Feeling down

• I am feeling down and unmotivated to work today.  This is a bad state of affairs, especially when I am already behind on hours for the month due to having missed four half-days of work (equally two full days) due to doctor's appointments for my sons and my own migraines.  And this in a month in which billing all my required hours was already going to be difficult due to fact that there are only 20 workdays.  *sigh*
• Factors contributing to my feeling down:
• I had a migraine that lasted three days this week, and even this morning, I still woke up with a little residual pain, especially on the left side of my head and neck/shoulder.  I know that many migraine sufferers are plagued with headaches that last for days, but I (blessedly) am usually not.  In fact, I cannot recall another time when I have had a migraine that lasted more than 48 hours.  I exhausted all medicinal and non-medicinal remedies and still couldn't get rid of my headache.  It was awful.  Equally as bad as the pain and suffering was the fact that I couldn't figure out what caused this episode, or what caused it to continue.
• Despite the fact that I began looking for another job in December 2012 and have interviewed for three jobs since that time, I am still working here, with no active applications anywhere at the moment.  It's been weeks since I've even seen anything I wanted to apply for.  I don't hate my field, but I am growing to really dislike my current position, and I really want to get out of it. . . but I am stuck, for a variety of reasons.  The primary reason is financial: our lifestyle is heavily dependent on the income I earn from this job.  Having said that, truth be told, even if I had a year's salary sitting in the bank that was earmarked for no other purpose, I likely would not quit this job, simply because doing so would not be a smart move for me professionally.  (We all know the conventional wisdom that it's easier to find a job when you already have one, and gaps on a resume can be hard to explain in an interview.)  Work is important to me, and I hate waking up each day dreading going in to the office.
• MM has been talking for a while--ever since I was pregnant with the boys, actually--about wanting to move to a bigger house.  Long story, but now that the housing market has been improving in our area, he has begun doing some exploration in this regard.  This prompted me to email our mortgage broker yesterday, and what we found out from him was depressing.  In short, even if we could sell our house today, we could not buy another house of even equal value and have the same monthly payment we have now because mortgage rates have increased since we refinanced last December.  *sigh*  Looks like we will be staying put indefinitely.  Even though I am really not as keen to move as MM is, I had begun to think that a change and more space might be nice, and I never like the feeling of having options taken away from me.
• On the positive side. . . 
• We had dinner last night with a friend and her family who are in town for a few days.  I had not seen her in over a year and (for a variety of reasons) had never met her children, ages almost-4 and two-and-a-half.  We had a really nice evening, and the boys were extremely well-behaved.
• I will be getting to see another out-of-town friend on Saturday when she and her husband and 3-year-old daughter are in town and meet us at the Children's Museum.
• I will be seeing two friends while I am out of town for a business trip on Monday and Tuesday
• I have a very busy week next week, and it's all work that I enjoy, is out of the office, and cannot be procrastinated away.

Here's to feeling better soon.

Toddlers are fun

(Caution:  children and parenting mentioned and discussed)

I often think that someone who knows me only through the things I write here might easily get the impression that I am a negative person when, in fact, that is not true.  Like anyone else, I have my moments of negativity and pessimism, and I think I am more pragmatic and logical than most women. . .but in the main, I am a happy and positive person.

I think the reason that more of the things I post here are negative than positive is because this blog is, in some ways, a repository for my negative thoughts and emotions.  Historically, this is the (virtual) place I have come when I have had thoughts and feelings I wanted to pour out that I didn't want to pour out to people in real life, for one reason or another.  Often, that reason was that those thoughts or feelings were uncharacteristically negative.

In addition to being the place I come to dump my negative thoughts and feelings, this blog has also become for me a chronicle of my life of sorts.  A limited chronicle, to be sure, but a record of my experiences nonetheless.

On that note, let me share that my sons are so fun!  Most mornings, they wake up laughing and "talking" to each other.  They are full of energy and are almost constantly in motion from the time they get up until the time they go to bed (apart from naptime).

They are understanding more and more of what we say to them and are making more attempts to communicate with us.  MJ says several words consistently and signs several words as well; it seems that he picks up a new sign every few days now.  AJ says only a few words but can sign several more and clearly understands a lot of what we say.  He has surprised us lately with busting out a couple of new signs we didn't realize he'd mastered.  (I have had some mild concern about the fact that AJ seems to be "behind" his brother, but he is quieter and mellower in general, and both our pediatrician and nanny seem to think he is on track for his age.)

In addition to the pleasure I get from seeing one of the boys sign a new word or hearing him say a new word, it is also great to be able to actually communicate with one another.  It's hard taking care of someone when you have to guess what they want and when they can't understand what you're asking of them.

We are often asked if the boys play together, and I'm not quite sure how to answer that question.  They do chase each other around, and MJ often tackles/hugs (not sure which) AJ and takes things from him that he is playing with.  They often hold hands while they are in the high chairs for meals and put food or sippy cups on each other's trays.  They "talk" and laugh at each other often.

In addition to the fun of watching them learn and develop, I really enjoy getting to act silly with them.  They love it when I sing 80s pop songs at the top of my lungs or make faces or give them "horsey" or "airplane" rides.  It's nice to have an excuse to do these things!

As well as enjoying the things the boys are currently learning and doing, being a parent has made me look forward to the future more than I had in a while prior to having them in my life because I know that the next stages in development will be just as fun to watch (in addition to having their own parenting challenges, yes, but focusing on the positive here).  MM and I often talk about how we look forward to introducing the boys to various activities and experiences.

We are so fortunate to have these little guys in our lives.

Memory loss

(Caution: children and parenthood mentioned)

Does anyone else notice that, since having children, your memory has gone down the tubes?

Pre-children, I had an excellent memory.  I would remember names, faces, things I needed to do, things I had read, things people told me, things that happened to me (and to others) years back.  I could rattle off facts and details and deadlines about my cases without looking them up.

Even while I was pregnant, I congratulated myself on not having developed problems with my memory, as so many other women report.  I did sometimes have difficulty concentrating, but I attributed that more to my extreme fatigue/exhaustion and constant nausea and heartburn than to my pregnancy itself.

Then my sons arrived, and with their arrival, my previously excellent memory departed.  At first, I chalked it up to lack of sleep.  But my sons have been sleeping through the night fairly consistently for some time now, so I can no longer use that excuse. . . and the problem seems to be getting worse instead of better.

Nowadays, I sometimes cannot even remember basic things without a reminder.  At work, this state of affairs isn't too much of a problem because law offices are set up to have safeguards in place to remind the lawyers of tasks and due dates (a safeguard against malpractice claims in a setting where nearly everyone is very busy all the time).  It's a mild inconvenience having to look up things I used to be able to remember, but it's workable.

At home, though, this is more of a problem for me.  I will go to the grocery store, and if I do so without a list (on which I tick off each item one by one as I find them), I will leave without the main thing(s) I went to buy.  I have forgotten to mail friends' birthday cards (or worse, cards to their children).  Right now, I have a baby gift that I have been carrying around in my car for over a month for which I keep forgetting to buy a mailer in which it will fit so I can mail it.  (It's a good thing I didn't buy a newborn-sized outfit; the baby has probably already outgrown that size by now!)

I have completely spaced on appointments.  I forgot my last hair appointment until I got the reminder on my Phone 30 minutes before (thank goodness for the iPhone and its calendar!).  I completely spaced a doctor's appointment earlier this week because I never set a reminder on my calendar, and I forgot to check the calendar that morning.  Didn't even remember I'd made the appointment until the office called me to tell me I'd missed it.

I also find that I cannot remember people I grew up with.  I grew up in a small town--population 5000-ish, only 350 kids in my entire high school--and I attended school with pretty much the same group of people from K through 12, so you would think I would be able to remember them.  Nope.  Every few months I will get a friend request on Fac.ebo.ok, or hear of someone from my hometown who died, and I have NO CLUE who this person is.  None.  Not even after other people who know the person (like my sister) try to jog my memory.

[Actually, I think the problem I describe in the last paragraph is related to a mental block I have about my hometown because, come to think of it, I had the same problem pre-pregnancy.  Hmm.  So maybe scratch that.]

One day last weekend, I actually forgot to put a diaper on one of my sons.  Yep.  I took them both in after breakfast to change out of their pajamas and into fresh diapers and clothes.  I changed and dressed MJ and then moved on to AJ.  A few minutes later, while playing with them in the living room, I picked up AJ and happened to pat his bottom. . . and noticed, hmm, there's no padding here.  That's because the poor guy was just wearing a romper with no diaper underneath!  (Thankfully, I realized this before he peed or pooped on the romper.)

MM jokes these days about how, once I leave the house in the morning, I will always come back in at least once to retrieve something I forgot. . . my iPhone, my lunch, the key to my car.  It's true.  And I can't even tell you how many times I have driven to work in the wrong car or driven off with the boys' car seats and stroller in the back, when our nanny will be needing them that day, without even noticing until I'm almost to the office.

I am not sure what the root of this problem is.  Stress?  Hormones?  Too many things on my mind?  Early onset dementia?

They say you give up a lot of your old life when you become a parent.  I guess my memory is just one of those things I've given up.

Where do I belong?

I have been on a semi-hiatus here, and it has continued at least in part because I'm not sure where I belong.

I wrote here nearly three years ago about sometimes feeling like a fraud in the infertility community, primarily because I/we never had an actual diagnosis but were simply "unexplained."  (In fact, my local RE told me once that he would consider me "subfertile" vs. "infertile.")

That feeling has resurfaced to an even greater degree since my unplanned pregnancy in March.  I mean, apparently I am/was able to get pregnant without intervention, despite 40 failed cycles of TTC.  Who knew?

At the same time, having conceived our sons through the use of donor eggs and IVF, I feel that my "journey to parenthood" is forever set apart from those who simply conceived through intercourse, with no medical assistance.  I mean, if someone uses IVF to conceive, strictly speaking, there is no need to ever tell your child this fact about his/her conception (any more than there would be a need to detail the sexual positions used or location of said conception if it were unassisted).  Not so with donor egg IVF.

If in no other lasting way, our family is different from those families in that my sons are not genetically related to me.  Given the growing ubiquity of genetic testing, this fact is something I likely could not conceal from my sons, even if I were of a mind to do so.  (And I'm not.)

Additionally, as I wrote about here, I don't think much about my (alleged) infertility any more now that our boys have arrived, and so the angst that spurred me to start this blog and to continue writing here are (mostly) gone.  For me, blogging has been both a chronicle of my experiences and a form of therapy and catharsis, as well as a way to connect with others going through similar experiences.  Nowadays, despite being a part of PAIL Bloggers and other online communities for parents after infertility, for reasons I can't quite articulate, I just don't feel the same camaraderie or esprit de corps or *something* most of the time.

These days, my biggest challenges seem to be spending the majority of my time away from my sons at a job I find mostly frustrating and lacking in personal fulfillment, and parenting two toddlers with limited language abilities and very different personalities.  So in those respects, maybe the place I belong is in a group of other full-time, working-outside-the-home mothers of twins?  I'm not aware of such a group--I haven't really made connections like this in my local Mothers of Multiples group--but I'm sure one exists.  Although I suspect that the other moms who would "fit into" this group would be like me: too busy and stressed for many get-togethers.

I still very much enjoy reading all my regular blogs and finding out what my friends in the ALI community are up to--even those who are now parenting, since that is the majority of those friends--but I somehow feel that the things I would choose to write about here, if I had the time and the inclination, would be things that would be of little-to-no interest to those same friends.

I don't know.  I hate posing questions to which I don't know the answers; I suppose that's the lawyer in me.

To sum up:  my sons are a joy, if sometimes also a challenge; my marriage and most of my other interpersonal relationships are going along relatively smoothly at present; and I have added looking for a new job to my already full-to-the-brim to-do list.  That's my life in a nutshell.

ginger and lime is a mom!

While checking in on fellow blogger ginger and lime, I found the following written in the comments section of her last post:

All,
A quick note of thanks to all of G&L’s wonderful followers. G&L gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby boy on Friday evening just shy of 37 weeks. Birth weight of 7 lbs, 4 ozs. Mother and baby are doing well. I’m sure G&L will be blogging about her experiences after she has regained her strength.
-Mr. Lime

Yea!  Stop by and congratulate her, if you're of a mind to.  :-)

PAIL Bloggers Monthly Theme Post May 2013: Body Image

(This post is part of PAIL's Monthly Theme Post for May.  You can find other posts on this topic here.)

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• How do you feel about your pregnancy / post-partum / post-adoption body?

I dislike my body now more than I ever have, and not only because it looks worst post-twin pregnancy and post-c-section (and believe me, it does).  I also dislike my body because it seems incapable of doing the most basic functions for which it was designed.  It couldn't get pregnant, couldn't stay pregnant, couldn't breastfeed, couldn't continue my medically-assisted pregnancy to term without developing gestational diabetes and preeclampsia.

• Did you have weight gain in addition to pregnancy gain because of depression, fertility meds, etc?

This is one of the several ways in which my body is weird. I never really gained any extra weight due to fertility treatments or really, at all during our three-year struggle with infertility.  My weight went up and down within about a 10-lb range, but that's normal for me and wasn't related directly to infertility-related stress or meds.  Also, I weighed 16 pounds LESS at my 6-week postpartum check than I weighed on the day I got pregnant, so I actually LOST weight while pregnant with my twins.  For the first trimester, people kept saying to me "Wow, you're losing weight."  And I was.  (Don't hate me because none of those weights are enviable.)

• How do you / have you made time to focus on your health/body since becoming a mother?

I have made several starts at this since my twins were born 16 months ago but have done nothing consistently.  I am working on this. . . I am continually working on this, both pre-kids and post-kids.  Also, I have recently gone in for my annual gyn exam and made an appointment for a mammogram, as I was overdue for both.

• Do you focus more on healthy food, good exercise, or a mix of both?

Exercise is something that I have found very difficult to fit into my schedule.  Between work and my sons, the only realistic time I have to fit it in is before work, early in the morning.  I'm not gonna lie: it's hard to make myself get out of bed before 5:30 a.m. to work out, and most days, I don't.

I have had a bit more success focusing on the healthier eating aspect.  Yes, I do slip up from time to time and eat candy or fast food, but overall, I make pretty healthy food choices.

Few things about me (a meme)

(Stolen from Jodi in an attempt to get motivated to write something here.)

1) What were you doing 10 years ago?
I was taking finals for the spring semester of my second year of law school.  On this exact date, I would've either been studying or taking my first exam, can't remember for sure.

2) What are five things on your to-do list?
1.  Fill out a corrected W2 form for my nanny.
2.  Mail check for a donation I promised a friend for a charitable organization.
3.  Add texting to my mother's line on my cell phone plan to avoid paying overage charges for her texts (gah, that sounds like I'm the parent and she's a teenager, when she's actually 68 years old today).
4.  Hire a new house-cleaning service since the one I hired two months ago stood us up.
5.  Decide whether to re-enroll AJ and MJ at The Lit.tle Gym for the summer.
(I could go on, and on. . . but these are the most pressing, apart from work and childcare.)

3) What are five snacks you enjoy?
Nachos
Almonds
Cheese
BBQ potato chips
Brownies

4) Name some things you would do if you were a millionaire.
Donate a lot of money to charity.
Pay off all our debts.
Hire a full-time, live-in nanny and cook/housekeeper.
Buy a new, bigger house (with quarters for the live-in nanny and cook/housekeeper).
Establish trusts for our sons, for my nephew, and for each of my parents.
Give cash gifts to family and friends.
Travel.

5) Name some places you have lived.
New Mexico, Texas, California, Connecticut, Arizona

6) Name some bad habits that you have
I'm a procrastinator and have a tendency toward laziness. . . as in, I want to try to do things the fastest and most efficient way possible most of the time.  I also use too much profanity--something I am especially mindful of now that our sons are starting to talk--and always have to work on controlling my temper (I'm a yeller).

7) Name some jobs you have had
Fast food worker
Pizza delivery driver
Tutor (math and science)
Tax clerk
Dormitory desk attendant
Nurse 
Lawyer