Where I stand now as opposed to 29 weeks and 3 days pregnant...

I was uncertain if I should blog tonight, I'm feeling a bit emotional but I suppose if one can't write an emo blog and post it online then what is the world coming to? I've been feeling surprisingly okay in the last few weeks. As I said to my secret twin, every day that goes by it gets that little bit easier to deal with the miscarriage but that little bit harder to deal with not being pregnant yet. That being said, some things have changed in the last couple of weeks which have changed my frame of mind but I'll get to that in time.

The title of this post is something of a misnomer. I actually rarely check how far along in my pregnancy I would be these days which is probably a good thing. I definitely spent a lot of time obsessing over those dates in the first couple of months after the miscarriage. I do think that I have been a bit depressed over the last few months, friends have definitely expressed their concern and suggested that I seek some kind of counselling (as has my husband) but I didn't feel that I needed it. I just needed to be able to talk to someone, anyone, about how I was feeling without them suggesting that. I know that sounds like I needed to talk to a counsellor but I didn't want that, I just wanted to feel like I could talk openly with the people I loved about the way I felt without being "judged".

This all came to a head a few weeks ago. My secret twin (who has been amazing in not rubbing her pregnancy in my face, so to speak) sent me a text saying that she and another friend who was pregnant were out together and heard "MMMBop" playing on the radio. I responded with a snarky text and she finally let me have it. She said all of the things that I needed to hear and thank goodness she did. I also had a heart to heart with a close friend (whose baby I saw get born in May, I still need to write that blog!) and she had said some of the same things but it was the slap in the face from my secret twin that finally made me pull my socks up.

I realised that I needed to stop dwelling on the future that I could've had and focus on the one that I have now. I needed to stop taking every little thing to heart and relating it to what happened. So I took a step back and thought about what I really wanted. Yes, I still want to get pregnant but I also want to stay sane. So I've decided to focus more on myself and my health again. We're going to stop trying to get pregnant but we won't use contraception, either. If it happens, it happens but a part of me doesn't actually want it to happen just yet. My 30th birthday is in January and I'm planning to have a kickass party with a mechanical bull and slushy cocktails...not exactly a pregnancy-friendly occasion!

So we're back into dieting and exercise. I waited to post until we'd done it longer than a week this time! My current health kick started when my (stay with me here) husband's cousin's fiancé, T, invited me to come to a pole dancing class with her. It's something I'd wanted to do for years but never had the guts to go on my own and didn't want to be the "fat girl" in the class so I wanted to lose weight first...which was a bit silly. We went to our first class last week and it was awesome, I absolutely loved it! It's a six week course and we're also booked in to do a one off 2 hour lap-dancing class this Friday night and on Saturday I start a six week aerial silks course which I'm also excited about!

What's funny is that my upper body strength has been my major weakness in my adult life and both the pole dancing and aerial silks rely on it so much. I don't know if that's because my arms were so strong when I was a kid doing gymnastics that they atrophied worse than the other muscles once I stopped using them as much. Unlike your leg muscles, your arm muscles just don't get that kind of use unless you're doing exercise (that is to say, they're not used to support your entire body weight unless you walk around on your hands!). I'm looking forward to getting some arm strength back again though, one of my goals is to be able to do a press handstand. That video is actually for a yoga version but when I was looking on YouTube for videos to show what I was talking about, I was so thoroughly impressed by her repeating the move that I had to link that one! I used to be able to do it when I was a gymnast and getting the kind of arm strength where I can do it again is one of my big goals!

Aside from that, we started doing Lite 'N Easy last Saturday. I know, I know, it's a cop out and I own a Thermomix but this is about losing weight, not convenience (though I won't deny, it's a bonus). We also started doing Power 90 again, this time we're doing it in the evenings with me switching out one cardio session for pole dancing, though it'll be two this week with lap dancing included. We're finding so far that this is working for us. Neither of us is a morning person so doing it in the evening and then being able to just heat up our Lite 'N Easy dinners is really working out well for us, plus exercising helps to get rid of the stress of the day.

Anyway, I started this post almost 3 hours ago (I got distracted by a friend on Skype in the middle of writing it!) and now it's 11:55pm so I'm going to post this now and scurry off to bed before today becomes tomorrow! :D

The things that amuse me...

(Click to enhance)

Mexican Meatballs,

Dessert is going to be an issue. Perhaps a trip to HT is required or maybe L4. You will need to liaise with Apricot Chicken on this matter. It is of utmost importance that this missive does not fall into the wrong hands.

Take care.

P.S. The red robin flies at midnight.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Greetings from Crazytown!

So if you're looking for proof that TTC is making me crazy, we officially have it. Some girls on the forums were talking about some "fertility readings" they were having done. I have never once in my life thought to consult a psychic for anything. I've always felt that whatever is going to happen will happen and I'd rather not know when things are going to occur and quite frankly, I didn't hold with such nonsense. My desire to get pregnant again apparently outweighs my sanity because when I heard about it, I promptly sent off requests for readings from "JennyRenny" and "Cheri22". Today I got the following response from Jenny Renny:

"Your reading reveals that your BFP news comes the end of June/beginning of July from a cycle that began in June.  The baby shows as a boy and his EDD/birth date is referenced the month of March 2013 - specific reference to the 9th and 7th."

Now, before she gives the prediction, she asks for some information. That being my DOB, DH's DOB, when my current cycle started, how long my cycles usually are and any previous pregnancies. My first reaction to this "reading" was to haul out my Inner Skeptic to say that I could easily have plugged these dates into an EDD calculator myself and come up with these results, another part of me was whooping with joy and hoping that she's right. I feel better since a friend told me that the one she got done by Jenny Renny said July so obviously she doesn't just tell everyone it's going to happen straight away.

It remains to be seen as to whether this prediction will hold true but needless to say, I hope it does. It'll be interesting to see if Cheri's prediction matches Jenny's and also if hers is correct as well.

As for my sanity, I guess it goes without saying that it left the building quite awhile ago. Maybe one day it will return but until then life is sweet in Crazytown! Wish you were here!

Secret assignations...

This came to me via a secret internal mail envelope dropped anonymously on my desk. Totally made my day!




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Just when you think you're totally alone in this world...

...it turns out, you're not. Since I wrote yesterday's blog, I got a few unexpected messages of support from "my girls". I had a good, long chat with my secret twin last night. After posting yesterday I really wanted to make the effort to talk to her. It was great catching up but I will admit that I cried for the rest of the train ride home after we got off the phone. Then I picked myself up, dusted myself off and read my Fifty Shades Freed book for the bus ride home.

So I guess now I'm just looking forward to the 1st of July. New financial year, maybe a BFP for me. It would be fitting, my whole life revolves around financial years so this would be perfect for me. Isn't it crazy how we look for "signs"? Things that might indicate that this is why something will or won't happen. Realistically, if it happens, it happens and if it doesn't, it doesn't.

I'm trying to stop focusing on what "should have" been. I think it's getting easier as my former pregnancy ticks on without me or my baby with it. I can't imagine either of us at 20 weeks pregnant, though I can imagine in painful detail how happy my husband and I would be at the 20 week scan with my Mum and mother-in-law in tow. Sometimes I will remember with horrible clarity the feeling of being in that hospital and I relive my miscarriage over and over again.

A part of me feels guilty because I don't feel like I loved my baby enough. From the time I had that scan and my baby measured small with such a low heartbeat, I didn't really connect to the pregnancy. When I miscarried, I was just numb. My heart breaks thinking about how happy I was during the beginning of my pregnancy compared to how I feel now.

Wow, I have gotten carried away with this blog, I'm sitting here and typing with tears streaming down my face when I had originally been planning to write an upbeat entry! So anyway yes, this is why I'm trying not to focus on where I should have been but on where I am and where I'm going.

Which brings me back to a more positive note, my friend is going to lend me her elliptical machine. I told her I was thinking of buying one and she offered to lend me hers for a month. If I actually like it and use it, I'll buy it off her. If I don't then no harm done. I'm also seriously thinking about returning to taekwon-do, I do miss it and she made a very attractive proposition in regards to my training to make it worth my while and less scary to return while TTC and possibly UTD.

So that's my plan. Focus on the future. Focus on my fitness and health. I might be broken but it turns out I'm not totally defective after all.

19 weeks and 4 days

Well I've officially been not pregnant longer than I was pregnant and I feel like I'm slipping away again. I can feel it happening but I either can't or won't stop it. I've stopped replying to texts and emails as quickly. If you call me, I forget to call back. Janet from love is blonde calls it "hibernating" and in some ways it is. I don't miss Facebook at all and I'm sad that I no longer get to chat to "my girls" in the Facebook group but I've gotten a few lovely texts and emails from a few of them which is nice. They all have every right to be happy about their pregnancies, their babies and their children. I'm the one with the issue which is why I've removed myself from the situation. They don't need me bringing them down when they have nothing to be sad about.

Obviously it goes without saying that AF arrived over the long weekend. I'm doing my best to try and stop obsessing over pregnancy and babies. I worry that by the time I finally get pregnant, I will have put too much distance between me and my secret twin to gain back the closeness we once had. She called me on the weekend and I didn't call back. I assured myself that her pregnancy is going fine when she rang (she has had some medical issues in her pregnancy) and then I put it to the back of my brain and forgot to call back later. It's selfish of me but I hope she understands.

Another close friend has told me that this blog is the only way that she gets an insight into my mind anymore. In fact, she's the reason I'm even writing this. I'd happily hibernate away from here too. I always feel better after I write here, though. There's something about writing to everyone and to no one at the same time that is soothing.

I had a good, long cry to myself on Saturday while Damien was at work. I honestly don't know how people TTC for years and years, I hate it already and it's only been six months, three cycles and one miscarriage since we started. I hate the hope that you get for two weeks that this could possibly be the month, only to have it shattered by the arrival of AF. Then you get two weeks to deal with that, two boring weeks where you can't actively do anything towards getting pregnant but wait for O to happen and then the hope starts again.

I feel like I'm broken. I don't work right anymore and the only thing that will fix me is being pregnant again. Until then I'm just trying to function at bare minimum capacity to keep everything going until I'm repaired so that nothing else breaks in the meantime.

I saw the most amazing thing...

So much has happened since my last post. I’m in a much better place right now. As the title said, I saw the most amazing thing, the birth of baby Eleni Jade. She is so beautiful. I’m committed to writing a “birth story” from my third party perspective which I’ll post in the next week. It’s funny, I was supposed to attend the birth of my niece in 2010 but she was born in the 36 hours I was out of the state for a taekwon-do tournament. My sister-in-law always said to me that if I saw someone give birth then I would never want to do it. To be honest, I was a little bit scared that she would be right. I forgot that whenever I have to do something I’m scared of, I always say “you do it first!” because after I see someone else do it, I find it easier to do it too.

Personally, I’m now of the belief that every “first timer” should try and attend a birth. I guess, though, that it would only be if you were attending the birth of someone as amazing as K. We had talked quite a bit before the birth, I’d read her birth plan and like me, she was very pro-natural birth. I’ll leave the details for the birth story but when the time came, there was nothing scary about it. K was in control the whole time and while she was undoubtedly in a lot of pain, she vocalised it and dealt with it. I haven’t been scared off childbirth at all, in fact I’m more than ready for it.

Reading a million pregnancy books couldn’t have prepared me for the real thing as much as seeing it live did. I remember being amazed by my nephew and my niece as babies but when I had newborn cuddles with baby Eleni a mere two hours after she was born (I was the first person after Mum and Dad to hold her!), I don’t think I’ve ever been more amazed. Even last night, a week later, I visited and had cuddles and was still so taken away by her. I literally just stared at her as I held her for almost an hour. I can’t even imagine how it will feel when the baby is mine, when I’m the one who has carried and birthed them. They’re not wrong when they call it “the miracle of birth” because it truly is miraculous!

So…I guess that bring us back to our TTC journey. Due to Eleni’s unfortunately-timed-but-nonetheless-amazing birth, we didn’t actually DTD on the day I O’d…which was the day E was born. We did DTD the day before and had been following the SMEP of doing it every other day so we’re still in with a chance. Testing day is Friday, the 1st of June. So far no symptoms other than what I normally have and I don’t feel pregnant. I’m trying (and failing) to not get my hopes up. A part of me is convinced that I’ll get the “Not Pregnant” on my ClearBlue Digital test on Friday morning but a larger part thinks it’ll say “Pregnant”. I’m trying to beat that part into submission right now because I can’t deal with the devastating fallout if I’m not pregnant and I haven’t already killed my hopes.

Speaking of beating things into submission, I’m halfway through the Fifty Shades series. Interesting, very interesting. *fans self*