Well...

I'm pregnant. Again.

This all happened soooooo fast!

I can't seem to wrap my brain around it. I started POSing on 10DPO because I just knew I was pregnant. I have every symptom in the book, in addition to my dog acting completely bizarre.  It was positive, but I took a test again on 11DPO and again the following morning. After 3 positives, I called the clinic and asked for a beta to be sure. They didn't want to do it because it was so early (this clinic makes their patients wait until 18DPO. Can you believe it!?), but I was not about to wait another week. I had to call them this afternoon to see if they had the results (how could they leave a poor girl hanging like that?) and what do ya know? Early beta is 111. I guess that's okay, right? They don't do a second beta which is a little disappointing.

I have my 6 week ultrasound on 12/12/12 at 12 noon. Funny ha! I think that's the day I'll tell my family.

Wow. PUPO.

Things moved ridiculously fast. I wasn't expecting things to go this fast for TTC Baby#2. On Friday November 2nd I made the first appointment with the new RE for Dec 26. They called me on Monday night (Nov 5th), said they had a cancellation and asked if I could come in the next day. I went in the following day (Nov 6th, CD9) for the initial consultation and blood work. I also had an HSN (hysterosonogram) during the visit to check for any scar tissue from my c-section. It was clear so they sent me on my way with an ovidrel shot on order and told me to have my sperm shipped and to start peeing on OPKs. If I didn't get a positive OPK by CD15, call the office to set up a time for an ultrasound. By Friday, I had 2 vials of sperm at the office and on Saturday the ovidrel injection arrived.

CD15 was this past Monday (Nov 12) and I still had no positive OPK. Not surprising because my cycles are a few days longer than the average 28. When I went in for monitoring on Monday, they found a 20mm follicle ready to go. They sent me home and told me to take the trigger that night and scheduled IUI #1 for this morning.

I went in this morning at 8:55. I had good cervical mucus, an open cervix and the sperm had a great mobility count. IUI was done in about 2 mins, I waited for about 10 mins and was up and out of there by 9:15.

I can't even believe it. I wasn't expecting to even start trying until January! We'll see what happens after my 2WW.

OMG. I'm on a 2WW again. I'm not even going to think about it or POS unless I don't get my period by the 26th (12dpIUI). I'm almost scared to find out that I'm pregnant. I can't help feeling a little apprehensive. This is happening a lot sooner than I original planned or expected. I kind of feel like an ass for having just started at my new office and then running off and getting pregnant again.

Here we go again...

So much has happened in the last couple of months!
- I (finally) got my transfer to the west coast. I bought a house, with a yard, planted a garden and now have friends and family nearby (my folks are asleep in the guest room right now). My new position at work is fantastic so far and things are going really well for me and I have been ridiculously happy lately.

- Chase is growing like a weed and is a full-grown 16 month old toddler. He's running around, busy as can be and talking up a storm. He's enormous too. He's wearing 24 month/2T clothes and he looks like he's about 2 years old. It makes me a little sad to see him so grown up already.

- Today I made my first appointment at the fertility clinic nearby to start on baby #2. I couldn't get in for the initial consultation until Dec 26th (crazy!) but what can you do? I know it sounds ridiculous and picky, but I really would prefer to have the new baby born in either the spring/summer. Maybe even early Fall. This means that I either needed to start TTC in October, Nov or Dec which obviously isn't going to happen, or I wait until June. My biggest reasons are to prevent birthdays from happening on major holidays and getting the kid into kindergarten before they hit the cutoff date. I have a friend whose boy doesn't turn 5 until Nov 4th (cutoff is age 5 by Nov 1st) so he has to wait another year before he can start school. He will be the biggest and oldest kid in his class, and she has to pay for yet another year of expensive daycare/preschool. I just would like to avoid that particular annoyance.

- I am hoping to do my first IUI in January which would put my due date sometime around October 21st, which would work out well. It has me off for maternity leave during the fall/winter which is when all the holidays are. I don't have hardly any time off left from having Chase so I will have to take a lot of leave-without-pay and if I can get some paid holidays in the mix, it would help. If an IUI in January doesn't work, then I'm not sure if I would wait out a couple of cycles to avoid a holiday birth or not. We'll see.

Long overdue

I'm so sorry, I've been meaning to post for awhile now, but every time I sit down at the computer to start one, it's so late and I'm usually so tired I can't focus.

I do read up on everyone's blogs so I have been keeping tabs on you all, I just haven't had the time or energy to comment.

Baby is doing very well and is the best baby ever. He's crawling, standing up and creeping across the furniture. He's been dabbling in solid foods and self-feeding and seems to like everything except peas. Daycare is still super-annoying. He's on antibiotics for the 4th time (I think? I've lost count), but he's a happy sick baby, so that's something at least.

I'm still unhappy at work and have been trying my damnedest to get back home to my family. Nothing has come through yet, but I am still holding out hope for something by the end of the year.

I have already started having thoughts about baby #2, but just don't know how I could do it here. It's pretty definite that I will have to wait until I move home and am closer to my parents, family and friends. I just could not afford daycare here and I find that with Chase, I often wish I had three or four hands. I can't imagine how it would be with two babies. Would I be wishing for 6 or 8 hands?

Anyway, it's now an hour past my intended bedtime so off I go!

I need a money tree

Last night was rough. Mr. Hot Potato thought he needed to sleep attached to my boob All.Night.Long. Stinker. This morning he woke up with a fever of 101 and about 30 minutes later it was up to 103 so I gave him some tylenol and headed out to find an urgent care open on Sundays.

We ended up going to the one we went to on Weds and this time they believed me when I said he was sick and burning up. They didn't open until 11 so we ended up waiting for an hour in the car. By the time we were seen, it had been 2.5 hours since I had given him the tylenol and his fever was still at 103. So, the doctor gave us a sheet and sent us to the pediatric ER.

They did a chest x-ray and ran a catheter to check for UTI. Chest was clear, but his urine was not and after spending about 5 hours in the ER, we came home with more antibiotics. I greatly fear the bills from all of this.

In summary, after his first week at daycare, my poor little baby has come down with an ear infection, strep throat and a UTI. W.T.F.

Wits end is where I'm at

He was much better & fever-free Thurs-Friday, but his appetite hasn't come back. Then tonight he wasn't feeling good and had a 101.3 fever. I gave him some tylenol and put him to bed. I just checked on him, it's about 5 hours later and he's burning up. Fever at 101.6, so I gave him infant advil. I just don't know what else to do and "give him tylenol/advil" seems to be the advice du jour, but I just feel like he should be better now that he's had 5 days of antibiotics. I am concerned about his cough/breathing. I know it's not whooping cough, but he just sounds so congested and I feel like he doesn't seem to be able to breathe quite right.

I'm going to break the rules and go get him and let him sleep with me in my bed.

Back to work? Just kidding...

So Tuesday morning he woke up burning up. I gave him some infant advil and debated about keeping him home and taking him to the doctor as soon as they opened which wasn't until 9am. Since I have to be at work at 7, I thought I'd just take him to daycare (the advil covering the fever) and see how the day went. At about 9:30 I called the daycare to check on him and they said he wasn't feeling well at all. So I called the pediatrician and made a 10:30 appointment and left work to go pick him up. I figured this way, I still got a couple of hours in and I could get ahead of any illness and get him on antibiotics early enough to take him into daycare today. The doctor did a throat culture on him and said it came back as negative, but he had an ear infection so I got the antibiotics and we spent yesterday afternoon snoozing together in bed. All went as planned until this afternoon.

Well, the daycare called this afternoon at about 3 to tell me that he had a fever of 103 and that I needed to come get him immediately. So I called the pediatrician’s office and the nurse there says she was about to call me because his throat culture came out of the incubator positive for strep. Of course, there were no doctors in there so she said to give him some tylenol immediately and then go to an urgent care and get myself checked too because I likely have strep too. When we got to the urgent care, of course he was his usual happy self and they didn’t think anything looked wrong but I insisted they take his temp and it was still 101. They were shocked that for as sick and snotty as he is how happy he seemed. They didn’t really “see” him though but said that the antibiotics I started him on yesterday may take 48 hours or so to really kick in and to keep giving him tylenol in the meantime to keep the fever down. They looked me over and took a throat culture and gave me a prescription for some antibiotics. They said they’d call with the results of the culture on Saturday. I guess there is a quick culture which the pediatrician did yesterday that isn’t as accurate or only tests for certain strains, and the other strains take some time to check. Whatever the case may be, we’re sick, and now I have to miss even more work.

One week

One week into daycare and he comes home today with a fever and snot. Fan-fucking-tastic. We took a shower/bath and sat in the steam for awhile but his fever ended up climbing to 101.3. I'm dreading tomorrow. I gave him some infant advil and now he's out like a light. Hopefully tomorrow he's better and the daycare won't make me come get him. I need to go read their policy about fevers and such. The administrator (who drives a nice, shiny new Mercedes UGH.) told me that he had a very mild fever this afternoon, but that he seemed fine and his carer didn't think I needed to come get him. Whew. She mentioned that with a higher fever I'd have to take him to the doctor (yet another stinkin copay which makes 6 so far and it's adding up) to get a form (which the doctor charges an additional $10 to fill out) saying that he's not contagious. Whatever. For the exorbitant amount of money I pay that damn place ($1500 a month) and all their stupid policies, which clearly don't work since that's where he picked up this crud, I wish they'd cut me some slack. I don't have the time off to take yet. I haven't even been back a full pay period yet to earn some hours of leave.

And of course, my throat has started to get sore which means I soon will be fighting snot and congestion myself and since I'm bf-ing I can't take anything to help. Yay.

6 Months...where'd the time go?

I can't believe my time is up and I have to go back to work tomorrow and leave my baby in daycare. I can't even think about it anymore. UGH!

Back to my hellish 10+ hours a day job with the jerks and mean people. No transfer in sight and I can't even tell you how many hours of sleep I have lost worrying about having to work weekends and holidays with no childcare available. I don't even know what I will do. I need to find a good way to refuse without pissing my bosses off (probably not possible). But I WILL NOT go two weeks or more without a day at home with my baby. I don't know what the answer is and in this economy the job prospects aren't good. I've been looking.

Also, I'm really not looking forward to having to pump three times a day at work. I have an office, but making/finding the time is going to be difficult. Especially with the misogynistic jerks around. But then again, I guess I really don't give a crap. If I need to pump, I need to pump and I'll walk out of meetings if I have to.