Estrace Update

Kristy asked how the Estrace was going. I'll update on it but Jay might really need to be the one to let you all know...

I don't think it's too bad so far. At this point I haven't noticed any weight gain or bloating. If anyone has ever taken synthetic progesterone you know what I'm talking about. I did that after two IUI's and thought it was horrible. That had me really scared about taking this estrogen but so far so good. Infertility weight gain seems to be really hard to loose so I would like to try to avoid it if possible. I'm pretty sure that most women going through infertiltiy would say that depression on top of the drugs is a big factor in the poundage problem. At least that's my theory!

My mood has been ok. This time of year is so stressful around our house and Jay and I usually have several "scheduling" discussions so its hard to know. I do think I've been a little weepier than normal. I kept tearing up during The Biggest Looser tonight.

A couple of weeks ago I did talk to another mother who had gone through embryo adoption and she took the estrace also. I asked about her mood and she said by that point they were so desperate for this to work she had no idea if it was her or the medication. I think that where I'm at. Mine is a little different though because I know I will have to
Do this at least one more time. I'm not as nevous because this is just a consult. But we have some big decisions to make before we get to Tennessee. I'll cover that in a seperate post this next week.

So to wrap up the Estrace - as long as Jay doesn't schedule three school functions on the same night I have something scheduled again we should make it to our appointment next week. If not, I'm not sure what will happen..

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The Questionnaire

If you were to walk into our house right now here are some things you need to be prepared to answer…

What year were you born?

How old are you now?

How old were you in 1985?

If Pampa was 17 in 1912 would he be dead now? (one of my favorites)

Who plays Indiana Jones

How old is Harrison Ford?

What year did you get married?

How old would I be if I was born in 1997?

Do you like Garfield?

Is Jim Davis still alive?

What is the copyright on the book you are reading?

What year did The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull come out?

Who wrote the book you are reading?

What year were they born?

Are they still alive?

What color eyes does Harrison Ford have? (that one was a little weird, not sure why he wanted to know)

Where there still Nazis alive in 1941?

What year was the Korean War?

How old was Grandma in 1959?

What was the Vietnam War?

These are actual questions I was asked in one evening. I don't remember him going through the inquisitive phase as a toddler so he is more than making up for it now. For the last two weeks he has not stopped asking questions. It gets to pretty hilarious after awhile….and my head starts spinning. He also thinks that my iPhone holds all the answers because I have looked some stuff up on there before. If I don't know the answer he asks where my phone is and then hangs over me the entire time I'm looking it up. Since we have no signal in our house that takes some time. While Jay was at convention I finally had to tell Cade to take a couple of steps away from me while the phone was working and I'd tell him as soon as it popped up. It makes me feel like a terrible parent but sometimes you just need some breathing room. It was intense being the only person to field his questions for three days. That's when I came up with his latest nickname…The Questionnaire. His brain never stops working. Never. Ever. I fully expect to see smoke shooting out of his ears before he is 12.

Our Weekend

Our weekend was pretty low key. Since Jay didn't get home Saturday morning until 2 am we took it pretty easy both days.

On Saturday our project was to go pick up this...

and this...

Finally, two months later, all of Cade's furniture is in. The nightstand looks short and silly next to the enormous bed but we'll make it work. We are just glad we've got it. This morning I heard Cade say "wow, I didn't have to get my underwear out of a laundry basket". Yes, it was exciting for all of us.
Sunday afternoon Jay cleaned out the garage.  I was supposed to be helping but I got sidetracked by the enormous box of sidewalk chalk I found...so did Cade....


and so did Charlie.  Charlie was a little too interested in it, so our sidewalk fun was short lived.

Cade then moved into Indiana Jones mode.  Here's Indiana hunting ants, which he then put in Jay's burn pile.  I guess he's a typical boy...even if he is wearing a purse messenger bag (you might recognize that from Halloween)



After Jay got the garage cleaned he moved to the shop.  It's chicken time again.  He's supposed to bring the babies home on Wednesday so he needed to get their pen built.  Since we have a title to maintain this year, Jay's already been talking about what he can do to grow them bigger.  We'll be the ones with the 15 pound chickens in our freezer the second week of June.  In a few weeks I'll be back to checking on the babies at lunch to make sure the poor overweight things haven't had a stroke.  Even though I grew up on a farm it didn't prepare me for being married to a man obsessed with show animals.  Did I mention Buttons is getting a pedicure this week???



And one last highlight from the weekend.  We've lived in this house five years and never knew we had a Lilac Bush.  Yesterday afternoon Jay and I realized it was blooming - it never has before.  It was just a nice little bonus to the day.  I love Lilac's.  Maybe this means my Hydrangea's will bloom this year???

Embryo Update

We are still on track to head to the great state of Tennessee for our appointment May 6.  Today I started the Estrace which is an estrogen pill.  The transfer won't happen until this summer, but they do a mock transfer on the first visit which means I have to take the medication to see how it works for me.  I'm thrilled about it (insert sarcasm).  I've heard "great" things about this pill - it's mostly mood related.  It also came with a wonderful list of possible side effects, but to even get to the side effects I had to read  two pages of warnings.  Yes, I'm absolutely thrilled.  At least one positive was that I didn't have to start taking it while Jay was gone.  He should be back from state convention tonight so he'll be around if I have any major problems with it.  Not that I really expect to, but you never know.  I had visions of having a stroke and being unable to move from the bed while Cade ran around oblivious to anything but playing with his Indiana Jones toys. 

I'm really, really nervous about all of this.  Actually I'm terrified - mostly of it failing.  We had another adoption situation this week that didn't go they way we thought it would and it was hard.  There have also been a lot of Mo families picked this week so that's added to our disappointments.  I don't know that I can emotionally handle another failure, especially when it involves my own body.  I'm scared of going through all of this, risking the side effects of all the medication to still end up without another baby.  Mentally I'm so used to things not working that I can't think of it going any other way.  I know I should trust more, but it's so hard when things have looked great for us so many times, but never worked out.  Every time we did an IUI the doctor said we looked good on paper....both of our adoption situations looked like they would work....Nothing was successful.

Another mental issue I'm trying to work through is that I always need to have a plan.  I got through our initial infertility and failed treatments by thinking about adoption.  It didn't matter if they didn't work because we were both on board with moving to adoption after we completed 3 IUI's.  Then we started the adoption process and I was ok.  This was going to work.  After waiting 1 year we started to wonder, but in the back of my mind I started thinking about embryo adoption.  After 1 year and 9 months of waiting we sent in our embryo application.  Even though we still continued to wait for an adoption I was ok because I knew we had another plan - we would do the embryo adoption.  Now that we are finally here, I've ran out of backup plans.  This is our absolute last plan.  There's is nothing else we can do after this point.  We will continue to wait for an adoption even if this fails but it won't be the same.  Once we take this step and find out if it works or not I'm out of plans.  There's this part of me that wonders if I'm ready to end it yet?  Am I ready to know for sure that we are out of options?  I don't know.

Today I need to send out a blanket apology to all my friends, family and co-workers.  I'm sorry for anything I may do or say from now until May 6th.  Just remember it's the hormones.  You might say an extra prayer for Jay.  I'm afraid he may have a loooong 3 weeks ahead of him....

Baseball

Our last year in Coach's Pitch Baseball got underway officially last night with their first practice.  Thankfully Jay is not the head coach this year - he's just assisting.  We got the phone call Monday night about practice and that seemed to light a fire under Cade.  He wanted to go outside right then and practice.  Even though it was 8 pm we headed out and played a little before it got too dark.  He really seemed to be in to it so I hope that continues for the rest of the season.

Trying to get Cade to do things sometimes is a struggle.  I'm not sure if it's because he's stubborn or if he knows he may not have the skills yet to master what ever it is that we want him to do.  No matter how much we work on things or try things he is never successful until he makes up his mind that's what he's going to do.  It all started with potty training and I see it continuing with other things that take a little bit of skill to master....tying his shoes, riding a bike and now baseball.  I think his body has finally gotten to where he's got more coordination so maybe that makes it more fun for him to play now???  Whatever the reason I'm just thankful practice didn't go like his very first practice.  It's always a good feeling when as a parent you don't want to pretend like you don't know who that child belongs to. 

I guess though if we're talking about progress I should also say that I've progressed quite a bit from that first year.  I didn't know a single other parent on our team so at practice I'd stand on the sidelines by myself.  Last night I sat by another mother and we talked through the whole thing.  Maybe I just developed the skills I needed to interact with other parents Ha Ha.  Maybe Cade gets that stubborn/skill thing from me?

The Green Room Part 2

I was going to do a post for Easter and Nana and Granddad's 60th Anniversary, but those pictures are on my camera.  I took them without a memory card in the camera so they're stuck on there.  For some reason I can't save them to our computer.  I'll take the camera to work and see if I can do anything with it there.  Since I can't get the pictures I'll finish up my green room/adoption loss story.

So we came home on that Thurday night to a clean house, but this is also what we had to face.  This is what I had wanted to avoid for all these years we waited and here I was stuck with it.  It was so hard coming home and putting this all away.  Everything is stuck in the closet so it's a mess again.  We finally got the crib put away and it's different pieces are scattered all over the house.  Hopefully when we need it again Jay will remember where he stashed everything.

I've really struggled with some anger issues on having all of this stuff.  I was one of the ones who don't want to have any baby stuff prior to getting a baby.  I think with adoption it's about 50/50.  The families either want it done so they don't have to deal with a newborn and decorting a room and the other 50% don't want anything until it happens.  I was in the latter 50% and here I was stuck with this stuff.  I knew that we had the basics (pack n play) and since we already had Cade I knew that a quick trip to Wal-Mart would get us by until we could get things together.  I wasn't worried about it.  I'll just say it again - I'm ticked about having all of this stuff in my house.  I've thought for years about Cade's baby clothes and that one day I'm going to have to face them. At some point they will have to be cleaned out and the emotions dealt with.  Now I've got a whole other room full of stuff that I'm scared I'll never get to use.    I know that if we ever get a placement it will be ok, but since that appears to be so far down the road it's scary.  What if we never get a baby?  What if someday I have to clean out this closet and there's all this brand new stuff that's never been used? 

So after a few weeks we went to work and tried to transform this room back into a den.  I pushed the changing table/dresser into the closet and kind of stuffed everything else in there.  It wasn't put up with any rhyme or reason, it looks more like a crazy lady started stuffing things so she wouldn't have to think about it! 

I also decided to make some decorations for the room.  I always thought that may have been one reason why I never cared for the green room - I didn't decorate it much.  I didn't want to spend a lot of money so I did some crafty things which helped in two areas - they were cheap and it gave me something to do!

 

I'm not sure why some of  these are so dark.  We have a new camera and sometimes it does weird things

I made 4 new pillows for the couch

Also made the things hanging on each side of the window.  It's a bulletin board with all different family pictures.

I also made this S.  The background in puffy.

I also dug out some old picture frames and framed some family pictures.  A couple of them are from our trip.  The one on the righ is my absolute favorite picture from vacation.  Jay and I look like we were in the happiest place on earth....Cade, not so much.

Here's a close up of the pillows.  I really like animal print stuff, but Jay hates it so I really don't buy it.  But since this is a "fun" room and not really part of our main home decoration scheme I decided to buy it.  When Jay saw the material on our kitchen table he asked what that awful red stuff was for!

Since I started this blog to talk about adoption I had to give everyone a little insight into what it's like to have a loss and what you have to face.  As of this week it will have been two months.  We're doing pretty well.  We really don't talk about it much.  I think everyone is doing pretty well.  There are just those doubts that creep up in my head sometimes about everything, but we're doing ok....nothing that some red zebra print pillows can't help!