I fully admire those that can live a zero waste existence. It’s certainly something to aspire to. I am just not there yet. However, I really believe that if a whole bunch of us start with just some small changes it will have a massive environmental impact.
Starting over a year ago now we have been implementing changes in our home to try and live more sustainably. Interestingly, I started implementing a lot of these and didn’t mention it to Hubby to see if he noticed and commented on it or if the change bothered him. None of the changes we have made so far have phased him at all.
I thought I would share one of these every now and then. If you like the tip feel free to implement it. I know these are not new ideas. I am just sharing what small changes I have been able to easily incorporate into our lives to make our family more environmentally friendly.
Vegetarian one day per week.
This is a great example of something I started to implement without Hubby even noticing. I did this at the same time I started meal planning. This was a beautiful change to make hand in hand. Not only is eating meat free once a week good for the environment, but meal planning reduced our weekly food waste and grocery bill significantly!
I did this for over a month before asking Hubby if he’d noticed we were eating vegetarian at least one night every week. He hadn’t noticed that, but he’d been liking the meals and the organisation of meal planning. It actually saved us a lot of time over the week as we were not having that daily “what do you want for dinner?” discussion and then spending time rummaging through the pantry for options hahaha. He actually got into the process and is now much more involved in our food choices and also dinner and food preparation YAY!!!
Here’s the thing… this doesn’t have to be a complicated meal. Often this is my simplest dinner of the week. Very often I combine this with pasta night. At the moment we are both loving the Rana range of pastas particularly the Ricotta & Spinach Tortellini and the Pumpkin & Roasted Onion Ravioli. Even better when I score the family pack on sale as this gives us two nights of dinners. Especially when I chuck in some brocolli and mixed vegies. My 11 months old loves these pasta dishes as well, she doesn’t eat pasta in other forms apart from these and lasagne so that’s another bonus for us.
Honestly once you look at a couple of vegetarian meals it is a lot easier than the pressure that people put on themselves to create incredible dishes. Yes, you certainly can do that. OMG there are some amazing vegetarian and vegan dishes out there, but there are also some quick fixes.
Loving the Wildly Good range for a quick healthy vegetarian or vegan meal!Wildly Good Falafel bites in a yum salad bowl with sweet potato waffle fries YUMMO!!!!!
Huge thank you to those of you who have contacted me to see if I am okay. This is why I love you guys!!! Thank you to everybody that has stuck in there with me! 🙂
I know I have been neglecting this space and not connecting with you all as much as I should have, or as much as I would like. I don’t really have much of an excuse, life has just been insane for many months now.
After we froze our embies we decided to have some time off from the fertility craziness. The docs didn’t really want to transfer the embies anyway as they felt I was too big.
I spent some time really soul searching and thinking about my life journey and how far I had come and what I wanted the next year (this year) and the rest of my life to hold. You know… nothing too heavy right?! Haha
I know I mentioned in a previous post that I had spent a lot of time researching weight loss surgery and what it could do for me with in regards to my insulin resistance, PCOS and snail thyroid. I also finally found out why sometimes my outer thighs goes numb, it is a condition where nerves get pinched randomly (can be cured or greatly improved through weightloss). So I bit the bullet, after 10 years and numerous diets and lifestyle changes I agreed to have sleeve surgery in April.
What?! I hear you say, but it is already May! Yep, that’s right, already done.
I didn’t tell many people. To be honest after so many years thinking about it and researching to come to the decision that I thought was best for me (even though I was petrified and didn’t really want to do it) I really didn’t want to hear any more opinions. So my parents knew (turns out they told a few people), obviously Hubby knew (turns out he told people too) and a couple of my friends knew.
Managed to not have a huge panic attack before surgery, mainly by trying not to think about it and just going through the motions of preparing. Afterwards I initially questioned all my so called wisdom and research because damn did I hurt. Being someone who is very independent though I was determined that even though I had just had major surgery a couple of hours before I was going to the toilet. So I did.
I pretty much had a dream recovery, slight allergic reaction to the dressings after a few days and slight infection on the surface of one of the wounds. Food wise I have had no issues. Was having issues getting enough protein, but I am getting much better at that now that I have added soft foods back in. Eventually I should be able to have all the foods I have before.
I hear people label this “the easy way”, boy is that far from the truth. For me this was (and continues to be) harder than quitting smoking. You still have to do all the work in regards to healthy food and exercise. It is just a tool, a very effective tool, but it is on me to make it work.
I have been doing well so far. Since 19 March (I am including pre op diet where I lost 6.8kgs) I have lost 13.9kgs. I am not ashamed to say that I am SUPER proud of myself for that 🙂
I know that for doctors the actual weight is what they focus on, but for me I am enjoying the non-scale victories just as much. The issue with the thigh numbness is already noticeably better which is amazing as I would get this multiple times a day previously – In the last 5 days I think I have had it once!!! I also fit into 2 blouses that I LOVED that no longer fit me. In fact they fit me better now than when I bought them! I am also much more comfortable in my car, not that I was uncomfortable before, but it just fits me better now.
It is a challenge everyday. You have to be super prepared food wise so you are not caught out. My father was suddenly taken to hospital last Friday (so a week today) and I was initially caught out a lot… loving coffee and quiches and veggie fritattas from a number of cafes at the moment for dinner as I am going straight from work to the hospital at the moment. Funny part is I can only eat about half, which then means either I get to make sure Mum has a decent meal or I get lunch the next day. Today I am stoked with my leftover pumpkin, spinach and ricotta quiche – you guys SOOO GOOD!
I find I am eating a lot more vegetarian meals. Not on purpose, just because I gravitate towards these meals as I enjoy them. I am glad though as I had been trying to move towards a more plant based diet prior to the surgery because it is supposed to be beneficial for the conditions I have. It does mean that sometimes I am not hitting the protein level I need to be so I have to be careful.
So now that I have bowled you all over with my crazy last few months tell me stories! I have missed you all 🙂
Fertility update time… update is… still having fertility issues.
We have done a freeze all cycle where I was on 300 Gonal F all the way up until trigger, with Orgalutran and then an Ovidrel and something else (Lucrin I think) trigger.
We got 11 eggs which I was stoked with. Honestly for some completely unknown reason that has always been my hope number so I was super pleased – and quite uncomfortable for a couple of days. My body had down in one month what would normally take 11 months. So YAY! But OUCH!
So 7 successfully fertilised, they said 10 were mature which is super suprising – everything must have just lined up really well this cycle. They also said they injected which was funny because we had never talked with them about doing ISCI, but it was already done so… what are you gonna do amiright?! Day 3 all 7 were still going, 6 were right on target and one was one cell behind (colour me shocked because those results are super incredible). Day 5 they rang and said only 2 could be tested and frozen, I was suprised and sad because of how well the others had been doing (and because I was still full of ALL the hormones). They said that they could take the rest to day 6 and call me then.
Day 6 they called and 2 more of them stepped up to the plate!!! So a total of 4 have been PGS tested and frozen.
4 lil frosties 🙂
Initially they told us that because we are young and there is no history of any chromosomal issues on either side as far back as we can track that there was not really a need for PGS. We decided we wanted it anyway because we want to make sure we are only transferring embryos with the highest chance of survival, when we transferred one that was not tested and received a BFN the first thing the nurse said was, “well the embryo wasn’t tested so you just don’t know if there were abnormalities”. I wan’t to completely eliminate the chance of that so that it is one less if, but or maybe that we have to deal with 🙂
We were hoping to go straight into another cycle so we could get some banked up, but funds are seriously restricting that at the moment and I get the impression that my husband wants a break from it over Christmas.
We have a specialist appointment on the 19 December and we get the results then. Disapointed that I have to pay another $200+ in order to be told how many made it through testing. Feels like a waste! I don’t even get to see my actual specialist as she is on holidays, I get a fill in. Kind of frustrated by that.
Fingers crossed that the majority of them come back good. Hoping, hoping, hoping, hoping!!!! Come on lil frosty babes!!!
The two week wait (or TWW) is a bitch! It seriously messes with your head. Have you ever noticed every single little involuntary muscle movement and slight cramping or discomfort your body has? Ever been completely aware of the sensitivity of your whole body particularly your sense of smell, stability of your stomache and the feel of your breasts? This is just the start of what we women go through during the TWW.
And who the hell made pregnancy symptoms so similar to period symptoms? It’s like they spent all this time designing and developing this amazing reproductive system and then at the 11th hour it was like…
Tech one: Everyone we are officially out of time! Amazing work everyone, just put on the finishing touches and we will send it to be integrated into the body matrix.
Tech two: But… I haven’t coded the period symptom and menstrual phases yet…
Tech one: Shit bro, seriously?! Goddammit Mike, you had ONE job! Okay just copy paste the pregnancy symptoms and ramp up the cramps and nausea during the actual menstrual phase.
I mean please…
Symptom: Tender or swollen breasts = period or pregnant
Symptom: Nausea with or without vomiting = period or pregnant
Symptom: Food aversions or cravings = period or pregnant
Symptom: Headaches = period or pregnant
Symptom: Fatigue = period or pregnant
Symptom: Slight bleeding or cramping = period or pregnant
Symptom: Mood swings = period or pregnant
Symptom: Constipation = period or pregnant
That’s just the main ones… not to mention… no symptoms = period or pregnant. So frustrating.
So here we are, women who so very much want children that we put ourselves through needles (would you believe that the thought of just drawing blood used to give me serious anxiety before all this started!!) and prodding and poking and invasive procedures and crazy ass hormones just for the slight hope of peeing on a stick and being rewarded with 2 lines instead of one.
The fact that we want a child that much alone puts you in a desperate and hopeful head space, then you add on top all the hormones and pressure of daily life and age and whatnot and it’s just a fucking boiling pot of emotions and anxiety and crap.
To quote J.K. Rowling…
…but we do… and so much more. I tried to explain to my husband the other day the thought process I went through in a couple of seconds to get from the topic we were talking about to the question I asked him a few seconds later which seemed completely unrelated. I explained how I got there and he was like, “How? It was like 3 seconds? How did you think all that in that time?!”
I was pretty confident initially that the ovulation induction round would not work. To me it was only a slight step above assisted natural conception (i.e. the timed sex we have been doing for 5.5 years among Clomid and IVF) and to me even though both FS’s have said there is no reason for us not to conceive naturally it’s just not happening. So I sort of felt that the new FS was mostly ticking boxes with this.
That doesn’t mean that I didn’t want it to work with every fibre of my being and soul. That with each passing day my hope didn’t grow until it was this amazing cushy marshmallow of hope and goodness. Then AF came and it was like a butane torch to my marshmallow. I watched it crisp, burn and melt away… didn’t even get a fucking smore out of it.
Our lives have been super busy and irrevocably changed recently.
At the beginning of June Hubby and I met beautiful twin girls who were up for adoption. A couple of weeks later we learned that they still had not found a home because separating them would be too traumatizing and people didn’t seem keen to adopt both of them.
So we met with them again and we just knew that our big home was exactly what they needed. So I would like to introduce you to the newest members of our family Persephone (Seph) and Athena (Thea).
When they first came home
For my Husband it was love at first sight. I loved them, but 4 furbabies is a huge commitment and I just wanted to make sure that we were making the right decision for the girls. Yes we had the space and money, but time and patience, did we have enough? I realised though that we are full of love and that at 3 months old the girls had known nothing more than the insides of boxes being poked at by people who weren’t going to take them home and make them part of their family. We could do that for them… and we have.
It took a few days for them to spend time out from under the couch. Though they loved having the top of this gym to escape to as the puppies came to terms with their new sisters.
The girls have basically doubled in size in just a month. They now allow us to actually pick them up and hold them and are HUGE lovers of pats. They didn’t purr when we first brought them home, but now we have a regular purr soundtrack in our household.
Miss Thea enjoys sitting with Mum on the couch now
It took them I think 2 weeks to realise that there was an upstairs. They now LOVE going up there and tearing around the place… in the middle of the night. They were pretty keen on getting into our bedroom at night which wasn’t the worst thing… until Seph started climbing the curtains!!! Bad kitty.
They are both very adventurous now. Very hard to tell apart as they are almost identical even down to their white markings. Thea is slightly smaller with a thinner tail, but they have completely different personalities. Thea will run all around your feet wanting pats and flop and present her belly the second you look at her like you might pat her. Seph is big on the rubbing against legs, bags, corners, arms etc. to facilitate the patting she wants which is all the time hahaha. Seph is also the one who has figured out she can jump onto the kitchen counter and drink the remnants of my cup of tea, then there was the time she tried to jump into the bloody oven when I opened it. Naturally her craziness has made her Dad’s favourite hahaha.
Basically Seph goes where she pleases and now believes that the new dog bed we bought before we adopted the girls belongs to her. She stretches out as far as she can to show there is no room for anyone else and doesn’t even like her sister joining her for a nap. To be fair I did situate it where it would get the best sun 🙂
Here’s our boy Sam reclaiming the bed for a short time this weekend to sit next to me while I had my morning coffee 🙂
The dogs are mostly okay with the girls now. Thea LOVES Sam and every morning she runs up to him and makes him pat her with his snout by rubbing herself under his chin. She will often then roll onto her back and present her belly to him. One day she will figure out that he cannot pat her hahaha. She also jumps around and over him inviting him to play… he just looks at me like “WTF Mum!” like any older brother with a toddler sister in play mode hahaha.
So our world has been very full of cleaning, playing, retraining, bringing out of the closet (figuratively and literally), giggling at antics and all sorts of other things lately.
I hope you enjoy the pictures of the newest additions to our family 🙂
Well the new year is here. I had high hopes for 2016. In truth many wonderful things happened and were achieved in 2016.I feel that the good things are often overshadowed by the fact that I failed to get the thing I wanted the most, a baby. 2 failed transfers, much heartache and being filled with hormones which rival a sorority house whose cycles have synced on the day before AF hits left me a little jaded. I have decided to remind myself of some of the good things that happened in 2016 to get some perspective.
Hubby and I finally achieved our goal of our own home, whilst getting there was a long road (3 years since purchasing the land long and 9 years of saving long) it is totally worth it because we are both totally in LOVE with our home (I’ll post more on the house another day with pics).
My youngest nephew Coda was born.
Hubby and I have gotten even better with our communication. It’s the kind of open and honest relationship I have always dreamed of having. Whilst he is generally the suffer in silence type, he is opening up a lot more now which I love.
I celebrated 1 year in my role as Reference & Information Services Librarian in January (it will be 2 years tomorrow). Honestly I can’t believe I have only been here that long. It feels like forever and I have done so much in this role.
I was asked to act up in the Branch & Customer Services Coordinator role for the last quarter of the year. It was so challenging and I loved it. I really enjoyed all the work with the programming and promotions. If they ever develop a role for that here I will totally apply 🙂
I have developed a close group of friends at work. I am not someone who makes close friends easily and I decided last year to put myself out there more and got great results. The result is a group of friends I can count on, sound off ideas on, have lunch and sometimes dinner with, go for walks after work and to the gym with, go to the movies with, we even went bowling. This awesome group of people has made a huge difference to my work and home life and I have such a great time with them!
I feel very fortunate to have met people like this in my workplace.
Hubby and I have learned a lot about DIY (seriously LOVE YouTube!!!). We have done basically all of our landscaping ourselves (Hubby much more than me), we have installed our own washing line and even learned how to lay bricks and built our own brick mailbox. The mailbox isn’t the most professional job, but it is the mailbox that love built and was a great bonding experience and we did much better than Homer did with that BBQ.
I quit smoking! Something I have been wanting to do for the longest time. February 15, 2017 will mark one year since I have quit. Sometimes (rarely now) in times of stress or emotional upset (like 2 failed IVF transfers) I kind of want to reach for a smoke, but I have been so good. VERY proud of this accomplishment. I did put on weight after quitting because instead of smoking I would eat. To be honest I let myself do this because I truly feel that was the right choice for me. Now that I have been successful in quitting smoking I have turned my attention back to my food. I have yet to conquer emotional eating, I am SO bad for this!
So there is a lot of really good things that happened this year. Often it is hard to think about them when something that is so all consuming is constantly at the forefront of your mind. I could choose to give in to it, or I could combat it another way. Yes IVF transfers failed for us twice one of which was a PGS tested perfect lil man embryo, Yes I REALLY got my hopes up on the lil man transfer, Yes my FS doesn’t seem to be the most open and communicative. So Hubby and I have done a tonne of research over the past couple of months and put some things into action which I will talk about in another post coming soon 🙂
So I saw the new Ghostbusters film. Actually I asked my Dad if he wanted to go see it on my birthday as I had taken the day off (Dad and I often go on movie dates), Mum decided to come along too which was great.
I had heard a lot of hate about the movie and therefore was not going in with really high hopes. And well… wow you guys.
I totally loved it. I laughed so much.
They basically completely ignored the existence of the other films, but still paid homage to them which I thought was great and there were all these little references to look out for.
I adored the female characters. They were so vibrant and funny and intelligent and awkward and I loved it. I have spent time thinking about why I enjoyed them so much since and I feel like this movie could be quite ground breaking.
The thing is that this movie does not walk around boasting about girl power or anything of the sort. What it does do is present 4 complex female characters who are intelligent in different ways, incredibly unique and I must say incredibly geeky. Not once do any of these characters waste time thinking they are losers or not good enough. They are completely unapologetic about who they are and they kick ass and invent incredible things and hire a dumb male secretary because they feel bad for him and he looks good. There is also ZERO relationship drama and not one of them is wearing skin tight body suits or short skirts or plunging tops.
Some seriously kick ass women in this film.
I NEEDED this movie as a teenager. Hell I NEEDED this movie now. If I ever have a daughter this will be mandatory viewing.
Each one of the actresses was amazing in their roles. They work so well together and obviously feed off of each other. I would love to know how much of this was off script 🙂 Chris Hemsworth was so good in this role. I think working with these ladies brought the best out of him as far as comedic timing goes. He was just so good in this role!
Can’t wait to purchase this when it comes out on DVD so I can watch it again. Mum and I have already declared a movie night for when it does 🙂
Well I was right. This cycle didn’t work. It was a heartbreaking realisation. By the time we did our blood test on Saturday I was so positive that it didn’t work that I convinced Hubby to go to coffee after they had taken blood.
Meanwhile the woman who called me back to confirm the bad news probably shouldn’t be making bad news calls. It was completely awkward and if I had have been in a different place, i.e. no bad symptoms and still full of hope I don’t know how the phone call would have gone. I told them I wanted a month off for my body to recover. She even said weird things like ‘generally we find that younger women like yourself find more success with frozen cycles’ umm then why did we ever try a fresh transfer? Don’t say stupid crap like that to women hyped up on hormones who you have just told that a $10k IVF cycle resulted in nothing. Then she said some other stuff and ended with, ‘okay well we will hear from you when you want to proceed with treatment again, if you do want to contact us ever again’ err… what? What a weird ass thing to say. Sweetie, you people have my frosty babe… I am coming back for them.
If the FET transfer doesn’t work, or they come back and say that the testing showed it wasn’t a good quality embryo I think we will look at going somewhere else. I have done some research and it looks as though Primary IVF might be pretty decent, it is practically next to Genea and they bulk bill so the pricing is ridiculously cheaper. We could do more than 10 full IVF cycles on what it costs us to do one at Genea. I have talked to a few women who have gone there (IVF support group via Facebook) and they all love the place. If anyone reading this has been I would love to hear your feedback. Unfortunately they are apparently really strict on BMI so we might not be accepted by them.
The grieving process for this was really bad. It happened the first night I started bleeding. My husband had never seen me like that and had no idea what to do. I blame those freaking hormones. I literally had no control over my emotions and I completely lost the ability to rationalise anything. I was a CRAZY lady. I think it was quite therapeutic though. I am not a huge crier and don’t remember the last time I had a really good cry. Afterwards I was completely exhausted and in pieces, but I felt this wonderful calm and I slept like a baby.
It has made me realise I need to slow the hell down. Infertility is bullshit and as much as we march on with the grit and determination of an Amazon really a piece of us dies inside with every negative pregnancy test, every purchase of tampons and every pregnancy announcement from others who have seemingly blessed lives.
We are not stopping trying this month, but we are not doing a transfer. A month of no sex was torture and I am not going into another month of that straight up. No sex plus a tonne of crazy lady hormones made for a very challenging month and we just want to get back to chilling and being with each other. I have organised for two weeks off in June and Hubby is taking the whole month off. We have to/want to get our landscaping done. That will be a fantastic achievement!
There is a lot going on in my head at the moment. We are just so very busy.
Trying not to test. Hubby really wants me to. He wants to know so much. It’s been a long time since I have seen him so excited about something.
Honestly I am somewhat scared of testing. I have never had a positive result on a preg test and I desperately want to see those stripes. It’s not like I haven’t earned them right? ☺ In saying that I don’t want the results of the blood test a week from now to be a surprise because I will get them at work and either result is probably going to end in a cry fest lol.
I did have to take a tiny amount of the ovidrel last Thursday. Honestly I have no clue how long after transfer you can test without the trigger affecting it. I would hate to test and get a positive then be gutted in a weeks time.
Over share time… let’s talk symptoms. Obviously I have been symptom spotting. I had some slight cramping Thursday and Friday, Saturday I had very weird nausea, all of a sudden I felt ill and quite sure I was going to be sick, but I didn’t have the whole saliva filling the mouth part. Then after some breathing of fresh air it passed. Saturday night I got incredibly sensitive nipples, this has gone over into today (Sunday), they almost feel bruised, very odd. I have also had some lower back pain today. I have no idea if any of this means anything. I’d love to hope it does, but who knows.
How long after transfer did you guys wait to test?
So it seems we are traveling well with our little embies. We got a call from the scientist yesterday, sorry for the late report, yesterday was madness all round.
Anyways, let’s get on to what you really want to hear about. We had 6 fertilise and on day 3 none of them had ceased development.
At 8:20am on day 3 we had 1 which has 8 cells, 3 which have 6 cells, 1 with 5 cells and 1 with 4 cells.
So there are 4 at the stage they would want on day three which is 6+ cells. In saying that I am not giving up on the others either because not all of the eggs would have fertilised at the same point in time over the 24 hours they were exposed.
So it looks like we are all set for a 5 day transfer tomorrow.
I am feeling very excited and grateful at this point.
Ditch the Bun 