Locked Up Tight

My home has officially become Fort Knox.

In our main kitchen/living area, where we spend most of our time, there are three gates. One down the hall at a stairway, and I can name two or three other spots where we should have gates, but I am just fed up.

For someone who worked in the home decor industry and really loved decorating and taking care of my home, this has been really difficult. Not in an Oh my gosh, my life is over kind of way, but more of a I want my house to look beautiful like it used to, but now it's overrun with toys and baby crap!

However, I try to not have too much "stuff" out at once, and whenever possible, I aspire to provide my children with the somewhat more old fashioned and aesthetically pleasing wooden toys. (Fear not, we have our fair share of plastic, too. It's just hidden. Out of sight, out of mind.)

However, all those jail-like gates do provide for some funny times and photographic moments:

For the record, that's MyBoy on the left, and MyGirl on the right. And yes, she's winning. She usually does. Poor boy.

Back on the Wagon?

This is an incredibly odd feeling.

After I stopped breastfeeding, I went back on the Pill. Chances are, due to J’s somewhat incapacitated sperm, I will never get pregnant on my own. But after hearing too many stories from IVF/twin mothers whose doctors told them, and I quote, “Your ovaries will never function properly on their own” and the like, and then they got pregnant when their twins were like three months old, I was determined that I would not become one of those stories.

And I haven’t been sure if I even want more children. J does, for much more complex reasons than mine, and I respect those reasons wholeheartedly. But I have been thinking more and more lately, and I feel confident that I could do this again, and that I want to do this again (the baby, not the IVF, etc). But they probably go hand in hand.

I refilled my prescription right before we took off for vacation, and through the chaos of packing, it didn’t make it into my bags. Subconscious or accident, you ask? Either way, I felt kind of free, and didn’t make too big a deal of it, either way.

Yesterday afternoon, I was reorganizing some of my bathroom cabinets, throwing out the eighteen jillion sample-size bottles of perfume I’ve managed to accumulate over the years. Oh yes, and organizing all my products by use (face lotion, body lotion, hair products, bath products, etc). I am slightly anal when I have the time and inclination.

I came to the bottom of the cabinet, and realized I was at the shelf. The very important shelf that, at the front, contains tampons and liners. The shelf that, at the back, contains a sharps container full of used needles, a fertility monitor and boxes of sticks, and an extra Follist*m kit.

I felt like the breath had been knocked out of me. It’s only been a year and a half since I used all that stuff daily, but you know the adage out of sight, out of mind. And while it’s never really out of mind, infertility has not consumed my daily thoughts as it once used to.

I sat down on the toilet, and pulled out the sharps container. I took out a needle on top, one of the long, thick PIO injections, and twirled it in my fingers. Am I ready to do this again? Can I stand the disappointment and hoping? I’m not as afraid of the physical pain from injections and retrieval as I was the first go around. I feel like labor and emergency c-section have shored me up on the pain-front. But I am afraid of the emotional pain, and how it might be different than it was before. And knowing that we’d have to start over from the very beginning, since we had no extra embryos, is a bit intimidating to me.

I poked around through the Follist*m kit, and marveled at the miniature (in comparison) needles used for those injections. That’s the easy part, I thought. Then I pulled out the fertility monitor, and tried to remember how to use it. Which is where I find myself now, on the Clearb*ue website, downloading instructions.

I’m not a big believer in “signs” and such, but this morning over breakfast, J asked if I’d had any thoughts about “more rug rats,” as he so delicately put it. We haven’t talked about this in months, and I thought it odd that he brought it up now. Well, now that you ask...

So as of now, we’re trying but not trying. I’m ready to give it a go a la natural, but need a bit of time to work up my courage to all of the IVF stuff.

I’m feeling a little ambivalent about it all, and that makes me feel really guilty. I know that this is the right time for our family to do this, and I know that it could take a long time, or may never happen. I don’t want to get too excited, but I’m afraid to not be exited enough.

Glad to be back

My wonderful babies,

We’ve just returned from eight days away, and the last four increased in torture with each sunrise. As much as I loved being away, I wanted so badly to be with you. Many quiet moments were filled with the whispering of your father and me, wondering what you were doing at that exact moment, talking about how proud we were of you, and would we wake you up when we arrived home late at night.

We did not wake you up, but did creep into your room to gently pat your backs and run our fingers through your hair (it seems like it has grown so much in the past week!). We collapsed exhausted into bed, as our trip home took so much longer than anticipated.

We awoke to your giggles and quiet talking, much earlier than we had hoped, but you actually “slept in,” due to daylight savings time. Much like children on Christmas morning, we crept down the hall to your room and peered in the door. In return for our ear-to-ear grins, we received blank stared from each of your cribs. You, My Girl, looked nonplussed and slightly confused as to who we were and why we were there. What happened to Grandma and Grandpa? Your brother, on the other hand, was plain scared of us. I truly think he didn’t know who we were. Your daddy and I were a bit disappointed, but we knew that in a few hours, you would come around. And you did, once you saw your grandparents, and all was well.

Eight short days translates into a whole lotta baby time. MyBoy, you’ve learned to climb the stairs, and with prompting, will attempt the entire staircase. You have officially begun to crawl, although you still favor your army-style belly crawl. It was wild to see you move about on alternating hands and knees. MyGirl, you are cruising around the furniture with speed and grace, and it seems that grandma taught you how to wake.

You both seem so much bigger, and I have to remind myself that you are ten and a half months old … it doesn’t seem possible! You smiles are wider, your vocabularies, which previously included “ba-ba” and “da-da” have grown to include a wide variety of unintelligible syllables. You’ve acquired a few bad habits with the grandparents, my favorite being the spitting of food on the lucky soul who is feeding you. My least favorite are the bloodcurdling screams and thrashing about that occurs every time I try to change your diaper. But we’ve learned to do it standing up, now.

Dad and I loved having an adult vacation, eating out extravagantly almost every night, and enjoying wine with lunch. We tried to sleep in, but found ourselves awake every morning and your appointed wake-up time. We loved chatting with friends, exploring our surroundings, and catching up on our reading.

We talked about you much more than we said we would, and we certainly thought about you more than we imagined we would. We are still a special couple, your father and I, and we have a wonderful relationship, between just the two of us. But now you two are in our lives, and when we’re away, it seems incomplete.

But fear not, we will do it again, and we will love coming home to you even more. How is that possible?

Much love,
Momma

****************************************************

I guess my reward was not tempting enough to garner many responses, but what did you expect, a trip to St. Barths or something????

Seriously, loved it beyond what my words can describe. A tiny, French island that seems a cross between European country village, Caribbean island, and jet-set yacht club. And the food … oh, the food….