Guess what?!?!

Guess what!?!?!

We're preggo!

It was actually a total surprise too!  I Haven't had a period since I miscarried back in December, so we took a little break to work on our foster care stuff and just let my body start a cycle again on its own.  About 2 months ago I went in to check and they wanted to start me on progesterone to cause a period.  I started it in February, with no success.  They then gave me a shot of Progesterone that they assured me would work in 5 days of less, and that also didn't work.  I went in on Tuesday to do an ultrasound to see why I hadn't had a period, and they told me that my uterine lining was thicker than usual, so the situation was really bizarre, because everyone starts their period on this medication.  They decided to do some some blood tests to see what my hormones were doing.  They called me back a few hours later to tell me that the reason why I wasn't having a period is because I was between 4-6 weeks pregnant according to my HCG levels!  I could not utter a coherent sentence for about 2 minutes.  I was in so much shock!  I hadn't had a full period in nearly 4 months, and low and behold we were pregnant!  I freaked out a little as I went on a rebellious stage after the miscarriage and had stopped taking my prenatal vitamins, but now we're back on track with those.

After speaking with the nurse I immediately called Alan.  I was at work when I picked up the phone, and several of my cooworkers heard me say "Oh my gosh!  Are you serious?!" and I wanted him to be the first to know.  Alan was super stunned when I called him, because he wasn't expecting it either.  He's been wonderful about it, and I think he's more excited than even I am.  I can't walk within arms reach of him without him rubbing my belly, and he hasn't called me Ani since we found out.  Instead it's "Mommy"  which is a shock whenever he says it.  We have our ultrasound to see how far along I am Monday at 1:15.  I'm hoping they'll be able to see something on there.  We're ok if we don't see a heart beat, I just want to confirm that we have something growing in there.

It's kind of hilarious, as two other girls on my team of 11 people are pregnant, and the only guy on our team's wife is also pregnant.  4 out of 11 is crazy, and most of the rest are too old to have kids now anyways!  I have girls on my fertility group asking me to send them a bottle of water from work.  It does have me a little freaked out, because one of the girls, Emeline, has a three year old daughter who told her she was having twins.  Low and behold, when they went in for the ultrasound there were two distinct fetuses in there.  This same child has also predicted that I will have twins.  I'm tempted to discount it, because we weren't on any fertility meds and twins don't run in my family, but it still freaks me out.  The thing that also worries me is that her HCG level was 3000 when they went in for the ultrasound for her twins, and mine was 5000 on Tuesday and they didn't see anything when they checked my Uterus.  They weren't really looking for a baby, and it would only be about the size of a lentil, so they could easily have missed it, but high HCG levels are one indicator of multiples.  I just hope it's not triplets!

I haven't really had any Nausea yet, which is awesome, but I have noticed other symptops.  My sense of smell has intensified, food (Particularly Chocolate) tastes differnent,  I have been a little over emotional, and I have had some weird cravings.  My dinner last night consisted of a pound of broiled asparagus (Yummy!) a boiled egg, and sausage with cheese.  Alan has just been laughing at all the crazy things I've been eating.  I still hate dill pickels though, so at least that hasn't changed.  A week ago Alan and I had an hour long argument about something he said that really just set me off, when normally I wouldn't have thought twice about it.  Poor guy.

We are planning right now to go with a Midwife for our birth.  I've felt really REALLY good about not going to a hospital, and I would plan on a midwife assisted home birth even if we find out we're having twins.  Our preferred midwife has had experience with twins, so if everything looks good I would love to stay out of the hospital.  I've had too many bad experiences with hospitals not respecting the wishes of their patients, particularly when it comes to medical intervention.   I also have a feeling that if we have twins we would be really pressured into a scheduled c-section if we went to a hospital.  I do not want to do a c-section until after a trial of labor, even if it's a breach birth.  I know that God will direct us in which way is the best way, and that if a hospital is needed we will be know that.  I'm feeling really calm about this pregnancy, and I know it will all work out for the best whatever happens.  I plan on keeping a regular journal on here of everything, so updates and pictures will happen as we go along.  See you Monday with more news!

Announcement!

We have an announcement to make! Alan and I have decided to adopt!  We are in a situation where we could financially handle a baby, and it truly feels like the next step in our family.  We have been blessed to have many wonderful examples of adoption in our lives, and are thrilled at the idea of finally becoming parents. 

We know that the journey will be hard and may take some time, but we know without a doubt it will be worth it.  Despite all the love and joy we have had as a couple, children have always been the missing factor - the thing that truly makes a family.  Complications have prevented us from having children, and we are thrilled to have this option available to us.

Right now we are in the process of getting signed up with LDS family services, and are also contacting Utah Foster Care to become Certified Foster parents.  We would prefer a child under the age of two, and would love a child of either gender.  At this point we are open to all options, and are working on getting our paperwork completed to qualify for international as well as national adoptions.  

Even with all of the options we are pursuing right now, we know that all of you will be out greatest asset.  The most successful adoptions are via word of mouth, and we hope that if you hear of someone considering adoption, that you will think of us.   Additionally, if you have had any experience with adoption, we would love your advice

We are so incredibly excited for this opportunity, and cannot wait to welcome a little boy or girl into our home and hearts!  

We have started an adoption blog here.  I haven't finished all of our bios and such, but this is the address for it:

http://achingforanarmful.blogspot.com/

Life as we know it

I have no plan for this post. That doesn't seem so unusual to most, but all of my blogs are planned out and this one isn't. I haven't even decided if I am going to actually post it or just keep it safe in a draft. I miss livejournal's ability to make some posts private, some for only friends, and some for public. Blogger should really REALLY get on the ball with that, especially since livejournal was doing it when I was in Jr. High.

This is my life right now. I have been married for over two years now, and I am further away from getting pregnant than I was when we got married. And I really want children. I have ALWAYS known that would be my highest calling in life, from when my playing pretend as a little girl was always playing house. My parents were very against forcing children to gender identify, so they bought me dolls and trucks and tools and pretend makeup kits. I chose the dolls, and I used the Tonka trucks as strollers.

*note, this is not actually me in this picture, but you get my drift.

When we considered breeding our dog Cleo I asked my mom if she would be a good mom and her question to me was "Does she 'Mother' her toys?" I'm not saying by any means that if you played with cars as a small child that you will be a bad parent - far from it. Dogs are not people, and have nowhere near the resources and intelligence and common sense that we do. But the point remains that I have been in the practice of 'Mothering' for a very long time. I have invested so much in that goal. And you know what? I WILL be a mother some day. I will hear little children scream "Mommy!" and that will be my name. It hasn't happened yet.

This "not happening" is not without trying. I have never been on the pill, and we still have the full box of condoms we got when we were married. I have spend about 8 months on fertility meds, and we know I am broken. "Perfectly healthy people, as a general rule, have no problem getting pregnant" Right? So I am in need of fixing. I can accept that this body in it's current state has almost no chance of conceiving, and even if I could it would probably be a hard pregnancy. So now I have a choice of what to do moving forward, and there MUST be a choice. I will not accept this without a plan, and no one around me would either.

1. Do nothing. Convince myself that there are other things that I should be focusing on. Throw my efforts into loving my wonderful husband, school, loosing weight, and getting a better job. If I am patient I will have less stress, my relationships will improve, and I will not be the crazy wannabe mom, who cannot exist without relating everything in her life to children and infertility and birth and pregnancy.

2. Throw myself further into fertility treatments. Spend thousands of dollars on forcing myself to get pregnant, only to be a basket-case when I see time after time that negative test. This one has the highest possibility of conceiving. There are methods I have not tried and tests I have not done and one of those could do it. It is my highest chance of getting pregnant.

3. Start the process of adoption. Get a lawyer, save up for court fees, get registered with an adoption agency, create a bubbly profile for LDS family services that justifies ourselves as the perfect place for someone's baby, because no one is going to give a baby to someone that they have any doubt will be able to take care of them. And we could wait. Wait for potentially years, being turned down because our jobs aren't stable, we don't have college degrees, we've only been married for a short time, we don't have any other children, we're too fat, our eyes aren't the right color- the list goes on. And what if there is someone who likes us enough to consider us, and we go to pickup the baby and they say "No, I'm sorry, but we've changed our minds" even though we have been supporting them through the whole pregnancy and we were so sure that it would work out. And what if that happens one, two, three times and we never ever get to bring that sweet child home?

None of those three sound anywhere close to perfect. We have decided on a mix of one and three. We will focus on other things besides getting pregnat. We will work on improving our life and our jobs. While we do that Alan and I are working on our certification to be Foster Parents. There is no need for fancy adoption blogs, and the children are so much more needful of loving people with open arms. We realize that 90% of children that we may get will be unadoptable as their birth parents work with the court to get their children back, and the ideal is for a child to be raised by loving birth parents. The whole 100% are in need of a loving home, and that is what we can give.

If you want to be a parent you have to be where there is the possibility of children, and foster care is the perfect place for us. I know that God will know if we are supposed to adopt a child. I know that we have a lot more to offer than a fancy blog will ever show. I know that we will be blessed because of the role that we play in their lives, be it for a day or a lifetime. With Alan and I both working, many people would consider us crazy for even trying, even going forward with it with no plan as to how we are going to provide for them, but we know this is what we need to do. We are going to go through the classes and become licensed. We can't be powerless to give a child safety anymore.

It's a start. It is progression. I am moving toward 'Mommy'.

Babehs!

Hello, I'm Ani, and I'm baby hungry.

Scoff if you wish, but I think it qualifies as an addiction. Poor Alan has to hear about it all the time, especially when I tear up at little things like Playskool commercials or clips of babies on AFV.

I was watching a documentary the other day called The Business of being Born, and I can honestly say it's one of the best "alternative birth" (watch the documentary and you'll see how ironic that term is) documentaries I have ever seen. Sadly, that's probably because it's the ONLY one that is publicly available.

As a warning, this is a documentary about birth, so there are naked women giving birth everywhere, and you should not watch it if you have objections to boobs, bellies, butts, and baby heads. Netflix totally has it in their instant queue, so if anyone doesn't want to spend the $8 for the DVD from amazon.com you can totally come over to my house and watch it with me for the 5th time (seriously, it never gets old, and I learn so much every time I watch it).

I really really wish that I could find a doctor and a midwife as good as the ones Abby Epstein had in the documentary. I have NEVER seen a doctor that is that enlightened about birth. He admits that most births have no need for a doctor's intervention, and that outcomes for the vast majority of women (above 90%) who do not have serious complications, are BETTER outside of a hospital. Doctors are wonderful and necessary for those that need the medical intervention, and I wouldn't give them up for the world, but I do agree that medical intervention has gone too far.

I am so grateful for the wonderful advancements that medicine has made over the past few years. Lets face it, C-sections have saved a bunch of women and babies that would have not survived without that medical intervention, but they are actually part of the cause of our high infant and mother mortality rate. In the developed world (England, Germany, New Zealand, ect.) the US has the second to worst infant and mother mortality rate. In Europe and Japan, midwives deliver 70 percent of all births; in the U.S. midwives deliver a mere 8 percent of births. Coincidence? I think not!

Some may ridicule me for speaking out about this, having never had a baby myself, and yet, I have more experience than most first year medical students. I have been in attendance at 1 hospital birth and 3 home births, and I can honestly say that the atmosphere was so incredibly different. In one, there was screaming, yelling, medical malpractice, major bleeding, anxiety, exhaustion, and panic. In the other, calmness, peace, comfort, and better care for the infant and mother. Can you guess which one was which? In my experience, the home births were by far a better environment to bring a baby into the world.

Kind of a roundabout way of getting to it, but I am looking for a midwife. Because of the lack of demand for them, there are relatively few of them that can remain in practice for long enough to gain much experience, and the ones that do usually have mega long waiting lists, hence the looking before I'm pregnant. I'm also looking for a doctor who would be ok being my backup if something does happen to go wrong, so if you know one I would be happy to hear about them as well!