Just living life

This past weekend I

• went out to dinner and to a play with a friend on Friday night after work 
• took the boys to their usual Saturday morning session at The Lit.tle Gym
• made a dent in sorting through my "denial piles" of paper clutter (some of which have been accumulating since I cleared out our former home office and then went on bed rest before the boys were born)
• had dinner out with MM and friends without our kids!
• took the boys and the dog to the park Sunday morning (we had beautiful weather this weekend; fall is a great time in Phoenix)
• Furminated and brushed Hunter, removing enough hair to knit a small afghan
• saw my inlaws
• had lunch out with MM while the boys napped (courtesy of my inlaws' babysitting)
• bought groceries, did the usual minimal household chores and meal prep, as well as seven loads of laundry (including folding and putting away)

All of the above in addition to the usual weekend agenda of playing with my sons and keeping them safe and happy. When I write it all out, it sounds like a lot!

Things generally are going well. The new job is working out: people are nice, and so far I have a lot less stress. Most importantly, I have my weekends back!  I'm also able to take a rapid transit commuter bus from a nearby park-and-ride to my building most days at no cost (paid by my employer as part of a pollution reduction plan), which is a nice way to save money and reduce the stress of commuting. I've been able to read five books on the ride to and from work so far. 

The paycut has been a bit of a struggle, but I knew it would be. I have cut back on some things and am challenging myself to find more places to save money. Things will ease a little in March when MM pays off his car and even more when I finish my first year on the job because I'll receive an automatic 5% pay increase and qualify for student loan repayment assistance that will amount to an additional $325 or so per month.  Until then, we just have to do without some non-necessities.

The boys are doing wonderfully well!  MJ is very chatty and probably has over 75-80 words now. He is like a parrot and will repeat most new words he hears.  AJ is starting to talk more, though still much less than his brother. He is very interested in puzzles and building things.  They are both very fun and happy most of the time, though we are definitely starting to see some toddler frustration and independence emerging.

PAIL Bloggers October 2013 Monthly Theme Post

[This post is part of the PAIL Bloggers October Monthly Theme.  You can find other posts on this month's topic here.]

I think I must be in the minority in feeling this way. . . but I always viewed pregnancy and childbirth as very much means to an end and not as things I felt a strong desire to undergo for themselves. I do understand that many women have an idea in their minds of how they want their birth experience to go, and that many mothers create a birth plan with the intention of realizing these hopes.  But I had no investment in any particular plan except whatever would result in all of us being alive and well at the end.

Even before I was pregnant with my sons, I felt that so long as my pregnancy and birth experience ended with both my baby (or babies) and me healthy and alive, I would deem them a success and be happy about how they went.  Once I knew I was having twins and was at a higher risk of complications with both, I felt this even more so.

So because I felt this way about pregnancy and childbirth, having a certain type of birth experience was never very important to me.  In light of how each of these experiences went for me, I believe the fact that I had this mindset was probably a good thing because both my pregnancy and my delivery were far from what most women would wish for as the ideal of these experiences.

I knew from about 26 weeks on that I would likely be having a C-section.  Twin A (AJ) was in a frank breech position at that point and unlikely to turn (as he was running out of space to do so).  And even before that point in my pregnancy, I had a strong suspicion that a C-section was a real possibility, given the fact that I was having twins, had gestational diabetes, and was over age 40 (all risk factors for C-section).

So the only real question in my mind for most of my pregnancy, and certainly from 26 weeks on, was not "how" I would give birth but "when."  My OB told me she would not allow me to go past 38 weeks, but I also got the feeling from her that she never thought I'd make it that far (and I didn't).

• What type of birth did you have?

I gave birth to my sons via urgent C-section at 34 weeks, 1 day.  Essentially, my doctor came into my room just before 7:00 p.m. and told me that I'd be delivering that night because my lab results that day indicated that my preeclampsia had worsened and was now at the "severe" level.  Before 10:00 that night, my sons had been delivered.  (I wrote about my sons' birth story here.)

• How did the birth experience of your child affect your parenting of this child? 

Although it was far from ideal in a number of ways--not the least of which is that I was heavily medicated, critically ill and barely saw my sons for the first 48 hours of their lives--I honestly don't think that my birth experience has had any effect on the way I have parented my sons.  Being pregnant with twins and having had pregnancy complications, and with my background as a nurse, I was always well aware that premature birth was a possibility.  We have been very fortunate that our sons have been very minimally affected by their early arrival.  At this point, apart from being a little more on the alert for delays than I think I might otherwise have been, I think I interact with them just as I would have done had they been born via a natural, full-term vaginal delivery.

I also don't think that my birth experience affected our future plans with regard to having more children.  We were done at two regardless, based on other considerations.

• Have you felt “judged” about your birth(adoption) experience, and has that affected your parenting or future plans?

There have only been a few times I have begun to feel judged about my birth experience. . . but letting people know that you developed a life-threatening condition that left your doctor with no choice but to deliver your sons early and that you had to have a C-section because one of your twins was in a frank breech position usually puts an end to any possible judgment.  (I've felt more judgment from other moms for not breast feeding than about my birth experience, but that's a topic for another post.)

• What sticks out in your birth/adoption experience that you still carry with you?

I remember that I didn't hear our first son, AJ, cry as I could feel him being pulled out, and that concerned me.  I remember asking MM to go and check on him and telling him to make sure he took pictures (he did).

I *did* hear MJ cry, loudly.  I remember one of the nurses bringing MJ over for me to see first, and that his eyes were wide open, looking around at everything (just like my MIL told me his father's were when he was born).  I remember being further concerned about AJ at that point and wondering why he hadn't been brought to me first when he had been delivered first.

By the time a nurse brought AJ over for me to meet, the narcotics and other drugs I had been given had started to take full effect, and I felt very drowsy and disconnected.  I do remember that his eyes were squeezed tightly shut, in contrast to his brother's wide open ones; he looked very tired.

I remember two different nurse practitioners from the NICU coming over and telling me that neither of my sons needed to go to the NICU.  (There was a NICU team present for each boy at their delivery, just in case.)  I was both surprised and relieved to hear that.

After that, I just have bits and pieces of memory over the next several hours.  I recall seeing the boys in their warmer beside me in the recovery room. . . talking briefly to my father to let him know they had been born. . . lots and lots of uterine massage by my nurse and eventually even more intervention "down there" by my OB (which is, blessedly, very hazy, thanks to the narcotics).  I know that I had a lot of bleeding because I remember seeing some of the pads with my blood and hearing the doctor and nurses talking to each other and to my husband.  I remember throwing up and afterwards feeling very, very thirsty.  I remember the boys being taken off to the nursery at some point.  I remember eventually being taken to a regular private room.

All in all, I really don't think much about my birth experience. . . primarily because my memories are not entirely positive.  I mean, obviously the arrival of our sons brought us great joy, but I have never been so ill in my life, and that in and of itself was very scary.

At first, I felt a little sad about the fact that I don't really have positive feelings overall about what really should be a joyful experience.  But putting things in perspective. . . my sons' birth was really just one day in what will be a lifetime of being their mother.  So we got off to a bit of a rocky start.  They are here, and so am I, and we are all happy and healthy.  That's what really matters.

You Don't Forget

I have written here often about the fact that I spend little-to-no time thinking about my lack of fertility now that I have my sons. There have been times I have even pondered whether I am truly "infertile," given my lack of a definitive diagnosis, my "advanced age" at the time we started trying, and my ability to conceive naturally on two occasions (though those pregnancies did not progress).

An online friend (not a part of the ALI community) married last year at 39 and hoped, as many of us do, to start a family with her husband. Her first hurdle was being diagnosed with cervical cancer shortly before her wedding. After (thankfully) getting the all clear on that front, she experienced an ectopic pregnancy recently that ruptured, resulting in the loss of one of her tubes.

Through the surgery and follow-up for her cancer, she has also learned that she has a large uterine fibroid that it would be very risky to remove but will make a successful pregnancy nearly impossible.  After seeing what she went through with ruptured ectopic pregnancy, her husband doesn't think she should even attempt the surgery. Or if she does, attempt the necessarily risky (to mom and baby) pregnancy that would follow it.

My friend posted on her blog this morning about how she is not OK and about her feelings about likely never being pregnant or having a child who is a combination of her and her husband. Reading her post reminded me of my own feelings of grief when I realized I would never have a child who shared my genes and MM's genes.

I adore my sons and the unique individuals they are. Now that they are in my life, I wouldn't trade them for my own genetic child. But I won't deny that, before they were here, having a child naturally, who would have been genetically related to both me and to my husband, would have been my preferred option.

I have confidence that my friend and her husband will mourn their (very real and deep) loss and probably come to parenthood in some other way. I do believe that most people who want to become parents do, if they are open to multiple paths to that destination.

Reading her words and being reminded of my own feelings as I progressed along my own long and increasingly circuitous route to eventuall motherhood by a path I'd never thought of walking brought up emotions today I hadn't felt in a long time.

You never really forget.

Curiosity killed the cat

I am an Internet stalker of the first order. I admit it. Ever since I first discovered google over ten years ago, I have done searches for numerous ex-boyfriends, long-lost friends, former classmates and others. I even use google to search my clients' backgrounds, and those of the people who sue them.

Given this fact, it's probably not surprising that since I first learned our donor's first name over two years ago, I have occasionally searched for her online. Not because I have any intention of ever contacting her, but because I'm just nosy as hell, frankly.

Today, for the first time, my searching bore fruit.  I stumbled across a website that revealed a lot of personal information about our donor, complete with photos of her that left me with no doubt that I have the right person. Information so complete and detailed that I think she'd feel weirded out if she knew I had it.

I guess that's what I get for snooping around.

PAIL Bloggers September 2013 Monthly Theme – Why We Blog

This post is part of PAIL Bloggers' monthly theme post for September.  You can find the other posts for this month's theme here.

Did you start blogging before, during, or after your journey though infertility?
I started blogging here at the very beginning of our journey through infertility, back in March 2009, when it started to become clear to me that natural conception was not going to happen for us. (Prior to that time, I had written on another blog for a couple of years.  That blog was mostly just about my daily life and my struggles with my weight.)

Back in those early days of the blog, I naively thought that we would probably "just need a little help" to get pregnant. Wow, how wrong I was, and what a long way we have come since then.

Why did you start blogging? What has kept you blogging?
I originally started blogging as an outlet for the thoughts and feelings I had about the challenges of infertility that I had a hard time expressing to people in real life. I was/am very fortunate to have great friends and family to whom I could talk about most of these things. . . but I couldn't talk about them to the degree and extent that I needed to in order to really process them and work through them and still maintain my sanity.

Also, I had stumbled across some other infertility blogs and found them both informative and inspiring. I wanted to connect with other women in positions similar to my own.

When you became a parent did you transition your blog or start a new space? What were your reasons for doing so? How do you feel about your decision now?
I considered shutting down this blog and starting a new one when I got pregnant with my twins. However, I had made so many connections through this blog, and it was such a chronicle of all I had been through to get to that point, that I ended up just continuing to write here.

Now, over two years since becoming pregnant with my sons, I feel OK about this decision.  At least those who have been reading my story since the beginning can still easily find me and continue to follow my story, if they so desire.

Have you ever felt pressure to blog about certain things and not others? What influences your writing, if anything?
I will say that I have always been mindful of the fact that at least some of the people reading may still be "in the trenches," that is, still TTC. Keeping that thought in the back of my mind has sometimes held me back from writing honestly about some of my thoughts about the stresses and challenges of parenthood and sometimes about other things.

My writing is more influenced by what is going on in my life and in my mind than by anything else.

What did you hope to achieve by blogging? Do you feel that you have done this?
Mainly I hoped to use blogging as a form of therapy, in a way. . . to have a place to vent and share my thoughts and feelings, and to preserve my sanity. It has definitely served those purposes for me. It has also been a great way to connect with other women going through similar situations.

Why is blogging important to you NOW?
I would say that, to the extent that I blog at all now, it is more about trying to keep that connection I have formed with the other women I have met along the way than it is having a place to vent. . . simply because I am less in need of that type of space these days (though I still use the blog for that purpose on occasion). I do still want to preserve the connections I've made with the women I met during the years I was going through my struggles with infertility.

What value do you see in blogging the "after"?
I think that the experience of parenthood after infertility/loss can be quite different than it is for those women who simply conceived naturally and easily. So to the extent that sharing my experience on this blog offers an example of that "after" for others, I think there is value in that.

Also, although this isn't exactly relevant to continuing to write here, I do think that my archives might also be of value to a reader who finds herself in a similar position to mine, since I wrote about my experiences in deciding upon, and pursuing, treatment through donor egg IVF in detail as I was going through it, as well as my twin pregnancy. That is one of the reasons I never shut down or deleted the blog after I got pregnant.

New Job

I got one.  I start September 16, and September 13 will be my last day at my current job.

Never thought I would see the day when I would be happy to take a 25% pay CUT, but here it is.

In my new job, I will be doing much the same work I am doing now, with some key differences.  I will no longer be paid by insurance companies.  I will no longer have a billable hours requirement.  And I will have holidays off, paid vacation, and paid sick leave again.  I will also have some other nice benefits, like student loan repayment assistance and a state retirement plan that my employer actually contributes to.  (My current employer offers a 401k plan but contributes exactly $0 to it on my behalf.)

I will also be working only blocks from MM, which means we will be able to meet for lunch occasionally.  Yes, it will probably be brown bag lunch, due to decrease in my salary.  But hey.  Life is full of trade-offs.

I will take my sanity and more time with my sons in exchange for less money.

Sleep question for the moms

In the past couple of weeks, AJ has gone from being our excellent sleeper to being our challenge.  Historically, AJ has always needed a little more sleep than MJ.  From the time they came home from the hospital, he would sleep a little longer at naptime than MJ and wouldn't wake in the mornings after MJ (usually being awakened by MJ, or by us because MJ had been up for a while).

Starting about two weeks ago, AJ has been waking up first. . . and early!  He has gone from sleeping until 6:15-6:45 or so to waking between 5:15-5:30 most mornings.  This change in wake-up time has come without any change in bedtime or change in nap duration, and I'm not quite sure what is causing it.

Now AJ is up before MJ every day, and unlike MJ, AJ is not content to babble contentedly in his crib for a little while when he wakes up before someone comes to get him up.  No, AJ wakes up crying and insisting to be taken out of the crib THIS INSTANT.  This means that someone--OK, *I*--have to get up at 5:15, or whatever ungodly hour he has awakened, and get him up.  And because MJ is a light sleeper, I also have to get him up, too, because invariably AJ's crying wakes MJ up, no matter how quickly I go in to snatch AJ out of his crib.

I'm not sure if this is our "new normal" or a phase or if there is something that can be done to change this pattern.  I know that AJ is probably due to get some more teeth--at 19 months, he still only has four teeth, though several more are visible right under the gums--so maybe teething pain is a factor in these early wakings.  Additionally, he has had a ravenous appetite lately.  The amount he is eating has increased 50-75% from his usual amounts over the past few days; some days, he eats almost as much as I do. . . and that's saying something, considering that he weighs under 23 lbs to my (ahem) 200-ish lbs.

This morning AJ woke at 4:00 a.m. (GAH!), and fortunately I was able to quickly retrieve him from his crib before he woke his brother.  He slept in the guest room bed with me for a little more than an hour more (we generally don't co-sleep, but desperate times call for desperate measures), until he awoke at 5:10 signing and asking for "cracker."  (Dude has a serious graham cracker addiction lately; he eats several a day on top of his usual meals and snacks.)

I tried to put him off by telling him it was too early.  His response was to slide down off the bed and toddle out to the kitchen on his own.  

Fellow moms, any thoughts on what may have caused this change in AJ's sleep habits and what we can do to get him to sleep a little later?  I'd like him to sleep in not only so that I can get a bit more sleep--I'm usually up at 5:30 anyway--but also because he seems pretty tired all morning these days when he gets up this early, so I'm concerned that he isn't getting enough rest.  Plus I feel bad for MJ for getting woken up every morning.

Thanks!