Biking, Bowling, and getting back the groove, but not in that order

I am getting fat.  I’m up 2 whole pounds only 6 weeks into this pregnancy.  Yuck.  I was fine until I weighed in at the gym on Wednesday and found I was at 166.  After recovering and getting on with my day and deciding the internet REALLY didn’t need to know about that number, I realized that perhaps it was actually time to buckle down and get back to staying in shape.   The 2 pounds wouldn’t even bug me normally, in fact, I’d expect it, but it is not my belly alone that seems to be modifying its shape.  It seems my clothing is also shrinking a bit around my hips and thighs.  Oh yay.  For those of you wondering how 166 makes a 2 pound gain, on Thursday and today I was only 165 and I’m considering 163 to be the ‘start’ weight although that’s pretty arbitrary.

You see, I KNOW that I should be doing light workouts.  The trouble is, my brain is alternating between thinking “You’re being lazy, this is really bad for you, go workout.” and “You’re overdoing it, you’re going to cause pregnancy problems, take it easy.”  I went out for a bit of a hike Tuesday morning.  I walked/slow jogged my way up to my son’s school and a bit further up the road.  As I walked I felt like I wasn’t doing anything at all and as I jogged, I felt like I was being naughty.  It is all so mental.  P and J have TOLD me they would be happy with doing light work outs.  Everyone and their brother says it is good in pregnancy to keep up basically what you were doing before.  My brain has such a hard time getting around that for someone else’s pregnancy though… and it is refusing to allow me to sit on my butt like I did for Jessie and Ash’s pregnancies. 

Well, the out of control gain that hit before even making 6 weeks helped to shut my brain up about all its issues and I’ve started making a better effort to get into the gym to workout in the mornings again.  I just do the elliptical – because the slow jogging hurts from the shots too much.  I set it to level 10 (down from my normal 15) and do not try to push myself much.  Still, it is a far cry better than what I was doing, so I think I’ve found my groove again. According to this chart I just found online (thank you google), normal weight women should gain ~1.5 pounds by 6 weeks.  By 13 weeks I should be at a 4 pound gain.  Hopefully I can hold to that.

Did you catch that, BTW???  We’re at 6 weeks!!  That means, at most, I could only have 6 MORE weeks of PIO shots.  Actually, I try not to think about that too much because it is more disturbing than comforting so maybe I won’t type that again.  We have our ultrasound on Tuesday morning so we’ll see how many little ones are in there at that time.  According to the baby on the left of this screen it should be about the size of a grain of rice now so I’m thinking TWO of them shouldn’t change how much I gain at this point. 

There have been some slight symptoms off and on over the last few days.  Every once in awhile I feel like calling up P or J to yell “You happy now???” at them about how ill I’m feeling, but the feeling passes and while it still makes me chuckle to think about, I can’t actually bring myself to do that if I’m not feeling sick.  Plus, P can’t have his phone at work so it isn’t worth calling and J never answers his due to meetings.  

Next Tuesday morning is ALSO the first day of school.  Big conflict there, but I don’t think I’ll be able to move the ultrasound.  Mostly because I know the guys’ schedules aren’t easy to change at the last minute like that, so I don’t want to try.  Gavin is sooo excited about riding his bike to school this year.  I’m petrified of the whole thing.  Well, that’s not true.  I’m not petrified of the whole thing.  I’m fine with the part of him riding his bike.  I’m actually over the moon about it because I ‘practise rode’ the route with him last night and that boy is OUT OF SHAPE.  It will be good for him.  I’m nervous about Kris and I BOTH having to be at work before he actually leaves the house.  I’m nervous about him leaving the doors locked and the garage door shut and bringing his backpack and his homework and his mittens and hat and zipping up his jacket.  I’m nervous about him leaving the house on time and not zoning out and forgetting that he has school.  I REALLY wish that school started earlier and ended earlier and his alone time would be after school when I know he’d be fine.  *Sigh*  The boy has to grow up and learn responsibility some time.  We’ll see how this works.  Specifically for this first day of school though… I’d really like to see him out the door.  Maybe we will do a practise ‘first day’ on Monday.

Speaking of school, Jessie will be going to preschool!  I haven’t had her going because I work full time and I can’t leave work every day to drive her to and from preschool.  A flaw in the preschool system, I think, that they can’t deal with working parents.  Well, this new montessori school opened right by our house and I’m so in love!  They allow you to go only as many days of the week as you like, so I can register her for just one day a week and drive her there in the morning, pick her up after work, and she can get a full day of preschool each week without having to leave her in home daycare and without having to feel like she’s in an institution all day every day.  She is SOOO excited about it, which I’m glad for because her natural shyness could make this tough on her.  She’s happy about the idea of preschool though so maybe it will go well.

Gavin will also be going to this school once a week.  They have after school childcare and while he doesn’t need it, he could use the tutoring help and the supervised homework time.  They will pick him up from school one day each week and bring him there where he will work on reading.  He loves the place and has asked me to please NOT pick him up until they close at 6:30 on his day there so I have high hopes about this too.  Not that it is cheap – even at just one day per kid.  I wish I could afford two days per kid but that would not make my budget.

On an entertainment topic, last Wednesday night I went bowling with my hubby and in-laws.  I won ALL of the games we played.  I won them because I have amazing talent (106 was my high score) and NOT, absolutely NOT, because they were all quite pissed drunk and I was totally sober.  I haven’t tried to bowl while intoxicated before but I have to say that after observing their behavior Wednesday night I am quite certain that alcohol does nothing to impair one’s ability to throw a very heavy ball in a straight-ish line down a slick wooden path.  No, that was all skill.  Plus, I got TWO strikes in ONE game.  I should go on tour.

How to PIO your thigh, step by step

When the nurse called me and said that my progesterone results were 114 (I think, it was something like that), I was nervous.  Believe it or not, I had not actually gone to look up normal progesterone levels so other than knowing 9 is bad, I didn’t know the range.  114, compared to my HCG level, seemed low.  After talking with the doc, however, I learned that the average for a normal pregnancy is about 20 and for IVF pregnancy is about 40-60.  Thus, 114 is very high and certainly high enough for me to lower my dose.  I am now giving myself a shot at night that is still 2ccs, but the one in the morning (which is usually in my thigh since I leave before anyone else gets up), is only 1cc.  YAY!  Oh, and one of the search phrases for my site was ‘how to give PIO shot in the thigh’.  Since I do not believe I’ve actually described how I do it, and since a lot of people seem convinced it is WAY too horrible to do that way, I will share.  This is all courtesy of my friend Jeanette, as she taught me.

Thigh PIO shots:  First, get the ice pack out of the freezer.  Do NOT apply this directly to your leg and leave it there while you are prepping your shot unless you enjoy watching your skin thaw out and feeling the crunch of ice crystals while putting in the needle.  Just leave the thing on the counter.  Next, put your flannel bag full of dry corn kernels that your very thoughtful friend Jeanette gave to you and is now filthy dirty and needs to be re-bagged into a new cloth cover into the microwave.  Set that to two minutes.  While it is nuking, get your giant scary PIO needle and the smaller thigh needle with the green writing on the package.  Grab your alcohol wipes and a paper towel or something to stop the bleeding after the shot.  Also, get your PIO vial and make sure that you haven’t run out AGAIN because holy salad dressing batman, you go through a lot of that oil.  Wait and wait and wait.  Take the hot pack out of the microwave a second before it actually beeps because sheesh woman, you want to wake the whole house?  Shake it up a bit and put it BACK into the microwave for another two minutes.  While this is going, get some water and take your vitamin and 3 Estrace pills.  Stand in front of the microwave right in front of the glass doors in your kitchen where you can see your reflection and note to yourself that your belly is sticking out way too much.  Wait wait wait.  Stop it AGAIN just a second before it beeps and take out the now very hot bag.  Set it on the counter and put the PIO vial in the center and fold it over to heat up the vial.  This makes the oil actually fluid enough to draw into the needle.  Wait for as long as you can stand it because you’d like to actually get out of the house sometime this morning.  Take the needle and syringe and open both of them.  Draw the syringe back to the amount you are going to give yourself.  (1cc if you are me now!!!  YAY!)  Take the vial out from it’s corn cubby and shake it up, then use the alcohol wipe and wipe down the top of the vial.  Put the big scary needle into the vial and turn it upside down.  Push in the air and while making sure the needle is below the surface level of the PIO, suck in the dose you want.  Do what you need to do to make sure there are no air bubbles.  Suck the PIO down out of the big needle, put the cap back on it, and twist it off.  Put the thigh needle on the syringe and take the cap off.  Push the PIO up through the thigh needle just enough to get all the air out again.  Replace the cap and put the syringe with the PIO into the corn cubby to heat it up again.  (Try to not actually inject yourself with burning hot oil.  I’ve done that.  Ouch.)  Bring the paper towel, a new alcohol wipe, the cornbag with syringe, and the ice pack with you to a place where you can sit down.  No really, you may be clever, but don’t do this standing up.  Go sit down.  Hopefully you are wearing something where you can access your thigh at this point, if not, go change and then sit down again.  Now you are ready for the shot.

Pick which side is the least bruised and painful.  On that side, place the heal of your hand against the fold of your thigh.  About where your pinky hits, apply the cold pack.  Leave it there long enough to numb the skin but not long enough to attach the cold pack to your skin via ice crystals.  Take the cold pack off, locate the area right where your pinky finger hits again for the shot and use the alcohol wipe to clean your skin.  Do this part fast before your skin gets the feeling back.  If possible, try to not do it in exactly the place you’ve used before or on top of any obvious bruising.  I’ve never tried that, but I imagine it would hurt more.  Take your needle out of the corn cubby and remove the cap.  Pull your skin tight enough on your thigh to put the needle straight in, and insert it all the way.  Really, make certain that it is ALL THE WAY.  Now, in theory, you are supposed to pull up a bit to check for blood which would mean you’ve hit a vessel and it would be very painful but since I find this icky and have no intention of aborting and resticking in a different place if I DID find blood, I skip this step.  Slowly push all the PIO in while trying to not wiggle the needle much.  Once it is all in, pull the needle out quickly (because who needs the mental trauma of pulling it out slowly?) and apply the paper towel to the area to hopefully stop the PIO leak and bleeding that can occur.  Once it stops bleeding, reheat the corn pack for another minute and apply to your thigh where you gave yourself the shot.  Ideally, you would have the next 2 hours to sit like this but odds are you will not.  Take what you can.  With any luck, as the day progresses, you won’t have much pain.   Odds in reality for me though say that about 1/3 times you will get it to work painfree for the whole day.  How long you get to sit with the hotpack on your leg really helps your odds.

So, yesterday I used some vacation time to head out to the Mall Of America with my sister in law, my mother in law, and our two oldest boys.  Apparently, there is a new trend with the MOA little kiosks where they are selling makeup or hair products to try to snag passing people and get them to let you play with their makeup or hair.  This is very pushy for Minnesota even if it IS the MOA and cheesy as hell but whatever.  So, this guy that we walk by asks me if he can talk to me about my hair.  He has this hair straightening booth with all these little irons so I don’t know what I was thinking but I was all excited to talk about Yuko.  (Which, BTW, is now 2 months old and still awesome.)  He asked what I used to straighten my hair and when I said it was the Yuko system, he clearly had no idea what I was talking about.  He wanted to show me how his amazing magic, I mean ceramic, iron would be sooo much better.  *eye roll*  He also smelled of cigarette smoke so I was completely annoyed by him quickly.  Finally I told him that I had straightened my hair with the Yuko system back in JUNE, NOT this morning and he clearly thought he had misheard me.  I said I didn’t even blow dry my hair this morning, let alone use a straightener on it.  I then said I had to go.  Oh, also, when I was talking to Gavin my son, he asked if he was my brother and I could’ve smacked myself for the look I gave him.  “Oh my, no silly man, thank you but he is my son.”  Hook.  Line. Sinker.  Moron.  I can’t believe I didn’t just sneer at the guy.  Thanks to my new street smarts for the MOA booths, I successfully “no thank you’d” my way through the rest of the hair straightening booths. 

I did find a nice new pair of casual shoes so that was fun.  I believe we are going to have some family pictures tonight and then go bowling.  I’d like to find some freetime to go visit my friend Michelle and her new baby, but we’ll see when I can coordinate that with her schedule.

Love potion #9

24 DPO today.  24 days of needles and PIO.  I’m better now, but Friday night I was ready to throw those needles across the room.  It isn’t that they are so terribly bad.  It is that they are relentless.  I tried to jog just a little.  A slow 4 MPH speed walk, really.  All 4 of my shot sites, which normally don’t all bother me all that much, were hurting.  I got through to my doc who said (which I already knew) that I was taking 4 doses of progesterone and why in the world was I taking so much and it was double what I should be on.  Ya, I knew that.  He also said that since I was established on that, we’d have to do progesterone checks to bring me down slowly.  I also knew that.  So he put the order in Friday night so that I could stop by the hospital over the weekend or just the clinic on Monday to have blood drawn for the progesterone check.  If it is high enough, they will cut out 1 dose, or 2ccs.  Then I will repeat the process in about a week to cut out the other dose.  It is Monday morning and I am at work and not the clinic getting blood drawn.  Why?  Because  mostly I know I will get in today, but also because I’m really scared that it will not be high enough.  I had my progesterone checked once before while pregnant with Jessie and while there were a lot of other circumstances, it was a big giant mind staggering 9.  9 is not a pregnant result.  9 is like getting a 3 in HCG.  Obviously, Jessie thrived anyway.  Pregnancy doesn’t always follow the rules.  If it is low this time, it means no cutting back on the shots. 

Complaining about the shots is rather a ‘thing’ for me.  At first, it was funny to make comments about it because it is expected and all that.  Now though, I’m not being as funny but I also don’t want people to think that I’m being obnoxious about it.  You see, when you’re an infertile going through PIO shots and talking about how horrid they are, it is different.  You are doing this because something sucky hit you and you cannot get pregnant by just having sex.  Complaining about it is right and just and good.  When you are doing this because you signed up to be a gestational carrier, it is a whole different issue.  Are you complaining about it because you want more attention?  Maybe you want to brag about what you are going through?  Maybe you are trying to make the IPs be even MORE grateful to you for what you are going through.  Truly, I don’t want to do any of those things so I figure courtesy draws the line somewhere on the whole jokes about PIO topic.  Yet – I am still human and at least for my blog – those things are wearing me down.  I hope that my progesterone tests come back extremely high and I can cut back at least the first 2 ccs.

This weekend we spent more time with our visiting in-laws and cousins.  On Sunday we went to the renfest with the two older boys and Jessie.  Those older boys have gone from playing great together to trying to kill each other.  I wish that I knew how to channel that competitiveness from the 9 year old boys into something constructive that would be good for them and keep them from the fighting, but I do not.  It makes me feel like there is something missing from our society for young boys.  Some way to integrate them into being older without having to feel like they have to beat someone out on something in order to be fine, upstanding young men.  I do have to share a little giggle with what was a big purchase for the boys.  Gavin was asking to get a potion.  He wanted a magic potion so badly that when we walked past a shop that sold little glass jars that you could fill with different scented bath salts.  I told them to get a little jar and mix up their potions.  Once we were home, I told them what each of the scents added to their potions, Orchid was love, Sandlewood was protection, mulberry was strength, etc.  They were so excited about their bath salts purchase! Of course, when they found out the blue mulberry was strength, they started fighting over who had more blue in their potion for more strength.  Gavin was particularly dismayed at the meaning of the pink orchid which was listed at the fair as “dragon”… something or another.  I’m quite certain he was hoping for a potion that would allow him to breath fire so telling him it was a love potion about made him gag.  On the plus side, now the boys cannot WAIT to take baths with their new potions. 🙂

Yesterday, Sunday, was my big sister’s birthday.  Happy 60th birthday to you big sis!  You should be proud of how young you look for your age!  You could be in your low 40s!  Giggle.  Remember, no matter how old I get, you will always be older.  And that is why I love you so much.  🙂

This weekend was also P’s birthday so a big shout out HAPPY BIRTHDAY to him!  His last childfree birthday so I told him he had to live it up.  Next year he may be too tired to really celebrate. 🙂

Beta news for all…

Dare I venture a guess based on HCG numbers that I’ve been warned again and again do not mean anything for sure???  The 2nd beta for 19 dpo was 2898.  That gives us a doubling time of about 34 hours.  That gives us a very high HCG.  Also, this belly of mine I swear to you is changing and not even 5 weeks along is WAY TOO early to be changing.  I know, my uterus is well versed in how to expand, it has certainly done so plenty of times in the past.  And yes, by my 5th pregnancy I can expect to be showing much sooner.  Still, 4 weeks???  No.  There is either more than one in there, or I’m growing an elephant.  Since I do believe the gestation time for an elephant is something like 2 years, I’m a tad bit anxious to find out how many we have.  We have the ‘intro to pregnancy’ appointment that we are forced to make before we can even see the doctor on Sept 5th.  I requested that I get a chance to speak with the doctor tomorrow to go over these nutball shots and the Estrace I’m still taking and to schedule an US (hopefully a non-pachyderm revealing US).  The nurse tried to tell me to step off and that USs are only done for ‘medical’ purposes, but SHE doesn’t know the power of having very high betas, a history of stillbirth, IVF with two enbryos transferred, and a very… persistent personality.  (That last one honestly having more effect than the others.)

So, last night we had a dinner to go to.  By ‘we’, I mean my work team and my manager and his boss.  We were all going out to meet his new boss.  He was a really nice guy and had such a ‘normal’ look to him.  None of that ‘plastic’ look that a lot of higher level managers seem to have.  Well, as I blogged before that my team knows what is going on because of the screwy travel issues we had, they asked me at this how it was going.  It is really unnerving to be sharing intimate details about your uterus at a business dinner with management.  I mean, as long as the topic of conversation is rotating around me in some way, I’m generally in bliss so I wasn’t really upset or anything.  It just felt like perhaps this was crossing a line or something.  Generally you don’t go about telling tons of work people about a pregnancy until you’ve BEEN pregnant for significantly longer than 4 weeks. 

In the course of talking about it, I mentioned the HCG number we got on Monday was very high.  One of the guys asked what HCG was and my boss’s boss answered.  He answered VERY well.  Someone else chuckled and said “Not the dinner conversation you were expecting is it?” and I said that if he knew what HCG was so well, it sounded like he had some experience in this.  He said yes and that he and his wife had gone through IVF a few times.  He also shared with us quite a lot of details that impressed me not only beacuse he was willing to share, but because he really experienced it and understood.  He was talking emotions and how infertility makes you feel.  I generally have the impression that the husbands are more or less along for the ride and don’t know all the intimate emotional details to such a degree.  (At least, that is how mine is.)  I came away from that dinner slightly embarrassed for discussing details that generally are not business conversations but also with a high respect of this person. 

Well, that’s all folks.  I’ve got a date with the gym in the morning to make sure this elephant doesn’t take over too soon.

I’m sorry, did you say 1 thousand?

1094.   That is what my HCG was at 17 DPO.  (DPO, in case you were wondering, means days past oil as in, days since I’ve started injecting myself with monster PIO doses. )  Wanna know what is average at 17 dpo?   At 17 DPO, the average HCG level is 132 mIU/ml, with a typical range of 17-429 mIU/ml.   (Straight off the chart.)  Since I know with the ingrained sense of trauma and fear exactly the date on which I started the PIO injections, I know the dpo is correct.  What does this mean?  Well, it means I spent a good deal of time googling (yahoo searching, actually, but that sounds dumb – so much for marketing yahoo.) hcg levels and what 1094 could mean.  I seems that plenty of people have had higher and had single babies.  Plenty of people have had lower and had quads.  For the most part, it seems that based on that number, the odds have gone up that there is more than one, but they were up anyway since we DID put in two, and it is all pretty unreliable as a way to tell.  It means that we can still not rule more than one out.  It also, just so I don’t come off as ungrateful and crass, means that we have a very very very good chance of having a very healthy pregnancy starting out here.  This is a good thing because I’ve been unusually worried about miscarriage lately and I don’t like it when I’m unusually worried about something because THEN I worry that I will mentally make it happen with my negative thoughts and THEN I worry that I’m a nut and THEN I start to wonder who else has found this out.  (The answer, of course, is the entire internet world.)

I do wish that I had some more symptoms.  Not anything unpleasant, mind you, but a slight tinge of tummy sickness for a mere 5 minutes wouldn’t be unwelcome.  As it is, I feel virtually nothing unless you count the burning sensation in my leg from the PIO shot I did this morning.  Oh, and as a side note, while I realize that no one like jamming needles into their leg and pushing down really hard on it, try not to finish the injection only to realize that you’ve partially pulled the needle out while doing it.   Apparently it is a very good thing that PIO shots are deep in your muscles because when you bring even a little of it more near the surface, the stuff burns like rubbing alcohol.  I don’t know… maybe it is just me, but just to be safe, fully embrace the length of those PIO needles and get that stuff down in there.

We’ve had a fun time having Kris’s brother and family over.  The kids have loved having the age-matching cousins there to play with.  Not that our house is ever boring, mind you, but I guess to a 9 year old it can sometimes seem that way.  I’ve tried to convince him to use his imagination to come up with things to do but I don’t push too hard because usually using his imagination involves scissors, glue, the table linens from our good china hutch, and a few buckets full of dirty sand from the sandbox.  Or some similar list of ingredients that cause large messes and often loss of property value.  They’ve been playing great together though!  Even Ash is getting into the fun by play wrestling with T, who is the boy that is about Jessie’s age.  I think it is fun for him to have a ‘brother’ that is closer in age to him.  That, or he is really anti-social and is just actually trying to take the other boy out whenever he sees him.  Really, it is so cute at this age though!  It is even cuter because Ash usually does it while wearing the pink plastic play high heals from Jessie’s dress up clothes with the pink fuzzy band over the toes.  We’ve learned that this is not just a trait for Asher though because C, the little boy Ash’s age, has also developed a fondness for wearing the high heals and pushing the baby stroller around.  Poor little C – he doesn’t have any older sisters to steal the girly toys from.  Actually, I think it is just a travesty that there aren’t any play dress-up little shoes for little boys to slip on and off.  They obviously love doing it and how hard could it be?  Maybe the “daddy-n-me” line of toys with strollers, diaper bags, dress-up clothes, and some little doll toy cars with a ‘manly’ theme to the design for the toddler boys.  I can tell you there will never be a more loved set of toys for all the little boys I’ve seen from Gavin to Ash and all our friends than the little ‘working’ vacuum and the doll umbrella stroller.  Even the play lawn mower can’t compete with those.

The spiral of sleeplessness continues…

Is it a bad thing when you are so tired that you actually get 4 hours of sleep and you can’t even tell anymore?  I’m thinking yes.  Something is going to have to change and unfortunately, I know what that is.  I’ve been staying up playing WAY too late in the evenings.  At least for a bit, I’ll have to put myself to bed early and not stay up doing whatever – until I catch up from this long weekend.  I thought my 9 year old could put up a fight to stay up late… he’s nothing compared to what I can whine to myself like.

So, I was getting dressed this morning and I put on my pants and they were feeling a tad bit snug.  Since it is still WAY too early to claim pregnancy issues I’m clearly going to have to get back into my routine.  This morning though, was not that.  I had an early appointment at the OB office for a blood draw to check my 1st beta.  I’ll be doing the next on Wednesday.  I also asked for a regular pregnancy test while there and I think the nurse thought I was kinda losing it.  I might have been because I shortly found myself in the bathroom with a plastic cup and the realization that I had JUST gone before I left my house and I probably wasn’t going to be able to go again.  I’m sure you will all be relieved to know that I did manage enough for the test.  One of the few superpowers of a pregnant woman. 

The test today was positive again! Now we just wait for the numbers.  I realize the numbers today all by themselves won’t mean much, but I still am excited to find out the results.  I mean, I know how far dpo I am (Well, I’m 0 dpo since I never ovulated, but you know what I mean) so maybe I can map that out to see if it is high or low from average.

J met me this morning for the blood test.  YAY!  It is so fun when they are all involved and excited about this.  I feel a little guilty since it is the hospital/clinic closer to me and all that and really, the blood draw was pretty boring.  Still, it is fun to see them.  Plus, J ran from the car to the clinic front door in his suit and tie from work and it was just the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen.  (disclaimer, my children are more adorable but it wouldn’t have sounded as fun to say it was the 5th most adorable thing I’ve ever seen.) Even if you are pregnant with his child, your husband can’t be jealous if you are in love with a gay guy, right?  I’m pretty sure that is totally on the up and up.

This weekend I cut the heads off my sunflowers and took the seeds out.  That was pretty exciting!  I probably could’ve left them a little longer, but the bugs were taking them out as it was so I wanted to save what I could.  It wasn’t a bad harvest for two little flowers.  Considering my bean plants have barely yielded anything, the carrots and tomatoes never even grew, of the 3 pepper plants, one got pulled up by something, one is still really tiny although it is growing even tinier peppers, and one had the top eaten off after it flowered so, no peppers from there.  The watermelon plant is growing really well but for some reason the flowers aren’t growing watermelons so when the little buds fall off, there is just an empty vine under it.  There is ONE watermelon growing and it is already bigger than any of the ones from last year got before the first frost so I’ve got some hopes that it might actually be edible at some time.

My upgrade at work this weekend went well enough.  I was pretty frustrated because the manufactoring peeps wanted me to do it without using any of their time and I just cannot test THEIR processes out for them.  They did come around to testing it… 30 minutes before the scheduled down time instead of the 3 months like I was asking but hey, I’m not one to rip on procrastination.  (Yes, Erin, I KNOW – I will get that card in the mail, I PROMISE!)  Anyway, they found a problem and very nearly cost us the upgrade completely.  Thankfully, the issue was resolved and we did go ahead with it.  I was done by about 2:30 AM.  Next time?  I will push to use our scripts as proof that the PCs were upgraded instead of having to actually log onto each PC individually.  That is just such a pain, and we only have about 90 PCs.

Adventures of the needle junkie

Big weekend coming up here!  First, today we start a big rollout here at work.  We had one earlier in May and we don’t normally have another one so close but it couldn’t be helped.  Anyway, it will most likely be a very late night for me.  We have to qualify every one of our 90 PCs running the factory.  After the server side upgrade is done.  Which will be anywhere between 9 PM and 3 AM tonight. Yay.

Tomorrow there is a CAbi party to attend which I am excited about.  Hopefully I will get some sleep before this.  Hopefully everything will go well with the upgrade and I will be able to attend.

There is also news about my brother and sister in law staying at our house sometime this weekend or in the week.  I don’t remember exactly.  I haven’t been participating in that much as it is my husband’s brother so I’m hoping Kris meant “I’ll have to get some cleaning done this weekend.” when he said “We’ll have to get some cleaning done this weekend.”  Normally, that means “You’ll have to get some cleaning done this weekend while I reorganize the garage.” so… ya know… we’ll see.

Before I forget, yesterday was my mom’s birthday, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY mom!!  Tomorrow is my sister Erin’s birthday so HAPPY BIRTHDAY Erin!  Later in the month is my older sister’s birthday so no Happy Birthday to her until later.  I DO have cards, I promise, I’m hoping they get mailed out and not piled on the stack of other cards I own because I bought them with great intentions and never got around to mailing them out.  (I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one with that stack at home, but I MIGHT be the only one with that stack including years worth of holiday cards.)

I made it into the gym today.  I didn’t do it on purpose, somehow I absent mindedly packed my gym bag with workout gear and drove into the gym.  Since I was there, I decided to workout.  Weird.  Just walking still.  I’m starting to think there is some truth to my previous weight gains being due to muscle gain because I was 160 today and through lack of strength training, I’m probably losing it now.  I also noticed while getting ready that I have two acne spots on my face now.  Lovely.  Oh progesterone, how do I love thee?

Speaking of that, I’m kinda running low on supplies.  I’ll have to figure out how much longer what I have will last and see if I might need more.  It will depend on what my OB will (hopefully) lower me to once I start up with him I’m sure.  As it is, I’m going through a whole PIO bottle every 1.5 days.  Yep, I know.  Holy needle junkie batman.  I did manage to redeem myself yesterday and today by giving myself the shot in my hip.  Not much else to talk about regarding symptoms or anything.  I did take a ‘week 4’ belly shot yesterday which I will post eventually.  Here are the rules:  1) Absolutely NO comparing how pregnant my week 4 looks compared to Jeanette’s week 15. Seriously. None. 2) Um, I don’t have any other rules.  Just that one.  OH, wait, no.  I do have one more.  2) Even if the rows of pictures do not line up perfectly, I do NOT have to go overdue just to make them even.

On the road again

Or, at least, the treadmill.  This morning I got up and put together my neglected workout bag and headed into the gym.  Well, before doing that I also took my 3 Estrace pills, my horse pill shaped vitamin, and grabbed the ice pack out of the freezer wile I nuked my corn bag to sub-lava-like temps.  Now, I wrapped that cold pack up in a light towel because I’ve learned, last weekend, how very important that is.  Last weekend I had been absently reading the cold pack on the table while my kids ate breakfast.  It said to always wrap a cloth around it to prevent frostbite.  I thought how stupid that was because I always used it without a cloth and was always fine and besides, if you don’t, it doesn’t get cold enough.  Later that night I was icing my leg for my PM shot and thinking blog lines in my head.  (OCD anyone?)  I was thinking about how the worst part about these shots is the initial shock of putting that darn cold pack against your skin.  So, I rigged up a towel and a chip clip to hold the cold pack against my thigh while I prepped the shot.  Just call me Macgyver, people. 

I sat down and ripped open the little alcohol pad and removed the cold pack and discovered white, literally frost covered patches of skin under it.  Concerned and yet task driven, I located where I was going to give the shot, and put in the needle.  My leg felt nothing.  My hand, however, registered the crunching sensation as the needle went through the layer of frozen solid skin.  I finished the shot and wondered how badly I was going to pay for this later.  I placed my hot pack on my leg and waited for whatever was going to happen.  I’m happy to say that it was relatively minor.  The white patches turned red and were raised for a few days and it was pretty sensitive to temps like in the shower.  I avoided giving the shot there for a few days.  Other than that, it was more mental trauma than anything else.  Still, now?  We wrap that cold pack in a towel FIRST.  AND, it never gets cold enough and the shot always hurts now.  Fun.

Getting back to my story, I applied the cold pack and prepped the shot.  My thighs were both still a bit sore from the day before so I opted to do my back hip.  I was going to have to do it myself I figured because the lovely supporting husband was asleep still.  I’ve done this before but it isn’t very easy.  I went upstairs with all the stuff so I could see what I was doing in the bathroom mirror and located where I was going to put the needle in and tried.  That needle was not going in.  I’m not sure what I was doing wrong but I gave up and woke up my husband and made him do it.  I cannot believe I succumbed to being a needle wuss this morning.  I will have to not ever do that again.  And then I drove into the gym.

With the goal of getting a workout in that felt decent and keeping my heart rate below 130, I hopped on the treadmill and slowly upped the walking speed and incline while checking my heart rate periodically.  I managed to keep it between 115 and 120 at about 4.0MPH and 2.5 incline.  It still felt pretty lame, but that was the point, I guess.  I was happy to be back and doing it though, and the relaxing factor of it was nice.  After the workout was the weigh-in I was dreading.  I had not worked out since Sat August 2nd.  I have been injecting large volumes of oil and I have been eating out frequently.  I was 163.0.  I think, maybe, the fact that the majority of my weight loss has been due to working out and gaining muscles and not just starving myself, has been a big help to not gaining when I’m out of the routine for awhile.  I hope so anyway.  Now, that number will be going up but hopefully not too fast.  We want healthy baby weight, not lazy excuse fat here.

My absence, the reason of

I haven’t been blogging lately.  I know.  I feel badly about it, however there are two very negative pregnancy tests in my bathroom right now as my excuse.  When P and J told me that they didn’t want to know about it if I tested early and it was negative, but they DID want to know about it if I tested early and it was positive, you’ve kinda got to pass off that you did not test at all to avoid assuming bad news.  And bad news was all that I had.  On top of that, I don’t feel pregnant.  From someone fairly experienced in what it feels like to be pregnant, I can tell you that none of the normal symptoms, at least, the progesterone induced normal symptoms, are present.  Since we will recall that I am injecting watermelon sized lumps of progesterone and oil into my body on a fairly regular basis, I would assume that pregnant or not, there would be symptoms.  I would ESPECIALLY assume that if I were pregnant, there’d be something.  There’s not.  I was sad.  I was frustrated with all that we went through and how that was our fresh cycle and how the frozen ones didn’t have the same odds.  I was fed up with giving myself these shots when it was just prolonging a cycle that didn’t have much hope.  I was scared about testing and showing off a negative result on Tuesday when we visited the guys’ house.  Granted, it was just the first try, but it took us a year to get to the point where we even got to take a pregnancy test.  I was so depressed, in fact, that I decided to NOT take the 3rd and final test from the pack I got on Monday morning as I just didn’t want to see another negative result.  I resolved to wait until Tuesday morning so that I’d have one last chance to check for something close to a possitive result before the dinner.

My test this morning was positive.  It was EXTREMELY faint, but it also showed up faint right away.  If you looked at it from all but 2 angles, it was, in fact, negative.  YAY, positive!!!  So I went off to work and finished off my day and went to the dinner knowing that it would be a happy day.  I had a wonderful time tonight, although I had to pee so bad all night long because you have to hold it for awhile before taking those things so I didn’t go waiting all night for the whole “And now we segway into handing you a stick that you will go pee on” part of the conversation.  As it turns out, that isn’t such a natural thing to fit into a conversation.  As it turns out, having to pee like a race horse is NOT very helpful when you are trying to hit a 2cm by 4 cm area without soaking your hand in urine.  Anyway, I brought it down and gave it to the guys without looking at it (although I had a bit of a reason to suspect I knew what it said) and… it was positive.  It was grandly, darkly, wonderfully positive too so I didn’t have to hold it in the right light to show them the right line. 

We finally made it.  (Does a year count for using the term finally?)

We finally made it to the part where you get to worry and hope that everything goes the way it should for the next 9 months and you end up with everyone being healthy and alive and wonderful in the end.  Speaking of that, I have a beta draw Monday morning and another Wednesday morning and Wednesday afternoon we’ll get the results.  Now we hope for good things. 

For the record, I did not work out at all last weekend because ‘knowing’ that it was going to be negative, I didn’t want to feel like I had done anything that might have caused it myself.  Now, however, I have to get back I think.  I know just some light workouts won’t hurt and the doctor actually said anything with my heart rate under 130.  Now, 130 is pretty low but I can make that stick.  I’m gonna have to because I KNOW I’m over 163 at this point.  I just hope that I’m not over 170.  Then again, I have yet to get that ‘initial’ weight check for this pregnancy and really, who wants to make that any lower than it has to be?  Maybe I’ll wear my parka to that appointment.  The heavy one.  With bricks sewn in the pockets.

No more lounging around…

7 dpo

I found the e-mail from the clinic about workout guidelines.  They state that light cardio can resume after 48 hours from the transfer.  Guess that means no more excuses, huh? This is good though because I’m starting to feel… puffy.  My clothes all still fit and everything but I think the rich foods and lack of exercise is starting to catch up to me.  That and all the progesterone I’m injecting.  I think I’m shooting up about a pound of oil per day.. wonder where it all goes.  Of course, I could also be pregnant so there is that.  

So, now is the time to start the pregnancy symptom watch.  This becomes very difficult when you are the equivalent of a progesterone addict, since most of the early symptoms come from progesterone, but we’ll make a go of it anyway.  I’m not normally one for morning sickness, but last night while making dinner I started to feel a tad bit ill.  I’m not sure what that was about, but we can chalk it up as a symptom, right?  I’ve been feeling that tendon pull in the groin area that means either I am doing the splits and didn’t notice, or something is putting pressure there.  Of course, a uterus that is being artificially drugged to develop the amazing ‘Princess and the Pea’ inspired lining is probably a sizable thing all on its own.  My other key symptom would be the drug sniffing dog sense of smell.  It is hard to tell if I have this as I purchased the Tide brand of laundry detergent that was advertised to smell of lavender and vanilla.  What it really smells of is “allergies suck”, a scent I’ve noticed is far too common in today’s world.  Since I’m too lazy and cheap to re-wash all of my clothes, I’m just living with the allergies until I get through everything that was washed in it.  I have gotten rid of the offensive detergent and purchased new stuff which is really more than I thought I would do.  Normally I’d rather not throw out perfectly good detergent JUST because it makes my sinuses want to cave in on themselves so I’d use it and suck it up until it was gone.  I’m also really tired but that is pretty much a constant state for me anyway AND I’ve been so engrossed in my new books (The Darkover Series by Marion Zimmer Bradley – awesome!) that it is a battle of wills each evening to stay up and read instead of falling into a coma while trying to reread the same line over and over.

Bah, can’t I just test yet?  Please?