New Life

My goodness life has changed. It has been a LONG time since I wrote here. Not because I didn’t want to. Life just got very crazy and my focus shifted drastically during this time.

Health journey wise I lost 48kgs and travelled overseas and was living my very best life. Every kg I lost was hard worked for. There were many reasons I wanted to undertake this health journey. One of these was to give us the very best chance of having a child. We had 4 embryos frozen and the plan was to wait until we felt my body was in the best shape (and we had saved enough) and then go back in for IVF again.

Well….. long story short… we found out last October that I was pregnant… suprise!!!

Much joy, worry, excitement, fear, etc. ensued. What can I say after 8 years of infertility and then being pregnant in the middle of a pandemic I was a barrel of emotions hahaha.

Little Miss C came into the world in May and she is perfect. I couldn’t believe it. So many joyful tears you guys. We had some initial issues with feeding which is a story I will save for another day, but generally she has just been a joy. She surprises us everyday and I still can’t believe how lucky we are.

I have missed writing here and now as I continue on my life journey as a Mum, wife, health and knowledge seeker I really wanted to get back here.

Can’t wait to share and to catch up with you all!!!

IVF Cycle – Freeze 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!!!

2016 in review

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 🙂

The new Ghostbusters

NOTE: Will do my best to avoid any spoilers 🙂

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 🙂

Seriously awesome!!!

Losing my habit

Many moons ago I was studying for my higher school certificate (HSC for the Aussies, final school exams that give you your marks to get into University for everyone else 🙂 ), I had always had issues with exam anxiety. It wasn’t that I didn’t study or didn’t try, I just got in there and somehow convinced myself things were trick questions or they wanted more than what was on there or had blanks. It was a bad time. My grandmother was also very ill and going through cancer treatments.

One day I went to visit my grandmother with my Mum and the doctor chose that day to tell us that she would not be getting better. I blocked up all my reactions and when we left the hospital I kept striding towards the car until my Mum yelled for me to stop. I sat down on a short wall and started crying. My Mum had her cigarettes sitting next to her and I just took one and lit it. That was the day I first started smoking.

I was a pretty considerate smoker I believe. I stood away from people and crowds when smoking. I held the cigarette away from myself and blew the smoke away from myself to reduce the amount the smell stuck to me. I would also eat a mint, wash my hands and give a spritz of perfume after a smoke and like any decent person I binned my butts.

Because my hubby, siblings and mother smoke I have always found it very difficult to quit or cut down. I would also use smoking as an appetite suppressant and didn’t feel I could quit and lose weight at the same time and because I was always trying to lose weight I never really quit.

I always thought I would quit when I got pregnant. For many years of trying I didn’t think of quitting. Then when we found out how much IVF was going to cost us I decided I didn’t want anything risking it not working and I just completely quit on February 15 this year. One day I smoked the next day I just stopped, that evening I was sitting at a table whilst my Mum and Hubby enjoyed a smoke and a cuppa together and it was hard, but I didn’t smoke.

I have now not smoked for 155 days.

I am so very proud of myself. It was not easy. It was in fact very hard to break a habit I had for over a decade. I feel I am healthier for it. I used to always get bronchitis in winter, I have not (touch wood) had anything awful so far this winter (although I also had the flu vaccine for the first time this year). Whilst all my colleagues have been falling around me I have marched on with sometimes mild flu symptoms. I have been an asthma sufferer for years and since quitting I have not had one attack. Not one use of my inhaler. That is incredible to me.

Between quitting smoking and the IVF meds I did put on about 8kgs (my IVF doctor was not pleased) and my eating was just out of control because I was using food to fill the smoking hole. Last week I signed up with weight watchers to help get my eating back on track. In the first week I lost 2.4kgs so I feel like this was definitely a good move.

I knew going in that quitting smoking would be a long road. I was prepared to put on weight and wait for my body to get used to being without cigarettes before attempting to lose it and now I am ready to build a new lifestyle that does not include smoking.

It was a massive part of my life. My husband who generally succeeds at everything he does lasted half a day. I am not mad at him for this because I know how difficult it is. I believe in him and know he will get there.

I have had difficulty because I used to use a smoke as a time of stress relief. Suddenly removing that from my life I believe had a bigger impact than the cravings. To deal I replaced it with watching Netflix and eating chocolate basically everyday. As a chocoholic I must admit I loved this, but my fat jeans did not. They no longer fit 😦 It also did not solve the problem because I was avoiding de-stressing by submerging myself in another world. It was all still there when I turned the TV off at night.

After our fresh transfer for IVF failed I went into a dark hole. I knew I needed to make changes to help my mental health and help me heal from this devastating result. So we took a break from IVF to allow my body to balance out all the hormones and we vowed to stop having timed intercourse for a couple of months (anyone who has had to do this knows what it does to your relationship and we have been trying to conceive for 4.5 years now) and I decided to make some changes.

So what has this loss of habit brought me?:

I no longer have asthma symptoms, I can breathe easier, I don’t get sick as often and if I do I get over it pretty quickly.

My decision to change my lifestyle began 155 days ago when I quit smoking. I knew I was in for a long journey, but so far it has totally been worth it. I have been going to Pilates for 3 weeks and love it. Yesterday I added in some treadmill work before Pilates which my body was not used to, but was very good to me. Pilates has also helped my headspace. I plan to increase the number of times I do it a week because I feel that this could provide me with the de-stress I have been craving. Long soaks in the bath have also helped with this and finding ways to spoil myself a little that has nothing to do with food or smoking has helped with the de-stress too.

The combination of quitting smoking and having a break from IVF has hubby and I connecting like newlyweds, we are coming up on 9 years together and 5 years married and I can with confidence say that our relationship is everything  have always hoped for in a marriage.

Whilst I put on weight initially I am now losing it slowly in a healthy way and filling my body with awesome nutrition to support the beautiful embryo we have frozen just waiting for transfer.

Making the decision to lose this habit has had many positive impacts in my life. It was one of the bigger challenges I have faced in life and I am proud of myself for overcoming it.

 

Response to the discover topic The Things We Leave Behind

 

 

The saga of A & E

I am posting from a place of serious tiredness today. I am not entirely sure my brain is functioning in any sort of what you would call ‘normal’ capacity lol.

Last night my brother took ill and had to go to hospital and his 3 and 4 year old daughters came to stay with us. I didn’t know this had happened until I checked my phone when I finished work at 5pm. Then I raced to get the shopping for dinner done and got home to enjoy the onslaught! Honestly I don’t know how my brother and his girlfriend do it. Major props to them. I adore these girls I truly do, but seriously they are cheeky, devious little ninjas who will always find the most inappropriate thing to play with and make the biggest mess possible.

I arrived home and immediately asked what was in E’s (3 year old’s) hair. Apparently she had decided her hair needed to be shampooed so got into the shower, pumped the heck out of the shampoo bottle and smeared it all through her hair.

It was like this! She went full Shia LaBeouf on me!

The she decided she wanted to play a game that was housed in a ziplock bag so instead of asking for help like a normal person she chewed the bag until she could get to the parts inside it! Seriously you can’t make this stuff up. Her sister A (4 years old) was actually pretty well behaved this visit, I didn’t have to talk to her too much for misbehaving except when she started acting out because E was getting attention for being naughty. A has been pretty well behaved at our place since she found out that if we threaten the time out corner we mean it lol. But she was still trying it on a little bit and not doing what she was told and whining a lot and interrupting and ignoring/pretending not to hear you if you were asking her to do stuff she didn’t want to – you know, normal kid stuff.

Back to E for while… apparently E has spontaneously developed a fear of the toilet. Before I came home she had already weed somewhere and after I got home I was desperately attempting to wrangle them both and throw together homemade pizza, E was playing with the doll house then climbed up on the kitchen bench. I told her to get down, there was some back and forth, but in the end she did it, then I see watery stuff everywhere. It took me a bit to figure it out (I actually figured I must have spilled something whilst cooking because why would I think the kid peed on the kitchen counter?), I realised there was more watery stuff on the floor and I could literally trace it to her. I talked to her about it (she is advanced for a 3 year old and truly knows she should be using the toilet) and asked why she didn’t go to the toilet to be told she “didn’t want to” and that she liked to wee in her pants. So we clean up her and everywhere she has been since she peed and I go back to making pizza. In the end something that usually takes me 10-15 mins to throw together took an hour by which time they were taking turns attempting to steal things from the pantry and fighting with each other and whinging about being hungry. Again normal kid stuff haha. Then there was the whole A standing on the table throwing a basketful of toys around the place whilst screaming with joy. That was so entertaining!

Pizza is cooked and even though they both adore pizza there is all this kerfuffle and a bunch of cajoling to get them to sit down to eat it. E is actually placed in her seat whilst claiming she doesn’t like pizza because it is too spicy. I go to the kitchen and debate with myself whether to try and make my mini pizza or just eat their scraps. Mum convinces me we should do the former, so we embark on that mission. Minutes later E comes running through the house with a piece of pizza flying about in her hand, I catch her and lead her back to the table whilst wondering if it is legal to restrain a child until they finish dinner. I finish making my pizza in record time and bung it in the oven. The girls are behaving because you know… food. My pizza is done and Mum and I ask Dad to keep an eye on them so we can eat.

Haven’t even gotten one bite out of my pizza before hearing Dad yelling. Apparently his view of ‘watching’ the girls is somewhat literal and he is barking orders from his chair whilst E merrily dances on the kitchen bench. I get her down and rowse on her, turns out they have finished their pizza. I give them a second slice. I decide to gobble down my pizza whilst watching a bit of netflix or something and go hide in Hubby’s office. Only to find that his recent rebuilding of the computer has meant everything works weird. So I sit alone quietly in the office eating my pizza and ignoring the thunder of little feet for awhile until I feel sane enough to emerge and help Mum and Hubby (who is now home and has fixed said computer issues).

The girls are bathed. E’s shampoo is properly removed from her hair. A decided to get her hair all wet in the bath so her hair is all messed up too. Both girls have very long hair, A’s is waist length and E’s isn’t far behind. When you have two little girls with very long blonde hair and a serious tanty throwing hate of the hairbrush you wish long and hard that they were yours and you could just shave it all off hahaha. After many months of work with them I am now the only person in the family (including their parents) that they will reasonably behave with whilst getting their hair done. I put in the ‘magic spray’ (AKA detangle spray) which ‘magics away all the knots’ and then when we are all done I do their hair very nicely (usually plaits because that is the best hair style to avoid knots for many hours hahaha) and we all look at their hair and ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’. I still get some tantys during the process and so it can be a very long process. E wasn’t too bad because she was really tired by this point. She was complaining about it and I said she could go to bed as soon as I got her plaits in which she apparently took literally because about 10 minutes after I was done we found her in bed fast asleep.

A took longer. She is not into bed time and fights it like a pro! Her hair took a while because it was seriously bad guys. There were parts in there I thought I might have to cut out because they were matted with whatever she had managed to get stuck in it, but with a mixture of part conditioner part water I managed to work it all out. I plaited her up and then the had multiple stories and was put to bed, then put to bed again, and again. This happened a few times before I stood outside the door and sent her back to bed the second I heard her get up. Then she took to yelling out, she got in trouble for this and I told her if she woke her sister she would be in the corner for a long time. Eventually she drifted off at some ungodly hour at which point the clean up commenced and I poured myself into bed sometime around midnight.

In the morning I wake up to a massive crashing sound and E screaming blue murder. I come out to find Mum cleaning up her cup of tea after E apparently climbed up onto the kitchen bench (seriously she is obsessed) and when told to get down she somehow Chuck Norris’d Mum’s tea all over the kitchen.

This was after she peed in Mum’s wardrobe, I’ve heard of people peeing in wardrobes when drunk, but this was the first time I have heard of it happening because someone was looking at pretty jewelry.

E and A then proceeded to argue much of the morning over normal kid things like stealing each others chocolate milk and whatnot.

Then they were playing nicely on Mum’s piano until E wet herself and the antique stool *facepalm* at which point I put her in the corner. She screamed and cried and I got her calmed down and asked her if she understood why I was going to put her in the corner. She said because she didn’t go to the toilet, I agreed and reminded her that I had said if she did it again that she would go into the time out corner. She went quietly, but tried to make a game of it and got pretty sullen when she realised I wasn’t having any of that. After her 3 minutes in the corner I told her she could come out and speak to Nan and she apologised for weeing on her chair.

Within 10 minutes we found her just as she was hopping off the kitchen bench again with a little bottle. Turns out it was nail polish remover and she wanted to ‘play’ with it. SIGH.

By this time it was 12pm and I had to go to work so I wished my Mum well, kissed and hugged the girls and came to work. I truly do adore my nieces through all of this, yes they can be naughty and cheeky and cause great messes and damage, but I love them so much and often get a lot of giggles out of their antics 🙂

I have no clue what transpired after I left or what condition I will find my parents and the house in when I return hahaha. GULP!

 

Long time, no blog.

There has been a LOT going on lately and my head is very full of all the ‘adulting’ I have had to be doing which hasn’t left much time for me to sort through the things that have been happening.

Most important of all is the fact that we very unexpectedly lost my uncle a couple of weeks ago. He was very fit, he did have diabetes, but it was controlled by insulin and diet. Initial results (which my cousin received the night of his funeral) indicate a heart attack. He hadn’t even retired yet. The whole thing was way too sad and I cannot write too much about it because to be honest I haven’t dealt with my feelings about it yet. Everything during that time became about supporting my cousins and their kids and supporting my Mum and Dad and just getting done what had to be done. My Uncle was not a blood relative, he married my Mum’s sister, but he was best friends with my Dad from a very young age (apparently they pretty much lived in each others pockets from the age of 12 or 13) and my Dad met my Mum because of my Uncle. I would literally not exist if it were not for this man.

He was a wonderful person, he always made time for you and even after he moved interstate (if you were to drive it would take 20 hours) he would call often. He always reminded me of Robin Williams, a soulful person who was quick to smile, always had time for others, quite compassionate, true family man, worked too hard, loved deeply and had sparkly blue eyes. I still need to make time to feel my grief for him. I have certainly had my moments, the funeral was one of the hardest moments of my adult life. Though my family are somewhat spaced around the place now (Russia, Western Australia, Far North Queensland, Sydney, etc.) so we do not see each other as often as we would like we have true love for one another. When a member of a family like ours passes away, the funeral is a truly heavy thing. It is like thick grief soup. In saying that the wake was a celebration of his life, we ate, DRANK, shed some tears, laughed, hugged, shared stories and loved.

Other things that have been keeping me busy lately include house stuff, fertility stuff, work stuff, healthy living stuff, preparing to move and some other family stuff. I shall save these for another day though because I feel like my Uncle Peter deserves his own post. Love you Petie!

In the wake of his passing I have been thinking about how friends and family are such a vital part of our life and have been making an effort to get in touch with people I haven’t seen for awhile just to say, “hey, how you doing?”. I’d like to suggest you all contact one person today that you haven’t talked to in awhile. It might be two weeks, it might be two years, it cannot hurt to just send a quick text and say, “hey, just checking in. How you doing?

 

 

The Final Truth

* Trigger Warning: I am going to talk very seriously about eating disorders. These are my experiences and some might find the descriptions of emotions hard to deal with. Oh and also I swear 🙂 *

This is a hard subject for me to write about, but I have been inspired by another blogger’s honesty and felt it was time for some of my own.

In High School (and some of Primary School) bullies had me convinced I was fat and ugly, I was very good at hiding how much that affected me mentally. No one knew exactly how much I struggled because as it turns out I am an ace at bottling my emotions. Eventually I attempted to stop eating to lose weight convinced if I just lost weight I would be beautiful and the bullying would stop and when I found that too difficult I became bulimic. No one knew I had this problem, I was scarily good at hiding it and in fact managed to hide it in a family of 5 for many months.

Sometime later my best friend who I didn’t get to see often because she moved 40 minutes away was hospitalised because her organs were shutting down due to anorexia, seeing her that ill made me do some serious thinking. I knew about bulimics and had stupidly talked myself into believing that I wasn’t one because bulimics threw up everything and I only made myself sick if I ate something naughty. Seeing my friend hospitalised and being told she might not come out scared me good and I decided to make myself stop.

And I did stop. My girlfriend got better and we have since talked about our experiences, until recently she was one of two people that knew I ever had a problem.

The thing about this kind of illness is that the mental battle doesn’t ever completely disappear. To this day I know she struggles with it sometimes. So do I.

I have been on the infertility journey for four years come this New Year’s Eve, for most of that time I have managed to keep my shit together, but every time I go and see a doctor or a specialist and get told I need to lose weight and that I am not doing enough or working hard enough it sparks a battle I have to work very hard not to succumb to.

Do I over indulge in my everyday life, hell yes, and if I am truly honest it happens too often. To be even more honest *deep breath* I have recently come to believe that I think (particularly in the past) that some of my overindulgence is to prove I am okay. I know this sounds so stupid but it is sometimes almost a test, like “I can totally eat this cheesecake without having a war in my head”. Not all of it is this way and I think it is subconscious, I am not even positive as to whether this is true (mix this with being an emotional eater and I think you really have something); it is just a thought that has been circling for a while now. It is possible it started off this way (pretty sure that part is true), but has now just become my lifestyle, habits that I now need to go back and break.

For me it was also about control. As a teenager I felt so out of control of every aspect of my life, I couldn’t even succeed in controlling my eating, but I could control whether it stayed in my body.

This brings me to why I am bringing this up now. I had not made myself sick for many, many years, over a decade in fact without a relapse. Then the constant and intense pressure from the specialist started, if I do not lose 10kgs I will not be put forward for IVF.

Just to be clear, if I cannot lose 10kgs you guys, I might never have a biological child. Which means my parents and T’s wouldn’t get grandbabies from us and T will never be a father. That is a fuck ton of pressure to carry around with you constantly, every day and with every food and activity choice you make. Slowly but surely the little wars started going on in my head again, the wars got longer and the devil on my shoulder started to gain ground. Still I thought I had everything under control. Then I started to feel as though T wasn’t as serious and dedicated to having a child as I was. I felt like I had to have surgery to get my ovaries drilled and he couldn’t even commit to the nights we were supposed to have sex because his work kept calling him up. The prospect of the needles and complete invasiveness that is IVF had me terrified and I just felt that I had absolutely no control over anything.

Then one day… the devil one a battle.

A couple of weeks later he won another one.

The worst part about it was the complete relief I felt afterwards, then I felt ashamed for feeling so relieved. I was at a crossroads, I could see the two roads in front of me and I needed to make a decision.

One night cinched the deal.

T and I were supposed to have happy time that night, but once again something kept him away so I was left waiting in bed trying to stay awake. Instead of being mad at his work or at him for not telling them to call someone else I turned on myself and after berating myself with stupid friggen stuff that in reality was for the most part untrue or greatly exaggerated I felt a very strong urge come over me. I knew this was the moment. So I made a decision.

I held my body in a tight foetal position with tears running down my face until T showed up. It took a long time for me to get out what was going on. I danced all around the subject. Started with telling him how I felt about his commitment to trying for a baby and his priorities in regards to work. Then my feelings of complete terror surrounding going through IVF (the fear is real guys, I don’t know why, perhaps it is fear of the unknown, but sometimes it is paralysing which is ridiculous. I think I feel like IVF is our Hail Mary pass and if that doesn’t work it’s all over). Then finally I took a deep breath breathe and I told him.

I told my partner of 8 years (husband for 4) that I had been bulimic on and off for a very long time as a teen and that I felt it coming back. I told him everything you guys, what brought on episodes, the fact that I had already succumbed twice in a few weeks and that I was pretty fearful of the road I was heading down.

Then I started sobbing and asked him if he thought less of me, he said of course he didn’t. Then I begged him not to tell my Mum because I was ashamed (ahh fuck it now I am crying). This is ridiculous because my parents would never judge me for this, but I didn’t want to let them down. I also didn’t want to feel like everyone was watching me looking for signs of it worsening. For anyone who has suffered with mental illness or eating disorders (and I am sure many other illnesses) you know exactly what I am talking about.

I made a deal to talk to T when I started having these feelings to try and cut them off before they become all-consuming to the point where I lose another battle.

Interestingly since I have told him the one big thing about me that I have never shared I have not had one instance of being even close to relapsing. I feel as though knowing that even in this we are facing the battle together has made me stronger.

Addition:
I actually wrote this post 2 days ago and once I finished writing it I realised I should speak to my Mum so held off posting it until I had. She was okay and we talked about strategies to help me and everything. I feel better for being able to talk to her, but I really hadn’t wanted to add to her worries.

Budgeting plans

I have been thinking a lot lately about budgeting and living on less. We are by no means in struggle street at the moment, mostly because we are living rent free with my parents (don’t worry guys we totally contribute I swear. We go halvsies on everything else) so we are able to save really well because we are pretty good at that kind of thing. I have even been able to contribute an extra $600 a month towards the mortgage on the land which is nice because it means we are paying off more than interest 🙂

We are covering all of our bills and we have still been able to save, but this could change a lot once we go through all of the surgeries Mr T and I have coming up and then once we take possession of the house, not to mention Christmas in-between so I have been thinking about how to do more with less. I have also been thinking about plans for once we are in the house.

What am I hoping to achieve

I am hoping that in being able to get some additional savings each week now I will be able to:

• Up my extra mortage payment each month from $600 to $1000
• Save between 10% and 20% of my wage. I am hoping for 20%, but I might start off at 10% so it is less of a shock hahaha.

Changes I have already made

• When Mr T and I decided we wanted to buy a house the first change I made was to dump barista made coffee. I worked out that my one bought coffee a day meant I was spending almost $30 a week on coffee! Holy crap that is a bunch. Don’t even get me started on how much Hubby was spending (it’s A LOT more than mine!). The amount we were both spending on coffee each month was rather obscene, if we both stopped immediately within 2 months we could have afforded to buy an expensive coffee machine for the workplace LOL. At the time I was even working at a Library that had coffee (instant) and tea facilities… they even provide milk and sugar! (This is the same Library I now have a full time job with). Stopping this immediately freed up $100 per week!
• I used to love a good shop and buying new things. I was a big fan of STUFF, particularly handbags and things like that. That HAD to stop 🙂 I am now a lot more controlled with my shopping, but I do let myself indulge in some retail therapy from time to time so I don’t feel like such a big hermit!

What I am going to do moving forward

• Currently there is a lot of our “savings” sitting in our everyday account. I am moving that into our savings because we get higher interest on it. I can’t even believe I haven’t already done this. I am going to leave some of it out though because there might be gap payments for our surgeries and if we take out of the Savings account we lose the interest for that month 😦
• Because I have been dedicating myself to living a healthier lifestyle the only downside related to that is the cost of food. It costs a lot more to eat well (especially if you are trying to go organic). However some thing I have figured out is that cooking bigger meals is more cost effective and also means that I have two nights worth of dinner and perhaps even a lunch. Using leftovers can be a HUGE money saver. If you do not like eating the same thing two days in a row see if it is freezable. Most meals will freeze well and it means that you have a healthy homemade microwave dinner for some night you really need it 🙂
  Along the same idea as this I am going to try and be much more organised with food. I did a 5 day healthy eating challenge recently which was great and one of the things I found was that because all my food was already organised I didn’t have to spend brain time during the week thinking about food which was awesome! In planning my food it also means writing a grocery list and sticking to the list means no unnecessary spending 🙂
• I am going to go through my belongings and have a good clean out. I am going to figure out any items I actually need to purchase for my closet (I doubt there will be any apart from a pair of black flats for work which might be pricey, but you should always buy proper shoes for your feet or they will cost you more in the long run – my current pair are literally starting to fall apart). The plan behind this is that by figuring out what I actually need I will shop less for random things I want. It will also cut down a bulk of my clothes which will mean I don’t have to pack and move them and deal with them again in the new house 🙂
• Whilst cleaning out my belongings I am going to see if there are items I could get rid of by selling. One I can think of off the top of my head is a fish tank I haven’t used in years, it is biggish and is a waste of space for me. I don’t expect to make a bunch of money out of this, but if I sell five items for $10 each that is $50 which covers about half of our grocery budget for one week. It all adds up.

Extras

Mr T. is not going to like this – actually I think he will be okay with it. He doesn’t really spend much 🙂

Because we were quite poor when we first got together (in fact we started living together before we went on our first date because we were both without a roommate and couldn’t afford to live on our own) and we went on serious budget living. Honestly we were managing to buy groceries for $50 or less per week we had to be so strict, but being that way for over a year then and staying budget conscious but not as strict in the years following has meant that we can easily afford our awesome dream home. We have worked hard at Uni and jobs to get ourselves into a good position where we can live comfortably.

So why am I wanting to do this? Well my parents went guarantor for our house (apparently 2 professionals in permanent employment with steady work history, a reasonable deposit and enough money to cover it wasn’t enough), in order to release them (and their house) from guarantor status we have to pay off a certain amount. I want to get that done as soon as possible 🙂

Also paying off more now (while we can) gives us more leeway in the future if something drastic happens and we are short on a payment.

Is it okay to eat the world?

It’s been a bad couple of days and it has been really hard to talk about it with anyone because I just am not even processing things at the moment. The only place I am functioning well at is work. I can shut off that emotion crap and get lost in my role. Currently the person I am at work is very different from the person I am at home. I am great at work, I am sparkle girl, I am organised and I get told that I have amazing initiative and they are so happy with me.

At home, as of last night at about 6pm I completely withdrew and basically went mute for a few hours.

I am going to talk about something I haven’t on here before, in fact I have only ever mentioned it to one person on WordPress and that was in comments on her blog. I want to talk about my brother. My brother has a reliance on pot. It worries the hell out of me because over the past few years I have seen it get worse and I have seen him change, he has 2 children who are almost 4 and 3 and the problem has gotten worse since the second one was born (I need to be clear though on the fact that it is never around the children and he never uses it where they can see and he doesn’t keep it where they can get to it). Both babies were unplanned and my brother and his partner were quite young for the first one and had not been together long. Please don’t think I am saying that he doesn’t love his kids, he does, he adores them, but he cannot handle them for long periods of time because his patience is just not awesome. He does know this about himself and is careful.

Basically in general both he and his partner are not dealing with life and their two toddlers. She isn’t working at all, he has casual jobs and seems to get sick a lot which means no pay when he doesn’t go to work. They both seem very dissatisfied with their life and bitch about each other to members of my family.

So now you know the background. The basics anyways…

Which brings me to Clomid – it has had its side effects and at first I thought that my want to withdraw all the time was the side effect, but I am not sure whether it is the side effect or withdrawing is my reaction to the fact I am emotional and don’t want to snap at anybody. Either way I have been trying to deal with that and if I am honest I haven’t been too awesome at it.

So last night I get home from work to my parents and my brother, his partner and my two nephews are there. There was a weird vibe going on and my Dad said not to ask about it, after awhile they went home. I assumed they had had an argument or something. I asked my Dad infront of my Mum and he said it had been a weird day and long story short she is pregnant.

Queue me shutting down in 3…2…1… I just emotionally shut down. I couldn’t deal with it. So I made the right sounds of shock and disbelief and the murmurs of concern and then went about my normal routine of getting dinner ready. Hubby came out (he works from home) for a coffee break and tried to engage me in coversation, I tried to make the right sounds, but we have been together for 8 years so it wasn’t going to fool him. He stopped me from flurrying about the kitchen, made me look at him and asked what was wrong. I couldn’t say it for a second, then when I did I just whispered it, “X is pregnant”. He looked at me for a second and then burst out laughing, “you have to be kidding me?!” he chortled, “what idiots, are you serious? How stupid can they be?!”. Then for just a minute my carefully constructed facade of nonchalance cracked and I started to cry. He engulfed me in a hug until the sniffles subsided and I sent him back to work pretending I was okay.

But I’m not. I am not okay you guys. This is not okay.

Apart from the fact that there is all the emotional issues related to the fact that we have been trying for over 3 years (which really would be enough) I am beyond concerned for this baby. Unless they both completely change their current lifestyles this child is going to have a mediocre life at best and I am not dealing with that. My oldest nephew is a very smart child, but they do not spend time with him teaching him things. They don’t take the boys out for experiences, basically the only place they go is shopping, we live 30mins from the beach and neither of them have ever been. The 3 year old is beyond coddled and is still taken out in onesies all the time, he is referred to as Bubby and is completely emotionally clingy and dependant on his mother and barely talks (he might say 4-5 individual words – no sentences) – there is not a medical reason for this, it is purely because they have not spent time teaching him things. They have just magically expected him to develop this stuff on his own as he grows. Neither boy has any kind of schedule and will sometimes be up until all hours of the night.

But then stupidly even after saying everything I have above, when my Mum said she had talked to her about the fact she needs to really think sensibly and that she does have ‘choices’ and whatever she decides is her choice alone – I couldn’t process it. I couldn’t process the fact that someone would be lucky enough to fall pregnant, but be so irresponsible and lazy that they can’t make an effort to get their lives together so that they can have it. That they would choose the easy way out.

Oh god I have to stop. I can’t. I am getting to upset about it again.

So basically I went through the motions, I made dinner, I ate dinner, I hid in the back room and watched Netflix and ate a LOT of chocolate, I brushed my teeth and went to bed. This morning I got up, brushed my teeth, had a coffee, Hubby tried to talk to me about it and I changed the subject, I caught up with my WordPress reader and then went to work. Once at work, work me emerged and got business done. But now, now I am home again and at home the problem is real and I don’t know how to deal with it yet. I want to eat everything, can I eat the world? On top of everything else I have weird achy feelings in my lower abdomen, they are really weird and I haven’t felt anything like it before. It is almost like when you get bloating before AF, but it is only in my lower abdomen. Is this some weird pre-AF Clomid side effect too? Or is hiding my emotions just wrecking havoc on my body?

I am really hoping the dam doesn’t break at some really weird time. Can you imagine me finding a handbag I adore and just bursting into sobs hugging it? My next blog may be from a padded room hahaha.

If any of you have some advice for me I would completely love to hear it. I am wide open to any kind of advice at the moment 🙂 Thank you for reading my rant and I am sorry if it upset anybody.