Post-Operative!

So, I think I'm finally done with all my medical junk for the time being.

I had my post-op appointment with the fertility folks in Phoenix on Monday, and it went swimmingly.  Dr. Awesome went over all my pathology results and bloodwork results - I am apparently disease-free and my uterus stuff is all kinds of benign.  So I couldn't be happier.  I did have a real-life, actual polyp - only it wasn't as large as we thought.  Still, the doc said it could've affected implantation and he's hopeful for all of our trying to conceive endeavors.  He gave me the green light to try this month, and said we should seek further care in San Antonio around October/November if it hasn't happened naturally.  Hoping we won't need to, especially since we won't be able to....

Then, YESTERDAY, I had an excisional breast biopsy, which is all part of the much-ado-about-nothing medical junk I've been dealing with.  The breast surgeon isn't concerned at all, but I moved forward with taking the darn lump out so I never have to worry about it again.  (She took out a lump with some surrounding tissue.)  My post-op is next week and I'm really not worried at all.  Just a little scared to remove the bandage from the ol' boob this morning and see the damage.  It hurts a bit, but nothing major.  It was pretty weird hearing "snipping" going on in my breast, though.  Never wanted (or needed) a breast reduction. =P

Still dealing with the moving stuff.  The yard sale was an absolute success - we made over $400!  Still have some left-overs that I'm either trying to sell on craigslist or going to donate.

Oh my God, this is so boring.

Until next time!  Ever's doing great, by the way.  Although, and maybe this is typical 3-year-old behavior, he's becoming just a little bit more.....mean.  He'll say things like "I don't like you" or "No, go away."  Which is pretty unlike him.  I realize that I say "I don't like THAT" a lot when he, you know, does something I don't like, so maybe I need to reword.  Shrug.  These little ones are tricky and, while I love this new personality he's gaining, it's also sad to be leaving his 100% sweet self behind.

Sigh...

Projects & Other Goings-On

Well!
There is, without question, a LOT going on in our lives right now:
1 - Upcoming move to our hometown of San Antonio (end of Sept - not much time!)
2 - Move requires moving from an 1800 sq ft to a 900 sq ft house
3 - Which requires getting. rid. of. lots. of. stuff.  Half of our belongings, even.
4 - So, yard sale.  Obviously.
5 - This weekend.  Yikes!  Not prepared.
6 - To keep from having to do all the dreaded yard sale prep work, in addition to all the usual daily duties, I decided to take on this project instead:

It's a child-size dresser and I fell in love with it the moment I saw it!  I have no idea what final outcome I have in mind for it, but I'm thinking blue and boyish all around.  While small (which is exactly what we need for our soon-to-be-new-home), it is solid wood and HEAVY.  The price tag didn't hurt, either:

This is his current dresser (which is nice and I would love to keep it for our room, but alas, it's just too much furniture at the moment) that we bought the new one to replace:

Gosh, the more I look at it, the more I want to keep it.  It has drawer track issues (as in, they aren't currently there and I've been too lazy to do anything about it), and the last person who refinished/stained it made some interesting choices (drawer front appears to be upside down and such), but it still has lots of potential.  Ah well, in the yard sale it goes.  Hoping to get our $35 back and use it to purchase something when we get where we're going. :)

ANYWAY, here's my progress thus far (not much, but I couldn't wait to start)!

1 - Appease 2-year-old who REALLY wanted to see a picture of his own tongue.

2 - Inspect/Clean whatever all that gross stuff is. I found some small dings and chips, but I'm going to wait until the paint is off before I go off and buy any wood filler/putty/whatever. I'm thinking it'll be okay. At this point I started worrying that I was dealing with wallpaper removal.









3 - Only contact paper - whew! Peeled it all off and wiped down the dresser thoroughly. I'm still not sure if I'm going to sand or strip it.




 4 - Remove drawers and contemplate whether I should just use it as a bookshelf/toy shelf because it would be really cute! 












5 - Find receipt from 1985 behind one of the drawers.  So it's at least that old.









My next step is to remove the hardware and move forward with the removal of paint.  I'm leaning towards stripping it (though I've never used and am pretty deathly afraid of paint stripper), because the paint is laid on thick....who knows how many different colors are underneath.

FYI, I'm using this tutorial for all of my furniture painting endeavors:

http://romantichome.blogspot.com/2007/08/painting-furniture-step-by-step.html

For Ever's dresser, I'm going to leave out the distressing part and probably go with a polyurethane sealer rather than wax.  Toddlers are known for their innate ability to destroy everything, so I figure a little extra protection couldn't hurt.

MEANWHILE, THIS......

Yet another project.  This one's half-finished, as I'm waiting for the paint to cure at least 48 hours before sanding it and distressing it a bit.  It's a bookshelf that I bought for $10 and we use it in our living room to hold various video game consoles.  I REALLY want to go for the shabby chic look at our new place, and since this will be a fixture in our living room for the forseeable future, I figured it would be a good/easy starting point.  It was originally a dark espresso color and the previous owner's dog had chewed one of the legs up a bit, hence the low price.  Now that it's sanded/painted the bite marks are all but gone and I think it's going to look great once all is said and done! 

We shall see.  I'm definitely no expert, but I'm learning as I go and enjoying the process.  Painting is NOT my forte, but I think I'm doing a decent job even so.

Now to figure out exactly how to pain Ever's new dresser.  His room is a disaster at the moment, but it's space-themed and I'd like the dresser to be a nice addition without looking overly "busy."  Here's one of his walls - with the Moon in My Room and a piece of "art" I made for him recently.  Saw this on etsy:  http://www.etsy.com/listing/69313596/space-art-i-love-you-from-here-to?ref=sr_gallery_1&ga_search_query=i+love+you+from+here+to+jupiter&ga_order=most_relevant&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=ZZ&ga_min=0&ga_max=0&ga_search_type=all
and it was $20 JUST for the 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper, so I made a similar one myself using Word.  It cost like 30 cents to print out at Office Max and the frame was $8 at Ross.  So, overall, I'm pretty happy with it. :)

Stay tuned for the final results!  Or, you know, don't.  Whichever. :)



Also

This picture:

and this bit of news:

http://news.yahoo.com/mars-rover-curiosity-nears-break-landing-attempt-002742981.html

make me wish I worked at NASA.

Don't they look so ridiculously happy?  I hope they all hung out and had some awesome, nerdy fun after work.

Updates!

So, I haven't exactly been keeping up with this thing, but what else is new?  Considering I'm already in a new cycle (cycle day 3, as a matter of fact) I figured I should just recap the goings-on and go from there.

My surgery came and went and was not that big of a deal.  I don't even have a funny anesthesia story, so there really isn't much to say about it.  Except, oh yeah, there was no giant polyp in my uterus as previously mentioned to me by a previous fertility doctor who shall not be named.  There was a tiny "something" that maaaaybe was a polyp, but basically the whole surgery was sort of pointless.

Bah humbug.

But at least now I don't have to wonder and worry that if I get pregnant again, there's some weird alien growth trying to give my future hypothetical baby a hard time.  There's not.  It's been decided.  By cameras and stuff.

I stopped birth control and got extremely annoying for about 24 hours, where all I wanted to do was sit around, complain and just generally lament the fact that I had become a big old ball of bloat.  Seriously, even my feet swelled.  Hormones continue to be the weirdest.  I should've taken a picture. 

Instead, you get to see this:

This is me, hating my hair and all that it lays flat for.

In other, less obvious news, I cut my own hair last week.  With fabric shears.  Interestingly enough, you can not tell at all (and I cut a bunch of the suckers off) and, for whatever reason, I kind of love it.  Google "how to cut your own hair + ponytail" and you'll get an idea of how ridiculous I looked during the whole thing.  I am going to continue the craziness until it's a decent length.  I used to wonder, during my younger years, why most moms had short hair. 

It's because of this:

I really have to start taking pictures for this thing.

What else?  Well, we're getting ready to move to our hometown of San Antonio, Texas so there's a TON of what else's going on around here.

I'm selling about 60% of Ever's toys (omg, the poor child, I'm the worst mother ever, etc, etc).  But, seriously, he doesn't even notice.  I sold his train table today and he helped me walk the lady to her car with it and just said, "Thank you, byeee."  So sweet.  Who needs toys, anyway?  I still have a ton to either sell or donate, so there's a yard sale in our immediate future.  Boooooo.

Picture of a bunch of crazy toys we're selling:





Oh!  I also decided that I wanted to take up body-building because, hey, I don't always have to be poor little, weak little Crystal, right?  I want to be strong!  And fit!  And feel awesomely healthy!

This decision was followed by another, better decision the following day.  This is where I decided that body-building was horribly confusing and somewhat disgusting (5 egg whites a day, really?) and would be better left to the professionals.  I think I might start walking, though.  Or something.

That's all for now! 

Unnecessary Post

As I heard one of our cats playing with some marbles from my son's new marble playset, a terrifying thought occurred to me.

What if our cat, whose name is actually Marbles, choked herself into kitty heaven on one of these marbles?!  First of all, I would feel terrible, although slightly psychic.  Secondly, I would feel like a completely horrible pet owner.

How would the conversation at the vet's office even go?

Vet:  Soooooo.....her name is Marbles?
Me:  Yes....
Vet:  And she....died....choking on a marble?  Is that right?
Me:  ......
Vet: ..........

That would be an exchange I would NOT like to have.  I'd probably just have to bury her in the backyard and call it a day.  My poor, poor Marbles.  "What a horribly strange way to go," everyone would say when they read her epitaph. 

There's lots more to write, but I'm going to shuffle off now and be a responsible pet, child, and me owner.  Because marbles rolling around on the floor are just a dumb, cartoonish trip to the ER waiting to happen.

How To Get Pregnant - Part 3

Figured I should continue my "How to get pregnant" series, hopefully with information that might actually be useful to someone.

For awesome, informative, and ULTRA science-y descriptions of the male and female reproductive systems, see parts 1 and 2 of this series: Part 1 Part 2

Now that we're all kinds of knowledgeable about our respective equipment, let's talk about how to actually go about the thing.

*Note - This is mostly for those of you who are fairly new to trying to conceive, haven't had fertility problems and just want to get ON with it already.  If you're like me and none of this stuff works, then you might want to go see a doctor sometime between 6 - 12 cycles.*

So, basically, we women have something called a menstrual cycle (I hate the word menstrual, by the way).  This is how a textbook cycle would go:

Follicular Phase (Cycle Days 1 - 14):

Cycle Days 1 - 5 (or 6 or 7 or 8 or whatever):  Your period happens.  Life is horrible, probably.
Cycle Days 7 - 14:  You're getting ready to ovulate.  Your ovaries are busy building up some follicles, one of which will mature enough to be THE EGG OF THE CYCLE and if you want to get pregnant, this is the week to get to it.
Cycle Day 14:  You're ovulating!  Congratulations!  If you haven't already (you should have, though), do the deed today and tomorrow (and maybe the next day, if you really like your significant other).

Luteal Phase (Cycle Days 14 - 28):

Cycle Days 14 - 28:  In the ttc world, this is known as the Two Week Wait (TWW).  This is basically where you have tons of pregnancy symptoms, whether you're actually pregnant or not.  If you are, your period probably won't appear.  If you're not, you start over from Cycle Day 1.  Please have some wine.

Notice I emphasized "textbook".  Not everyone (far from everyone, most likely) actually ovulates on cycle day 14.  The follicular phase varies from woman to woman.  You might ovulate on cycle day 9 or cycle day 39.  You might not ovulate at all.  Some months (rarely) you might ovulate twice!  Ovulation might change every month depending on stress levels, hormone issues, nutrition, exercise, etc, etc.  It's a tricky business and if you're not paying attention, you might miss ovulation entirely, leaving your poor little egg hanging.

The luteal phase, on the other hand, is pretty constant and typically lasts 14 days from the date you ovulate.  So, if you ovulate on cycle day 39 (you poor thing), your luteal phase should last about 14 days and (if not pregnant) you'd get your period again on cycle day 54, your new cycle day 1.

So, how do you know for sure when you ovulate?  There's no way to know the exact moment (short of a very well-timed ultrasound, I guess), but there are some great ways to narrow it down to a nice 24 - 48 hour window:

1 - Ovulation Predictor Kits (OPKs).  This is probably the easiest way to know when you're probably going to ovulate.  You can buy them at pretty much any drugstore.  They come in digital and non-digital form.  The digitals, while expensive, give you a smiley face when you're getting ready to ovulate (within the next 12 - 36 hours, generally).  The non-digitals display 2 lines, the control and test line, very much like a pregnancy test.  When the test line is as dark or darker than the control line, ovulation should take place that day or the next, usually.

Mr. Smiley face is gently reminding you to get to it already.

The only caveat (because there has to be one, of course) is that opks can't actually confirm ovulation.  If you're stressed or sick or blah, blah, blah, your body might gear up to ovulate and actually NOT ovulate, but you might get your nice little positive opk anyway and think everything's great.  Sometimes your body will gear up multiple times and, for various reasons, it won't happen until maybe the 3rd or 4th time.  Or, again, not at all.  Ovaries and hormones are tricky, tricky things and generally can't be trusted.

Which brings us to something that actually CAN confirm ovulation:

2 - Charting your basal body temperature (BBT).  When used along with OPKs, this is a pretty surefire way to know A) that you're going to ovulate and B) that you actually DID ovulate.  It's a lot more labor-intensive than just using opks, but if you like charts (and who doesn't!?), this is totally going to be up your alley.

Just to give more information than you're interested in, your basal body temperature (bbt) is your temperature upon waking, taken with a (get this) bbt thermometer, which is usually pink, for effect.  During your follicular phase (pre-ovulation), your temperature will be lower.  Once you ovulate, your bbt will be higher (by at least .4 degrees, usually).  So, it's pretty easy to see when you ovulated by looking at your chart.  Here's a VERY typical bbt chart, borrowed from some way more informative website:

So, it's pretty obvious that this person ovulated on CD 14, because her CD 15 temp was much higher than her previous temps, and it remained that way throughout the rest of her very textbook cycle.

There are some great sites for charting.  I use both of these, because sometimes I get annoyed with one or the other for various reasons:

www.fertilityfriend.com

www.tcoyf.com

They are both absolutely free and you shouldn't sign up for the paid accounts.  I've tried them and personally didn't find them all that useful or helpful.  Free is always better, right?

So, here are the steps if you'd like to chart your own BBT from now on:

1.  The night before:  Set your alarm for a specific time in the morning.  If you usually set your alarm anyway, because you're unlike me and actually wake up and do early things, then you're ahead of the game.
2.  Place your bbt thermometer within easy reach.  A nightstand would work.  Pick a spot and be consistent with it every night. You may want to keep a pen and paper handy, unless you're good at making your phone remember things for you.
3.  Wake up.  Hopefully you slept well, because bbt readings can be thrown off by a bad night's sleep.
4.  DON'T DO ANYTHING EXCEPT REACH FOR THE BLURRY PINK THING ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND AND TAKE YOUR TEMP.  If you take your bbt after getting out of bed, you're doing it wrong.
5.  Go back to sleep.
6.  Oh, wait.  Record the temp somewhere.  (See step 2).
7.  Then go back to sleep.
8.  Wake up and excitedly plug the day's temp in your chart on one of the sites mentioned above, or your own paper chart if you're weird and ultra-ambitious about it.

It's a good idea to not skip days and to wake up at the same time every morning.  Your BBT is a mysterious, fickle thing and, though it's awesome at confirming ovulation, it can get thrown off pretty easily.

Now that you know how to check for ovulation, the only other thing to do is the whole sex thing.  (*Note - there are other ways to check for ovulation.  Cervical mucus, cervical position, ovulation pain, etc...I'm too lazy to go into those things here, but they exist if you want to wash your hands frequently.) It (sex) is pretty easy, and if you need any visuals the internet is full of examples.  There's one very important thing to remember, though:

SEX MUST OCCUR AT SOME POINT BEFORE OR DURING OVULATION.  SEX AFTER OVULATION IS ALMOST POINTLESS FOR BABY-MAKING PURPOSES.

But it is useful for showing your significant other that you still love them and stuff, so go ahead and keep at it if you like them enough.  So, yeah, it doesn't matter if you get down every day, every other day, every few days....once menstruation ends, get some sperm in your Fallopian tubes!

Alright, We Did All That Stuff.  Now What?  Also, We're Tired From All the Sex.

Welcome to the Luteal Phase, better known in internet forum terms as the TWO WEEK WAIT.

THAT is a long time to wait for a new GoT episode.

14 days of craziness with LOADS of pregnancy symptoms thrown in just for fun.  The most productive thing you can do during this time is Google everything you're feeling that could possibly be a pregnancy symptom.

At the end of it all, you will either get this:

Or this:

You know, depending on which type of tests you buy.  Or, you may be a better person than I am and just wait for menstruation (ugh) to either begin or not.  Hopefully it does not and you will never need to reference back to this amazingly relevant and helpful blog post again.

Good luck!!