The big "O"

So it's here! After posting this morning I went and tested again with an internet cheapie. The test line was there and pretty dark. But definitely not what I would consider positive. I knew from before that I never really got a true positive with these things. They were always almost positive or not even close. This opk fell under the almost positive category so I decided to "waste" another digital opk to double check. I watched for a few seconds as the little test symbol flashed and then I just waited. I tried to occupy myself with the internet for a few minutes and then I glanced over at the test. And there it was. A beautiful little smiley face! YAY! I was so excited that I let out a little squeal. We bd'd last night and then again today when Burt came home. Now we'll stick with the once a day theory until O is confirmed. Hopefully that will be in a couple of days. Now that I know the eggie did it's job let's cheer on those spermies!! Go spermies! Find that eggie! Be real men!!! I figure if I insult them a little they might be a bit more aggressive.

Marco! Polo! Marco! Polo!

Well I am definitely playing this little game with my opk's this week. On cd 10 I started out with an imaginary line that I thought I saw on the test. Then finally by cd 15 I actually started to see something. And now today on cd 17 there is a for real line and it's getting pretty close to positive. I can't stop thinking about how great it would be to be pregnant again. I would only be like three weeks behind my friend Shannon who just found out she's pregnant. It would make it much easier to deal with the jealousy factor for sure! I also just want to be pregnant again to be pregnant. I so love being pregnant and feeling important. Although this time we don't plan on telling anyone until we get some sort of confirmation that everything is fine. I don't know what week that will be but I will wait this time. I don't even plan on telling the kids. It will be kinda fun to have a secret that just Burt and I know. Please body, don't let me down! If God listens to prayers then he is being bombarded with them now!

All about waiting!

The second one is definitely darker in person.

Chi-ching! That's all this amounts to.

No smiley face for me...YET!

The more time I spend on this trying to conceive roller coaster the more I notice that ttc is all about waiting. First we wait for ovulation to occur. In my case that's a very stressful and sometimes long wait. With irregular and long cycles waiting to O can be torturous! This cycle I started clomid a day later then the cycle I got pregnant with the twins and so I'm thinking I might ovulate a day later too. Today is cd 16 and my opk's are finally starting to show some sort of line. I'm hoping with time they will get darker and darker. But back to the waiting rant! The second period of waiting is what women in the ttc world like to call the 2WW or the two week wait. Most women hate this waiting more but I on the other hand really enjoy it. This is a time when I can validate treating myself like I may be pregnant. I take it easy lifting things. I get plenty of rest and daydream a lot. But I must admit that the 1ww is a bit harder for me. As the testing date get closer and closer I get more and more anxious. And then back to the waiting. The next thing we wait for is the 10 minutes it takes to confirm a BFN. BooooO! We all hate BFN's! And in between the time of the BFN's and AF is more waiting followed by lots of chocolate and possible fits of crying. Such an emotional time for a woman. It's amazing I've made it this far. It seems like we've been ttc FOREVER! But it's been about 16 months now and I've been pregnant twice. So not a bad record for the getting pregnant part but a terrible record for the staying pregnant part! Oh, wait! I feel something. As I sit here typing I'm feeling some aching down below. I know my ovaries are working. I just hope they're working to produce some nice healthy eggies! Please please please!

In other news, the kids have another soccer game tonight. I might take more pics and post them later. They're getting pretty good at this. I'm proud! Nathan has a class trip coming up to some apple orchard. I volunteered to be a chaperon. I figured this would be a good chance for me to take some pics of hi and some of his classmates for his school scrapbook. Speaking of which I better get my but moving on these scrapbooks. The holidays are fast approaching and I have two years worth of pics to catch up on. I need some motivation.

Just passing time

Update: cd 13 and still negative opk's; bding every other day and had a bit of weird light bleeding on cd 10. I'm feeling rather negative about this cycle now. I guess the bleeding is what did it to me. And then I had 2 days of higher temps. At one point I thought maybe the bleeding was ovulation bleeding, but it definitely wasn't. I'm hoping and praying I start to see a bit of a line on these opk's. I can't remember when I started to see a line on the others. Fingers crossed it's soon!! This 2ww is going to be horrific!

Today my Abby girl had a doctors appointment. She's been doing this really weird deep breathing and it had begun to worry me. I'm so dramatic. I of course thought it was something horrible like a lung tumor or asthma or something. The doctor thinks it's just a habit now. One time over the summer Nathan and her were swimming in the pool and Nathan accidentally kicked her in the throat. It probably knocked the wind out of her and since then she's probably been more in tune with her breathing. And when she focuses on it is probably when she feels like she needs to take deep breathes. That's my girl! We had a fun little afternoon. I picked her up at 11:15 and we drove up to the appointment. She was in a silly mood and was being really funny in the waiting room. She makes really silly faces and makes me crack up. After seeing the doc we headed to chik-fila for lunch together, just the girls! Then I took her back to school. My big girl! Next appointment will be with the dentist on the 6th to get her 2nd baby tooth pulled. And yet another visit from the tooth fairy.

Giddy and excited about ttc

I completely expected that ttc again would be very stressful. What I didn't expect was to feel a bit giddy about the whole thing. I think back to what an exciting time it was when I found out I was pregnant with the girls. I remember how happy I was walking around with the positive pregnancy test in my black jacket pocket. I remember snapping 100 pictures of the positive tests. It was just a genuinely happy day for the whole family. I look forward to having that opportunity again. I think I did such a great job of making a special way to tell different people. And I really enjoy looking back on those memories even though our girls aren't still here with us. So, I am really excited about making new fun memories again. I've started researching some more fun ways to make the announcement and I'm still on the fence about it. I think I'm going to buy the kids a pumpkin and cut a hole out for the mouth and stick a binky in there and glue on a bib or something and draw a face and give it to the kids. I don't plan on telling very many people this time around. Although after I tell the kids I'm sure word will spread fast. Maybe I should save the pumpkin idea for someone else. Someone that can keep a secret. lol. I ordered the tube of preseed today. There's no saying for sure whether it helped or not last time but if there's even a small percentage of a chance then I'm all for it. After I finish here I plan on rejoining Fertility Friends VIP membership. My completed chart was a nice keepsake from the girls and I also enjoy looking back on it. If I get pregnant this month the baby or babies would be born sometime around the end of June 2010. And I would definitely have the summer baby that I started out wanting to have. Please God give us one more shot at this! I can't tell you how disappointed I'll be if I see a BFN. I'm actually worried about how badly I'll handle it. Am I setting myself up for failure? But I don't want to think of that now. Only happy thoughts! It is so very relaxing to know that no one knows we're ttc. I don't have to worry about anyone asking if I'm pregnant yet. And best of all I don't have to feel like I'm letting anyone down or if they're thinking I'm a failure. I do enough thinking like that on my own. Happy thoughts! Happy thoughts! Happy thoughts!

On the road again

I'm over here on the growing follicles side...cd 8

Let's hope this does the trick
(prenatals, baby aspirin, clomid, and temping)

So here it goes again. Today is cd 8 for me. Although I technically should be 27 weeks pregnant exactly! Instead I've been without my babies for 90,720 minutes. How sad! As you can see though my days now are number in terms of cycle days instead of pregnancy weeks and this can only mean one thing. We are back at trying to conceive. I'm taking my last dose of clomid on cd 4-8 this cycle. Fingers crossed that it will only take this one dose. I'm taking baby aspirin again and am back on my water kick. Although I could be doing much better with it. We're scheduling our bd sessions for every other night until I get a positive opk and then it will be every night maybe twice one day. The opk challenge will start on cd 10 or so. I think I have like 50 or so left so that should last me. My emotions have been all over the place. I'm not sure if it's the meds or the emotional toll that ttc is having after loosing the girls. Prior to ttc again I seemed to be handling my emotions much better then before. I actually wanted to post about this but got busy doing other things. I heard a great quote from Dr. Phil yesterday. He was talking with a woman that had lost her son in Iraq. He said, "You don't have to hold on to the pain to feel connected." It spoke right to my heart. For the past few weeks I've been thinking of the girls often but found myself also thinking of other things. That bothered me so badly. I felt guilty. And when he said that I realized why. I felt like if I stopped hurting then that meant that I didn't love them enough. Or if I stopped crying then they would think they weren't important to me anymore. But how very untrue. My heart is still broken and missing two pieces. I still think of them daily and yearn for the life we could've had. But that life was with healthy babies. Babies that wouldn't suffer every minute of their short lives. So now I've been given permission by my Phil...permission to let go of the pain and remember my babies with the love I have for them.

And now I digress...On the ttc front, it has brought up a lot of emotions. I haven't decided if I feel positive about it or negative. I'm trying my best to push all of the negative feelings aside and only keep the positive energy but clomid is making that hard for me. Oh how miserable I've been! I'm sure Burt and the kids can vouch for that! I feel it myself. I'm inpatient and quick to jump down everyone's throat. People that don't usually bug me are urking me! I've now graduated to having headaches and am extremely sleepy. But I'm hoping it's all for good reasoning. C'mon ovaries! I feel you working in there. I know you're up to something. Please make us some good healthy eggs. I'm really counting on you this month.

In other news, the kids are doing really well at school. Abby is more then likely the teacher's pet. She comes home daily telling me that Mrs. Stansfield said she's the only one that sits quietly. Abby has gotten quite a large head from this in fact. She told me that if it was only her and 2 other girls (I can't remember their names) in her class then they would get a lot of work done. She's a beautiful little nerd and I love it! Sunday was her 7th birthday. We had a little gathering here at the house like we always do on their real birthdays. My mom stopped by, my brother, and my sister. Abby and I had baked a vanilla cake and decorated it with pink and purple frosting. We're quite the bakers! I surprised her that morning with Bratz decorations. She knew the kitchen would be decorated but she didn't know I would have all the Bratz stuff. She loved it! I even left it up the day after her birthday so she could enjoy it for one more day. My mom, Frankie and Amanda bought her the 3 Musketeers Barbie and Ken. They also bought her the 3 Musketeers little girl with a glitter pony. Oh yea and a really annoying ICarly microphone. I cant seem to wipe the theme song from my memory now! Thanks Mom! We bought her ICarly PJ's, a Bratz watch, a Princess Peach DS game, a Build-A-Bear Wii game, and a birthday party littlest pet shop set. I think she made out rather well.

As for Nate the Great (that's what his one soccer coach calls him), he's also doing really well in school. When we went to back to school night we could see his teacher left him a little message thanking him for helping her with the crayons. Not the greatest accomplishment in the world but none the less I am proud of my baby boy for stepping up like the little man he is. Some days I feel like I cheat him out of the excitement of his kindergarten experience. I feel like I'm "been there done that" and don't get as excited about what he's doing. But starting tomorrow I'm going to make a recognized effort to ask him more about his day.

Today I watched Burt's friend Joe's son Joey. What a handful. At 22 months old he gave me a run for my money. I forgot what it was like to keep little hands from getting into things they shouldn't. It gave me a nice taste of what it's going to be like with a 3rd one running around. Very chaotic. But like my years with Abby and Nate those menace to society days will fly by so I plan on cherishing them.

Alright so my fingers ache, my back hurts, and my neck is stiff. I think it's time to say Good Night. Good Night world! Good Night children! Good Night ovaries!

BLAH!

Okay so this is the first time in awhile that I've posted and I haven't been crying. So YAY for me!! I feel as if I've made some progress here and I'm proud. My feelings are still a big jumbled mess. Burt is beginning to get the itch to visit with his brother. While family is important to me, this particular family is not. He never makes any effort to see my kids and now that he has twins he's been bugging Burt to come around. Not only does it annoy because he's never been involved in my kid's lives but the twins aspect really bugs me. It bothered me before I found out about the girls only because I've always wanted twins but now it bothers me more. I'm just not ready to make that step towards healing yet. For now I'll sit in self pity.

I'm sitting here tonight at 1:30am going through my "favorites" list on the computer. There are so many sites on there that once I got pregnant I thought for sure I wouldn't be visiting anymore. For example the "Very early signs and symptoms of pregnancy" page. I thought for sure I'd be well into my fifth month of pregnancy and those symptoms would all be a blur by now. Instead I sit here stressing out about when my AF will return. I'm trying to wait for CD 3 to get my blood work done, but I'm not sue I'll be able to wait that long. I've called the doctors office and had them add a lupus blood test to my blood work. I think I've convinced myself that I have it. I can't tell you how excited I'll be if the test comes back negative. But just as importantly I'm hoping to get some answers from the PCOS testing too. I just want to know what I need to do to get pregnant again. My time is ticking here. I really want a summer baby. If I get pregnant by December I can still accomplish that.

In other news, tomorrow is the kid's open house at their schools. I'm excited for them to meet their teachers but so worried about them . They are getting so big now. The time is flying by. We've got their birthday parties planned at Oasis. And they're well into the swing of soccer now. Just waiting on a schedule for games. It feels like just yesterday I was bringing Abby home from the hospital. Boy I'm getting old!