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!!!

Where have I been?

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 🙂

 

 

 

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!!!

6 year anniversary of TTC is looming

So the IUI was a bust. Unfortunately as AF was 4 days late my hopes had grown super high. I didn’t POAS because I really wanted that hope to last for a little bit longer. I started bleeding the afternoon before my bloods were done. I let the nurse know and said I was confused because I was extremely regular and I it was very weird for me to be more than one day off. Only to be told that Pregnyl can make AF late. *SIGH* I really wish they would tell you this stuff when they give you the medications. So I thought I would share it with you all so you may avoid being caught unawares…

So far I have learned that Pregnyl and progesterone (anything) can/will delay AF. Obviously everyone’s body is different, we may not all react the same… yadda, yadda, yadda 🙂

As we come up to the 6 year anniversary of TTC in a couple of months I find myself questioning everything. Currently I have been TTC for 70 months, 70 failed cycles. That’s such a burden you guys. One of the most natural things my body should be doing and it won’t. I’ve never even had a BFP. I know people who have had 3 children in the time I have been trying to fall pregnant once!

Here are some of the things I am questioning:

Should I be looking at a different job which is less hours and stress so I can focus more on a health journey? Could I do a secondment at work or ask to go part time in my role for 6 months or longer? But all my pay goes towards an IVF fund which keeps us moving foward and I don’t really know if I could afford a pay cut.

I know in myself I could do amazingly well in this industry. I have been the library industry version of head hunted quite a few times and I am a hard worker who isn’t afraid of change or leaping outside the box. But any amount of success in this industry would not mean much to me if it meant foregoing the opportunity to be a Mum.

 

Recently I have asked myself a very important question…

Would I be willing to basically blow up my life if it meant we could have children?

The answer is yes.

 

Is this something I need to do? I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know.

 

What could this look like?

• I have had doctors talk to me before about weight reduction surgery. I have never really considered it because it just didn’t feel right and I have met quite a few people for whom this wasn’t really a long term solution and they have had to have it redone down the track. During this cycle a nurse who has had it done at the FS office chatted to me about it. I asked her about the fact that we would not be able to do IVF during this time and she said we would still be able to make embryos and bank them, but that generally they will not allow us to transfer them for a year post surgery. I am very much in two minds about this, but will raise it with my FS on Thursday when we see her.
• Leave my job or ask for reduced hours to concentrate on a health journey. This is something I have thought about quite seriously. It makes me really sad because I really love a lot of the people I work with. I would really rather not leave, but I don’t know that my job could be done in less hours. Part of me feels that something drastic like this has to happen though. I have a very sedentary life in this job and there are not a lot of ways to fix that.
  If I get the surgery discussed above I will likely have to have quite some time off anyway so who knows.
• Completely retrain for another industry. This is something I have also thought about quite seriously. In particular I have thought about going back to uni and becoming a nutritionist that specialises in PCOS, IR and Diabetes. I have looked and have found it very hard to find specialists anywhere near me. I have also thought about going back to uni and becoming an specialist in the area of Autism. My nephew has Autism and I know a few other children who are on the spectrum too and there is a lot of talk by specialists of all the restrictions children on the spectrum will have. I would love to be a specialist who works closely with children with Autism to help them work through their own individual difficulties and overcome obstacles as well as develop techniques to help them navigate everyday life. Every single person is different, having Autism doesn’t change that, everyone is a snowflake and you need to treat them as such.
  Both of these options would include more work, stress and sedentary behaviour whilst I become qualified and established so I don’t know how realistic these choices are.

 

Has anyone out there blown up their life for this? Would love to hear your stories. Advise is also COMPLETELY welcome! I would love some!!!

 

 

Ovulation Induction

What is ovulation induction (OI)? It’s a form of fertility treatment that is reasonably non-invasive where you are stimulated to produce one to two mature eggs then given a trigger to release them. You then have timed intercourse (because we all love the scheduled sex amiright?!). I would probably consider this as the next step up from a clomid cycle where you are just given some tablets then told to do it like rabbits. Clomid cycles are also considered OI treatments.

This treatment is generally considered suitable for women who like me have no real great reason for not falling pregnant naturally, those who have low hormone levels or are not ovulating on their own, but have normal tubes and a partner with a normal sperm result.

So what happens?

Well for us this has been our plan:

Day of cycle	What happened
Day 1 11 Aug	Call nurses to advise AF has arrived
Day 2 12 Aug
Day 3 13 Aug
Day 4 14 Aug	50 Gonal F
Day 5 15 Aug	50 Gonal F
Day 6 16 Aug	50 Gonal F
Day 7 17 Aug	50 Gonal F
Day 8 18 Aug	Blood test Result: change to 62.5 Gonal F
Day 9 19 Aug	62.5 Gonal F
Day 10 20 Aug	62.5 Gonal F
Day 11 21 Aug	62.5 Gonal F
Day 12 22 Aug	Vaginal scan and blood tests Result: starting to O, have sex
Day 13 23 Aug	Pregnyl trigger 8.30am Have sex
Day 14 24 Aug	Have sex
Day 15 25 Aug
Day 16 26 Aug
Day 17 27 Aug	Pregnyl again 8.30am to support
Day 18 28 Aug	Blood test

Then we are in that waiting period that all of us fertility challenged community know and love.

I decided to share our plan because a while ago Hubby and I tried to look at what this was and there were not a lot of people putting this information out there so I figured why not help 🙂

Free Comic Book Day

So there is this annual event called Free Comic Book Day. Never heard of it? Check out the information here http://www.freecomicbookday.com/ We have an amazing time with it at our library service with kid and family friendly activities that run all day. We have actually had people tell us they are visiting us rather than the big comic book stores which is amazing! I have taken my nephew to it for all of his 5 years he has been around.

I have been asked to participate this year as a character. Huge excitement!!!!! I get to choose who I want to be and source the costume which hopefully means I can find something that fits okay.

So here’s the thing… have you ever looked for plus sized costumes? Pretty much all of them have the word “sexy” in front whilst men get these awesome looking things like the below with options for fat or skinny people.

Where are all the awesome costume options for shapely ladies?!!

At this stage I am pretty much assuming I am going to have to put one together myself so I have started thinking about who I might like to be. One of the other librarians is going as supergirl. I found some interesting costume (DIY) options for wonder woman which I think could work well. Another one I am pretty interested in currently is Claire Redfield from the Resident Evil comics/world… at least then everything is not as clingy and bodysuity… plus I really like the character.

Here is the current list I am considering:

• Claire Redfield – Resident Evil
• Alice – Resident Evil
• Wonder Woman – Wonder Woman
• Lady Mechanika – Lady Mechanika – would be awesome, but huge amounts of prep.
• Poison Ivy – Batman – would be a GREAT costume, but worried about doing a villain and having the kids be afraid of me when I am trying to get them involved with stuff 🙂 Also sometimes kids might “fight” villains.

Side note: I would totally love to do Abby from the new Ghostbusters, but that character isn’t from the comics 😦

What are your thoughts? There are other comic book characters I love, but I need it to be fat friendly, movable to some degree so I can interact with kids and hopefully more than one piece for ease of pee breaks 🙂 I would LOVE some suggestions from you all!

Annnnnndddddd…….. GO!!!

 

Things that are making me smile

I went for a walk to get a coffee today and our local coffee shop had this up. It made me smile (and want a t-shirt) so I asked the barista if I could take a picture of the sign. He seemed excited that people wanted to share it so I thought I would.

Seriously though… this needs to be on coffee cups and t-shirts… ooh and totes. You just know as a librarian, book lover and someone who is trying to reduce their waste that I love a good tote 🙂

Something else that made me happy recently is that my cover for my new phone arrived. At the beginning of the year I got a new Samsung S7 in rose gold. My contract for my old phone was a few months out of date so it was really time. I always have my phones in wrap round cases – I think it is what makes them last so long. I found a cover I LOVED online that I wanted so much that I literally waited a MONTH for it to arrive from Hong Kong. It only cost $12 though so BONUS!

Honestly, this looks even better in person than I thought it would. Often (as with my last phone case), when the item arrives the colour, quality or image are not as good as you had anticipated. With this product the colour is great, the quality of the materials and stitching is good. The names of some of the texts are a teeny bit hard to read sometimes, but if you are a Harry Potter fan you will be able to work out what they are 🙂

I was super pleased with this, it still makes me happy. The owl is SO cute. I really have a thing for owls, always have. My favourite are Tawny Owls, they are just so little and cute, Boobook Owls are also super adorable and have incredibly expressive faces… plus they have the word ‘book’ in their name 🙂  I don’t think it is overly fair to keep such beautiful animals as pets, but I would love to have them hanging around my place. This little sketch of Hedwig is probably the sweetest I have seen to be honest.

What has been making you smile lately?

Reducing waste

For the last few months I have been thinking on possible ways that I could reduce waste in general personally, at work and for our household. I have done quite a bit of research on this, because you know… librarian. Whilst I am dedicated to reducing our waste in a number of ways I wanted it to be something (at least to start) that does not require massive sacrifices every day.

This has been an ongoing project for me. We started with our home. Whilst we still have all the creature comforts we could ever need we did consider a lot when building. For starters the house was supposed to have a fancy architectural void from upstairs to down which not only wasted power as far as aircon went, it also wasted usable space and the extra windows meant extra cleaning as well. So it had to go. Our toilets and two of our outdoor taps run off recycled water which I am so pleased about (even though it costs more and often doesn’t work for hours at a time) and our mailbox out the front is built from leftover bricks we have from our home. As far as air conditioning goes we have ducted air con in our house that is separated into zones, so on hot (or cold) days we can set the air con to only be on in the areas we are using which is awesome!

I have been using eco bags for shopping for awhile, but I have been getting pretty slack with them to be honest. I have been recycling the plastic bags at the Coles supermarket REDcycling point though when we do our grocery shopping so that is something. For my Australian readers that are not aware Coles have a REDcycle program. You can drop off empty bread, cereal and frozen food bags, plastic shopping bags and other flexible plastic packaging and it is sent off and used to build outdoor furniture for Aussie primary schools and pre-schools. I have been making a much better effort with the eco bags though. They now always go straight back into the boot when we unpack the shopping. My aim is to stop using plastic shopping bags altogether.

One of the other big changes we have made is to stop buying store bought toilet paper. We now have a subscription to “Who gives a crap”. They send a massive box of forest friendly world helping toilet paper every 16 weeks to our door. The toilet paper is great and we feel good about the fact that 50% of the profits go towards building toilets for people who have access to none. Find out more about them here. Just now looking at their site I have realised that they now do tissues and paper towels too!

Food wise to minimise waste I have for the past 2 weeks written a food plan for the week and stuck to it. This means I do not buy more than I will need which minimises the amount of food wastage in the house. The last two weeks the food wastage in our household has been almost nothing. Such an awesome outcome. Is it a bit of effort? Definitely, but I think it is worth it too. The flow on effect is monetary savings and rubbish savings because we are not buying all the extra junk we do not need.

Hubby and I have switched to paperless billing and statements wherever we have been able to. We have been using prescription services like STAN and NETFLIX and borrowing movies from the library instead of purchasing DVDs which has saved a LOT of money and as cheap as this sounds it means we can have a wine and popcorn night at home instead of going to the cinema which costs like $80 at Event these days! We are also planning to swap to rechargeable batteries for all of our remotes etc. We don’t have many items that require AA and AAA batteries anymore, but it would be nice to be able to reduce the waste these create.

 

Future plans:

I would like to have a veggie and herb garden up the side of our house as well as a passionfruit vine and a lemon and lime tree, but those will have to wait for a little bit. I am also considering a compost bin as this would help reduce the grass cuttings from our massive lawn. Currently we are not able to mow our front and back lawn in the same fortnight as the cuttings will not all fit in our council bin 😦

I plan to buy items like basmati rice and vegetable oil and cleaning products in bigger packaging so there is not as much waste.

Well maybe not this big, but you get the idea. Buying in bulk reduces the packaging waste.

I have purchased a reusable BPA free water bottle. This encourages me to up my intake of water as well as not waste plastic bottles or drink as much soft drink or juice because I always have water on hand.

Cleaning wise I plan to do some research (AKA hit the library books) to look at some more cost and environmentally friendly options. Already I have swapped to microfiber cloth which often means that many marks on the walls etc. come off with just some hot water and elbow grease which is grand!

I would love to hear any suggestions that you have. I am pleased that so far my efforts have in general saved us money because we have some very good uses for that 🙂

 

Catch up…

I know, I know, I don’t call… I don’t write… I am a bad blogger. I am very sorry for seriously dropping the ball here. I have to say though I was so touched that some of you reached out to me to make sure I was okay, it meant so much to me.

I want to assure you all that I am here and okay. I have been somewhat busy with crazy life stuff and been going through some things. I have had lots of stress at work, pressure, heavy workload and what not. Mostly it is all very stimulating stuff, but I am sometimes stuffed by the end of the day. I have also been going to the gym a lot more and pilates once a week which often means getting home very late to start with.

I have been having some issues with anxiety. Why must infertility be such a bitch? A coping mechanism I have utlised to deal with this is that I have turned down my filter quite a bit and speak my mind so much more. Weirdly this seems to be working for me as I was asked to act in a very senior position at my library for the last 3 months. Basically I was acting coordinator of 4 branch libraries. I have also recently spoken out about a couple of little things that have bugged me at work and the response has been amazing. Then I presented an idea for bay end merchandising which is VERY different for our library service and the branch supervisor loved it and we actioned it within a few days displaying new items that had not been circulating. The change in circulation within one month was HUGE! They are really pleased which is great.

I have not been being overly good with food which means no loss and no gain which I am actually okay with. I don’t know why, but I am just kinda over the weight obsessing even though I am supposed to because of the fertility stuff, but I am just so over it. It makes me do unhealthy things and have serious stress and anxiety. Where I am now I regularly work out and I eat pretty well, isn’t that healthier?

[I started writing the above some time ago…]

I have fallen behind a bit at the gym due to busy Christmas stuff.

We used our last embryo, it was a boy, it didn’t work out. I was absolutely crushed. Every aspect of the environment, him and me was perfect. There was no reason for it not to work. We were so sure it had. I like couldn’t even believe it when she told me it hadn’t worked I wanted to know the numbers. They weren’t good.

There are so many people in my life announcing they are pregnant at the moment. It is just very hard. There are a few times where I have had to stop and take a deep breath. Sometimes I immediately shut my phone or computer off when I see an announcement. SIGH. I have to just keep believing that one day will be my turn. I can’t give up.

Privacy exposed

So last month with different things to do with the house and landscaping Hubby was calling me often at work asking me to move money here and there across different accounts so we could pay for things. Apparently whilst doing this one day I must have accidentally clicked the print icon and printed the screen I was on. Because I did not realise I had done this I didn’t go looking for the piece of paper.

Normally if someone finds printing on the printer that does not belong to them they put it to the side or if they know the owner they deliver it to them. But no…

Someone found this statement which had my name in bold letters at the top of the page, a list of all 5 of my accounts and their names (meaning mine and Hubby’s) (including our mortgage account) and instead of handing it to me or leaving it to the side of the printer they took it and put it on the notice board in the staffroom. Front and center for all to see my financials. Including recent transactions which showed my pay coming in too, so now everyone knows that. Let me be clear in stating that there is no way any team member would have thought this was the place to put lost print outs. It is 3 rooms away from the printer.

Two team members noticed it yesterday morning and ripped it down for me.

What an awful, malicious thing to do. What a dick!!! Management is furious, but completely impotent in this matter because we don’t know who did it, we’ll never find out unless they decide to continue whatever this BS is against me and escalate things.

I don’t get it though. I am not mean to anyone. Even when I stand up for myself or someone else I am not mean about it. This is awful. How dare someone expose such private information about me. Plus, why??? What could they possibly get out of it? There was nothing in the accounts. Are you trying to shame me because I am poor? I don’t understand! So weird!!!

There are only one or two women at work that are malicious enough to do something like this so I am pretty sure I know who it is. She won’t make eye contact with me and twice today I have walked towards her and when she has seen me she has changed direction. Then we went out for a staff luncheon and I made sure I sat next to her. She put her bag inbetween us and moved away angling herself away from me and did everything she could to avoid conversation with me without appearing rude. She has been fine with everyone else so I am pretty sure she was the one who did it.

Do you guys think this is the beginning of something and I need to look out for myself or just a one of heinous act?