotten the papers. every one's fax machines are working.

the other thing i'm worrying about is what if our doctor is being rejected as a valid health care provider to set up our account. she's been able to do this for other people at donor banks. i figured we would have no problem doing it.

i know i need to calm down because stress will do me no good. i've had a headache for most of the day, and i don't regularly have them. i have acupuncture tomorrow morning, a massage thursday night, and yoga friday morning. i hope that all helps. i just have to keep reminding myself that i can't control everything, no matter how much i want to:)

the midwife assistant is going to call the cryolab in the morning to see if there is another way to send the info, like scan it for email. please be thinking/praying/whatever you believe works for anna and i. we need it.