Hope

Hope is a magical thing and something that I truly feel with great delight right now.  We insem’ed last night amidst lots of laughs and chocolate ice cream and everything felt light and airy and right.  We’ll have one more go before the egg pops but I already feel really different and excited about this cycle.  I’ve been working very hard at realigning my thoughts and expectations and it seems that my hard work has paid off.

What’s the difference between between getting ones hopes up and being delightedly hopeful? Is there a difference? Right now, I feel like there is.  I’m not in the habit of talking myself into being pregnant (my 1st cycle of ttc shook that out of me…) and I don’t feel as though this is me getting my hopes up…I just seem to have greater hope and perhaps even faith (!??! I’m an atheist, aren’t I !??!) that I’m on track and that pregnancy will come, and it will come soon.

I have more to say but I’m at work and fear being caught…so for now, please tell me I’m not setting myself up for a fall!

Talk to me…

I want to hear about your favourite podcasts?

The dog and I have been enjoying really long walks along the creek lately but as my backlog of podcasts dwindle, so too, I fear, will my motivation to walk.

So, who gets you going?

Out of sorts

Despite the quick defusing of my donor related hysteria late last week, I managed to work myself into quite a state and have really only just come down from it.

Partially I think I’m a complete nut job, partially I had my period and partially I think I was a bit sick and those 3 things combined made for me being a royal pain in the ass. There’s been tantrums and tears, sulking and swearing and a helluva lot of hypochondria thrown in for good measure. Ducks has been nothing but supportive and uber-patient and I am once again reminded of how wonderful she is and why I want to co-parent with her.

So, onwards and upwards now. I’m shaping up and doing all I can to make this cycle THE cycle. The house is clean. I’ve been taking my vitamins, minerals and herbs religiously (Yes Barb, I am taking herbs as well as the acupuncture…). I’m practically swimming in tea (of the raspberry leaf and green variety). I’ve been walking lots and I plan on more. I’m enrolling in an 8 week pilates class as soon as I get paid. I’m doing my darnedest to learn to meditate and I have pre and post insem acupuncture already booked.

Here’s hoping I can maintain my zen beyond our insems next Tues and Thurs.

PS. We saw Juno yesterday and I didn’t think it was pro-lifey at all. I actually thought it was a really cute little film and I cannot wait to see what Ellen Page does next.  Extra points for the Kimya Dawson / Moldy Peaches soundtrack too!

The TAG that swept the world…

I was tagged by ninefirefly over at Growing Our Little Bean Part II.

The Rules:
1) Link to the person that tagged you.
2) Post the rules on your blog.
3) Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
4) Tag at least three people at the end of your post and link to their blogs.
5) Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
6) Let the fun begin!

About Me:
1 – I am a constant procrastinator.
2 – I have red, curly hair. When I was a kid, my hair was uncontrollable. In an effort to control the uncontrollable, at the height of the eighties, my mother and hairdresser saw it fit to PERM my hair! I was 8years old and looked like a cross between Annie and a sheep.
3 – I have a women’s symbol tattooed on my foot.
4 – I lived in London for a couple of years after I finished school. There, I worked as a nanny and swore that it would be the last time I looked after other people’s children. It wasn’t.
5 – I’ve been paying a monthly gym membership for 2 years but have barely been to the gym in the last 18 months.
6 – I used to read fiction religiously but now can barely manage a few novels a year. I even studied literature at school and uni. I’m not sure why this has happened!
I’m tagging
owlie or p’cat at enough grows
sara at the egg dance
starrhillgirl at caved

2 techy questions

1. Is anyone finding that WordPress is losing about half of the comments they leave on other people’s blogs?
I’ve been commenting like crazy in the last couple of days but hardly any of the comments are showing up.

2. Can any of you see a way that my flickr account could possibly link to my blog?
I’m told that someone found my blog via my flickr site but I cannot work out how! If this is indeed the case, then the Anonymity stuff still stands and the flickr link is coming down ‘cos there is no way I want my Mum to find my blog!

no more hysteria

I sent our darling donor an email with this months dates and just a kind of ‘check in’ to make sure he’s happy to keep going as we’re going. It had been less than 24 hrs before the hysteria of not having heard back got to me and I posted what I posted in my previous blog entry. Just now, 19 hours after sending him the email, he replied.

“I’m still more than happy with things, it’s really no huge strain on my
part. I would have hoped, for your sake, for a more efficient outcome though. “

He said other sweet stuff too. I am such a dork. He is such a darling.

Shifting Sands

I’ve had so much floating around in my head to blog about but with readjusting to the workers lifestyle, I’ve really not had the mental energy to do it. Of course, all those poignant, super important things I wanted to post about have slipped away from me now but I will try nonetheless to write something interesting…

RE: the Anonymity post –
We really have wonderful friends and I think Sarah was right when she suggested that sometimes letting people in can be a giant leap of faith and a great move! Before she had read the Anonymity post, K (our friend who found us…) and I had one of those really great email conversations that you can only have when you’re at work and supposed to be doing something else. Basically, she said, ‘BTW, I like your blog, I think what you write about is really interesting…’ and I said, ‘oh yeah, about that….’ and told her that I felt self conscious and blah blah blah and I concluded by saying that I felt stacks more comfortable about them reading it now that I’d had time to digest it and think it out. Turns out K totally understood my self consciousness and why we’d kept it quiet and straight away said that she wouldn’t read it anymore and she’d tell M, her partner not to either. In the end, I essentially welcomed them to read but I don’t think they will. (But, if indeed, you are reading – Hi! and welcome!) Nonetheless, it’s been a really interesting process for me – I definitely feel more able to trust our friends with our ‘stuff’ – which is a really great thing.

This TTC thing really does call for way.too.much introspection and personal growth. No one warned me about this.

Re: TTC bits and pieces.

The great news is that I’m bleeding, so I’ve waved goodbye to the month of indulgence and am back on the clean living, baby making wagon. Looks like we’ll insem at the end of the month. This month off has been really great. Over xmas, I ate all the gluten in the world and enjoyed it immensely. (My gut and my skin and my thyroid did not thank me but it is simply too hard to refuse Tiramisu.) I’ve also been drinking WAY more than usual and there was a 10 day period there where I was drunk or almost drunk every night. Of course, I am drunk or almost drunk on anything between 2 and 4 glasses of wine so it’s not like I’m particularly hardcore! It was good for my mental health though and I’m sure that any physical damage I may have done was well and truly countered by my healthier mental state. A month off feeling like a time bomb is a GOOD THING.

Unfortunately, the moment I got my period, the crazy-making was re-ignited and I’ve developed a ridiculous hysterical fear of our donor pulling out of the deal. It’s completely unfounded and he’s done nothing but be a patient, accommodating and supportive angel (as has his gorgeous gf) but I am, indeed, a nut case and have this unshakable need to make myself crazy. Surely I am not the only one who lives with this fear?

Re: Lucky me!
Looks like we’re going to Bali again this year. Last year we got crazy cheap flights ($270 return) and spent 10 wonderful days there in March. This year, my generous and wonderful mother has offered us some frequent flyer points to have ourselves another glorious holiday! It may be a family holiday – my sister and her partner are considering coming and if they come then Mum and her partner will come too which may be a slight challenge but regardless, 2 weeks in Bali will be just what I need by the time April comes around.

Bali is one of those places that never really interested me ‘cos I’m not really a touristy, resort holiday, beachy kind of girl but after a particularly rough year about 5 years ago, Mum gave me points to go there and I’ve never looked back. I’m really fortunate in that I have a friend with an awesome house who lives there so with free flights and free accom, it’s actually cheaper to hang out in Bali on holiday for 2 weeks than it is to stay home! (And having just spent almost a month hanging out at home, I can truly vouch for that – part of our indulgence was WAY overspending!)

Anyway I am so spoiled and I know it!

And you know why else I’m spoiled? – Ducks is doing some design work for another Chinese Medicine friend of ours (yes, we have a couple) and rather than paying for the work, I’m getting free acupuncture! So this cycle I’m going ALL OUT and having needles put in me at least once a week! Ducks is so kind to me – how is it fair that she does the work and I get the reward? I love her so.

I could soooo be a princess.

Things we saw and did…

Our couple of days away were lovely. Clearly, not long enough but really lovely nonetheless.

A few pics to convey the general theme of the trip:

Anonymity

We’ve been blogging now for almost six months.  (I say we, because when we set out, this was supposed to be a combined effort and after 6 months of no contribution, I’m still clutching to hope that Ducks might come on board soon!) At the beginning of this journey, we decided to keep the blog quiet in our real lives with the obvious caveat that if real life friends found us incidentally then we’d obviously live with it.

Ducks blew it the other night when she told  one of our closest friends not only that we had a blog, but even what it was called.  She just confessed after our dear friend K left a comment on my last post. She feels pretty bad about it – she even offered to let me post the hilarious naked photo I took of her last week on here…I will resist from that…unless there are more confessions she’s yet to make.

Anyway, I digress.  By means of an intro to our lovely real life friends K & M, I would like to post this disclaimer of sorts.  The reason we decided to keep this wee blog quiet amongst our real world was several fold.  Primarily we wanted this to be a space where we (I) could be as neurotic as we (I) wanted about this whole baby-making caper without recourse or insecurity.  A baby-making safe space, if you like.  This is sensitive stuff and we’re fully aware that not everyone in our peer group is interested in kids and baby-making, nor the intricacies and craziness that my obsession affords us.  We also felt that by keeping this blog on the down-low, that we wouldn’t have to moderate or restrict our conversation, ideas, thoughts, fears, neuroses…Of course, all our close friends know that we are TTC or at least that we want to but in the early days we kept it pretty hush hush and we still tend to omit most of the gory details in conversations with our real world friends.

It’s a funny thing that just the other day, I was talking online to a fellow TTC’ing blogger about levels of anonymity and she mentioned that someone very close to her reads her blog and then wants to talk to her about it, which for her, is just a bit too weird. I think the same can be said for me. Having real life friends is wonderful, they are priceless and cannot be replaced. However, this community of blogging Dykes TTC is also a blessing because in some instances y’all really do get it in a way that’s just too hard to even begin to explain to those on the outer.

Meanwhile, Ducks has really been attacked by the guilts and I think my not being particularly pissed off with her is providing greater torture than I could ever come up with intentionally!

Just a few random thoughts

You may like to offer comments or suggestions on all or any of these:

1. In last nights dream, we had a new baby boy. I didn’t have to birth him, but he was mine. He also slept right through the night from the day he was born. I woke up feeling guilty for not doing 3 hour feeds in the night and for making him wear disposable nappies (diapers).

2. I’m going back to work next week. I’ve clearly come a long way because as much as I don’t want to go back, it’s got more to do with loving holidays than hating work.

3. About 9 months ago, a prominent lesbian blogging couple named their son the same name (first and middle name) that we have been intending to use for our son. We have wanted this name for many years. We will probably never meet this couple. It’s fine to use the name, right? People will think we’re copy cats.

4. It’s going to be hellishly hot again for the next few days. Fortunately we’re going down the coast for a couple of days and staying in a hotel with air con. I’m pretty impressed by this happy coincidence.

5.  We’re having 10 people for dinner tonight in honour of an Aussie friend who is now a Vancouver gal.  We’re just having a BBQ and I’m gonna make a good old Australian pavlova for sweets.  I think she’ll be suitably impressed.  When I told her we were doing a BBQ she shrieked with joy.