Confessions

Tons of random ramblings at 9-weeks-old….

• It’s dangerous for me to go to the baby section at Target….everything is so cheap so I go a little too crazy! Can’t resist sundresses for Honey and polo onesies for Champ.
• I remember when I was on bedrest, a lot of folks IRL and in blog comments told me the worrying never ever ends when you have kids. This is definitely true, but I must say that the relief that the babies made it into the world safe and sound still has not worn off. I do not miss the intense anxiety of pregnancy one bit.
• Whenever someone asks me the babies’ birth weights, I tend to add a disclaimer along these lines: “But I ate a ton of cheeseburgers and sheperd’s pie and milk shakes and protein during pregnancy!” I need to let it go.
• Even though I was anxious most of the time, I loved every moment of being pregnant. I was pretty worried I’d get the baby blues after birth, but I didn’t. I think being so grateful to be able to walk around and do chores and lift things again took the edge off (since I’d been on bedrest for weeks).
• I’ve been getting phantom kicks since the babies came out.
• The babies are tiny celebrities whenever I take them out. People go crazy for twins. They deserve the attention, sweet sweet things!!!!!
• I’m still amazed and grateful and over the moon happy that I can breastfeed. I was so so so so so worried I wouldn’t be able to.
• I love bonding with the babies while nursing, and I love providing nutritious breast milk for them, but pumping all of the time takes. a. toll.
• Plus, I miss my small boobs. They never grew or got sore during pregnancy, then BAM, right after giving birth, they arrived. I can’t fit into any of my button-up shirts or old tops.
• But it is pretty cool that hubs mentions how “awesome” my boobs are at least once a day. 🙂 I have a serious rack, it’s out of control.
• Even though we’re NOWHERE close to thinking about more kids, I do hope and pray that my cycle/period magically comes back when I stop breastfeeding. I want it to work again. (Pregnancy has been shown to “re-set” the body in some anovulatory women.) I think about that way too much.
• Even though I’m BFing AND I’m anovulatory, hubs and I are using condoms just to be really really really safe. It seems so strange to use protection, considering the lengths we went to for our babies.
• Condoms suck.
• I REFUSE TO GO BACK ON THE PILL. I still blame it for my anovulation.
• I wish I was skinny for my college reunion this weekend. I know that’s totally vain, and I just had twins, and yada yada….but I just don’t feel comfie in my bod right now. I have these huge boobs, a mushy tummy, a soft jawline…it’s okay, it’s just hard to be on display, if that makes sense? OF COURSE our babies are 200% worth it.
• Even though I miss my pre-IF figure, I will say that breastfeeding burns a ton of calories. I’m almost at my pre-pregnancy weight—which is insane considering the amount I eat these days—everything just seems to be situated totally differently.
• I’m running (shuffling) a few times a week, too. I sent an excited text to my little sister last week that I was up to running for 33 minutes straight and she wrote back, “Only that long, are you injured?” Uhhhhhhh, thanks? She doesn’t get that even though I’m “a runner,” you can’t take this much time off, give birth, and then have the muscle strength or fitness to bang out a five-miler. Kids!
• I picked up the babies’ birth certificates downtown yesterday afternoon and tears welled up when I saw their names on those official documents and after signing for them as “Mother.” Wow wow  wow. It will never ever get old, I am in awe of my amazing luck and life.

I think that’s enough random-ness for one night! xoxo

Home again home again, jiggity jig

I survived the wedding weekend and the 40 hours away from Champ and Honey and hubs! It ended up being really fun, and I am SO HAPPY I was able to be there to support my friend and watch her take this huge step of marriage in her life. I did miss the babies constantly and I called/texted/emailed hubs a dozen times to check on them. I brought one of Champ’s swaddle blankets with me and cuddled up with it on the plane rides and at night so I could smell their sweet baby smell while I was away. And anytime a wedding guest asked if I had pics of the babies, I whipped out my phone and showed them a few of the three hundred pics I have saved on there of the babies. 🙂 Their ears must’ve been ringing alllllllll weekend long.

I realized that it’s been FOREVER since I was truly in a social setting. Hubs and I went out to dinner on February 13 (his brother was visiting) and then the next morning the pre-term labor stuff happened and I was put on bedrest for five weeks, and then the babies came and I’ve been a hermit who only leaves to take walks, etc. Of course we’ve had friends over to visit, and we went out to dinner on my bday last month, but I haven’t been ACTIVELY social in about three months. I walk around the hourse in my lulu pants and glasses. I live on coffee and granola bars. It felt like I was being released into the wild! A blow out! Make-up! Pictures! Dancing! Small talk with six other bridesmaids! Cocktail hour! A sit-down dinner! A seven-hour long wedding reception in which to meet new people and catch up with old friends!

I felt like I went from being a hermit to a social butterfly. It was crazy and overwhelming but actually completely wonderful.

And OH MY GOSH was it amaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing to walk in our apartment door yesterday afternoon and to find my chubby babies waiting there. I felt like my heart was going to burst. We spent the ENTIRE afternoon snuggling and cuddling together in my bed. 🙂

I’m glad I got the social rust off, as we are heading to our 10-year college reunion in a couple of weeks. AHHHHHH!!!!! I reserve the right to change my mind, but the current plan is for all four of us to fly (!!!) to the East coast and set the babies up with hubs’s parents and spend the first night at their house. Then hubs and I will head to campus for a day and night sans babies. Then hubs’s parents will bring the babies up to campus on Saturday so we can introduce them to our friends. I actually ordered Honey a dress and Champ a polo shirt in our school colors, so I think this is really and truly happening.

If you had told me, when they were born at under 5 pounds, that we would be able to (physcially and emotionally!) take them on a plane trip at 10-weeks old and introduce them to our best college friends, I would’ve thought you were crazy. But their ped has given them 110% clearance to travel. And I think it’s going to happen….

So yeah, basically I have two weeks to try to get my body in a place I feel good about. Honestly? I just don’t have the time or energy to exercise and lift like I need to in order to get my figure back. And I eat even more these days (breastfeeding makes me super hungry) than when I was pregnant. It’s not a good time to diet. (Of course, I don’t really need ice cream at night, but that’s another story!) Being a couple months postpartum and seeing tons of peeps you haven’t seen in 10 years = not ideal timing. I’m going to do a post on recovery from bedrest and birth + exercise + eating, etc at another time. But these babies are (of course!!!!) worth this soft body with its ginormous boobs!!!

Holiday happenings

A very belated HAPPY HOLIDAYS, bloggies! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, whatever you celebrate!!

I’ve been totally AWOL! First work was craaaaaaaaaaaaaazy before the holidays. Then we were in Philly for Christmas with hubs’s family and I forgot to pack my lappie’s power cord….so I had to ration my battery power to actually do work and not blog. (Sigh.) I read your posts from my phone but it’s impossible to comment that way so please forgive me for being behind in checking in with all of you! We got stuck in Philly with the crazy weekend snowstorm. (Ugh.) We ended up renting a car and driving down to DC yesterday because we couldn’t get a flight back to Chicago from Philly, all of the 12-hour trains from Philly to Chicago were full (!!) and we didn’t feel comfortable driving the 12 hours on winter highways….anyway, we finally made it home at midnight last night and I am so so so so so so happy to be here! Back to my comfie bed (no more fold-out couch!), my lovely Snoogle body pillow, my humidifier, my awesome shower with its amazing water pressure, my healthy breakfast options (no more bacon every morning!)….ahhhhhh, home, sweet home.

The babies got lot of loot this Christmas. 🙂 We got carseats and a travel crib from my parents. Hubs’s parents gave us a rocking chair for the nursery and some onesies. Hubs’s sister gave us a nursing pillow and stuffed animal and more onesies. Hubs’s brother gave us a flip video cam. And my sibs all went in together on a totally adorable night light for the nursery (above) that I would never have splurged on for myself but have been eyeing for 6 solid months.

Lucky us, lucky babies! And now for some random updates….

I am feeling good but big. I stopped jogging after the Turkey Trot with my fam over Thanksgiving and have been rotaing yoga DVDs, swimming and the elliptical a few times a week. Just getting to the gym is becoming more of an effort but it’s so worth it to get some exercise and feel like I’ve got a healthy routine in place. Hubs and I hit the gym a few times over the holidays and it not only felt good to move around, but it was also lovely to get some Zen, me time away from the house.

*****

Over the holiday weekend I had some discharge that freaked me out. It was more copious, yellow and a thicker consistency than the usual thin, white stuff I get. The next time I went to the bathroom there was some semi-solid discharge, about the size of a pea. Of course I used my phone to Google my findings and found scary stories about women losing their mucus plugs and going into premature labor. It was the day after Christmas and we were officially stuck with the snow so I opted not to call my doctor’s office, figuring they’d hear the fear in my voice and invite me into the office to get it checked out (which I couldn’t do). The discharge went right back to normal and I took it easy snuggling with hubs’s family’s dogs in front of the TV the rest of the weekend so I feel okay about it. But I’ll ask my OB about it when I go in for my growth scan next week. (Grow babies, groooooooow!)

*****

I also have my gestational diabetes test next week. Just this month my clinic eliminated the orange drink-blood test because they felt they were getting too many false positives. So they told me to scrap the orange glucose fluid they’d sent me home with in November and to come in for that 2nd test most folks only take if they fail the first one, after having fasted for 8 hours. I know twin Moms tend to develop gestational diabetes more often so we’ll see what happens…..at least I’ve had my fill of egg nog (gallons worth, seriously!) before I get the news!

*****

I rolled my ankle and fell again today. 😦 Hubs and I were walking some groceries into the apartment and I bit it as I crossed a small patch of snow to the sidewalk. WTF?!?!? I twisted my body and landed on the snow on my side, but it scared me again and I’ve got new bruises and my right ankle is swollen and blue again. (I felt them bumping a little bit after lunch so that made me feel better.) I guess that old saying that pregnant women lose their sense of balance/have looser joints is not a myth. I have been so careful, but I guess I need to take it up a few more notches!

*****

Between the weird discharge, the stress and fatigue of traveling and being stuck away from home due to the snowstorm, I’m starting to see why many clinics encourage preggos not to travel past 24 weeks. I have one more trip to KC for a shower with my Mom’s girlfriends the first week in January and that’s the end of airports for me. I am obviously so very very excited for this shower and to be home with my family again (three times from Oct 31 to Jan 7, that’s totally a record for us!), but the honest truth is that nothing sounds worse to me at this moment than traveling again in 9 days. I pray we don’t get stuck again and that it goes a lot more smoothly than our recent trips to NYC and Philly!!

Maybe?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!!

We visited my family over the holiday weekend. My older brother and his wife couldn’t be there because of work, but it was great to see my parents and little brother and sister. Hubs and I split the holidays between our fams, alternating who we visit at Christmas and Thanksgiving every year. I know my Mom is reallllllllllllllllllllllllllllllly sad we won’t be flying home for Christmas….and that manifests itself as intense guilt in me. But beyond little comments here and there bemoaning missing us already at Christmas, we had a wonderful weekend.

Early on Thanksgiving morning, I braved a 16-degree, windy morning for a 5K Turkey Trot with my Dad, sister, brother and hubs. I shuffled the entire thing! Usually I’m out in front of my family, but this year I was the caboose. 🙂 Totally fine by me, I was happy in my snail slow pace. It has been getting uncomfortable to jog/shuffle….I think I am just getting too large. So that was probably my last “run.” From now on, it’s going to be swims, yoga and maybe the ellip and light weights. All of it super EZ, of course. A tiny dose of exercise a few times a week keeps me sane!

After the Trot we began cooking the Thanksgiving meal. Fun fun fun!!! (Even though I totally ruined my dish—what should’ve been a delish sweet potato hash—by over-salting it. I would’ve been cut in a second if it was an ep of Top Chef. So JV!) Later that afternoon I relaxed for a loooong time on the couch to watch football with my sibs and hubs. A couple of times, I thought I felt a very very gentle “bump” in my lower left stomach region. Not bubbles or flutters or tickling or kicking, but a so-subtle-I-could’ve-imagined-it bump. It made me so happy! I willed it to happen again and again. Since then, I THINK I’ve felt it a couple of times….usually on my lower left but also right by my belly button.

I have no idea where the babies are located in my tum, but I sooooooo hope this is them, beginning to make themselves known. It’s not kicking or crazy movement or anything close….it’s MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE something.

I also realized that I’m never sitting for an extended amount of time or laying around unless it’s bedtime. At work, I’m “officially” at a desk-job, but the reality is that I’m on my feet walking somewhere and doing something away from my desk every few minutes. And then I come home and cook or clean or whatev….I finally relax after dinner in front of the TV…and my then I’m so tired that I usually scoot into bed and promptly fall asleep within a few minutes.

SO. The point is….it’s hard to find long spells of quiet where I can replicate my lazy Thanksgiving afternoon during which the babies MAYBE moved. Or maybe I didn’t really feel them move. It could very well be that I want this so badly that I’m imagining things. But I would really really really love to feel more of it. 🙂 It would so help soothe my anxiety!

ANYWAY! Tomorrow will be 20 weeks. And it’s T-minus seven days until our big anatomy scan. I am thankful for so so so so much this year, but mostly these babies, who hubs and I cannot wait to share our lives with. We love them so very very very much. And I pray and hope with everything in me that these babies are growing and healthy and strong and that everything is okay.

I will leave you with our first purchase for them. We saw these Dr. Seuss jammies discounted on the baby-deals site Zulily.com earlier this month and couldn’t resist. 🙂

TGIF

I slept like a LOG last night. I cannot even express what a difference that seemed to make in my mood and well-being when I got up this morning. Of course I was still incredibly anxious about the babies, because unfortunately that’s how I roll, but I felt waaaaay better than I did yesterday (frazzled, fatigued, nauseous, worried). I have got to make an effort to get to bed earlier and to do relaxing things before bed (warm bath, good book instead of email, etc) so I can sleep more soundly. Huge difference.

ANYWAY! The 18-weeks appointment with Dr. Zen’s partner set a new world record for quickness, but what it lacked in length it made up for in relief: I saw the babies’ beating hearts on the portable u/s screen (for all of two seconds). Yip!

Other notes, probably boring to everyone but me (ha!):

• Dr. Zen’s partner said it was the right call to stop baby aspirin. I should’ve stopped it earlier, definitely by 12 weeks. But she assured me I haven’t hurt the babies by taking it until 17 weeks. Also, she wanted to know what the heck was I thinking stopping medicine without calling them and double-checking. I was going off of directions suggested at OB appointment #1 at 9 weeks so I didn’t think it was a huge independent decision, but still….I see her point.
• She did a manual cervix check: I’m long and closed, as I should be. I know some twin moms get exact cervix length measurements at each appointment, and of course I asked for one because I’m obsessed with what other people in blog land are doing at their appointments (haha), but she said they actually prefer the manual method so that’s what I’ll get.
• I have the all-clear to get my hair highlighted if I want to. (Yes, I want to!)
• She said most first time Moms feel movement between 20 and 25 weeks, EVEN if they’re carrying twins. So all of you 16 and 17 and 18 and whatever-weekers are serious overachievers! 🙂
• My chronically itchy legs have absolutely nothing to do with pregnancy, it’s just winter dryness. (Haha.) I’ve invested in some intense Eucerin products so I’m hoping for some relief.
• No, she will not look for the gender using the portable u/s (I always ask if they can tell, heeee); we’ll just have to wait a while longer.
• I’ve gained 11 pounds so far. She says this is good, but it seems low to me. The OB said at 20 weeks you start gaining more quickly and that once they begin measuring the babies they’ll have a better idea of how I’m doing and they’ll tell me if I need to pack on more pounds. She said as long as the babies are getting what they need and growing on track, she’s not concerned about the exact number.
• I can and should keep up my jog/shuffle or swim routine until I don’t feel like it anymore, which she warned could be coming soon. I’m really hoping to make it through the 5K Turkey Trot with my fam on Thanksgiving morning.

I always bring a list of Qs and I’ve noticed my list has gotten shorter and shorter each visit. (Not that you could tell from the bullet points above, but trust me, they can get pretty long.) I’m sure it will start getting longer again at some point….

This is a totally random side note, but after the appointment I tried on a dress at a maternity store and under the ridiculously bright lights of the dressing room I noticed a sort of bluish/purple-ish hue around my belly button, almost like a subtle bruise. Has anyone else experienced this? I would’ve asked about it at the doctor’s office, but of course it happened afterwards. It doesn’t hurt.

My next appointment is the anatomy scan with Dr. Zen herself in 2.5 weeks. AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! Please, please, please, please, please let everything be healthy and perfect with our babies! And just FYI, I have NO idea what gender(s) they are. None. It seems from comments on previous posts that 90% of you are thinking two boys. Hubs thinks one of each (only because he’s an econ guy and statistically that’s most likely), followed by two girls, then two boys. I really, truly have no idea. But I guess if I was FORCED to make a guess, I would say two boys—probably because I take all of your comments to heart so dearly!

I didn’t run my 10th marathon on 10-10-10

And I couldn’t be happier about it. 🙂

Yesterday, on the awesome date of 10-10-10, 45,000 runners woke up at the crack of dawn and raced 26.2 miles in the Chicago Marathon. I watched the elite athletes race on TV. Even if you are not into running, if you want to see the most inspiring, chills-inducing finish EVER, please watch this AWESOME video that shows the last mile or so of the men’s race (they run so fast it’s only a few minutes long). I was literally yelping so loudly from the living room that hubs had to come in to see what all of the racket was about. I got to meet Sammy Wanjiru last year for work—he’s the guy in red—and I heart him!! (Weird coincidence, the day I interviewed him was also the day I popped my first-ever Clomid pill.)

For the past 15 months I have been so careful about not over-extending my body and that has meant no racing and no long distance runs. (Except for a race over Memorial Day weekend, right after I found out IUI/injects 1.0 was a bust and I was on bench month because of a cyst.) This has honestly been pretty tough for me because I guess you could say I have always fallen back on races as life-preservers to get me through hard spots. I signed up for my very first marathon when I was a few months out of college….hubs was working insane 100+ hour weeks in his i-banking job in NYC and I was feeling lonely and lost in a new city. Answer: Find a goal, connect with the running community, dedicate myself to training and feel good about myself during a rough time. (It worked!)

Of course I have done plenty of races just for the fun of it, but I have repeated that recipe throughout my life. When we moved to Chicago three major things happened within the span of one month….we were plopped into a new city, I started a new job, and we got married. Whew! My answer to the stress: train for and run the Chicago Marathon, of course!

During infertility treatment, training would’ve been a great coping mechanism for the hormones and stress I was putting myself through. Based on my hormone levels—and the fact that I was not underweight or low on body fat or anything like that—neither Dr. C, nor Dr. K, nor Dr. Awesome said running caused my anovulation (that may forever be a mystery), but they all agreed I should relax on it during treatment. Running was exactly the opposite of what my body (physically) needed. And we wanted a baby so very very very badly that there was NO QUESTION I would chill the heck out and let my body rest up.

So I stopped training for stuff cold turkey. And as for plain old exercise, I stopped running hard, and long, and I ran less often.

Over the past year I have fielded a lot of questions from coworkers and friends about what race I’m gearing up for next. When a big part of your identity is as an active, sporty, race-running person, I guess that’s what happens. It would hurt my heart every time I’d give my “Actually, I’m taking some time off and running for fun for the joy of running!” response.

It was the truth, but still.

I told my bosses we are pregnant on Thursday morning (!!!) and gave them the green light to tell people at work (I am much too shy for that!). So the news slowly trickled around most of the office by the end of the week.

I think it’s pretty awesome that I was given the gift of feeling comfortable enough to tell people right before the marathon.

Now when someone asks me, “Did you race this weekend?” I can say, “Nope. I am pregnant!” I am so lucky and so very very grateful to be where I am today.

Meandering through June

I ran 8 miles in the pouring rain early on Saturday morning. I felt slow and heavy, and my legs still burned with the after-shocks of the hard (untrained!) effort of running the race last weekend. But I reveled in every step. I felt relief that the storm kept the Moms and Dads with their baby joggers off the lake path. I sloshed along and felt my lungs searing, my quads burning and my feet freezing; it all felt good. And then I walked/limped into our apartment, looking like a drowned rat, and I poured a mug of steaming coffee, cuddled into a cozy sweatshirt, and just sat there sort of staring into space: too tired and numb to think or to be scared or to feel sad.

Running is my escape.

*****

Hubs and I joined a CSA for the first time this summer! We’re sharing a weekly delivery of farm-fresh produce with three other friends. The first shipment…..romaine lettuce (sorta a snore, we’re using for side salads), spinach (we used it as a topping on a homemade deep dish pizza last night), kale (sauteed with shallots and garlic and lemon and served alongside leftover grilled chicken after a late night at work on Friday). With the leftover spinach, we’ll make this awesome bean dish, which is hearty enough to serve as a main course. The real toughie in the box was rhubarb, which hubs and I have never cooked with. We’re making a strawberry-rhubarb crisp tonight to follow hubs’s pulled pork and my homemade potato salad (with real mayo, no store stuff!).

You can see why I really should run 8 miles every day, right?

****

Meanwhile, we spent Memorial Day weekend planting veggies, herbs and some flowers. We also bought some cushions for the wrought iron furniture on our (tiny) front and back decks. We’ve live in this apartment for three years and had never done all of this! OMG, now I could literally live (with a book and a glass of vino) on my back deck. It. Rocks. (Dudes, I went to Home Depot four times and Target two times in the course of three days!)

I must say that I melted a bit watching hubs get down and dirty with the plants as we potted them last weekend. He keeps checking on them, too, making sure they have enough water and remarking on the weather and how the sun or clouds might effect them. 🙂 Ohhh, my sensitive little heart. Imagine if I ever get to see him with our baby?

****

We’ve also been decently social lately. (Ugh, I’ve been such a little hermit. Especially with the break…I just…I have nothing to say to anyone right now and it’s horrible, I know, but it’s how I feel.) We went to a birthday party for a college friend on Tuesday night. I was sooooooo not in the mood to be social and celebratory, but I sacked up. It ended up being a fun party and it was distracting. It majorly helped that the group we were hanging with was mostly singletons, so babiesbabiesbabiesbabies = not on their minds. Thursday night we went to a spur of the moment dinner at a restaurant called Schwa with some friends. That was freaking awesome. (More on that in another post. We went to THE BEST restaurant in Chicago/possibly the country and it’s not really fair I’m acting all, Ohhh, whatevs, I’m being social about one of the best meals of my entire life!!!)

*****

We have our consult with the new RE on Thursday morning. I’m sure I’ll get nervous in a few days, but for now I’m just excited. I wonder what this new RE will think of my treatment thus far? I’m worried he’ll look at my nine months with clinic #1 and say, “I cannot freaking believe they had you on Clomid three times given your hormone levels!!!!” or something like that. I’m equally worried he WON’T say something along those lines. 🙂 Oh geez, can I give an RE a break?

Anyway, T-minus 3-days until the Dr. Awesome consult. Looking forward to the appointment takes a bit of the sting out of my daily cocktail of BCPs, Pre-Naties, supp supps, etc. I’m gonna run and cook and garden my way through Thursday.

I miss the old me

The BFN on Wednesday was expected but of course it still sucked. I got back into bed and quietly cried while hubs hugged me. But I think I bounced back pretty well. I talked myself into focusing on the positives of the cycle and tried to see the BFN as bad luck….not further proof that my body is f-ed up. I have to work hard not to think about it too much. Not to wonder if there’s more bad stuff going on with my body that I don’t know about. “Normal couples only have a 20% chance of conception each cycle.” Haven’t we all been told that a bazillion times? I know it’s true. But normal couples don’t have the meds to produce multiple follicles. And they aren’t taking Ovidrel to ensure a strong ovulation. And they aren’t having expertly prepped swimmers deposited into their uterus at the perfect time.

You know?

So I wonder…..what went wrong in May? Did my mature follie(s) hold a good egg or was it empty? Did I even ovulate? Did we time the IUI correctly? Did we fertilize an egg? Did the embryo divide correctly? Was my lining too thin for implantation? Did an embie try to implant? Did it start to and then stop? What went wrong? Everything? Nothing? Bad luck? And so on and so forth.

******

So I went to CD2 monitoring very early this morning and unfortunately the injects left me with a cyst on the right ovary. Once again, I expected it. I mean, I pretty much talk about my cysts and benched months ad nauseum. But it still hit me pretty hard. I was secretly hoping for a miracle….that I could begin injecting tomorrow night and numb myself—to the questions I posed above—with a fresh start and some hope.

But my body let me down again. My body can’t ovulate. It doesn’t produce LH like it should. It has trouble with its lining. It can’t get pregnant. And it develops cysts and benches me. Over and over again.

*****

I used to be very proud of my body. How it can run marathons and bike for hours and swim more than a mile and walk all day. How it carries groceries and lifts weights effortlessly. How it sits at a desk all day and works hard. How it sleeps soundly. How it still can play soccer and basketball and tennis 13 years after I stopped playing competitively. How much love it is capable of. How motivated and disciplined and overachieving it can be. This year has slowly eroded my confidence and love for my body. My body keeps letting me down. It feels weak and fragile and jealous and lonely and….broken. I don’t even recognize it most days. Especially not on monitoring days.

So I’m doing something crazy tomorrow morning. I got a last minute entry into the 10-mile Memorial Day Weekend run I’ve done every year since I moved to Chicago. It will undoubtedly be my slowest 10 miles, EVER. I am not trained or even close to prepared. I’ve run once in the past 2.5 weeks. But I think I can finish the distance and I want to participate in a race—where I feel happy and comfortable and hopeful and excited and joyful. I want to feel the sore muscles all weekend long and remember that my body can accomplish awesome things.

I need to remind myself what my body is good at. Because I am losing faith in it by the day and it’s breaking my heart.

Rookie ramblings

The wedding weekend in NYC was wonderful and a very, very nice distraction. I am now home and a whopping 12 days into the 2ww! 🙂 I DID end up jogging with my good friend over the weekend (who is incredibly dear to me but does not know about my IF because I seem to only be able to talk to you bloggies about it) and it felt awesome. I took it very EZ and drank lots and lots of water during the run and am fairly certain I didn’t thwart any potential implantation.

Speaking of implantation, I still have zero signs that we’re finally pregnant. On the night of 8DPO I *thought* I might’ve had a trace of that twinge-y lower abdomen stuff many women describe, but it only lasted one evening and, honestly, I was thinking about my uterus so intently that night that it’s more likely I either a) imagined it, or b) was so hyper-aware of my body that I noticed something that’s always there anyways.

And that, my friends, is it….so whatevs! I have zero desire to test early. I’ve decided folks who test early must have a strong suspicion that they’re knocked up so they’re really excited to see that BFP. Me? I’m still hoping for a miracle and praying for a symptom here or there, but mostly trying to prepare my psyche and heart for Wednesday morning’s result. (My clinic only does a Beta if you get a positive HPT; I need to go buy one.)

When in doubt, which is 97.7% of the time, I cling to this awesome post by Leslie as proof that—depsite what blog-land and message boards suggest—it IS definitely possible to be knocked up without any symptoms. Whatever happens, I will take the 2ww to being benched ANY TIME. Of COURSE I would be over the moon to have beginner’s luck, but simply living with the potential that our hopes and dreams could finally be realized has been truly amazing. A couple times I even daydreamed about what we might name our little one. I haven’t allowed myself to do that since last summer when I blissfully and naively thought the answer to my lack-of-period-woes was a 10-day dose of Provera. I have absolutely treasured these two weeks of feeling—for the first legit time—like we’ve had a shot at starting our little family.

Figuring more stuff out (kinda)

I mentioned that Dr. K doesn’t think my endurance exercise from 22-years-old to 30-years-old—10 marathons, almost four dozen half-marathons, one Half-Ironman, four Olympic-distance triathlons and too many 10Ks, 5Ks and Sprint triathlons to count—are responsible for my infertility. If they were, I’d have some red flags in my blood work. (Low estrogen, low LH and low testosterone.) And I don’t have them, except for the LH.

I told her I enjoy exercise and asked if she would give me some guidelines for a healthy amount of working out. If she had told me that it would be wise—even JUST IN CASE—to nix exercise, I would’ve gladly done it. I was so desperate to hear there was something else I could DO to help my chances, I would’ve given up my workouts. But she didn’t say that all. She said she doesn’t want me to stop exercising or doing so little I don’t get the benefits I enjoy—clearly for me it’s a stress reliever. That was encouraging!

This morning hubs and I jogged to the gym (about 1.25 miles) and then lifted for about 20 minutes and then jogged most of the way home (maybe 1 mile). The old Egg would’ve SCOFFED at that workout. I mean, really, I would’ve felt like I hadn’t even earned my breakfast. But I am totally cool with it these days. While we were jogging home, hubs asked if I felt like now I would get back into my old exercise routine (not training for anything, but running about 25-30 miles a week, plus Spinning/swimming/x-training and lifting) given that Dr. K doesn’t think exercise is remotely related to my fertility issues.

Honestly? No. I don’t have any desire to. I’m embracing this new way of working out. I’m excited about getting into yoga, which I’ve dabbled in over the past year. I’m enjoying running because I want to, because it feels good, because it makes me feel clear-headed and less-stressed and anxious. I’m learning that I do not have to run 6 miles to get those benefits. Sure, I miss my flat stomach and toned upper body….but I do not miss feeling guilty if I miss a day or getting so wrapped up in the intensity and sweat of exercising. Truthfully, if I want to be a little slimmer I can eat fewer cheeseburgers and cookies, I do not have to train for a half-marathon.

Now all of that said, I still struggle with this transition. I admit I did feel intense pangs of “I miss that soooo much” while I was following the Boston Marathon coverage on Monday. I am SO FAR from being in that kind of shape—or any racing shape—and it’s a difficult pill to swallow as races begin popping up around Chicago. An extra layer of complexity? Part of my job is covering racing/running/athletic–related news. So I cannot really escape that world. A couple of weeks ago a business contact emailed me about joining her team for an upcoming 10-mile race. I declined and recommended a couple other staffers who might be interested. She immediately emailed back: Are you pregnant? It kind of sucked. I turned bright red in my cube and felt like smashing a brutally rude reply into the keyboard. But I just said, No! Definitely not. We are traveling to so many weddings that I’ve decided not to train for any long distance races this summer.

I am SERIOUSLY considering feigning an injury—something I’ve never done!—to suppress more questions like hers. A lot of colleagues are already asking me if I’m training the Chicago Marathon this summer and my current bumbling response, “Maybe, I don’t know! I’m so burnt out on training so I’m not sure….” is literally inviting them to continue asking and asking. That—combined with the 10-15 pounds I’ve put on—is all a bit suspicious. I don’t want another person to ask me if I’m pregnant. I’ve taken to carrying Diet Cokes around the office.

The truth is, I’m comfortable with where I am, most of the time, and that’s what matters.