Old habits die hard.

After spending the better part of two years scrutinizing my cycles, it's hard to ignore all that stuff. I just went to the bathroom and I think I'm about to O. Even though we KNOW we need ART to conceive, I still get excited at the possibiliy of BD'ing and conceiving on our own. Stranger things have happened, right? So, I will have to jump Ed tonight and give it a shot on our own. Since my D&C was this month we won't have a medicated or assisted cycle, and I would just love to be one of those couples who was "on a break" when they got their surprise BFP.

**Keeping all fingers and toes crossed**

On a different note, my foster dogs look like they'll be adopted this Saturday. I'll be sad to see them go, but I will be thrilled to have some serene moments in my house again. The past 9 days have been a constant state of chaos. It's fun at times, but man do I miss sleeping in! I have been up an hour earlier than normal every day before work and there was no chance of sleeping in this weekend. I'm sure Jimmy will miss his playmates too. I'm just glad we can help out this way and save dogs from being put into shelters (or even worse).

And on a third note, I think I've come up with a cute name for my dog walking business...

The Lucky Puppy

A Dog Walking & Pet Sitting Service

My friend has also thought of a cute logo. Here it is, we have some tweaking to do with the graphics but this is the general idea. And then we need to create my website. Now how in the world do I do that?? Hpefully she'll know :-)

I thought this would be fun...

Post your own answers in your blog or email...

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? Nope.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? Today

3.DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? No, I write worse than a fourth grader

4.WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? Honey maple ham

5. DO YOU HAVE PET? Jimmy, our Basenji, and we're fostering 2 more right now, Toby & Chloe

6.IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Depends on my mood when we met. LOL.

7.DO YOU USE SARCASM? yes

8.DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes

9.WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? Yes

10.WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Rice Krispies

11.DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? No

12.DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? I know I am.

13.WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? Breyers Coffee (with chocolate sauce)

14.WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? If they smile when we meet

15.RED OR PINK? Pink

16.WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? My hair

17.WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? My Grandmom

18.WHAT COLOR ARE YOUR EYES? Hazel

19.WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? blue pants black sketchers

20.WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? PB crackers

21.WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? Nothing, no music in my office :-(

22.IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Light blue

23.FAVORITE SMELLS? DH's cologne and roast beef in the crock pot

24.WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? My Mom :-)

25.DO YOU LIKE THUNDERSTORMS? Yes, I love to sit on a covered porch during them.

26.FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? Hockey, but in person, it's boring on TV

27.HAIR COLOR? Dark brown and I have some dark blond highlights (that need a touch-up).

29.DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? No.

30.FAVORITE FOOD? Mexican

31.SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? Happy

32.LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Holiday (with Cameron Diaz, I love it!!)

33.WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? Ivory

34.SUMMER OR WINTER? Winter

35.Hugs or kisses? Hugs

36.FAVORITE DESSERT? My Mom's apple pie...yumm-0!

39.WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? "Eat - Pray - Love" given to me by my nest-sister

40.WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? I don't have one

41.FAVORITE SOUNDS? Jimmy Buffett's music

42.ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? Um, neither.

43.WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME? Costa Rica!

44.WHERE WERE YOU BORN? Philadelphia, PA

CRA-ZY!

That has been my house since Sunday. What was I expecting with 3 dogs?? LOL.

Our two foster dogs, Toby and Chloe, have more energy than any two dogs I have ever met. They keep my Jimmy running every second they are awake. They are really good dogs but I can swear I can see Jimmy's thoughts, "Please make them leave me alone. I'm tired and I wanna go to bed!!" With any luck we'll find a great adoptive home for them relatively quickly.

We're also still thinking about sellling our house. We have a big single with plenty of room for a family. We're getting to the point (after 23 months of TTC and 3 m/c's) that we realize we just may not have that family. So we are thinking of downsizing our home and our mortgage payment and using that money to do stuff we enjoy. Vacations. A new third car like a convertible or Jeep. Save for early retirement. More vacations. Whatever we want.

I know were not done TTC so with more IF treatments ahead of us the money will certainly come in handy. I think it would be worth it. We've exhausted almost all of our insurance allowance so we're going to start paying OOP pretty soon. And plus all of the copays have been adding up...$40 a visit is a lot when I went 8 out of 10 days just for my FET. Yup, $320 in copays the first two weeks of December. Bad timing right before Christmas gift-buying. And we did 2 IVF's and 5 IUI's before that. Oh, and we have to pay for our injectibles which have been $10K...so far.

I think it sucks big time that we have to spend so much money on something 5 in 6 couples get for free. I know I'm preaching to the choir and you all have that same thought. But it sucks for all of us. I just can't get over that. PEOPLE DO THIS FOR FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

We should get a group of ladies together and chip in for lottery tickets. Wouldn't that be amazing for all of us? We could afford our treatments and quit our jobs to get rid of that stress and all go to accupunture and afford the "good" PNV's and not buy generics. Hey, a girl can dream. Can't she?

We're going to foster another dog! We're going to foster another dog!

And I have my heading written twice b/c we're going to foster TWO dogs :D


I can't believe I got Ed to agree to it, but he did and we're getting our two foster dogs tomorrow!


We're getting a male named Toby and a female named Chloe. I haven't personally met them yet but I hear they are sweethearts...I just home my Jimmy thinks so too. I don't know what I'll do if three dogs don't get along. They've been together for two years and are very bonded so I'm praying we can adopt them out together.


I don't have much more to say about them but I'll give a full update tomorrow night or on Monday once they're here and I learn a little more about them.


Oooh I'm so excited!!! Toby is on the left and Chloe is on the right...

I was rear-ended last night.

First off --- nobody was hurt.

I was driving to meet DH last night and I was waiting patiently on a highway on-ramp. I was singing along to my Jimmy Buffett CD and I was in a great mind-set. Then WHAM! I was rear-ended. I look in my rear-view and I see a "US Army" sticker on the windshield and I'm thinking oh great, a huge Army guy is going to get out and scream at me and blame me for this.

Instead a tall, thin guy, maybe only 18 gets out and he looks scared to death. Now I do have to say he was a HOTTIE. His hair was short and his body was toned. Yumm-o. Lucky for both of us we just had scratched bumpers so the repairs shouldn't be that bad. It will just be an inconvenience to have my car in the shop to get fixed. We exchange our info and he was just too darned cute. I doubt he'd been in an accident before and just apologized about five dozen times.

I was able to hop back into my car and I wasn't even late to meet DH. So, it didn't put a damper on my night at all.

Just a few months ago that would have totally upset me. And now I see it's really not a big deal and in the grand scheme of things I'm only concerned that nobody got hurt. Thankfully I wasn't PG at the time so I didn't have to worry about the safety of my baby.

And my life goes on essentially unchanged by that event.

Maybe God IS listening to me??

With all of the bad stuff happening to me and those I care about in the past few years, it's no wonder it would make me question if there is a God or not (or questions His power over our lives).

I sob when I hear the song "Unanswered Prayers" by Garth Brooks. It's as if he is singing directly to me through my car stereo. Then I start to ask if I'm not meant to have a baby, then what the heck am I meant to do?? Or is NOW just not the right time? Is there something I have to do before I can start my family? Please give me any hints, God, as to what I'm supposed to be doing with my life right now if having a baby isn't it.

My last post was all about me needing a new "project" to focus my energy on...new home, new foster dog, something - anything - new.

And then my phone rings this morning.

It's my dog walker. She is telling me she is moving an hour away and she's here for only 8 weeks more. I'm sure she was expecting me to get very upset at the thought of losing her (she is FABULOUS and my Jimmy loves her). But instead I suddenly was filled with as much joy as I'm capable of right now.

For the past two years I have dreamed about starting my own pet sitting/dog walking business. I currently work as a financial analyst and I'm getting sick of the daily desk job doing the same thing day after day. Numbers are totally boring to me and with all that my life has been lately I certainly find it hard to concentrate at work. I'd give anything to be outside spending time with my four-legged friends. So after spending some time on the phone with her she agreed to recommend all of her clients to me to take over when my walker moves. How awesome is that!? The hardest part of starting your own business is building clients/customers so how great would it be to be handed a few dozen people who would otherwise be up sh!t's creek without a walker for their furbabies?

So here is my new project. I need to get licensed and bonded, take animal CPR/First Aid and a bunch of other stuff like that. I need to come up with a great name (my walker is the Fairy Dogmother) so please post all of your great suggestions!

Now I may still need to work a regular job part time to make up for some of the money but I owe it to myself to doing something that will make me happier than I've been over the past two years. Oh I know I'm crazy, but this is the most excited I've been in a long time. Nothing else but procreating has been on my mind since March 2006 so maybe this will be great to get me focused on something else for a while? Obviously I'm not giving up on my dream of having a family but this will just keep me happy in the meantime.

Please God, answer this prayer and help me make this happen!

What to do, what to do?

I really need something new to focus on. We've been TTC since March 2006, so that has been my "project" for almost two years now. I'm learning not to focus on that so much so I'm looking for something else to take up my time and energy.

DH and I are discussing selling our house. While we have made many great memories here, it is also filled with many bad ones. I have had three m/c's in this house and I can still picture me in specific rooms when certain things have happened. It is burned into my brain the picture of me sitting in the living room staring out the window waiting for DH to come home after m/c #2 and #3. I can still see me collapsing in his arms in our foyer. That is all I can see when I think of my foyer.

We have a swing set that was left by the prior owners and DH and I sat on it when we started planning our family and I can vividly remember me saying "In a year we'll be swinging our little baby here!" Well, that was 18 months ago and still no little toddler has used that swing set. We have a spare bedroom that has been dedicated as our baby's room. It needs to be painted but we've been waiting until we knew whether to do it blue or pink. I can't bare the thought of painting it something neutral just to make a pretty guest room. I won't go into much detail, but the master bathroom is a horrible place...the last I saw baby #2 and sac #3.

There are scenarios like that for every room of my house. There is space left for a little one that we've been unable to fill. Maybe buying a new home would do us some good?? It might help to get these bad memories out of my day-to-day life. I know they'll always be with me but it's even harder when I visualize them wherever I go. We don't put anything on the front of our fridge, except for our u/s pictures. Now that I see a totally blank fridge it just adds to my emptiness. We have had a few different pictures come and go but it seems so much more glaring now.

We have this huge house with extra bedrooms and big yard that is perfect for a big family. What do we need it for?? I know we're not giving up on TTC but we're spending a lot on a mortgage that isn't fulfilling it's original purpose. With the extra money from downsizing we could afford more IF treatments and go on a much-needed vacation. We could enjoy ourselves more and not feel we need to save every extra penny for treatments or the future child. We need to bring fun back to our marriage and fun isn't always free (LOL). I don't know what to do. I want someone else to make this decision for me. Part of me feels that it's giving up but part of me feels it would help my sanity to have new surroundings. Does that even make sense??

I also thought a good "project" would be to foster another dog or two. I haven't since November. Some of you may remember my last foster Reilly. She got her period when I was desperately praying for a visit from AF after my 2nd m/c. Well I hadn't specified that AF was to visit ME and instead my dog got the visit. LOL. Anyway...I would love to help out other dogs and maybe this would be a good time for me to foster again. It would totally bring joy back to our home and it might help pass some time until we can TTC again. I'm sure it would be great mental healing for me.

I just need something to focus on b/c I am totally dwelling on the negatives right now.

I'm blaming the hormones

So I figure that my hormone levels are dropping drastically since my D&C and I'm guessing that is why I'm such a mess today. I just can't hold myself together. First off, I didn't even get showered and dressed until noon. Then I forced myself to leave the house and run errands but my eyes were welling up walking around the mall and seeing all the mommies with their kids and babies. It was like a jab to my heart every time.

I'm feeling so sorry for myself today. I'm getting to the point of "what if we never have a baby". I can't get my focus off of that. I imagine us selling our big house since we don't need it anymore. I picture myself selling my SUV and buying something smaller. I just can't stop thinking that we have worked so hard saving and planning for a family and now it may be for naught. Everything I have done in my adult life has been in preparation for having a family. We always wanted three children. Now I think about having three dogs. My dog (aside from my DH) has been the only one to make me smile. It's like he knows when I'm upset and comes over to me and nudges me to make room for him to sit with me. He even started licking the tears off my face the other day. Gross, I know but what a great little guy.

I remember going through this depressive stage with my other two losses but I always thought there was still a chance for us. Now after three I just don't know any more. The only saving grace is that I can now have my RPL panel done. But what if they don't find anything? What if there is nothing that will explain my three losses? Then I'm up shit's creek without a paddle. Then I guess we start planning a different future. That is just too painful to think about. I need some serious healing to happen in me.

D&C with local, not that bad...honestly

First off, thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers over the past few weeks. It's so wonderful and comforting to have the support of everyone.

I know it's always a question of what to expect from certain procedures so I'll write about my D&C. I just had local anesthesia, and it honestly wasn't that bad. Just be warned I give a lot of details so don't read if you don't like TMI. I would have been 7 weeks yesterday with a blighted ovum, so my body was still acting PG and I still had bloating and lots of m/s all day.

First, I needed help dialating so I took two misoprostol (sp?) suppositories around 6 am yesterday morning. Light cramping started an hour later and around 9:30 I started to pass blood and clots. It was quite a bit of stuff and felt pretty icky coming out.

At 1 pm I took 600mg of Motrin and 2 perkaset pills. Within 30 minutes my head was feel fuzzy and I could have gone right to sleep.

Then I got to my RE's office around 2 pm and went back six minutes later. They first did an u/s to see what was going on and that morning I had passed the sac but I still had a lot of stuff inside my uterus. My lining was still 16 mm thick and there were a lot of clots/tissue. They took out the dildo cam and prepped me for the D&C. First they put the duck lips in and cleaned off my cervix (this was all pain-free). Then he gave me three injections into my uterus with the local. I didn't feel the first two AT ALL, but the third was a bit of a pinch. It really wasn't that bad though. After two minutes he went through my open cervix and propped it open a bit more (with what? I don't know, I couldn't see). Then he inserted a long thing tube in there that was a suction. This took care of most of the stuff, but then he put a long spoon-like thing through it and scrapped what was left. This was the worst part of the whole procedure. The scraping lasted about 8 seconds and I just squeezed DH's hand and breathed through it. He gave one last sweep with the suction, took everythikng out, and we were done. I laid there for ten minutes, got dressed, and was ready to leave. Oh, I also got my Rhogam shot afterwards. No big deal though.

We were back in our car before 3 pm so the entire thing lasted no more than 45 minutes.

Once we got home I just laid on the couch all afternoon. The medicine stayed with me through dinner so I was a bit out of it, but not in much pain. Once the local wore off of my cervix I could feel a bit if cramping for a few minutes but that didn't last and wasn't too bad.

Today I feel fine, but a little exhausted. I'll just relax all day and I don't think I'll need to take any pain pills. A milkshake will do just fine :D

Now I have had a D&E with general, just the misoprostol and now the D&C with local. Each of the three have their pros and cons, but I would say the local was probably best for me. The general involves almost all day at the hospital and with the local we were in and out in under an hour. So, just wanted to put that all out there in case some of you were deciding which to do. Of course, I'd be happy to answer any questions about all of the procedures I've had, and I won't candy-coat any of them.

Miscarriage #3

I will write more later or tomorrow when I'm not trying to see my computer screen through tears.

For Good

These are the lyrics to the song "For Good" from the musical Wicked. I'm sure many of you know why I would post it so I won't get all teary trying to explain...

ELPHABA
I'm limited:
Just look at me - I'm limited
And just look at you -
You can do all I couldn't do, Glinda
So now it's up to you(spoken)
For both of us(sung)
Now it's up to you:

GLINDA
I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you:

Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good

ELPHABA
It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You'll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend:

Like a ship blown from its mooring
By a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a skybird
In a distant wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you:

GLINDA
Because I knew you:

BOTH
I have been changed for good

ELPHABA
And just to clear the airI ask forgiveness
For the things I've done you blame me for

GLINDA
But then, I guess we know
There's blame to share

BOTH
And none of it seems to matter anymore

GLINDA ELPHABA
Like a comet pulled Like a ship blown
From orbit as it Off it's mooring
Passes a sun, like By a wind off the
A stream that meets Sea, like a seed
A boulder, half-way Dropped by a
Through the wood Bird in the wood

BOTH
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
I do believe I have been changed for the better?

GLINDA
And because I knew you:

ELPHABA
Because I knew you:

BOTH
Because I knew you:
I have been changed for good.

What a crazy way to end 2007

As I posted yesterday, I spent Sunday night in the ER, and lost one of our twins. I went to my RE on Monday and the nurse said our sac was empty (blighted ovum). As you can imagine I was devastated. My doctor wasn't in so I went home and waited for his call in the afternoon. It was a terrible four hour wait for him to call. I was so upset. This would be my third loss this year. What a totally crappy 2007. Can't get much worse. We've been through so much in the past 14 months and I can't think of a worse time in my life.

BUT...

Then my RE called around 4:30 and he said that both he and another nurse saw a sac. So we're not down and out...yet. I have to go back on Friday and he said we should see the HB flicker by then.

Please please please send as many prayers as you can our way so that our little baby holds on. I'm having a hard time holding out hope as I don't want to get terrible news on Friday and go through those tears all over again. I feel so torn apart and broken. This pgncy has been such a roller coaster of them telling me things are ok, but me not feeling that they are.

I know the loss of the twin will affect my hCG numbers but it's still freaking me out that they're not doubling as quickly as I'd like them to. I know I should listen to my RE but I don't want to hold out false hope. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than devasted...again.

Oh how I wish 2008 is better than 2007.