The Power of Positive Knitting

What have I been doing lately?  Knitting.  Baby knitting.

While buying onesies and miniature socks is one thing, baby knitting is completely different.  Buying ready made clothing can be done on a whim.  It can be done without much effort and time.  Baby knitting, however, requires more time and energy.  A lot more.

My chiropractor recently told me that I need to start being more positive.  She told me that our babies are in “escrow” and that I need to think like my future is going to include them.  I guess it’s the power of positive thinking or something.  Is there anything more positive than knitting a baby sweater and matching booties?  No.  There isn’t.  Unless I started painting the nursery… No.  No, I haven’t…. yet.

I can always replace the buttons if we have a little girl who just doesn’t appreciate centurion soldiers.

An unexpected surprise that is attached to these?  I upload all of my hand knits to my Ravelry account (which is also where you can find both of these patterns). -Side note: if you knit or crochet and aren’t on Ravelry, you’re missing out.  In the description, I explained that these were for our future baby blah blah blah.  Apparently the sweater showed up on a popular page somewhere on Ravelry and I got a few messages from some nice women around the world just to let me know that we’re not alone and that it gets better.

Infertility community, you blow my mind sometimes. I seem to get the messages I need at all the right times. 🙂

Other than this, I’m feeling good.  I’m having just a little bit a residual pain in my right ovary, but I’m guessing that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  I’m going to try to focus on all the school work I have going on over the next couple weeks and see what happens. 🙂

As another side note: I think my chiropractor also said something about not thinking about babies and just letting things happen… but I’m not sure.  I blame it on my selective hearing. 😉

Ps.  I’ve decided to keep the green booties from this post. Because I can.  And they’re so gosh darn cute.

The Perfect Cycle

Well.  My ovaries rocked this cycle.  My little 15 mm follicle grew to 23 mm in 4 days.  My estrogen climbed from a measly 83 to 296 in 4 days.  My lining increased from 6 to 10.2 in 4 days.

All of this without a single injection.  “No ovidrel?” you ask.  No.  My Lh is beasting it at 51.  I’m ovulating on my own on day 16.

This is without a doubt the most perfect cycle I’ve ever had.  When we got pregnant in October, I had a great cycle.  This one is even better.  It’s so great, I’m ok if we don’t get pregnant this month.  Knowing we can have cycles like this on our own now is a huge burden lifted.  I’m definitely crediting the chiropractor and my extreme diet change.  I feel better all around and my reproductive cycles are reflecting that.

Today has started to restore my faith in my body.  I’ve felt like it was failing me so much over the past 2 years and now I can actually see the result of it healing and becoming better again.

I start prometrium on Saturday just to be safe and go in for another blood test next Monday.  Cross your fingers that this perfect cycle turns into our perfect perfect baby. 🙂

Baby Socks and Washing Machines

When we decided to start working towards adoption, we also realized that that meant we probably wouldn’t have a baby shower until after the baby was born.  Our parents have offered to buy the larger items when we get matched with a birth mom, but the rest (clothes, bottles, formula, etc.) are things we’ll need before baby comes home.  And because 16% of first attempt adoptions fail, we also realize the need for any newborn clothes to be gender neutral.

Other than the few onesies we I’ve already purchased, our collection of baby paraphernalia is, and rightfully so, pretty slim.  Our solution is to buy a onesie or a pair of newborn pants or a pack of newborn socks every once in a while when we’re out and see something gender neutral we like so that we don’t have to worry about buying everything all at once when the time comes.  Plus, baby clothes are super cute and make us happy.  Our purchases get thrown into the wash, dried, and folded neatly into Baby G’s dresser.

Cue the leaking, dead washing machine.  Snow White had an accident the other day while she was locked in her crate for an hour while I was at the chiropractor.  I threw her bed in the wash (admittedly, it was probably too big to go in our washing machine, but that’s neither here nor there. 😉 ) only to have the washing machine stop and refuse to turn back on after the first wash cycle.  I guiltily called Jeremy and told him it wouldn’t turn back on.  When he got home that night, he proclaimed it’s death and said we would probably have to get a new one.  Crap.  So much for saving for that adoption.  Today, he decided it wouldn’t hurt to pull the whole thing apart.

As he was doing that, we realized we were missing a brand new baby sock.

Twenty minutes later, he pulled it out of the washing machine’s water pump…

This kid isn’t even conceived yet and it’s already causing us problems. 😉  We’re just happy we don’t need a new washer.  And Jeremy feels like a handyman-extraordinaire for finding and fixing the problem.  Now let’s just hope he can put it all back together. :p

Note to self: baby socks get washed in mesh lingerie bags from now on.

Follicle, Oh, Follicle

Well.  We’re back to it again.

Yesterday morning, I woke up with a knot it my stomach.  It was my first monitoring appointment in 3 cycles at Dr. B’s.  What would we find?  Had all of the chiropractic work done anything?  I snuggled in bed with the greyhounds for half an hour instead of eating breakfast and fixing my hair.  Ponytails at the RE’s office are cool, right?

I met up with a friend who just had her first IVF transfer a week and a half ago.  She was getting her first beta done (I’M SO EXCITED!!) and waited while I had a very romantic Valentine’s Day date with the ultrasound probe.  We found a 15mm follicle on day 12 with my estrogen at only 83.  My uterine lining is a little thin, so I’m now taking baby asprin once a day on top of my other supplements.

I don’t know how I feel about this.  To make it easier, I had just started to think we were just going through the fertility treatment rounds before we finally made it to adopting our take home baby.  I’ve been really excited about this adoption lately and far less sad about my infertility than usual.  Knowing my body is still responding and hasn’t completely shut down my reproductive organs made me stop and reexamine my feelings.  When let myself think it really wasn’t an option to have biological kids, I forgot how much I want them.  Getting caught up in this “maybe” or “what if” is really making me feel so conflicted.  And I know, it doesn’t really matter how I feel.  Either we’ll get pregnant within the next few months, or we won’t.  If we don’t, we’ll adopt.  That’s the plan.  Either way, we get a baby.  It’s just throwing me for a loop to get back into it and to know if we’re close to a pregnancy or not.

Anywho, I go back on Monday to recheck if this adorable follicle has made enough progress and if my estrogen is where it should be.  We’ve agreed to trigger with an ovidrel injection if my Lh levels are too low and everything else looks good.  It will still be a later than preferred ovulation (day 16 or 17), but it’s an ovulation.  I’m worried they’re going to tell us to cancel the cycle because my estrogen is so low.  Crossing my fingers that it rockets up to 150+ by Monday.

And for an “awwww” factor, here’s Snow White being more adorable than my follicle. 😉

 

Hope everyone has a nice weekend!

A Deeper Love: Artful Hearts for Valentine’s Day

A Deeper Love: Artful Hearts for Valentine’s Day

I just have to throw this out there because I’m so excited:  The handmade pet supplies store I run with my sister is featured in this Huffington Post Valentine’s Day article! =)  Scroll through the heart pictures until you see the cat with the heart balls!

Family Building

I’m going in for monitoring for this “natural” cycle next Thursday.  It’s day 12.  I’ve never started monitoring so late in a cycle.  It’s weird.  However, since there’s no medication to adjust and no IUI this cycle, we’re just waiting for a follicle to grow naturally.  If it grows.  They asked us to consider an ovidrel trigger injection if my body makes a follicle on its own but isn’t releasing it.  We’re open to that.  It’s just a little push.  It’s just one injection.

I met my midwife yesterday.  I really liked her.  Her midwife in training?  Not so much.  She told me to prop my hips up after intercourse.  Because I haven’t been doing that for two years… She also told me that I am so young and I have plenty of time to figure this out.  My standard response has become: If I’m so young and having trouble getting pregnant now, what will it be like when I’m 30 or 35?  They don’t usually have a response to that.  I hate people some times.

But the real news in our house is that we’ve decided to submit an application for a domestic newborn adoption.  We’re aiming for 6 months to a year from now, depending on how long it takes us to save.  Within the next 6 months, we’ll know if a baby without IVF is possible for us.  Neither of us have ever been wild about the idea of IVF.  It’s more than we’re willing to go through.  –> I’m definitely not saying IVF is bad, I just don’t personally want to go through it.  I’d rather adopt.

I know this adoption might never take place.  We might get pregnant within the next six months.  But we might not.  I can’t tell you how much of a weight was lifted when Jeremy and I made that decision.  It’s a definite end to this childlessness.  Within the next 2 years, we’ll have a baby one way or another.  A big part of me doesn’t care how we have a family anymore as long as we have one.  And we’re going to have one. =)

So I bought this book.  And this books and this book might have made their way into my cart as well. ❤

26: Unmedicated Monitoring

I made these last night.  I’ve been eyeballing this pattern for the past 2 years.  I always said the first time I made these would be for my own baby.  I say that about a lot of knit baby things.  Last night, I decided to take some leftover yarn and leftover buttons and see what happened with this pattern.  I love them.  I might save them for our baby.  Or I might give them to the next friend who gets pregnant.  We’ll see how I’m feeling when that happens. Click here for the pattern.

My period started early this morning giving cycle 25 exactly 30 days.  There was enough time to actually get pregnant, I just didn’t.  I’ll call Dr. B’s office in the morning and we’ll start monitoring all over again.  My veins are not looking forward to it.  I bruise far to easily when it comes to blood draws.

We’re seriously considering our third IUI in March or April.  Even if my body is healing.  I want this horrible horrible time to be over.  If that doesn’t work, we’ll save for a fourth and maybe even a fifth.

It snowed here this weekend.  Finally.  We’ve hardly had any snow this winter.  Skill Set and Snow White had never gotten to play in the snow off of their leashes.   Yesterday, we took them to the dog park and let them run and goof off in the snow.  They loved it. 🙂