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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Can I do it? Yes I can!

I've been thinking a lot about this weight loss thing. It seems like every time that I try to loose weight, I fail miserably. I start out with all the motivation in the world but I can't seem to hold on to it. I am gearing up to try again but I have no idea what is going to happen. I do have some tricks up my sleeve for this round and I am hoping that these will help me stick to it this time.

My first trick is that I am looking at weight loss as my current IF treatment. I may not be doing an IUI or IVF, but I am doing something. My body didn't respond at all to medications when I went to an RE a few years ago. My RE told me that my only chance to get pregnant was to loose weight. I think that I have completely lost touch with this reality. Something inside of me just keeps hoping that even though I have failed at loosing weight, I will still meraculously become pregnant one day. I now know that this just isn't going to happen. It is up to me to make it happen.

My second trick is that I am going to take a page out of the "pregnant lady" book. Have you ever noticed that almost all pregnant people take "belly shots" throughout their pregnancy? They start with that little bump and then grow into big tummies about ready to pop. I know that one of my SILs did this with hers and I think that the other one did to (did you?). Anyway, I am going to do this too, but for weight loss instead. I am going to start with a picture of my big belly and hope that as the weeks go on it will get smaller and smaller. With no further ado...here are my starting pics. (By the way it took some major guts to post these...I get tears in my eyes just looking at them)




Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Motivation Can Be Found in Some Very Unpleasant Places

This may sound terrible to some of you...but, on occasion when I am out and I see someone that I think is extremely overweight I compare myself to them by asking the person I am with if I am that big too. I know that I am overweight and that I have a long way to go before I am at a healthy weight, but for some reason, it makes me feel better to hear my hubby or my mom say that I am not "that bad." Well, I guess you could say that turn about is fair play.

The hubby and I were out at a restaurant this weekend. We had finished our meal and were standing up to leave. Our table was pushed up really close to a wall and I couldn't get out the other way because of another table that had people sitting at it. I slid off of my chair and slowly squeezed myself through the gap between the table and the wall. As we were passing the other table that was close to ours the woman leaned over to her husband and said "I'm not really that big am I?"

It didn't know whether I wanted to throw up everything I had just eaten or just sit down in the middle of the floor and start bawling. Fortunately I did neither; but I did come out of the experience with some serious motivation for loosing weight. I hope to never forget that moment there in the restaurant. With that memory and with the knowledge that my weight is preventing me from having children, I am hoping to push myself toward the breaking point where I can finally commit to loosing the weight once and for all.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Standing Still

I have been married just over seven years. The day I got married I was standing on an island in the middle of a rushing river. I saw my marriage as the boat that would get me off that island and take me to all of the places in my dreams. It would take me through the rapids of motherhood, the tranquil waters of safety and security, and out onto the hidden lake of accomplishment.

We boarded our boat and asked the river to take us toward our dreams. Only the rapids of motherhood quickly began to fog over until they could no longer be seen. Large boulders of debt began to block the way toward the tranquil waters of safety and security until there were too many to navigate around. The hidden lake of accomplishment lies on the other side of the tranquil waters and remains hidden behind ever growing self doubt and fear. As the ability to ever reach any of our dreams seems to grow farther and farther away we look up to find we are still beached on the same island we were on when we boarded our boat.

I have been married just over seven years. I am still sitting in the same place I was the day I got married; on an island in the middle of a rushing river. Waiting. Forever waiting, for my chance to dip my oars into the water and experience the true powers of life.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Our Chicken Doesn't Lay Eggs

Yesterday we had an early Mother's Day get together with my in laws. Generally my hubby's family is pretty content with just us being there and they don't bring up the fact that we don't have kids. My BIL was joking around and mentioned that we needed to adopt a little girl (long story as to how it came up; no need to go over it here).

Later, during dinner, the subject surfaced again. My SILs husband kind of looked at us with that question in his eyes. I basically just came out and said "it is most likely that we are going to have to adopt if we are going to have children." He replied that he thought we were going to use a surrogate. (We have had three women offer to be a surrogate for us, including his wife, and I think that is where this idea came from.) I sat there for a minute and then leaned over to my hubby and asked him how I should explain the situation without his mother getting offended by the "table conversation" and also to prevent an awkward moment due to the children that were within ear shot. I ended up going with this: "It isn't the oven that is broken. We just don't have all the ingredients to bake a cake."

I thought that this was very creative if I do say so myself...but apparently my hubby felt that I had left something out so he added "Our chicken doesn't lay eggs."

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Baby Dreams

Lately I have been plagued by baby dreams almost every night. They are extremely vivid, causing my arms and my heart to ache every time that I wake up. I have had these dreams before but it is usually just for one or two nights and then they are gone for a while. There is one other major difference between my recent dreams and the ones that I have had in the past. In each of these new dreams, the baby is adopted.

In the first one my husband and I had been speaking to a few different birth mothers. Our case worker arranged for us to go and meet one of them in another country. It was just supposed to be a meeting, nothing more. Once we arrived the girl went in to labor and then just handed me the baby and asked me to take it. We didn't have anything for the baby; no clothes, no car seat. I just had this baby handed to me and I had no idea what to do. But at the same time, I was filled with such love and such intense emotions that even my writing about it for this post is causing me to tear up.

There have been a few other variations of the "baby dream" but this first one was the most powerful and has stuck with me the longest. What I don't understand is why the switch to adoption? The hubby and I haven't talked about adoption for quite a while. I don't know anyone who is in the process or even talking about adoption. There are plenty of people who are pregnant...shouldn't I be dreaming about that?

Monday, May 4, 2009

So much to tell...and yet so little time

There has been a ton of stuff going on in my life lately. My life is finally starting to get into a rhythm again...although it is a much different rhythm than it was a month ago. I thought that I would take a minute to give you a quick glimpse of the highlights.

My hubby has joined the ranks of the unemployed...not by choice. This is the fourth time in the seven years that we have been married. Apparently his line of work is very closely tied to the economy. He is the first to have a job when it starts to go well and the first to loose his job when things go bad. He has been officially unemployed now for 3 weeks. There hasn't been a single nibble on his resume. We are currently looking nationwide and have still come up empty handed. By the way...does anyone need a piping designer?

The hubby's B-Day was a couple of weeks ago. I planned a nice long weekend trip to the Denver area to see the Mammoth play their last game of the regular season. The weather was sooooo nice leading up to that trip. We left on a Wednesday afternoon, drove most of the way and then stopped for the night in Ft. Collins, CO. It is a lovely little college town. We didn't get to see too much of it though because it rained all day on Thursday. We stayed with one of the hubby's aunts for the rest of the weekend. We planned on doing some sight seeing...only that rain from Thursday turned into a massive snowstorm on Friday. Events were being canceled and kids were being sent home from school. We braved the storm and rode the train into downtown to the Pepsi center. I figured that we had traveled all the way from Utah to see that game and snow or not, we were going to see a game. We made it back to the house we were staying at safely. The next morning...we were snowed in. We spent all of the day on Saturday inside, watching the snow fall...18 inches of the white stuff. On Sunday morning the sun shown down and melted all that snow away, perfect for our trip home. I don't think that they ever want us to go back to Denver...apparently we are bad luck.

On to the next little tidbit. On the Wednesday before last, I gave birth to a couple of bouncing baby kidney stones (one in each kidney no less) and I did the majority of it without pain medication. I will admit that I had apparently already given birth to the left one prior to the trip to the ER. It was the right one that caused the need for that field trip. The ER doctor looked extremely surprised when he found out that I hadn't had a drop of pain medication during the 4 and a half hours that it took for them to figure out what was wrong with me. Go figure.

I'm terribly sorry if I got any one's hopes up there for a second. There still isn't even a glimmer of baby news in my foreseeable future. But at least I now know that it is entirely possible that I may be one of those women who can handle child birth without pain meds. But then again, now that I have experienced the pain without...I figure, why do it more than once in a life time...next time, I want the drugs!

That about wraps up the highlights from May...next post...Baby Dreams