Buggy Too Cute Tuesday

I was at church a few Sundays ago with my 2 year olds. We were having fun playing a game on the carpet when one of them spotted a bug that had expired. She came to me with a worried look and pointed, saying "Budgh. Wook. Budgh Yuck!"

All four of them crowded around the belly up beetle and waited expectantly for him to scatter away. One of the little boys looked up at me and frowned. "He bwoke," he said, confused. Then I saw eight little eyes looking at me for a response.

I thought it was as good a time as any to introduce them to a gentle explanation of death. I know it is just a bug to some, but for two and three year olds, it is a big deal. I nodded. "Yes, Mr. Bug is broken."

The same little boy smiled and said "Oh, Awian fix."

I shook my head. "No, Mr. Bug is a kind of broken that we can't fix."

With instant understanding the little boy looked up and said triumphantly...

"His battewy wunned out."

All the kids took this as a perfectly acceptable idea and went back to playing.

Who could argue with such a simple explanation?

Dear Senator,

My name is Arian. I am writing you in response to bill HB2159. I think this bill is horrible. It is a shame that we are allowing the actions of one irresponsible doctor to culminate such ridiculous laws that snatch rights away from responsible, loving women who want nothing more than to have a family.

I am 27 years old. My husband and I have been married for 6 years and we have been trying to have a baby just as long. The process is an emotionally traumatic one with the most intimate act of marriage stripped of all dignity and privacy. I can understand the desire to have a child. I know how frustrating it is to see a clock looming in the future and praying that your time doesn't run out.

I think it is wonderful that we live in a country where a woman can choose to remain unmarried and still see her goals and dreams become a reality. We have made so much progress in the past decades and it sickens me to think that we are stepping back in time again. If this bill passes, it is only a matter of time before laws are put in place to prevent couples like my husband and I from ever having a family. It seems like laws these days are backwards, awarding unloving parents that never wanted their children, while taking away the opportunities of loving and able families.

In addition to taking the rights of women seeking motherhood, this bill is also a very expensive addition to an already strained budget. I can't see how you all can talk about letting thousands of jobs go that are integral parts of our lives and in the same breath, suggest a new bill that would cost over $50,000 dollars and provide another job or maybe two. How many people will lose their jobs to fund this bill. Is a single mother seeking to start a family truly such a strain on our state's economy? Have you all considered how much it costs in the state of Tennessee for egg donation and IVF? Thousands of dollars go into one treatment. The average woman has to go through several of these treatments to be successful. The women you are targetting are not irresponsible or looking for free handouts! These are women that make enough to support their children and recognize the cost in raising a child alone. On the other hand, how many social workers and DHS workers will you let go in order to fund this bill? How many parents out there that are unable to take care of their children will suffer? How many babies will be put at risk so that this bill can become a reality?

I think we need to ask ourselves how this money could be put to better use. Which crisis is more pressing? As an elementary school employee, I hear and see daily evidence of our shortcomings with social services and help for our children. Rarely do I ever see problems or suffering children because a woman decided to raise a family on her own or with a same sex partner.

I thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope that you too will see how irrational this bill is, especially in our current financial situation. I hope you can ask yourself how much effect this bill will have on our state's economy. I haven't heard anyone ever say that single women or same sex partners put our state in the economic situation we are in. I haven't seen any major headlines about irresponisble doctors and high order multiples draining our state of valuable dollars. I'm sure you haven't either. Think through this bill and I beg of you, please vote with a clear head and rational reasoning.

Thank you,
Arian



**** I guess we need to start saving for our Clinic treatments sooner than I thought. It is only a matter of time till they start trying to take that hope away from us too...

Thanks Mel for pointing this out!

http://www.eggdonor.com/blog/2009/03/31/tennessee-seeking-to-ban-ivf-for-unmarried-individuals/

What do we do?

We got a BFN this afternoon. Right before I started spotting again.

Now what?

Seriously, I don't know what to do next. We have a plan in place with the doc to go up to 150mg, but honestly at this point I feel so defeated. It seems so stupid to keep pouring money into this. What is one more set of pills gonna do for us? If God had intended us to have a child, why would that one month make any difference?

I'm so angry at Him right now. I don't understand all of this. I feel so trapped too. I just want to curl up in a dark corner of the world and disappear right now, but I can't. I have surrounded myself with the very thing that causes me the most pain: other people's children. It is in every part of my life. I can't help it though. The need to fill that void somehow just draws me to them. They break my heart and hold it together all at the same time.

The ideal plan would be to cry a bit, hurt alot, dust off and try for this one last time. My body is working the right way and we are on a roll. It isn't possible though. We have to come up with $150 in just a few days. We won't have it. The timing on this is horrible. We have gone through all of our savings for medicine and copays. There aren't any more coffee cans in the back yard.

Part of me says," Well, that's your sign. Time to pack it up and quit."
The other part keeps saying," You'll never be able to quit and just leave that one last try sitting there on the table." It's like the last dinner roll, you can't just leave it all alone there in the basket. No matter how full, someone will step up and eat it.

The failure and disappointment feel like they are suffocating me right now. We're just stuck in the middle of the pond just out of reach of the oars. I guess our picnic is over.

April Showers too soon

I am amazed at how green things have gotten over the past week! I spent the entire week confined to either bed or couch, unable to breathe or move. I haven't been that sick in ages. I have no idea what it was because I was too sick to get out of bed and go to the doctor. I just took some tylenol and waited painfully for the next wave of sleep to take over. By Friday, I sounded horrible, but I was able to stand for more than a few seconds and I felt a million times better! I finally went to Mom's for a bit that night and it was shocking to see how quickly spring had sprung in my absence.

Saturday brought with it sounds of thunder and more signs of nature's awakening. The rain started to fall as I headed out to pick up some dinner. I told Hubby how beautiful it was outside. The sky was like a checkerboard, one minute sunny, the next black. Sure enough, as I drove down the road, a tornado warning came across the radio for some neighboring counties. We never faced any dangers, but other places had quite a bit of damage.

I took the chance to snap up a few shots before running in to pee. I had no idea that the clouds had also brought someone else with them. I stared in disbelief at the pink tp for a long time. It confused me. It isn't time yet. We still have four days. I was out of pads, toilet paper, I was so screwed!

I called my mom and they happened to be on their way home. They were very ironically driving past my house at that moment and swung by to pick me up. I stayed at their house until Hubby got off work. I couldn't sit in our house alone. For the first time ever, Mom listened to our plans and she was supportive and asked questions. It felt good to talk to someone.

I got home and there is not even a slight tinge of spotting. I don't know what in this world is going on with my body. I'm so frustrated with it right now. I'm sure tomorrow will tell us more, but for now the clouds still cover up all of our hopes and dreams. We hoped so much that it would work this time. We are $150 short for the next cycle, our last with this doctor. There are lots of painful decisions to be made it seems and I prayed so hard that we would be spared. Why can't the universe just be straight-forward with me? Instead, I get the run around and the guessing games. If you have any connections with St. Peter or Gabriel, perhaps you could send 'em an email for Hubby and me. Maybe they just accidentally forgot that it's been raining over here for the past 6 years.

Sorry for such a gloomy S&T this week. Perhaps you should go check out the rest of the class...

Crawling out of bed post

I've been a bad blogger. It wasn't because I forgot any of you. I would love to tell you that I have been whiling away the hours on white sandy beaches in a tropical paradise with the waves licking my toes. I would feel less guilty if I told you I had been so busy lately that I had fallen asleep standing up to save a few precious moments of productivity. I can't tell you those things truthfully, though. Nope, truth is, I've been asleep. Seriously.

Saturday morning I got up and my chest hurt a little. I knew it was coming. Every single time I have a good cycle I get a cold. This time is no different. Well, it is a little. This is just a simple "Help! The pollen thinks I'm a bee!" sort of allergy type cough complete with a runny nose and itchy eyes. It has managed to kick my butt. Or...something has.

I am tired. I'm not really sleeping much more than normal (other than that 2 hour afternoon nap I discreetly added in), it's just that I feel like I am carrying around an extra 50 pound weight in my pocket. The girls have gone on an "All hands off deck!" strike too. Ow! It doesn't help either that my brain has begun to swim Phelps-like circles around and around in my head. I was completely prepared for all this silliness. I knew that I would have side effects. I wasn't quite expecting my face to catch fire from a 99.1 degree temp for the past three days, but my body loves to throw in a few surprises. Speaking of surprises, I totally love that lurching feeling my stomach takes when food enters the room. Half of it wants to devour every crumb while the other half tries stoically to hold on to my last meal. My body is completely nuts!

That little Sheldon is really doing a number on me this time. I just hope he gets enough giggles to stick around until...say... Christmas?!?!

Garble...

I had a nice neat post all prepared to rush home and whittle out, but my brain is mush. I have gone to training two nights this week until nine o'clock and tonight I had my weekly women's study at church until eight thirty. This post is going to be a garble. I apologize.

I did have the full 10k units of hcg. The doc never gave me the details on his plan, so I'm not sure what he intended. I just pray that perhaps this is the jump start my little Sheldon needs.

How do I feel? Well, exhausted. I'm tired. I know most of it has to do with how busy I have been this week and probably a bit to do with the hamster wheel that is spinning furiously in my brain. I don't want to wait. I want to know. I hate this. Also, my "girls" omg. They are sore right now. I'm not sure whether the hormones are affecting them more than the fact that I was put on the ground in restraint training last night and my poor "girls" got caught in the middle. There is weird twingy, crampy, bloated type feelings going on in my abdomen. I have also battled a loss of appetite. I get hungry but I can only eat a little of it. I'm sure that has to do with the bloat.

I'm a bit frustrated about the events of my training last night. We had to do restraint training to make up some hours that we had missed due to snow. Restraints are used when a child becomes violent or out of control. I signed up a couple of months ago for it and the timing couldn't have been worse. We got out of school at three thirty and had to be half an hour away at four thirty. We had no dinner break and got out at eight thirty for the half hour drive home. Ugh!

I don't like to miss any days, ever. My recent absences raised a bit of an eyebrow and I had several questions. I answered them truthfully and as vaguely as I could, but you know how teachers are. They have to know it all! The second night of our training was totally physical. We had to learn the restraints and perform them correctly in order to pass. I have been trained before so I knew what to expect. Several of my coworkers did not and they threw a hissy that I would consider participating "in my condition." Thankfully, our school nurse came to my aid and assured everyone that she would sit me out if it became to strenuous.

It was flattering I suppose to be fussed over, but it bothered me. Everyone has turned this into a big ordeal this month. They mean well, and they are very sweet and motherly, but they just don't get it. This feels like just another month for me. It is just another wait. It is a time of silent whispered hope and prayer as well as preparation for the crushing grief to follow. I'm doing all I can to hang on as it is. I'm glad to have their support, but I think I would rather go it alone sometimes. I can't imagine the reaction if it doesn't work. I have a hard enough time without all those people. I'm pretty sensitive to everything right now and this particular subject is extremely tender. I'm not sure what to do or how to handle it.

Thankfully, tomorrow afternoon I begin a wonderful week of spring break. I am going to rest and keep my feet up all week hopefully. I want Sheldon to have a chance to get real comfortable for a nice long stay. I have never wanted this more than I do right now. I just hope he knows that.

Needly St. Pat's

I was supposed to go in for an ultrasound yesterday to check out my response to the clomid. I already knew it was more than likely an internal u/s, so I told Hubby that I wanted to "freshen up" before we left. He kept fussing at me to hurry that there was no reason to do that when the doc was just going to slap some gel on my belly and we'd be done. Of course I had to be right. I thought maybe since I was still bleeding just a little, that he would tell me we couldn't do it this month, but he went right on.

The ultrasound showed that my right ovary isn't doing anything really. The doc pointed it out and explained where the follicles were and the sizes. He expressed his disappointment and then said "Let's check the left just in case."

When he scanned over it, Hubby popped up and said, "Ooh, those are good ones!" The doctor laughed and agreed. I have one beautiful little follicle named Fran that was at about 16 mm.

Doc printed out a pic and disappeared for a little while. He came in and told us that he wanted to do an hcg trigger. He said it wasn't proven to help, but it couldn't hurt. We would have to go to this one specific pharmacy and pick it up and bring it back. We had not been planning on forking out the cash for an injection and told him we couldn't do it right then. No worries though, he told me to come in first thing in the morning. We went home and I called every pharmacy in town to try and find someone local that could fill the script so I didn't miss another day at work. The only pharmacy for many miles happens to be that one and they keep it on hand for my doc's partner.

Now, just a bit of background... My doc's partner happens to be the one that helped my mom get me. It is a long running joke with all of us at work that his office is where babies come from. We are pretty sure that my doc took the measurements over to the other doc and that is where we came up with this sudden deviation in the plan. I think it's pretty cool that this time he had a hand in it. Hopefully, he is where babies come from after all!

I took off this morning and got to the pharmacy just as it opened. I had issues with a lady about using my insurance card. I refused and she got huffy. Thankfully, the pharmacist had remembered me from the day before and he rescued me. The pharmacy has a beautiful picture of a baby with angel wings and the inside is loaded with gorgeous baby things. Perhaps it was a good sign?

I got to the office and doc was in surgery. The nurses had never given anyone an hcg shot before. They made me take a pg test which I thought was hilarious. They decided it should be broken into two injections; one on each side. I'm not a person that minds needles. I had several surgeries as a kid and was very used to being poked. I had a brief spell of piercings and tattoos. This injection was so slow and it stung a little, but no biggie. Well, until I had driven half an hour home and went straight to work. My back is very sore.

I hope to goodness that this works. We are going to have a bit of fun with it though and go buy a few tests. It may be the only positive I ever get to see, so why not? I guess tonight, we do the hokey pokey till we pass out and then pray for the best right? Surely the fact that it's the luckiest day of the year can't hurt.