Sweet Potato

Size of Baby: 2.3 cm- about the size of a green olive.
Total Weight Gain: About .4 lbs
Continuing Symptoms: Tiredness, peeing a lot, occasional mood swings, back soreness by the end of the day, and some cramping. I also get hungry really fast and then full really fast. I basically don't really feel pregnant.
New Symptoms: Occasional headaches, round ligament pain when I sneeze, more pressure on my bladder.
Physical Changes: Helloooo big breasts! I'm already up one cup size and VERY happily bought a couple new bras. My face has exploded with acne as well. I look somewhat pregnant at nighttime, especially if I have to pee.
Maternity Clothes: Nope! Not even close. I've been living in my yoga pants as I'm preferring comfort to cuteness right now.
Sleep: The last few nights I haven't slept well at all due to D just having surgery on his shoulder. However, I'm enjoying the fact that I get tired enough to take naps AND still be ready for bed at a decent hour. Between 2pm and 5pm is when I want to rest the most.
What I'm Eating: Normal eating habits so far. Occasionally I chew a piece of cinnamon gum after meals that make me feel too full. Some days I wake up at 3am super, super hungry and other days I have to remind myself to eat breakfast because I'm not starving. Our overall consumption of milk has doubled. Thank goodness for Costco!
Cravings: Tomato-based products: tomato soup, marinara sauce (which I use as salad dressing), homemade bbq sauce, pizza, and pasta sauce. I crave a lot of sweets and cereal. Over the last two days I've craved: fruit roll-ups, doughnuts, cupcakes, and fruit loops. I'm also loving baked potatoes and freshly baked french bread. I really don't know how I haven't gained THAT much weight.
Movement: It's too early to feel the baby move. However, when I was about 5 weeks along it felt like there was a tiny butterfly fluttering in my uterus. My mom and MIL reported to have the same feeling in their pregnancies. I can also feel my uterus growing and stretching... not always a great feeling! During my ultrasound this afternoon we were able to see the baby twitch and move it's arms a LOT!
Special Pregnancy Moments: We have a lot!
1. Calling our parents on December 10th to tell them that I had a positive test.
2. Getting a call from our Reproductive Endocrinologist on Dec. 12th- in the baby section at Ikea- confirming my pregnancy, hearing my due date and learning my hcg numbers.
3. Calling our extended families that same night to tell them the news. The best reactions came from: D's little brother- who's been asking why we don't have a baby- cried. My grandmother bawled for about 5 minutes straight. D's aunt and my aunt just screamed and screamed with excitement.
4. Our first OB appointment this afternoon. Especially the ultrasound!
5. Purchasing a little snow suit last week. This evening I officially started our cloth diaper lot by purchasing a few.
6. The times that D states how excited or how happy he is to finally start a family.

Bruises

I mentioned in this previous post that it took D and I three years to conceive. That's a long time. Although, for me, it felt more like 1,095+ days. Looong days. It wasn't just 1,095+ days, either. It consisted of days being so consumed by the fact that it was taking a lot time, wasn't going to "plan," what-ifs, when do we draw the line, and the how far are we willing to pursue this? On top of that I majorly went through all stages of the grief cycle.

Yep... all 1,095+ days.

The time from September 2010 up until a couple months ago seemed to be the hardest. For the first time ever in my life I couldn't even be near a baby nonetheless look at one. There have been a couple times that I've had to drop everything and leave a store because I saw one while grocery shopping and just couldn't handle it. Even hearing one cry from across the store could trigger my anxiety level in .5 seconds.

And don't even get me started on baby showers.

Ingrained in my head was the idea that it things weren't working because I didn't deserve it. I know, I know- so not the case. It took medication and working with a counselor to retrain my brain to not feel that way. Then- ever so slowly- I took a huge leap and met up with a friend who had a little one. It was a success... a small one... but I'm glad I did it. I ripped the large band aid off and exposed my open wound.

Now that I am pregnant I've found myself in a strange place. Part of me is over the moon. Part of me is in disbelief... still. Part of me still feels the infertility bruises. I wasn't one who simply stopped birth control and was pregnant three months later. I had to work for this. Hard. The part that feels the bruises is worried that it could all be taken away as fast as it came. I feel as if this is the crappiest thing about infertility- in one way or another it never leaves you.

During those 1,095+ days I never allowed myself buy anything baby related if it wasn't a gift for someone else. In fact, the baby section was an area I frequently avoided in stores. Occasionally friends would hand me down a few things but 90% of the time I would end up donating the item. (Minus a couple things) I always thought that I would buy up a storm if we ever became pregnant. Well... at least something to commemorate the pregnancy. But, no. I've actually avoided it. I can look and browse but something has held me back from buying. That really bothered me.

Once again... I braced myself as I ripped off the band aid exposing a re-opened wound, hoping that the fresh air would do it some good. I popped into a local children's store and made my first purchase: a little cream snowsuit.

I hate that bruises of infertility may never fade away... but I also love how infertility has made me immensely grateful for the little one that is to come.

Tomato Sauce & Chocolate

New Year's Eve and New Years has never been a huge celebration for D and I. We've never put on fancy clothes to go to dinner or dancing. I guess it's just not our style. We tend to be the stay-home type. (In all honesty the thought of driving on holidays that focus on drinking keeps me indoors.) This year was no different.

Lately I've been waning food with tomato sauce. A couple days ago, on a shopping trip to Costco, I quietly concocted a plan to take as many free pizza samples as possible. I even walked around the entire store again to get a second scoop had seconds. At the end of the trip D ended up with healthy items such as greek yogurt, almonds, and vitamins. Me? A 12-pack of mini pizzas and a giant vat of ketchup. A GIANT vat.

So, when D came home from a bike ride this afternoon and asked me on a little date, "to a place with tomato-y stuff," I was thrilled. We dragged along our friend, E, with us to our favorite, local pizza place. (Top 50 pizza place in the country? Yes AND please!) D and E split a pizza while I stuck to an order of breadsticks with a salad... and might have used the marinara sauce as salad dressing.

We topped the night, and dinner, off with some fancy-pants desserts from a beautiful, ocean front restaurant.

Yeah- we're really good at being low key. There's no place else I'd rather be than where I currently am: sitting on the couch with a sleeping husband, cuddly dogs at my feet, too lazy to stop watching a movie that I hated the first time around, the smell of my favorite Anthropologie candle burning and pouring myself a bowl of cereal after publishing this post.

Happy 2012.

Yep... two posts in a row again. Scroll yourself on down to the previous one.

Christmas

This was our first Christmas sans family. Despite that we had a really great time with two of our best friends. Just like Christmas Eve, Christmas was more cooking, eating, and Settlers of Catan. We were blessed with a lot of great gifts this year but it was hard to top the wee little gift I've been carrying.

D and I couldn't stop thinking about how this was our final Christmas as a duo. It's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that there will be a little person bossing us around, stealing our hearts next year... but, oh man, we can't wait. 

It's also hard for me to think of how we'll get another person to pose in our Christmas picture since we have a hard enough time taking one ourselves. 

Hope your holiday was merry and bright. 

The Eve

 Emma

 Our tree. I'm pretty sure it hated us. It fell over twice and shattered a few special ornaments, including our star. 

 Prepping some basil

 A classy, young gentleman

 A crazy fart head

 AH-MAZ-ING Greek spaghetti prepared by Chris.

 Lovin' the Christmas cards we received. Between sleeping and baby excitement I didn't have time to get our out this year. 

 Lots o' gifts!

 Cookin' a sweet potato

 My famous Brie En Croute. So famous that a certain dog got up in the middle of the night and ate the remaining half. HE will not be named. 

 Chris and D. 

 Boys are creative wrappers- especially when a poop bag is involved. 

 My favorite bag from my favorite half-Jewish gal. 

 Inside joke

 Another creative wrapping example. (And, might I add, that it contains only ONE shoe. Not a pair. Just one.) 

 Mmm mmm!

 The dapper cook.

Full tummies all around. 

...

Two posts in a row?! Yes it's true. The first one is here. 

There Are No Real Words...(Especially)

...to describe seeing the following image:

Especially on a Saturday afternoon after unpacking your entire house. Especially on a whim. Especially when I had an extremely special dream about this type of thing two days before I tested. Especially since there was a reason why D got hurt and had to come home. Especially after three long, painful years of trying. Especially after being diagnosed with a progressive disease- one that I can never get rid of, was surprised to learn I had, and one that is one of the main causes of infertility. Especially since I had become used to saying the word "infertility"... a word that I despise. Especially since I went through six months of hell in the form of a shot, seven rounds of Clomid, two rounds of Femara, had surgery, and went through nine months of terrible depression/ therapy/ anti-depressants.

The whole previous paragraph was worth it after thirty seconds of the taking the test. All the stress, fear, anxiety, anger and sadness disappeared as D and I stared at each other, with disbelief, and said, "What do we do now!?" I would do it again. In a heartbeat.

I am a daughter by birth, a sister by blood, a wife by marriage and, now, a mother by God's grace.

Six weeks

Risk

On Sunday night a thought popped into my head as I was getting into bed: "Tomorrow is going to be either really good or really bad." Being very tired and realizing that nothing I could do could change the situation, I focused on the upcoming Friends episode on my tv. To my surprise I fell asleep really fast.

Hubs has been gone for two months for specialized training. In a prior phone conversation on Sunday he warned me that he might be coming home sooner than he wanted to. Not because of a failed test, poor performance or anything of that sort. His shoulder was giving out and the the remainder of his training "fate" rested in a military doctor's decision.

Monday morning came fast and his fate was relayed to me via text message- he was coming home. He was not happy. A quick bout of anger on his part, tears on my part and we were quickly reminded that the military moves fast, and we had to keep up. A craigslist search and a dozen phone calls later we secured a new home in a new location.

via

Back to Sunday night. In the moments prior to checking out, mentally, to watch Friends I thought about all of the risks that we've taken this past year. Especially the past couple of months. All of the risks were very calculated, weighed and obessesed thought over: we packed up our entire house and uprooted two states away knowing that he could come home early. We knew that being separated during the holidays would be extremely hard. We knew that me living out of a suitcase, dragging two dogs around and bouncing between two sets of parents would have some pros but a lot of cons. Et cetera, et cetera, etcetera. I didn't prepare myself to risk picking up broken pieces of someone who tried but didn't succeed.

That's a risk I should have prepared for. And I'm very bad at math.

Hubs is my absolute best friend. He reads me and anticipates what's coming before I'm even ready to let it out. He's spent the past two years comforting, reassuring, pushing me forward, pulling me up and positively reinforcing me... sometimes multiple times in an hour. He's also put up with some very crappy side effects- both mentally and physically. I had become so used to it that I'm guilty of forgetting how to return the favor. Apparently it doesn't take that long to remember how to return the favor.

The best part about risk? It's antonyms: secure, safe, shelter, save... to name a few.

Without the risks we've taken in the past couple months I wouldn't have been reminded how safe I feel in my hometown. I was reminded how absolutely secure my marriage is. I wouldn't have been able to save some of my childhood and family items that would have been given away. I wouldn't have had the most stressful two hours priviledge to negoiate a rental agreement for a condo we haven't really seen. I would not have had the chance to rely emotionally on a person who's growing more into family than friend.

Yeah... I guess risk is okay, afterall. Let's hope I still agree with the previous statement after all the risks we plan to take this coming year. My fingers will definitely be crossed. D exposed himself to a ton of risk... but I'm so glad he did.