And Baby Makes 8… ummm…. 9

Seriously. WTF? 36 days? I had to merge two cycles in fertility friend because FF didn’t believe me.

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edited to add: I went to the women’s health center last night and they checked me out. They weren’t super concerned yet, since the bleeding has been (until yesterday) really light. If I’m still going strong in a week, I’m supposed to go back for a referral to a specialist. Unfortunately, moving provinces means I have to leave all my fabulous Calgary doctors behind and start from scratch, more or less.

And before you ask, no, I don’t know when we’ll go back to starting a family, or even trying. It’s been a crazy few months, and things will only continue to be crazy for awhile yet. 

It’s strange to keep up with all of your blogs - but I do - because I know that had things worked out in either of our cycles, we’d either have  a newborn or be expecting soon. Life has worked out very differently, and I don’t regret it. I’m starting to see our lack of “luck” ttc in 2008 as something good, something truly lucky. 

I love my new job in Toronto. It’s a perfect fit for me; from my team-mates, to my manager, to the work I’m doing every day. I’m growing as a developer in leaps and bounds, and every day so far has been a challenge; something I crave in my professional life and have rarely found for this long of a period. 

I’m renting a room with a roommate in a creaky old brick victorian. We share the second floor and I have the attic room to myself. It’s drafty and cold, but I’ve been a hot sleeper since I started on the Clomid, so I don’t really mind. Toronto is really comfortable to me. I love that I see gay couples holding hands almost every day of the week, no matter where I am in town. The food here is great, and cheaper than what I’m used to. I’m even blessed to have one of my bestest friends in town, and I’m looking forward to getting to know her even better over the weeks, months, and years. 

What’s not so great is that Sandra isn’t here yet, and we don’t have a definitive time frame for when we can expect to finish up the move. I’m here on my own for now, with the “kitten” Boo.

As much as I miss Sandra and the dogs and the other cats, it’s pretty fun getting to know him as an “only” cat. We got Boo as a kitten when the others were five years old, so he’s never been the only pet. He’s loving it, and loving the attention he gets from my roommate. 

So. The future and what will happen? I don’t know. What we’re talking about is trying to get Sandra knocked up once she’s living here and we’re a bit more settled. I won’t get parental leave or benefits until they convert my contract to perm, maybe in another 9 months, maybe in another two years. And I don’t know if we can wait that long if Sandra wants to carry, so that might mean parenting in a different way than I’d always imagined. 

Still. 

We’ll figure it all out. 

Don’t go away. I’ll keep updating here. In a lot of ways, this place is more private to me than my other blog. I know nothing online is truly private, but at least here, I feel like the folks who are reading are a smaller and more friendly audience than on my main blog. Thanks for that. I promise to write more often. 

But for now, I’ll leave you with a kind of silly pair of self-portraits that I kind of like. It’s a sweater pattern I’ll be publishing this weekend, and although I need to take a few more photos, I thought these two were pretty reflective of the place I’m in.

A few things to note:

1. I have lost a lot of weight
2. My hair is now longer than it’s been since I was in junior high.
3. I may not look it in either photo, but I’m on my way to being happier than I’ve been in a long time.

I guess the big news is out by now, for those of you who read my public blog at indigirl.com anyway. I’ve moved to Toronto to start a new job. Sandra’s still back in Calgary. We’ve put the shop for sale and are hopeful we’ll find a great new mom for our first “baby”. 

As for TTC, I don’t know what the next year will hold for us. It turns out that my new job is awesome, and I won’t consider going on mat leave here until my position is secure enough to guarantee it’ll be there when I come back. Maybe that’ll happen after my first year is up, maybe not. So, the next step would be to see what Sandra’s new job - when she gets one - looks like. Maybe try to get her knocked up. Who knows. 

I’m keeping this blog open and will continue to update when things change or move forward. I just don’t know when that’ll be.

Hey all - 

Some stuff is going on that I want to talk about, but can’t talk about it super freely. So, leave a comment here if you want the pwd.

We had a nice dinner with my sister in law last night. She and her hub did IVF, almost 4 years ago and have a lovely baby girl. She’s going back for her next embryo transfer in early November. I’m happy for her, of course, and really hopeful that it’ll work the first time again. But still. I thought we’d be pregnant by now.

Alberta Health is now going to cough up the funds to cover midwives!

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/cbc/081016/canada/calgary_alberta_midwives_costs

It’s Day 20 of my cycle. I don’t know if I O’d. I didn’t test. I didn’t chart. Because I kind of don’t want to know. I’m on the fence in terms of this waiting business. On one hand, I can’t imagine TTC this month, or even next, while still getting things together in terms of my new and very cool job as well as working towards managing the shop better with Sandra.

A huge part of me is 150% ok with the idea of waiting several months, or even until the Spring. I’d like to have our finances in better shape, and I’d like some time to put aside money for what’s bound to be ever-increasing costs TTC through the clinic.

And on the other hand, knowing we have one month left of the Big F*ckin’ Man’s stuff over at the clinic makes me want to give it another shot soon, even though I feel like we aren’t really ready or in a good place to do so.

So we wait. For how long? I don’t know. If it’s like everything else in our lives, Sandra and I will probably just decide one day that it’s time to try again. And then we’ll try.

Today though, if you ask me, I’m far from ready. I feel like everything is far too unstable at this moment. And I know that’ll change in a couple of months. And having less stress will make having a little one all that much easier.

But I want it now. I really do. Now.

When I travel to see my folks, I always - always - make a good Target run. I love Target, and I miss Target. Wal-Mart doesn’t even come close. While I no longer decorate my house with picture frames and pillows from the big T, I’m a sucker for things like the Choxie candies, cheap white socks, and, my new obsession, HPTs and OPKs.

Dude, I had no idea one could purchase a Clear Blue Easy 20 stick OPK box for under $40. $40 here in Calgary gets 5 lousy tests. I also stocked up on OPKs, the ones promising “5 days before missed period.” Does anyone know if these are indeed more sensitive than the ones here? The best I’ve found are 4 days before missed period.

In any case, I’m looking forward to another month of peeing on white plastic thingies.

I’m done with the Prometrium as of tonight, and I feel like AF is just around the corner. I’m absolutely ravenous today. This is a new symptom I’ve just noticed for the past few cycles, and it’s kind of inconvenient.

Case in point… I ate a big chocolate glazed donut for breakfast and washed it down with a venti nonfat cappuccino. Not even two hours later, we went to Milestones for lunch and I downed a set of Thai Chicken Tacos while Sandra was still casually munching on her beef dip. Now it’s about 4.5 hours later and I’m counting the minutes until she gets back from the store with some kind of red meat to throw on the grill.

If this is any indication of what hormones do for me, what in the world can I expect pregnancy to be like? I’m terrified!

Today is Day 5 of the progesterone, so as of tonight, I’ll be halfway done with the 10 day program. I should be seeing AF around Friday, I’d guess. This has been a long cycle with not a lot going on and I’m ready to move on to the next one.

My friend Annie bought me a real basal thermometer, so I guess I’ll start temping again on Day 1 or so. I’ve been pretty lazy about it the past few weeks. After all, I’m not looking for anything specific right now, so it’s lost it’s thrill.

I will be doing 100mg of Clomid this time around, and am going to ask about doing an ultrasound or two to check out those follicles. We’ll see. Ultrasounds are one of the things covered by Alberta Healthcare, so I’d imagine it wouldn’t be a bit problem, but then, who knows.

Alright, I’m ready for this week to be over now, thank you very much.

It’s been a long month chez indigirl. My dad had knee surgery a few weeks back, and despite being put in ICU for a few days, went through it pretty well. I’m back home now. The photo above is of me and my new puppy Jackson Brown. I guess I should change the blog name, eh? Jackson was a rescue, but we suspect he’s related to our older lab because they have so much the same faces and eyes and there just aren’t that many lab breeders in this area. He’s five months old and oh-so-much-fun. You can read more about it on my main blog. (There’s a whole story.)

It’s day 34 or so and I still haven’t had AF show up, nor any signs of it, so I’m on the prometrium again. What fun! What joy! Since I haven’t taken it in about seven months, I’ve been feeling so sick all day, mainly nauseous. If I remember correctly, it does get better for me, but probably not this month.

I will be taking 100mg of Clomid this time around, so we’ll see what happens. We had talked about taking June off, but I think we’re going to go for it. This is our second and last month’s worth of stuff from the BFM, so it seems like it’s a good time to take a break after this cycle, mostly for financial reasons. We’re getting into summer now, and at a knitting store, that nearly always means a huge slowdown and lack of income for us personally. Taking some time off will give us time to save up more fertility funds and investigate alternative donors.

So, it’s good. I don’t feel all that positive going into this cycle, but then, I felt really positive for the last two months and not that much happened! Hopefully I’ll at least ovulate this month… that’d be good, eh?