I love Aunt Becky. Because who doesn’t love Aunt Becky?

However. If your husband does not read Aunt Becky it is probably not a good idea to be all, “Shut your whore mouth!” He is unlikely to understand how funny it is.

Just saying.

Very thankfully this recent teething episode was over as soon as it started, lasting only a few days of the worst of it – maybe a week of troubled sleep. Oh, and I was wrong about it being molar #2; on a hunch I checked her upper teeth and found little points peeking through on both upper molars, too. So now she has one fully erupted molar, and three just starting to come through. Which explains why she was not a happy girl. We resorted to motrin and orajel to get us through a few days, and the day she finally took a 3-hour nap again I danced with joy.

Other things she is doing now…

She can now climb into her car seat in the car. I’m sure this is in large part because our spare car seat (a second MyRide) is in our living room as her “recliner.” It was just sitting off in a corner of the house but she would climb in/on it and refuse to get off. Since we’re not using it in a vehicle I just put it in the living room and I swear it’s her favorite thing in the room now. She loves to sit in it watching TV, she puts her toys in the cup-holders, she stands on the seat to look out the window, she climbs on and off incessantly. So really it was not much of a surprise when I put her in the truck today, closed the door to affix a sticker to the window, and when I turned back she was already sitting in her car seat, looking at me expectantly. Unfortunately she’s going through a phase of protesting being buckled in, but it’s pretty mild complaints that cease as soon as I start the vehicle.

As I mentioned before she is climbing everything. Just today she started climbing onto our rocking recliner in the living room, which is not something she could ever do before (and not something I thought she could do – she’s still very short!). She likes to sit on our AC units, which are currently sitting on one side of the kitchen on the floor after being taken out of the windows. She climbs on the aforementioned car seat.

She’s picked up a couple more words and some signs as well. While we were away I borrowed some Signing Time DVDs from a friend and played them sometimes when we needed a break (which was frequently, given how horribly she was sleeping on vacation and how whiny she was). She LOVES those DVDs, holy moly. it’s the only thing I’ve found – cartoon, educational program or otherwise – that holds her attention for the entire thing… and in fact she wails at me when it’s over. (She gets REALLY unhappy when I turn off the TV and tell her it’s all gone.) I thought teaching toddlers sign language was a good idea anyways, but the fact that she loves them so much is a big bonus! So anyways, I didn’t really practice much with her, though I tried incorporating a couple of signs to our daily routine. She enough a week later she started mimicking three: milk, more, and done. She doesn’t do them unprompted, so right now it’s still not actually useful (she prefers the “screech until mommy figures out WTF is wrong” method), but I can say, “Want some milk?” and she signs milk at me. The signs for more and done she knows and does, but she doesn’t yet understand the concept of either. I say, “More?” she signs more excitedly. I hold out more food and she turns her head and looks at me with a disapproving frown. We’re working on it.

In general she understands a lot of what we say now. “Do you want to go outside?” gets her excited, and when I tell her to go get her shoes on she runs to find them, then either brings them to me or sits down and holds out a foot. Any mention of eating or food has her going over to her highchair and trying to climb in. She knows what certain toys are and will get them for us. Even simple directions, like, “Put your foot down,” which is especially useful when she’s frustrated and stuck on top of something – I basically just have to remind her what to do and she’ll stop whining and fix it. It’s really very cool to see her understanding evolve and grow!

She’s started yelling recently – not because she’s upset, just because it sounds interesting. We were at a restaurant today, she’s sitting in a highchair fidgeting around – she didn’t want her teether or pacifier and tried to eat the damn crayons so those were removed – and she just starts shrieking, “EEEHHHHHHH!” Loudly. And then cracking a big smile. Den and I looked at her, blinking, and we were all, “Where did that come from? And why did you have to start doing it in a restaurant?” Not that it’s brand new, she’s been experimenting with yells for a little while lately, but not quite like that.

I got her a wooden puzzle in the last month and she’s been figuring it out pretty quickly. She likes the overisize puzzle with wooden knobs okay, but she LOVES the chunky wooden melissa and doug one. She will spend a significant amount of time on the floor taking the pieces out and fitting them back in. She can’t do it perfectly yet, some are harder than others for her and she’ll give a short yell of frustration sometimes, but she knows where each one goes by matching the pictures and how to flip the piece over and turn it around until it’s the proper direction to fit in – I was actually quite surprised to see her deftly flipping them around to fit. So that was definitely a good purchase for this age! I’d like to get her a couple more.

The other thing which she just discovered is stacking cups. The only set we had was outside with the water table, but she used them as cups and strainers and never stacked them. Since it’s September now I brought them upstairs and cleaned them and she loves them! It’s really fascinating to watch her try fitting them into each other, she is still quite puzzled as to why some fit and some don’t. She’ll put the smallest cup in a large cup, then the of course the medium one won’t fit and she pushes and bangs and frowns as if to say, what the heck, I know these all fit together just a minute ago!

The other thing that has been sitting in our living room for quite some time without much use up until now is a bead maze. She never had any interest in it, and just last week she started pushing the beads back and forth and now thinks that is very interesting! We have a small one, which for her age is perfect.

In addition to molars Kate has a small cold. The snot coming out of her is unbelievable, and so very gross. We’re wiping her nose constantly – but unlike previous times she hasn’t been screaming or yelling about it. I think she figured out what I’m actually doing and she seems to appreciate it. One time today when I moved towards her with a tissue in my hand she actually took out her paci and waited expectantly. I really am looking forward to the day she can actually blow, though… that would be very useful. (And no, I don’t do the snot sucker. She does scream at that, horribly.)

She doesn’t seem to be affected in any other way, just the snot and the snorking and not nursing much at all, except… oh yes… the sleep. Thankfully she HAS been sleeping through the night, but that’s only after refusing to go to bed until 11:30 at night. Agh! We are so tired. I don’t even know how she does it, since she’s up for the day at 7:30 like usual, takes only one shorter nap (that I really have to work for), but then all evening every time I try to cajole her into laying her head on my chest and getting comfy and maybe even drifting off she pushes me away, squawks angrily, and goes back to playing with her toys. Which wouldn’t be much of a problem if I could just do my own thing, but she comes over every few minutes, grabs my mouse (she can reach it now), climbs onto my lap and tries hitting all the keys on my keyboard, shouts and cries when I use my phone (because she wants it), etc. On normal days I don’t use my computer much during the day because of this, I just hang out with her and clean up and do other little things until she goes to bed. No bed? No me time. Right now I should be going to bed myself but I just wanted half an hour to decompress first!

I figure I should just be thankful it’s not worse, remind myself that this will pass, and just go with it. Though a part of me feels like a bad mom for just turning on cartoons and letting her watch for hours in the evening while she plays. But I tried to put her down multiple times, I reached into my nifty bag of mom-tricks, and nothing worked. The only thing that works right now is waiting until she is tired enough that she’s falling asleep in my arms. (I just wish that happened a little earlier than 11pm!)

::

This is my absolute favorite song right now. (Adele/Someone Like You) It’s just so beautiful, her voice is beyond amazing, and I have been listening to it over and over again. Adele restores my faith in music – I feel like for so long I despaired that real talent was a thing of the past, usurped by the auto-tuned pretty faces that populate the charts nowadays. It’s so refreshing and uplifting.

::

My laptop is upsetting me… it keeps overheating and shutting off. The power supply gets wicked hot too, so I don’t know if the problem is with the laptop itself, or with the power supply. I have a laptop fan pad underneath that is always on (because it’s always run hot… just never repeatedly shut off because of it!) I tried cleaning out the fans and making sure there is good airflow, but I’m at a loss now, other than shutting it off when I’m not using it to let it cool down. I like this thing, and I spend enough money that I expect my computers to last 3-4 years, so this is frustrating!

Bedtime Limbo: that time between putting the child in her crib and going to bed yourself. If you lay down straight away the child will cry for you seconds after dozing off. If you force yourself to stay awake the child will quietly play in her crib for 20 minutes before falling peacefully asleep.

Sick AND teething child – time for confetti! Still waiting for those molars to come all the way through, they are definitely making progress. But boy does she teeth hard; the poor girl spends hours each day shoving fingers in her mouth and crying/whining. She comes to me for hugs, love and nursing, but when she realizes I am not fixing it she pushes me away to go scream in a corner. She get SO frustrated.

The cold isn’t getting worse, it’s just been a very runny nose all week – so gross. I am constantly wiping it, and I am quite thankful that she now seems to understand the concept and sometimes even comes to me for nose wiping. Now the nose is not as runny but she’s coughing as it drains. Sigh. I can hear her coughing at night and during naps, but she doesn’t usually wake from it.

The sleep has just been a nightmare. She gets a bad sleep association every time she is sick or teething and starts freaking out at the sight of her crib. She goes from happily going in her crib when sleepy and falling asleep on her own to struggling in my arms, crying, throwing her paci, and running for the door soon as she gets free. This happens even when she is falling down exhausted. So we had to switch to getting her to fall asleep in the living room and carrying her in to put her down after the fact. So frustrating, especially at 3am!

She does seem to be doing a bit better the last two days though… I can put her in the crib very drowsy and she’ll only whine once or twice and fall asleep. I do have to get her very drowsy before taking her in her room, though, else she sits up with a jolt and panics, causing me to have to start all over again. But at least she seems willing to get sleepy now, instead of fighting tooth and nail. It was a very rough few days.

Only problem is that now she thinks bedtime is after midnight. She’s been sleeping good after that, but before midnight it’s either a huge fight to get her drowsy or she falls asleep willingly only to wake up an hour later ready to play. She’s been trying to fall asleep in the early evening, like 6pm – especially in the car! This leads to a very late bedtimr. We successfully avoided it while driving home today… only to have her sleep 9:00-10:30 and be up until 1am. Agghhh! Thank goodness I don’t have to work, as I am getting sleep whenever she does, even if that is all morning. At this point I’m not going to bother trying to change the messed up schedule until she’s over the cold at least.

And that is why I’m not posting this week. And now bedtime limbo is now over so I am getting to bed!

I really hate that feeling when I’m nearing the end of a cycle and my mind starts getting a little out of control. As many times as I have done this I still sometimes find myself thinking about what it would be like to get a positive pregnancy test, to tell people, to be surprised. It irritates the hell out of me that I can’t turn that part of my brain off. This month was a giant mess, anyways; I have no idea when I ovulated, if I even did. Normally I can pinpoint it to the day, if not the hour – without any fancy tests. My body tells me. This time, not so much. I know I had a long fertile period, that’s all I know. Last month I took soy isoflavone pills. It’s supposed to act on your estrogen levels, kind of like clomid. I took it days 5-9 last month and felt like SHIT from day 5 until my period arrived. I was bloated, I was cranky, I was just not a happy person. I didn’t take them again this month but I still was feeling my ovaries and I was worrying that I’d gotten some cysts or something. Which would be just awesome.

Now Kate’s sick, I’m feeling slightly queasy, and my mind is going places I’d really rather it not. So just to shut it up I pulled out one of my old boxes of pregnancy tests. They’re expired, but whatever. So it’s negative, of course, although if I cross my eyes and squint I can sort of see an indent where the line should be. In the trash it goes. At least I can let it go.

I have a habit of pulling them back out of the trash, which I did about 15 minutes later. And there’s something there. A faint, faint shadow. Oh fucking hell, an evap? Really? I berated myself for using an expired test and looking at it again well after the 10 minute mark. There’s a reason they say not to do that, and clearly this is it. But my mind is working all night and I couldn’t sleep.

I bought a new box of tests to use to set my mind at ease. First thing in the morning I use one and wait for it to come up negative. Except there’s a faint fucking line. I just stood there, tilting it in the light. I’m not crazy. There’s something there. It’s so so faint. But I’ve had a lot of negative tests in my life… and this was not negative.

I shot an email to my best friend describing the situation and a big “WHAT THE FUCK?!”

I still don’t even know what to say or think or do. It’s been all day and I’ve just been walking around with that thing in my purse. I feel entirely unprepared for this. I was all set for my FET in December, IVF in January if that didn’t work. I was excited about it. I liked the timing of a fall baby. It was all good. This? This is entirely outside of my realm of understanding. Of all the things in the world to expect, I would expect our house to get hit by LIGHTNING before I expected to get pregnant. I take tests just to prove I’m not pregnant so I can go back to sleep. I am gobsmacked.

I have to admit, there is a part of me that did not WANT to ever get pregnant on my own simply because oh I know what people will say. “I told you to just relax!” I don’t know how I’m going to avoid shouting at people. I said over and over and over again how big our problems were, how IVF was needed, how I’d never get pregnant. “I knew a person who had a baby and got pregnant right away!” I do NOT want to be that person… I don’t want people to think that infertility isn’t very much real.

I think this is a case of the incredibly small odds finally landing in our favor. The soy probably helped, too.

I don’t want it to sound like I’m not happy – I am. This is insanely amazing. If this actually develops and becomes a healthy pregnancy with a healthy baby I will be absolutely thrilled. But right now I’m still working on picking my jaw up off the floor.

::

Monday morning: another test, another – darker – line.

Hooolllyyy shiiiiiit.

Judging by when I might have ovulated and how light the tests are I think I’m only about 4 weeks right now, which would put my due date right on Kate’s birthday, May 22. I’ll have to convince them to do a dating ultrasound though because I most definitely ovulated like a week or two late. I’ve never not known exactly when I ovulated… it’s so bizarre. I feel so unprepared for this!

Most of that last blog post was written yesterday. So here’s today, after I’ve been sitting on this knowledge for two days now.

My mind is a crazy place right now. I’m excited, I’m relieved, I’m scared, I’m bewildered.

One moment I want to tell everyone, because that’s just what I do, and the next I think, oh gosh, maybe we should just keep it to ourselves for a little while. I’ve never even been in a position to make that decision, as friends and family always knew when we were doing IVF and would politely and hopefully inquire how it was going. It was always such a struggle to get that positive pregnancy test that I would shout it to the world with joy! This time no one knows. I called my mom to tell her and she was so shocked she dropped the phone and screamed! Okay, so that part’s kind of fun. Except I’m feeling just as shocked as anyone else – possibly moreso. So we could keep it to ourselves. But do we want to? We never have before. Also there’s that pesky little problem of me already feeling sick…

I have a strong feeling this pregnancy is healthy because I am already feeling nauseated. That was what tipped me off in the first place, and it’s getting stronger. Den remarked that if I hadn’t taken a pregnancy test it wouldn’t have been long before I knew something was up. If I hadn’t had two pregnancies already I probably would have thought I was sick, but it is just too familiar. I keep burping and then breathing through little fingers of nausea. I’m willing to bet that in a week I’ll be heaving over a toilet. Joy! (I mean that both honestly and sarcastically. Feeling sick is great, but also just so yucky.)

I missed out on all the preamble to pregnancy. I know this is how it normally works for people, but I always had a huge lead-up, all this other stuff going on. It’s like I got a “skip three squares” card without anyone telling me. I should feel overwhelmingly grateful for that, but I think I’m a little disappointed. I know that’s nuts. IVF is hard on your mind and hard on your body. I always skate the edge of over-stimming and the two week wait is hell. I know that. But… it was always part of the experience. It just feels so strange to have that completely missing.

On the other hand I’m already starting to remember how hard the first trimester was last time and wishing I could have just not known for another month or so. Yay, I’m pregnant! Now sit and wait for a week to see a nurse for intake, and then another week or two for an ultrasound. No betas this time around, I’m not under the care of anyone. There’s no way to check on what’s going on, no real feeling (other than the nausea – thank goodness for that). And I realize too clearly how common miscarriage is. Not to mention that I’m a tiny bit scared of another ectopic. I’ll feel a lot better once I get an ultrasound and know everything is there, in the right place. But then I’ll have to just wait around until my next ultrasound at first trimester screening at 12 weeks. I remember how hard the first trimester was with Kate, and I know this isn’t going to be easy.

But I have Kate. For one she’s an excellent diversion, especially since she had a low fever this morning and was absolutely miserable. She wants me to hold her, read books to her, and watch TV with her. Or she just wants to cry and yell at me and she’s not quite sure why. (It was a rough morning.) But also she’s this living reminder that things CAN go right. That first trimester was so so hard and every time I had spotting I thought I was losing her but here she is, running around my house shoving books into my hands and petting the kitties. It’s a lot easier to have trust in this process now that it’s actually been successful for us.

I definitely don’t have that immediate attachment to this little embryo like I did with Devin and Kate. Shock may have something to do with that. But also, Kate is my whole world and it’s really hard to picture me being pregnant, growing another baby, having another baby. My brain isn’t processing that yet. My love for Kate is so huge, how can anything else stand up to that? It will, of course, it will just take time.

I am feeling so incredibly blessed… by friends and the incredible outpouring of joy and excitement… by my family… and this statistical anomaly that makes us feel like we seriously just won the lottery. This is craziness in the most amazing way.

My dear Kate is wearing my patience thin. I realize she’s getting molars. I am trying to keep that in mind, I know that’s affecting her mood and her sleep patterns. But after two weeks of “molar teething” I am just getting outright frustrated by her stubborn refusal to go the fuck to sleep. She’s trying to skip her nap, which is HORRIBLE because she needs a good 3 hour nap to function. I used to take her in her bedroom and wind her down in there, but no more… I take her in the bedroom, turn off the light, and she turns into a wiggle worm – a very vocal wiggle worm – who fights with everything she has. So I’ve found what works to wind her down in the living room: music videos on my computer. I turn them on and hold her and sing to her. It takes a little bit, but if she’s tired she’ll slowly give in and relax on my shoulder. When I deem her “far enough” I can then take her into her bedroom and deposit her in her crib. She doesn’t have to be fully asleep, but it’s a very fine line… if she’s not quite drowsy enough she immediately shoots up and starts kicking and fighting when I go into her bedroom. Frustration abounds.

Right now what works is a very specific sequence: Adele’s Someone Like You, then Dixie Chicks’ Lullabye. I don’t think she likes those any more than anything else, but I like them so much that I would play them over and over to sing to her when I was desperate and they have thus become her triggers. I’m not complaining, even though I’m getting slightly sick of singing the same thing over and over. (It’s better than Twinkle Twinkle Little Star 10 times in a row… trust me on that.)

On one very desperate night I was exhausted and just DONE and I sent Den in. He had the brilliant idea to turn on our portable DVD player with Signing Time – which she is addicted to – and was able to get her to watch quietly until she just laid down and fell asleep. Just like that. After me fighting with her for HOURS. This seemed brilliant! BRILLIANT! I got her to nap that way a few times too – again, instead of fighting with her for an hour or more. Seemed like a great idea!

Except…. it turned into a full-fledged addiction. She would wake up and yell because the DVD was off and she wanted it back on. I’d turn it on for nap and leave her… and find her still watching it an hour later, refusing to nap. then she started banging on her bedroom door, yelling and tantruming because she wanted me to go in and turn the DVD on for her. She’d pick up the DVD player and bring it out to me. If I said no she’d tantrum. Lots and lots of tantrums.

So I am DONE with the DVD player. It was a great thing in a desperate moment, but I do NOT like how this has progressed and the attitude is just not acceptable. I am not letting her watch it for hours upon hours each day, which is apparently what she wants to do. I’m done with the tantrums when I let her watch for a little bit then turn it off. So we’re just done cold-turkey. Soon she’ll forget about it and hopefully get back into better habits.

This sleep thing is going to be exceedingly frustrating until these molars come all the way in. (If in fact that is what the problem is… I sure hope so, because if it’s “just her age” or a phase and there is no end in sight, then I will cry. Heartily.) But somehow I will figure out other ways to get her to sleep.

Thankfully once she actually falls asleep she tends to sleep well. She’s been taking 2 1/2 – 3 hour naps during the day (one day it was an astonishing 4 hours!), and at night… well she’s fighting bedtime until much later in the evening, but again she’s sleeping until 8am without an issue. Sometimes wakes up to nurse in there, but goes straight back down. (I only get pissy whens he wakes up and refuses to go back to sleep… NOT okay. But thankfully rare.) Which is actually kind of ironic, when you think it. She was always super easy to get to go to bed, but woke frequently all night long. Now I have the opposite problem!

Toddlers certainly keep you on your toes.

::

Regarding the pregnancy – and it still feels all shifty to say that, like I need to look over my shoulder and whisper the word – I’ve moved from the shock and excitement stage into the nervous stage. I no longer want to tell people IRL at all yet. I continued taking pregnancy tests and they’re not really getting darker, which freaks me out after my experience with the ectopic. My pregnancy symptoms come and go and consist mostly of excessive burping and a crazy amount of bloating. The rest of the time I feel normal (except for an inability to fasten my jeans button – I always thought that was related to the IVF retrieval, but apparently no, it’s just my early pregnancy symptom). It’s so weird to know that I am pregnant but not really feel it at all.

I know I could phone and beg for a beta, but I really don’t have the desire to. I have a pretty fatalistic view of this pregnancy: either it will work out, or it won’t. Getting a beta won’t change that. It will, however, probably make me obsess and worry more. I found with Kate’s pregnancy that all those tests that were supposed to reassure me really only gave me more to fret over. I’d really like to do this the “normal” way this time… no numbers, no tests, no data. I do want an early ultrasound to see the heartbeat to prove there really is a baby (and that it’s in the right spot), and obviously I want to hear the heartbeat frequently after that. But that’s all. No extra ultrasounds or BPPs or NSTs. For right now there is absolutely nothing that can really tell me anything that I don’t already know. If it’s ectopic I’ll know within a week or two. If it’s going to miscarry it will happen regardless of good or bad betas.

I just saw an article about how a study showed that reading the ending of a book first actually increases your enjoyment of the book, presumably because you are not anxious about what happens later. If only I could read the ending of this pregnancy so I could sit back and enjoy the ride a little more. I have a feeling I’m going to be pretty reserved for a while.

These have been some of the worst nights in 6 months, I think. I know she’s still teething those molars but now I’m wondering if her last cold left her with yet another ear infection, it’s that bad. She’s now refusing to nap, refusing to go to bed, and the last two nights when waking in the middle of the night is NOT going back to sleep. Or rather, she does fall back asleep nursing, but wakes up screaming when I put her in her crib. I’m at a total loss here. She and I are running on very little sleep, and I really don’t know how she’s not an utter mess.

Two nights ago it went like this: I tried for hours to get her to fall asleep and she resisted. I just let it slide (I’ve learned if I push her she tends to throw a bigger fit… so I wait until she’s really tired). So that was midnight I FINALLY got her to fall asleep on me, I tiptoed in and gently put her in her crib. She did not wake up crying. SCORE! I figured I’d have at least a good stretch after that.

WRONG! At 2am we were woken up by a horrific, strange sound. We both sat up and looked around in confusion and found the damn dog throwing up all over. WTF? He was coughing and retching. Den cleaned up the puke but the dog still clearly wasn’t settled so we let him outside. Waited a while, let him back in. Nope, back out. Wait longer while I listlessly read stuff on the internet. Okay, back in and he lays down. Except… oh god, what is that smell? I hear a “pffft” – the telltale sound of a dog fart. Another wave of stench hits me. This went on for over an hour, me gagging and unable to sleep. Of course this happened right after the temperature took a nose dive so when I opened the window I froze to death.

Just as I was finally drifting off to sleep the baby cries. I got up, nursed her, put her back in her crib…. she flips over, lurches to her feet, screams. Okay. So I pick her up, her head flops onto my chest. I sing to her, dance with her, rub her back. Every time I thought she’d finally fallen asleep she kicks me again… weak little twitchy kicks. Just to let me know that she is in fact still awake and if I dare put her down we’ll be back at square one.

An hour later she is STILL not asleep enough for me to put down and we go through several iterations and attempts of different methods, all of which fail. I lay on the futon mattress with her, hoping that she’ll be okay if she’s cuddled up with me. she runs to the bedroom door and stands there screaming for 15 minutes – ignores all my soft words, my pleading with her to come cuddle with mama. No. She screams.

It’s now after 5am and I’ve slept a total of 2 hours – I’m tired, I’m frustrated, I’m done. I put her – still screaming! – in her crib and go flop on my own bed, crying. At that point den gets up to try calming her down and I fall asleep. He was going to wake me up when he left for work in an hour, but I don’t wake until I hear Kate calling at 9am. Apparently he’d pulled out the DVD player again, set it up with her next to her crib when he went to work. We assume she must have fallen asleep for a few hours.

She refused to nap yesterday, despite me trying. I really wanted her to nap because we were going to the fair, but no. I almost didn’t go, but Den pointed out that getting out of the house was probably best for both of us. She fell asleep in the stroller at some point, slept for about 45 minutes.

Last night my memory is fuzzy. I believe I got her to fall asleep in her crib at about 11pm. I went to bed grateful and expecting some sleep… but no, she woke up at midnight. I believe I got her back to sleep at some point, and went back to bed myself. She woke up at 6:30 and did the nurse-asleep-crib-cry thing. So I got up with her but she clearly was exhausted and wanted to sleep… but wouldn’t sleep. I managed to very carefully nurse her to sleep on the futon and I stayed there, frozen, for a long time. Not very comfortable. I waited long enough to wiggle away slightly and fall asleep myself. When she woke up I thought it was about 9, but apparently it was 11:30. Wow, okay, so we actually got some sleep – maybe I do need to push the cosleeping thing again.

Tried it for her nap… I really thought she was falling asleep. She wiggled away against a pillow and curled on her side the way she does when she’s tired. She stayed there for several minutes. But then she sat up and crawled off to bang on the door. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

So basically, all of that is to illustrate that I am so freakin’ exhausted and this no sleep thing is BULLSHIT. I want to stomp my feet and throw a tantrum and yell, “But I’m pregnant! I need my sleep!” Alas Denis is working tons of overtime and has no time off for another week so it is what it is.

If this continues I’ll be taking her to the dr on Monday to check her ears. If that’s not it…. then I HATE molars. HATE.

Pretty sure she has an ear infection. I’m resorting to pulling out the DVD player again to get her to sleep – at this point I’ll take anything that gives me a few hours of sleep. She still cries when I put her in her crib, but not very long until she gets distracted by the DVD. Any kind of silence is a good thing.

Kate woke me up, as expected, and I went in to try getting her back to sleep. She was soaked so I had to change her, then nursing her down failed. Also she chucked her paci under the crib. She’s gotten really good at that particular angle that causes it to fly to the very back. I need a stash of spare pacis in there because I’m very tired of fishing under the crib in the dark. So the paci was gone and she decided she didn’t really want to sleep anyways. I figured oh well, it’s almost 6am anyways, and brought her out to the living room. Where I then discovered it was not 6am, it was in fact 3:45am. Shit.

I’m not too unhappy about being woken up this time, as apparently the pregnancy dreams have started. This time I was on some sort of retreat with a friend, but a stranger outside claimed I killed his wife so I had to run. I was hidden by a lady who watched over people at the retreat, but it turned out she was the bad guy who was after me. I ended up in some big cavern, the lady frozen, while I ran around the pathways and found a large Thor-like hammer to use. That’s when Kate woke me up. Explain THAT one. I won’t even get into the large water-filled buildings.

Today marks 1 week that I have known that I am pregnant. I’m not feeling much of anything, except for a mild general nausea when my stomach is empty or over-full. Over eating is not in my best interest right now. I have yet to throw up, however, just gagging and burping.

I’m very glad to report that my achy left ovary has subsided, which reassures me that this is not in fact an ectopic. Well, that and the fact that I’m not spotting in the slightest. I’m definitely a TP checker, though, just being slightly paranoid.

Last Wednesday we went to a spaghetti dinner and the salad had two dressing choices: italian and thousand island. Since i hate italian I chose the thousand island, which I haven’t eaten in years. It was the best stuff EVER. Now I’m totally craving it and I don’t even have any in the house. I apparently have pregnancy dressing cravings – with Devin it was ranch. I am also craving cream cheese, specifically cream cheese on graham crackers. I have the crackers, but it’s just not right without the cream cheese. Clearly a trip to the grocery store is in my near future.

Now if this child would get sleepy I might actually get some more rest tonight…

I’m still trying to mentally calculate the crazy odds of this pregnancy. My eggs suck, no one knows why, and while doing IVF I get crappy eggs that aren’t mature enough to use. And even then when we do actually put back a real embryo my implantation rate seems to be between 33-50%. So then I lost one tube to the ectopic so that right there cuts my crappy odds of getting pregnant naturally in half again. Oh, and I’m still breastfeeding, which you’re not supposed to do during IVF because it could lower your chances of success. (No actual data on this one, though, but the hormones in breastfeeding kind of work against the hormones of a normal cycle.)

I swear the soy did something, though. I know people are wondering, so here’s what it was: I heard friends online talking about soy isoflavones having a similar effect on eggs as clomid. Soy isoflavones is sold in pill form on the shelf as a treatment for menopause. Now I did clomid for a few cycles and got a bunch of eggs but no pregnancy. So I didn’t really have any high hopes for the soy, but I was in a “I’ll try whatever” kind of mind space. I took 150mg/day, days 5-9. Apparently you can take it days 3-7, but I went with 5-9 in the hopes that it would mature my eggs more instead of making more of them.

Unfortunately from the time I started taking the pills all the way through my cycle I felt HORRIBLE. I was bloated, my ovaries hurt, I was bitchy as HELL. I was not a happy person. My ovulation was no earlier or different (except I certainly felt it!). And then? I got my period. I didn’t quite throw the pills in the trash, but I definitely did say, “Fuck this, I’m not feeling that shitty every month until we do IVF!”

So in August – this last cycle – I didn’t take anything at all. I was still feeling kind of gross from the soy, and still grouchy about it too. I tried not to pay attention to my cycle, but by week 3 I realized I was still getting fertile signals from my body and no ovulation signals. My estrogen was definitely up, but no egg. For the first time in a long time I actually cannot pinpoint when I ovulated, but I know it happened around the end of August (around cycle day 23) because come September my body went back to normal no-longer-fertile.

In the second week after ovulating I started feeling slightly nauseated every day, which made me wonder, and it was cycle day 34 when I took the first pregnancy test (the one that I thought was an evap).

It seems bizarre to me that taking soy the prior cycle would have gotten me pregnant, but it’s very clear that I had estrogen running amok this month with a good two week fertile period and delayed ovulation. Looking back at my IVF cycles that at least does make sense, as the cycles when I stimmed slowly were the ones where I had better egg maturity. They just need more time to soak, I guess.