Dear 26 year old me

18 August 2022

Dear 26 year old me, 

You've made it another 10 years and things have changed so much in this time.  Life has thrown you many curveballs - some you were expecting and others that knocked you to your knees from the shock but you've taken things in your stride, no matter how bad the situation and just gotten on with it.  You've got more guts and balls than you ever thought you had and you should be proud of your determination.

It took you a long time to stop fighting things (life, the universe, yourself, your demons) and instead embrace the lessons that had come to you.   The thing you still struggle with, even 10 years later is embracing the circumstances you're placed in, when the lesson is unclear.  The thing is, by embracing the circumstances, the lesson will eventually come clear but you have to learn to be patient.  Even now you're not great at doing this, but I promise you that you're getting better.  Perhaps this will be something you will spend your whole life trying to learn. 

You finally won the baby lotto and have two beautiful children.  After they arrived, right at the point where you were wistfully remembering those Sunday morning sleep ins and how you used to be to go to the toilet on your own, you even wondered why you made all that fuss to have a baby in the first place!  Despite this, you wouldn't have your life any other way.  

Richard is a great dad to the kids and they adore him.  You love how he is with them and how much they love doing things with him.  He's still a great husband, although still knows how to get on every single one of your nerves (guess that's where the kids learnt it!).  He brings a softness and thoughtfulness to the family that is needed.  I don't think you could have chosen a better man to raise your kids with.  

You know all those things you said you wouldn't do when you were a mum? Guess what? You have, for the most part, done them (with some exceptions).  All those things you said your kids wouldn't do? You got it, they've mostly done it.  But guess what? They're still good kids, and you're still a great mum, despite your fears that you wouldn't be.  All those years beating yourself up thinking that the universe was stopping you from being a mum because you were going to be bad at it was for nothing.  Of course you're not perfect - you get things wrong, you snap sometimes when you probably shouldn't, you tune out when Richard and the kids are talking and sometimes you just want to be left alone for an hour, but you like to think that you're teaching your kids valuable lessons about life and they're certainly not damaged from this.  Ask them when they're 26 themselves and we'll find out for sure!

Your twins would have been turning 14 this year and you still wonder what they'd have been like.  You still pause on 5 June every year to think about them and how much further you feel from the day you lost them.  Every year when you're celebrating your niece's birthday, you're also silently sending birthday wishes up to the two babies that never were.  The pain never leaves, and perhaps the biggest lesson you've learnt since finally having kids of your own is that having them doesn't actually erase the pain of your loss.  Sometimes it only magnifies the pain.  So please let go of the notion that it will - you're only setting yourself up for a fall.  When that fall comes, try to be gentle with yourself.

Oh by the way, you know all that pressure you put on yourself for being so far behind from your cousins in the baby making stakes, and how terrified you were that your brother would have a baby first? Guess what? Your kids are still loved by your parents and your nanna.  It doesn't matter that they weren't 'first' because they are *yours* and that's all your parents and nanna care about.  Nobody has ever told your kids that they cannot be loved as much as the other great-grandkids or grandkids because they were not 'first' because it's simply not true.  Look at you as a prime example - you were not 'first' but you were loved equally, if not more than your cousins and brother.  I cannot believe you've spent so much of your energy thinking about this and feeling so much pain about it.  Please stop twisting yourself into knots on the inside and hurting yourself thinking about this.  

Sometimes life is not fair.  Sometimes it is.  You know this.  Please love yourself as much as others love you.  

I promise you that if you just let all this anger, fear and loathing go, life will take you to amazing places.  But you have to trust the universe.  Most importantly, trust and love yourself.  What you're looking for is just around the corner.  Just take good care of you.  It all works out.  Trust me.

Love, 
Your 36 year old self.

Still waiting

We're now into our 11th cycle.  Obviously still not UTD.  Still doing acupuncture every week and I have now lost.... weight for it, weight for it (I couldn't help using the pun lol)....a whopping 21.3kg since 14 April.  


I've lost 13cm from my chest, 18 from my waist, 9.5 off the widest part of my body (ie my arse) and approx 15cm off each thigh.  Kinda figures that I'd have lost the smallest amount around my arse, bloody typical isn't it?!?! What I'd like to do is take those 13cm and put them back on my chest, and take the 13cm from my arse!!!!!  But I digress...


Of course I'm getting impatient, but who isn't after they've been trying for 10 months, and who wouldn't be if they'd been waiting for the opportunity to try for another baby for over 3 years?


I've been focussing quite a bit on the weight loss which has been good because it's taken the focus off the TTC.  Interestingly, what initially started as losing weight to get pregnant has morphed into something completely unrelated to getting pregnant.  I'm liking the changes I can see in my body and rarely even connect eating healthy and exercising with the quest for a baby.


In fact, some months, I focus so much on the weight loss that I couldn't even tell you what CD I'm on, although I might have a vague idea of the general vicinity.  Some months, I've been lucky enough to even get to CD20-something before I realise it.  


Every time the red dragon shows her ugly distorted face, I try to remind myself that others are in a much worse situation, some have been trying for longer, others going through IVF and others who will never have their own child.  


It's still disappointing though.  I don't know any way around the disappointment.  I wish I did.

Winning the lotto

There's an old joke (and I'm not good at retelling jokes, so it's not going to be as funny as it could be) about a man.  Every night before he went to bed, he used to pray to God "Please God, please please please let me win the lottery".  He'd done this every night for years and years until one night, a big booming voice came from the sky "BUY A TICKET!".

I don't buy lotto tickets though, I've watched my mum and grandparents buy them all my life and rarely win anything (and if they did it'd be something like $20) so in my eyes, it's a big waste of money.  Yet I often joke about how I should've won the lotto and often think to this joke.  I think it's a good analogy on life in general.

I know that we haven't been trying 'that long' when you compare to others, but losing the weight, going to acupuncture, having sex, getting Sydney Boy onto the zinc and me taking the Vitex.... well, all of this to me is buying that lotto ticket in the baby lottery.

I say "baby lottery" because I like to think of having a baby as more to do with chance and luck than anything to do with karma.  If karma was involved, bad people would not get pregnant - accidentally or otherwise; and good deserving people would get pregnant easily, at the right time, without a glimmer of a sweat.  But a lottery, it's a game of chance and when you look at the science of conception, it really is chance that the sperm will make its way to the egg at exactly the right time and fertilise it.  And, let's face it, continually buying lotto tickets gets expensive, and so does various TTC 'tickets'...

So on this theory, surely the more tickets I buy, the more chances I have of winning the lottery sometime soon?

Acupuncture appointment

I had my acupuncture appointment yesterday.  I really was amazed by how little I felt the needles.  Yes, I know people say you can hardly feel them if at all but I really couldn't believe them - I thought it was one big conspiracy.

Anyway, we agreed to just acupuncture at this point without the herbs given the time we've been trying and the fact that she's also going to try and help fix some of the other issues my body seems to have (back problems, arthritis etc).

She felt my tummy and said it was particularly hard and should be soft.  By the end of the session, it was rather softer than she started - WTF?!?!

We've made weekly appointments starting in 2 weeks for a few weeks so hopefully that combined with the weight loss and Vitex should see some continuance of 28 day cycles and, hopefully.... a BFP.

Acupuncture and Zinc

This is now our 9th cycle and it really is getting too close to that 'magic' 12 month mark so any time now that my body decides to actually make a baby would be good...

Here's where we're at at the moment...

Sydney Boy has started taking some zinc stuff given he doesn't eat vegetables etc to get zinc to help his little spermies.

The Vitex seems to be working some magic on the wonky cycle front though:
Cycle 1 October: 39

Cycle 2 November: 27

Cycle 3 December: 37

Cycle 4 January: 24

Cycle 5 February: 28

Cycle 6 March: 36

Started taking Vitex here

Cycle 7 April: 30

Cycle 8 May: 28

So I'm hoping that if AF absolutely MUST show her horrible ugly and distorted face this month that she will do so on CD 28/9 and not some ridiculous day like CD30-something!

Tomorrow is CD14 so here's to hoping for a BFP this month or the next...

And of course, tomorrow I have my acupuncture appointment after work.  Fingers crossed.

My cousin had her baby

I've been bracing myself for this for months since I first found out she was pregnant.  I was so angry and jealous. Stricken with jealousy in fact.  She's a few years younger than me and her family have always been competitive with me.  They always have to be better or do better than me and it irritates me because then my competitive streak comes out (and I try to lock it in the cupboard as much as possible!).  It was bad enough when her brother got his girlfriend pregnant after being together for a couple of months (although their son is now 1 and they've just gotten married).  Their mother made sure to rub my nose in it.  They were wanting her to have a girl so that she could give our grandmother the first great grand daughter given her brother gave her the first great grand son.  

Turns out, she also had a boy, Harrison (which I'm peeved about because I like the bloody name!!!).  I couldn't help but feel so freakin' relieved.  One down, and one to go (I think the other cousin is due in Nov-ish).  Here's to hoping she has a boy too! lol

The jealousy of the fact she's gotten somewhere I haven't and the joy that it wasn't a girl quickly turned to guilt when I found out a day later that she has had fits since having the baby and spent most of Friday night unconscious.  They've done an MRI and they can't see anything wrong with her.  The doctors are baffled about what caused it.  Mum said she has lost sensation in her left side so I'm wondering whether a stroke or something was a possibility? 

So now I feel bad.  I obviously didn't cause or want this to happen to her, but fuck she could have died and here I was worrying that the freaking baby would be a girl.  I feel like the worst person in the world now.  

So bad in fact that I was prepared to drive the two hours to go see her in hospital (despite the competitiveness, she does seem to like me and look up to me according to my mum) and stop off on the way to pick up some baby stuff.  

The only reason I didn't was because it was raining, it's a long weekend which means double demerit points (not that I speed, or try too but I'm paranoid that the times I take my eyes off the speedo for a few minutes will be when the speed creeps up and I get done for speeding) and also because mum didn't really know where in the hospital my cousin was as she was getting the info second and third hand through my grandmother.  

I think if she is still in hospital next weekend (assuming the docs keep here there til they're satisfied she's not at risk of it happening again), I'll drive up and visit her.  Maybe the baby 'germs' will be catching and my uterus and eggs etc will go "oooooh so *that's* what I'm supposed to do" and make it happen for me.... and also I won't feel so guilty for being so jealous of her...

Hello from Brisbane - with an update

So it's been a couple of weeks since I last updated this blog, mainly because life has been so insanely crazy with organising to move interstate, and then the actual moving.  

Unfortunately I'm now another cycle down as AF arrived last week.  Although I'm obviously disappointed yet again, I'm pleased that my cycle was a 28 day cycle again.  I'm hoping that this means the Vitex is starting to weave it's magic.  If AF arrives this cycle (and let's pray she doesn't!), I'm hoping for another 28 day cycle as a sign my body is being normal finally.


My most exciting news is that I weighed in today to discover that I have lost another 3.2kg since I last weighed in 12 days ago.  So freakin' happy.  Even more exciting is that this brings me to exactly 15kg loss so far!!!! I almost can't believe it!!!!!!  If this doesn't make my body better for making babies and keeping them, well geez, I don't know what will.

I've also made an appointment with an acupuncturist here that, when googled, seemed to have a LOT of awesome reviews and a pretty high success rate.  I rang last week and couldn't get in til 21 June so I take it they're pretty popular (and therefore good at what they do).  The only downfall for that is that 21 June is CD14 exactly and I'm not sure whether they do any acupuncture on your first visit - does anyone who read my blog actually know?! But I'm thinking even if they did, it's probably not going to be much use for this cycle.  Bummer, but what can I do about it?!?! Not a great deal...


So hopefully, the equation of weight loss + Vitex + acupuncture + heatlhy eating + exercise + some good old fashioned hot BDing in our new bed = a BFP soon.  


Here's to hoping... 
xo