why can’t i find any blogs on wordpress about bratty toddlers? it seems like all anyone wants to talk about are the rainbows and lollipops that shoot out of their children’s butts.  don’t get me wrong, i’m not saying we don’t have sunshine and unicorn days here too, but you know what else we have? days when louise trips and spills an entire milkshake on the carpet (not her fault, i know) shortly after i find out i accidentally set up an automatic payment with one of my credit card companies, which caused me to overdraft my checking account on a day when my husband had to leave town for the entire week.  we didn’t make it to gymnastics that night.  well shit, it doesn’t sound that bad when i type it out but it WAS.  and i felt REALLY guilty for making louise skip gymnastics because i was a wreck, but seriously, i was out of xanax.  i don’t need support on days when everything is swell, i need support on days when i feel like a failure in the parenting department.  yes, i KNOW i’m not a bad parent, i’m certainly not perfect, far from it, but perfect is boring.  i need to read stories about moms and dads yelling at their kids or making them watch spongebob for six three straight hours because they’re too tired to play leggos and read stories or letting them eat mcdonald’s because they just don’t know how to cook feel like cooking a healthy dinner (in my case, it’s don’t know how to cook).  THAT’S what i need people, give me the good stuff, we’re all familiar with the awesome days so can we start sharing the bad days? PLEASE???

okie dokie, now that we got that out of the way, here’s some other stuff:

march and april are a couple of my husband’s busiest months at work (in addition to september and maybe october).  he is gone pretty much every week all week during these months.  in addition to that, he’s been gone two weekends and has another one coming up when he’ll be gone.  boy oh boy, i can’t even tell you what a wreck i was when he had to leave town during louise’s first couple years, it wasn’t pretty, there were lots and lots of tears and they days DRAGGED by.  i’m SO happy that i can deal with him being gone now, it still sucks, but at least i don’t have miniature nervous breakdowns ever time he leaves on business anymore.  in any case, he’s home this weekend, wahoo!!!

my mom was here the first weekend he was gone too so that was nice-ish.  i mean, i love my mom, i really do, i’m so happy when she arrives but i wouldn’t say i’m really REALLY sad when she leaves.  my mom is awesome when you’re sick or injured, she will fall all over herself doing everything and anything she can for you, but she’s also judgmental, rude and condescending.  my mom is an intellectual snob, always has been, always will be, she earned it i suppose, she got her master’s degree and phd in psychology while caring for two young children, she was married and didn’t have to work, but still, the thought of taking ONE class almost reduces me to tears.  she was hired as a professor at a local college, which is now a university, the year i was born, i was born in may and by june she was teaching full-time.  by this time she had divorced my sisters’  (i have two sisters, megan and jes) father and married mine but my dad wasn’t exactly a bread winner back then, he played racquetball professionally (didn’t know racquetball was a professional sport? neither does anyone else) and then became an emt (in case you’re wondering emt’s do not get payed the money they deserve for risking their lives every day).  he did go back to school and was a nurse for quite some time, but my parents divorced when i was two or three.  he went back to school AGAIN ten or fifteen years ago and is now a pa.  what i’m saying is, my mom was responsible for taking care of me and my sisters, pretty much by herself for our whole lives, she got child support, sure, but that’s usually a drop in the bucket.  i don’t mean to say my sisters’ dad or my dad were absent or deadbeats, they weren’t, but the majority of the responsibility tends to fall on the custodial parent.  i got off track, sorry ’bout that.  my mom is smart, really smart, she reads books that would have me sleeping like a baby after three paragraphs for FUN.  watching tv with her is awful, she is forever asking questions about what’s going on or making comments about the actors and actresses awful hair or poor wardrobe choices or how they are too fat or too skinny, which leads me to the next topic: she’s been making underhanded comments about my weight since i was in my early twenties.  i was still skinny then but she was constantly telling me i was going to get fat if i didn’t start eating better and goddamnit if she wasn’t right.  i HATE that.  now it’s stuff about me being overweight, minus the two years i didn’t eat while i was going through super bad ppd, then i was too skinny.  you don’t need to feel bad for me, it didn’t cause any psychological damage i didn’t develop an eating disorder or anything and as annoying as it is, i learned to ignore her and having my sisters to complain too definitely helped/helps.  every time someone meets my mom they’re like, “oh my god, your mom is SO nice”, and i’m like, “oh yeah, SO nice” as i roll my eyes.  the thing about the weight comments is that i’m 100% sure she’s projecting her own insecurities onto me.  i cannot remember a time in my life when my mom wasn’t trying to lose five or ten pounds, it’s crazy.  the woman is like, a size six, she eats well, walks everyday and goes to exercise classes regularly despite the fact that she’s 70-years-old.  i have a picture of her in a bikini that i took when i was about ten years old, my mom had me when she was 33 people, that means she was 43 when i took the picture, you wanna know the last time i wore a bikini without shorts? NEVER.  in addition to this, she thinks that she can solve every issue we have with louise in a couple of days time, potty training, eating (or lack thereof), sleeping (or lack thereof), WHATEVER, she’s always convinced she has the solution but guess what? she doesn’t, we’ve already tried everything.  this all makes her sound like a horrible person, she’s really not, i’m lucky to have her as a mom, there’s so many things about her that are awesome, she’s hysterical and i have to admit, the smart thing comes in pretty handy sometimes, whenever i need advice about something, she’s always the first person i call, she’s ALWAYS there when i need her for ANYTHING, what more can you ask for? she’s not perfect but who is? she did the best she could and that’s really all you can ask for.

whoa. somehow this turned into a post about my mom, i don’t know how that happened, that’s not what i meant to talk about at all.

okay, let’s get back on track.  louise has been in swimming and gymnastics for a few months now, she’s doing pretty well and a few weeks ago we added violin lessons to her schedule.  you can’t really expect much from a three-year-old when it comes to things like the violin, we’re basically just getting her used to the idea of playing the violin, however, her miniature violin is freaking ADORABLE.  in the pictures of her with a violin you’re seeing a violin we borrowed because they didn’t have one small enough for her in stock.

louise’s itty bitty violin next to my full size violin. so cute, i die.

i think that’s about it at the moment, hope everyone’s good!!

*on a side note, can we all say a silent prayer that my mom doesn’t read this? i thought about password protecting it but i know a lot of people wouldn’t ask for the password and that sucks, so i didn’t.  i gave her the address  a long time ago but before i posted this i called to ask her if she still had it, she said no and i said good, because i talk about sex and stuff on it and you really don’t need to read that, she agreed, so let’s all keep our fingers crossed.

now that i’ve apologized yet again for being a horrible blogger, i thought y’all might like a real post.  it has been so freaking long since i posted last that i’m not even sure where to start.  it’s not like we’ve had a bunch of super interesting things happen, mostly just normal life stuff, but still, i could probably talk about a thousand different things, which one to pick??? i guess since i mentioned before that we are trying for number two i should probably start there.  to be completely honest, i can’t say that we’ve been trying that hard.  i’m not on birth control anymore obviously, but when we were trying to get pregnant with louise i was all business.  i ALWAYS kept track of my cycle, i knew when the best baby making days fell and i made damn sure we had sex on those days every.single.month.  i mean, if carl was out of town i even had “samples” on ice at our clinic.  then we started using art and you definitely have to know what cycle day you’re on when you’re spending all that money, so clearly i knew exactly where i was at any given day of any month.  probably every second of the day.  i was obsessive about it, i’m sure everyone can relate, all of us infertiles obsess over our cycles when we’re ttc.  the first couple of months after we decided to try again i did keep track of my cycle and we did our best to have sexy time when the ovulation days came around, but besides that i really haven’t done anything.  i haven’t even tracked my cycle for the past few months.  i guess that when we were trying to get pregnant with louise it almost felt like a life or death situation.  if we hadn’t been able to get pregnant with her i would have been completely devastated, i REALLY wanted to experience what it was like to be pregnant and i’m not going to lie, i wanted to see what a child with both my husband’s dna and my dna would look like and be like.  i feel like adoption wasn’t really something i was interested in, adoption is AWESOME, the people who do it are amazing and clearly much more selfless than i, it just wasn’t for us.  if we hadn’t been able to get pregnant with louise it’s likely we would have ended up not having kids at all.  i DO think fostering would have been something to consider if we hadn’t had louise, so who knows, it’s not unusual for fostering to lead to adoption.  all i can do is speculate and it’s a moot point so there’s really no use.  in any case, while we would like to have another baby, i don’t feel like it’s life or death this time, another would be great but louise is pretty awesome on her own too.  i really should get my shit together and start tracking my cycle, i’m not getting younger, that’s for sure, every month i slack off my ovaries are getting closer and closer to retirement. the next couple months might be rough for baby making because it’s the busy season for carl at work (one of them anyway) which means lots of travel, it would be a miracle if he happened to actually be in town during prime baby making time.  he was even gone over the weekend last week and he’s gone this weekend too, SO lame.  he had to miss riley’s regional gymnastics meet last weekend, what a bummer.  you all remember ms. riley right? riley is carl’s 15-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.

speaking of louise and riley, let’s get caught up on them, they’re the interesting ones.  louise turned three on january 31 and we’re in the midst of potty training right now.  i tried really hard to start months ago but louise was NOT having it, she wanted nothing to do with the potty and i’ve always heard that pushing it can make things worse, so i didn’t.  eventually she came around, she’s not 100% there but she’s close.  when she’s at home we let her run around with no pants or diaper and she ALWAYS goes on the potty but if she does have pants and a diaper on it’s kind of hit and miss.  usually if you put her in pants and nothing else she’ll tell you when she has to go potty but a few days ago i had her in just a pair of jeans and she peed in them.  she is not in love with the idea of underwear yet, at first she was super into them but now she freaks out when i try to put them on her.  oh well, what are you gonna do, she’ll get there, we just have to take it one day at a time.  whoever said girls are easier to potty train than boys can suck it.

louise started taking gymnastics and swimming lessons a couple of months ago, we’ve already finished one session and just started our second last week.  she’s great at swimming which isn’t a huge surprise since my parents have a pool and we go there all the time in the summer, gymnastics is kind of meh so far but i’m sure it will get better.  at the end of her swimming lessons last session her teacher said she was definitely ready for the next level so that’s what she’s doing right now.  they usually don’t let kids younger than 3 1/2 take the class she’s in now but due to the fact that her teacher said she’s ready the allowed it.  cleeeeeearly she’s very gifted and the only reason i added that last sentence was to brag about what an awesome swimmer she is.  parents will brag about ANYTHING when it comes to their kids, it can be super annoying so i try not to do it but every once in a while a little brag slips out.  what do you want from me, i’m only human!!!!  the best part about her moving into the next swimming level is that I DON’T HAVE TO GET IN THE POOL WITH HER ANYMORE.  i love doing things with her but wearing a bathing suit around a bunch of people i don’t know is not my favorite thing to do.  i’m also not super in love with getting my head wet when i’m swimming, i’m not afraid to do it or anything, it stems from insecurities i had about my skin (acne) when i was younger.  i’m not terribly insecure about it anymore but my distaste for getting my head wet stuck for some reason.  so yeah, last session i had to be in the pool with her (okay, i only had to be in the pool with her once, usually grandpa or grandma took her to swim class but once was PLENTY for me) and this session i sit and watch her through a window, they like to keep the parents a little separated so the kids stay focused on what they’re doing which is a-okay with me.  she DOES love her gymnastics class but they try to implement a little structure and she’s not so good at that yet, like, the teacher will say, okay, now we’re all going to take turns on the beam or the bar or the vault (it’s an itty bitty vault and obviously they don’t ACTUALLY vault, the just do a little bunny hop on it) and louise is NOT interested in hanging out and watching all the other kids until it’s her turn.  sometimes i can wrangle her into doing what she’s supposed to but a lot of the time we’re kind of off doing something else, she’s particularly fond of the bar, she loves to hang off of it.  she’s taking the same gymnastics class this session due to her distaste for listening to her teacher but hopefully she’ll be able to move onto the next level next session.  i’m pretty sure she’s the oldest kid in the class right now, which is fine, but for some reason i feel like she’ll do better with kids her own age.  haha, her own age, as if one-year-olds and three-year-olds are really far apart! i mean, developmentally they are for sure but saying that someone whose a year younger than her is TONS younger sounds funny because as an adult a person who’s a year younger is pretty much the same age as you.  lolz.  this past week i signed her up for violin lessons, she starts next week.  i cannot WAIT to see her adorable teeny tiny violin! she’s doing the sukuki method, i played cello for a long time and took lessons of course, but i never learned the suzuki method.  it should be interesting because i basically have to take the lessons with her.  for now i’m going to rent a viloin for myself, if it works and louise takes to it i’ll probably buy one but we’ll definitely be renting louise’s for a while as she will be growing out of her instruments fairly quick.

i think that’s most of louise’s big news.  christmas was great, louise and i went out west for about ten days, we got home on december 23rd, just in time to spend christmas eve and day with daddy, sissy (riley) and the rest of my family who lives in michigan.  her birthday was fun, we haven’t done anything super big on her birthday yet, like have a party at the ymca or the awesome swim center that’s near here, i definitely want to do stuff like that in the future but so far i feel like she’s just been too young to justify spending the money.  she’s not going to remember it or probably even enjoy it as much as she will when she’s just a little older.  next year she’ll be four and i think at that age stuff like that will be more rewarding and memorable for her.  luckily i have two nieces and a nephew who are older than her, they’ve all had birthdays at the fun birthday places which is an excellent way too see which ones louise really likes.  oh my god, my niece sierra is six and for her last birthday my sister threw her party at crazy bounce, i’m sure you all have a crazy bounce-esque place somewhere near you, huge room full of enormous blow up fun house like things with big giant slides and whatnot, you know what i mean.  louise’s cousins are all older than her, little ella is only about six months older but louise is always trying to keep up with jake and sierra who are six and close to seven years old.  so, louise followed one of them into one of these huge blowup things, eventually we saw the kids she went in with come out but no louise.  i waited a little bit longer and finally my brother-in-law sent jake into find her, more waiting… out came jake, no louise, he said he couldn’t find her.  i was like, alright, i better go in, so off i went.  let me tell you something, these things are NO joke, it was like a flipping inflatable obstacle course in that goddamn thing! finally i made it through the majority of it and there sat louise crying her poor little eyes out, she was stuck.  she wasn’t big enough to climb the wall that lead you out and she was scared (i would have been too), it was very sad, poor little thing.  turns out even i wasn’t strong enough and/or tall enough to get out the proper way, i had to take louise out the way we had both gone in, it was hard enough going through that thing the right way, the wrong way was an even bigger challenge.  i have no clue how all those little kids went through that damn thing over and over, i mean, they’re WAY shorter than me and definitely not as strong (not that i’m super strong but i’m willing to bet i could bench press more than a six-year-old) but they did.  louise was much happier on some of the things they had for smaller kids and did not feel it was necessary to keep up with the big kids for the rest of the party.

going peepee on the potty, i’m sure she’ll super happy about this picture when she’s a teenager.

her teacher calls this “the possum”

this one is “the butterfly”

the beam

cooking with daddy

bowling with daddy

layover in minneapolis.  traveling with a toddler by yourself is always a good time.

christmas morning, lincoln logs, HOORAY!!!!

walking the pier before the snow fell

ms. riley is doing pretty good, she’s 15 and quite grown up, she was just nine when carl and i started dating, i can’t believe how fast kids change and the change from little girl to woman is crazy.  she’s doing okay in school, i know she could do a lot better if she applied herself but it’s out of my hands.  she is on the gymnastics team at her school this year (HIGH school, she’s in TENTH grade!) which i think is pretty impressive considering she’s only had a couple of gymnastics classes.  she’s not the best on the team which is hard for her but i don’t think she really gets that all the other girls on her team have probably been in gymnastics for their entire lives.  she even got five high enough scores on the vault to qualify for regionals which were last weekend.  unfortunately carl was out of town on business and i did not want to wrangle louise for hours at the meet so we didn’t go, but my mom was in town and she did go.  carl, louise and i went to one of her meets a while back and it was CRAZY, it was fun to see all the girls doing their events, especially riley, but trying to entertain a three-year-old for eight hours in a high school gymnasium is not for the faint of heart (seriously, make sure you bring an ipad or a kindle or something if you decide to try it.  how did people live in the days prior to electronic devices???).  she was supposed to start driver’s training but she couldn’t do gymnastics and driver’s training, one interfered with the other or something, so i think she’s going to take it this summer.  that shit FREAKS ME OUT, i know she’s not a little kid but it feels like she’s too young to be driving yet! i’m sure my mom felt the same way when i got my license.  i can’t think of any other big riley stuff at the moment, i’m sure i’m forgetting something that will magically pop into my head the instant i post this, oh well, maybe it will inspire to post again sooner rather than later.  last summer carl and riley went to california when louise and i were in montana and carl got the cutest effing picture of ALL time…

okay now would you or would you not be FREAKING THE FUCK OUT if that was your kid??? could she be any cuter? gah, stay away boys!!!! that’s one of nature’s cruelest jokes i think, all dads know what teenage boys are thinking because clearly at one point that’s what they were, it’s enough to drive a man insane i tell you.

carl and riley on their way to cali.  not sad that mustache is gone.

on a whale watching boat in california, i think they looked a little greener by the time they got off

i wish i had a bigger file of this one, this is when riley’s cousin kaylie got married a few months back…

christmas morning

now that we’ve gotten the important stuff out of the way, i am doing GREAT.  the depression is SO much better thank GOD.  those first couple of years were rough.  i know it was mostly due to postpartum depression, but if i’m being 100% honest the adjustment from not having kids (i mean, we had riley of course but that was different, she was older and we only have her every other weekend.  don’t get me wrong, kids that age come with their own challenges and riley was no exception, but there’s nothing like having your first biological child to knock you on your ass) to having kids also played a large part in it.  it’s not like you can just run to the gas station to grab whatever anymore, you can but it’s going to take you a hell of a lot longer than five minutes, no more last minute concerts, (shit, going to a concert you actually PLAN months in advance is hard), no more weekend getaways, no more lots of stuff, it’s not about you anymore, when you have kids your world revolves around them and it took some time for me to adjust to that.  you can’t prepare someone for what it’s like, i did plenty of babysitting, i heard all the stories my friends who were already parents had, i even read all the books but the only way to truly get what it’s like to have kids is to have one.  that’s it, there’s no other way to understand what a parent experiences on a day-to-day basis.  it also took quite a while to find the right combination of meds to treat my depression.  today i wouldn’t want my life to be any other way, it’s a thousand times better than it was without my husband, riley and louise in it.  having your freedom is great, i’m not going to deny that, but there is nothing in the world that can beat seeing your kid swim without floaties for the first time or get a really good vault score or pick their nose, whatever, doesn’t matter what they’re doing, nothing else can compare to the cocktail of feelings having a kid gives you.  that’s not to say it’s all fun and games, there’s plenty of frustration and tears and whatnot but it’s all worth it.  i know there’s a gazillion people who didn’t have any trouble adjusting to life with kids, kudos and gold stars to them, really, i wish i could have been so lucky but what can you do? you chalk it up as a “learning experience” and move on with your life.  either that or you dwell on what a horrible person you are and continue to limp along miserably through your life, sounds super duper fun, i think i’m going to stick with the moving on thing.

carl and i are in a really good place too, far far away from the divorce discussions we had this spring thank god, that would have been a complete nightmare.  if we had ended up seperating chances are i would have move back to montana and that would have be terrible for louise and carl’s relationship.  i wish i could say i would be selfless and stay in michigan despite the fact that i know i would want to move immediately but i can’t.  it doesn’t really matter, there’s no point in even speculating, it’s not going to happen, not ever.  i love carl with all of my heart, he has stayed with me through everything, the infertility, me being SO sick the last couple months of my pregnancy and then the ridiculous crazy post-baby depression, i seriously don’t know how he made it through the depression, it was so bad.  he travels frequently for work and every time he had to leave i would cry and cry, i knew it made him feel terrible and that made me even sadder, that i couldn’t mask the fact that i was sad if only for his benefit, it was a never ending cycle.  i don’t LOVE it when he travels now but i don’t have a nervous breakdown every time either, louise and i are totally fine without him.  we prefer for him to be here of course, but he supports our family and part of his job is traveling.  she’s starting to get to an age where she notices that he’s gone and misses him, she asks about him sometimes.  today she came in our room while i was getting dressed and stood in front of his laundry basket pointing at his clothes (he’s out of town right now, weekend travel is the worst!), i said, what? and she said dawee’s (daddy’s) clothes, i said, yeah, and she bent down and took a huge whiff.  i was like, do they smell good like daddy? and she said, ahhhhhhh! i know carl loves me too, who in their right mind would stay with someone through all that crap if they didn’t?? NO ONE! and he loves his daughters so much, they are lucky kids, there’s plenty of children who’s fathers couldn’t care less about them, riley and louise hit the dad jackpot.  he’s lucky to have them as daughters too, they’re pretty effing cool.  alright, enough touchy feely stuff, it gives me the heebie jeebies.

this is why i suck so epically at posting i think, i started working on this yesterday, it took me TWO DAYS to write this.  it’s not like i was working on it every second but SERIOUSLY.  i always let so much time go by that when i do think, hey, maybe i should blog, there’s so many things to write about that i’m like, nah, too much thinking and shit.  i keep putting it off and before you know it, BAM, four months have gone by, i mean, if i couldn’t handle blogging about two months worth of stuff there’s no way i could do four! at that point it’s a complete clusterfuck of stories and information, how in the world am i supposed to organize all that stuff in my head and get it onto paper for someone else to read and actually understand? i have no idea.  clearly i decided i was up for the challenge though.  i’d love to say that i’m going to start posting more but i’m not going to make a promise i don’t know if i can keep.  maybe i will, maybe i won’t, i hope i do because this blog has been an important part of my life for a long time, i started this thing over four years ago, that’s crazy to me.  i have no idea what i would have done or what i would do without all my bloggy friends, you’ve supported me through everything, all the hardest and darkest times of my life (maybe a few good times too), i would be lost without my blogger friends.  if i do continue to royally suck at blogging you can at least count on me to read YOUR blogs and leave you comments, so thanks for being a better blogger than me!

oh my poor blog, i’ve been neglecting it so.  even more unusual i haven’t been keeping up with my favorite bloggers which is SO not like me.  i could say that i’m going to start posting more but i always say that and i never seem to do it.  i do promise to stop neglecting my favorite bloggy friends though and if you want to keep better tabs on me you can always find me on the book of faces, i’m probably the only kate ylinen on there

i’ll leave you with a photo of infertile myrtle’s star, ms. louise on her 3rd birthday.

have any endo ladies looked into the violet petal study? i did the initial questionnaire, but seeing as we’re ttc again, i can’t do it right now.

well, we had a good run.  until yesterday, louise had never been on antibiotics and she’ll be three in january, not bad.  i guess she’s just a healthy kid, which is awesome.  about a month ago, i noticed some very faint spots on her chest, i didn’t think much of it since she often gets patches of eczema, and started treating it with cortisone ointment but it didn’t go away.  this past weekend we noticed it was spreading to her arm and face, so when monday morning rolled around i called her doctor and made an appointment.  had it been a common rash i would have brought her sooner, but what she’s got isn’t red or irritated, i’ve actually never seen anything quite like it.  so, off we went to the doctor yesterday afternoon.  her pediatrician also hadn’t seen anything quite like it, but for a treatment you need a diagnosis, so he called it impetigo and wrote her a script for keflex.  it doesn’t look like any impetigo i’ve ever seen, but, he went to medical school and i didn’t, plus cortisone wasn’t working, so we needed to move on to something else.  while we were there i decided to get her flu shot taken care of, the nurse was so fast, it was over in about two seconds and louise did pretty good, she only cried for a minute and it wasn’t scream crying, more like whimpering.  i have a feeling that this time she’s going to remember that you get shots when you go the doctor though, i doubt she’ll be requesting to go every time she stumbles or scrapes her knee anymore.

the patient patient

her weird spots, taken with my phone, not the highest quality

my blog has become very similar to a ghost town.  out west, where i used to live, there were a few ghost towns, tourists would visit them in the dry summer heat, they would stand on their tippy toes peering through boarded up windows in the hopes of catching a glimpse into some forgotten life.  you can sort of do that here too, if you skip around, you’ll find little details about what was going on in my life at any given time.  in both places, you’ll see evidence of someone, or lots of someones.  in a ghost town, you might see a chipped ceramic mug or an old rag doll.  here, it’s words.  years of words, captured and left to hang out in the world wide web like an old creeky saloon sign.  look really closely at your screen people, you might see a tumbleweed go skipping by.

seriously though, i’m one of THOSE bloggers now, the ones who post, like, seven times a year or something.  the bloggers who have their readers wondering if the last post they read by you was the last post they’ll ever read by you.  it’s not like it’s a huge deal, i’m not one of those people with thousands, or even hundreds, of readers waiting, possibly even holding their breath, until my next post.  i’ve got a few regular readers, they comment when i do post, i read their blogs and leave my thoughts with them as well (even if i’m not posting, i’m still reading your blogs everyone).  i guess i just never wanted my blog to be one of those forgotten blogs just chilling out somewhere in internet land gathering dust.  i don’t know why i don’t post much anymore, i can’t think of a tangible reason, other than, i might be happier than i used to be, but i don’t want to give up on all the people who helped me get through the last four years alive.

i started writing here at the beginning of our infertility journey (i hate the term “infertility journey”, putting those two words next to each other makes it sound exotic and interesting and it’s not, but i can’t think of anything else to call it).  there’s not really one word that can describe what dealing with infertility is like, you have to take a bunch of words and jumble them together to give an accurate picture of infertility.  i think the hardest part for me, and probably for a lot of others as well, was never having the answers i needed.  it’s the unknown that makes it so hard.  you have to go into it completely blind and you don’t know if you’re going to come out the other side empty-handed or with that baby you want so bad.  there’s no lasik or glasses in infertilityville, you go in blind and you remain blind until the end, if you’re lucky enough to find an end.  not that everyone whose time comes to an end in infertilityville is lucky, some people just decide that baby or no baby, they are done.  one more bfn or canceled transfer or cyst will squeeze the life from their already mangled hearts and finally rip them into pieces.  you might will spend thousands of dollars on treatments, procedures and medications that promise you nothing, you might take out a second mortgage on your house, you might even sell your house in order to afford these things.  if there’s one thing you will not find in infertiltyville, it’s a guarantee, there’s not even a word to express such a thing.  all i can really say is, it’s hard.  it’s heartbreaking, scary, painful, infuriating, lonely, empty, confusing, frustrating and endless.  i could probably list a hundred more adjectives to describe it.

we found an end, and it wasn’t a miserable end, we’re the lucky ones, we got a happy end.  after two years, surgeries, suppression, semen analysis, medications, ovary stimulation, specimen drop offs, everybody and their brother staring into, or at least AT my vagina and putting things into it that weren’t biologically designed to go into it, we found ourselves pregnant.  there wasn’t any element of mystery in the process and it turned sex from something fun into a robotic chore, but in the end, we got what we started the whole process for.  on june 10, 2009, 14dpiui, i poas.  not just any stick, THE stick.  slowly, not one, but TWO lines began to appear.  in an instant, our lives changed forever.

then came ten long months of pregnancy, some of it was good, some of it was not so good, and on january 31, 2010 louise was born.  i’m not going to lie, the first couple of years were hard.  i had no idea what i was doing, it’s not like anyone can prepare you for what it’s like to have kids.  you can listen to every parenting story that everyone you know has in their mental rolodex, you can borrow other people’s kids, you can read every book on the subject, but when that baby is born, you still won’t know what the fuck you’re doing.  i checked into the hospital in full blown labor with an expectation.  i expected louise to pop out and instantly entrance me with the “bond” everyone’s always raving about, but that is not what happened.  bond? what bond? i thought there was something wrong with me, i loved her, of course, but i wasn’t IN love with her.  taking care of a baby can be a thankless job, they are cute, yes, but at some point, you will find yourself standing in the middle of a dimly lit living room at 4am with a rerun of roseanne flickering in the bacground.  you will be wearing clothes pajamas you have had on for at last three days, you won’t be able to remember the last time you took a shower, your pajamas will be dotted with spit up stains, you will have been awake for the last 48 hours straight, no breaks, you will be holding a baby who has been crying for all 48 of those hours and hasn’t crapped in four days, you will be wondering when you should call the doctor and you will be crying too.  when you find yourself in that place, it doesn’t seem cute.  you might even have a fleeting fantasy about adoption.

so, about that bond, i guess some people have it the instant they lay eyes on their baby, i have no idea who these people are or if they even exist in real life, but i have heard of them.  what i do know is i did not have this innate bond that was required in order to raise a happy healthy child.  days and nights went by, they turned into weeks, which turned into months which turned into years. louise grew and changed from a baby into a toddler right before my eyes.  with todderdom came something miraculous and completely unexpected.  louise started to develop a personality and our lives shifted and changed to make room for her, this little tiny person, who is all the best parts of me and everything i love about her dad.  any love or bond or whatever else i thought we were missing was filling up the space all around us.

louise is doing great.  she’s funny, smart as a whip, the cutest child i’ve ever seen and so imaginative.  she’s so many things that she’s everything.  she’s not perfect, she still uses her deedee (pacifier), she is NOT interested in potty training (aren’t girls supposed to be easy?), she will only eat about ten things, she’s stubborn, she’s independent and she’s perfect just the way she is.

i didn’t think i would ever have any desire to have another baby.  i was so sure of it in fact, that i got rid of everything i had stored away in the basement, swing, bouncy seat, carseat, bumbo, bins of clothes, you name it, if it had anything to do with a baby, i removed it from my life.  at the time, it was very cathartic.  it helped me accept that i was never going to have another baby, not because i couldn’t, but because i didn’t want to, WE didn’t want to.  getting rid of all that stuff just solidified it.

well people, here we are.  louise is almost three and both my husband and i have found ourselves in an unexpected place.  we have decided that we want to give number two the old college try.  believe me, i’m just as shocked as you.  i have no explanation to offer you other than we just know.  it’s going to be different this time.  there will be no re’s.  we’ll try the “normal” way for a few months (i know, i know, it’s probably a waste of time), if it doesn’t happen, i’ll make an appointment with my ob and find out what infertility services she has to offer, but that’s it.  i’m not having another laparoscopy, i’m doing another hsg and i probably won’t be using any injectables.  there will inevitably be plenty of pelvic exams, there might be an iui or two and it’s entirely possible that a few rounds of clomid could make their way into our lives.  last, but certainly not least, i’m pretty sure the dildo cam will be making a few guest appearances.  god, i have not missed you one tiny bit dildo cam.  one thing is for sure, my life will never revolve around infertility again.  we want to have another baby, but if it doesn’t happen, it’s not the end of the world.  had we not been able to have louise, i don’t know what would have happened.  i can’t even begin to speculate the amount of heartbreak that would have caused.  i can’t imagine it because it’s not my reality.  my reality is louise and for every bfn i get this time around, there will be one hundred hugs from her.

i stopped taking my birth control pills about a month ago (i wasn’t worried that i would “accidentally” get pregnant or anything, i used them to suppress my periods.  plus i was on accutane for a while, you basically have to sign a contract with your own blood swearing that you will use two forms or birth control at all times, even if the world is ending tomorrow, while you’re taking that stuff), my period ended a few days back (it was ugly, i’ll spare you the details) and today is cycle day twelve, optimum baby making time.  i haven’t used any opk’s, they could have a place somewhere in my future, but for now, i think i can do without them.

wow.  is anybody still here? if you are reading this, you have won the infertile myrtle olympics.  i wish i had a medal to give you or something, i guess i didn’t really plan this out too well.

am i going to be a big sister?

sigh… if blogging was my job, i’d have been fired long ago.  if anyone is still reading, i apologize, i don’t know why i’ve fallen off the blogging wagon, but clearly, i have.  three was a time i was dependent upon this blog for support and encouragement, and you were all there for me.  now that life is going smoothly, i have abandoned you all, and that is so lame.  i still read all of your blogs regularly and comment whenever i have something worthwhile to contribute, so i haven’t really abandoned you, just my blog it seems.  now that life feels pretty good, i should be expressing that here since i never had any trouble expressing the bad things that were happening,  you’ve been here for me though infertility, a difficult pregnancy, solo parenting due to a traveling spouse, postpartum depression, losing my job, the scare of a possible divorce and SO many other things, so, how is life going for me these days?

well… things are pretty damn good! i feel like i haven’t been able to say that in such a long time, really, since we started trying to get pregnant, which was like, ummmm… five years ago! time flies! that’s how it seems now anyway.  before, when i was going through hell, time seemed to drag.  infertility is probably the worst thing that ever happened to me.  i wish i could say that i learned some valuable lesson from it, but i can’t, it just taught me that life sucks sometimes.  i guess if there was any lesson to be learned through it,  and all the other crap we’ve been through, it’s that my husband and i can make it through anything together.

i don’t know exactly where to give credit for my new perspective on things, is it the medication i started on a few months ago (seroquel, technically an anti-psychotic, but also used as an anti-depressant booster in low doses, which is why i take it)? have i adjusted to the way my life is now? is it because louise is getting older? well, i’m not taking any chances, i don’t plan to stop taking seroquel or effexor xr anytime in the near future! as far as i’m concerned, these drugs have saved my life.

not long ago, my husband’s business trips brought me to tears, and he travels on an almost weekly basis.  now, although i prefer to have him home, his traveling doesn’t bother me NEARLY as much.  it’s pretty awesome.  i can’t express what a relief it is to not feel like the world is ending every time he leaves for a few days.  the bond between louise and i, which i used to feel was non-existent, is strong.  i love her so much, and it’s not that i didn’t love her before, i’ve always loved her, i think it’s just that i didn’t feel like i was a good mother.  i don’t think i’m going to win any mother of the year awards now or anything, but i do feel a little more confident in my mothering skills these days.  louise and i actually have fun together these days.  i take solace knowing that when she’s sick, or falls and hurts herself, or even when she’s really happy, that she wants me or is just really happy that i’m there with her, physically and emotionally.

we haven’t done anything super exciting over the last couple of months, but we went to a pumpkin patch a couple of weeks ago, it was really fun.  daddy was with us and we even went on a hay ride.  here are a few pictures for you from that:

and yesterday we got an awesome surprise.  my wonderful friend katie, who lives in chicago, came for a visit.  i had no idea she was coming, she just pulled up in my driveway with her daughter bailey who just turned two this summer.  it was such a great surprise! most of my good friends live pretty far away, so when she showed up, i was ecstatic! we picked louise up from daycare early and had an awesome little day.  first we went to look at pumpkins

then we went to the beach

then we went to an awesome playground here called imagination station (in wet clothes!)

and finally we went out for a late lunch/early dinner.  it was a great day, i’m so lucky to have a friend like her in my life