My Lenten resolution

My first entry on this blog was about how I planned on giving up reading other people's blogs for Lent, and instead devoting that time to writing my own blog. We are just a few days before the close of Lent, and I'm happy to say that I have done well keeping up my own blog, even if I totally broke that resolution a while ago and went back to reading some of my favorite intertubes writers. Oh fricking well. I am pleased with the results of this little experiment, even though I have yet to make this blog public. Beyond a few close friends, I'm really not comfortable sharing the getting pregnant stuff with the world. Once I am pregnant, and that baby is safely growing inside my belly and making me crave McDonald's entirely too much, well, that's a different story. But I don't envision making this public until I'd be close to the second trimester. Who knows how far away that will be!

We're in the waiting game again here to see if I am in fact pregnant this month. I don't really have a feeling about it one way or the other. I have had every pregnancy symptom in the book and not actually been pregnant, so I don't put too much stock in what my body says until I see the second line on the test. And I'm trying not to obsess about it. I think I am at a place where I'll be okay and not really disappointed if I am not pregnant this month, but in the mean time it's really hard not to give those "symptoms" any attention.

The weather here has been alcohol-inducing and we are back to being stuck inside again. Yesterday I took Eliza to Pump It Up, an indoor bouncy castle kind of place, just to get her to burn off some steam. For her first time there she was much less intimidated than I thought she would be -- she even went down a 15-foot-tall slide by herself. Unfortunately for her mom, there were a lot of activities she insisted on doing even though she couldn't figure out how to maneuver on her own, so I had to go through one too many inflatable obstacle courses yesterday.

Surrender

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of surrender lately, especially when it comes to having another baby. It's so easy to be in a place of control with the whole baby-making thing. You can take your temperature and figure out when you ovulate and overdose yourself with supplements that might make your womb a more hospitable environment for a tiny person. You can get to a really obsessive, crazy-making place with the whole process. I have spent time in that place, and it's not at all fun.

I have realized that once you get to a place of surrender about having another child, and have given up any attachment to it, the magic seems to happen. Time and time again this has proven true, both for me and for people I know. I have a friend who had tried for over two years to get pregnant. It turned out she had fibroids that were probably causing the problem, and she got to a place of acceptance that she needed the surgery before she could conceive. Two weeks before she was supposed to go under the knife, she found out she was pregnant. No medical intervention necessary. I have another friend who couldn't get pregnant, so she and her husband decided to adopt. They had been in the waiting pool with her adoption agency for almost a year. She started posting on the message board where we got to know each other that she was so done with the adoption process and was starting to look at donor embryos to try to get pregnant. She posted messages about this all week. On Friday afternoon, her adoption agency called. They had been matched. She and her husband are expecting a baby girl next month.

My first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage at six weeks. I was devastated. I think the fear of potentially having to endure that again got me to a place of surrender with the whole trying to conceive process, and I was okay with it taking a while and physically and emotionally healing from that sad place. And as it turned out, I got pregnant on my miscarriage cycle. I let go, and there she was.

So I'm trying to get myself to that place with this baby. I think you authentically have to get yourself to surrendering any attachment to having another baby, rather than saying "Oh, I'm surrendering all this" and then checking your chart for the seventeenth time that day, and I'm not quite at that authentic point yet. I haven't obsessed about getting pregnant this cycle, and I'm not going to be devastated if I'm not pregnant this month, but I think I still have some letting go work to do. It's hard when I am absolutely certain there is another little one who is ready to enter our family. I just have to accept that God knows far better than I do about perfect timing. Baby, I hope you come soon, but I know you'll find the best time to be born!

A definite answer

Which was no. No baby for us this month, no baby for us in 2011. When Ben and I were talking about it last night he said, "You know, this is my baby. It's probably not good to put arbitrary timelines on someone sharing half my genes." As nothing slows Ben down faster than me telling him to hurry up, he has a very good point.

So onwards and upwards to a 2012 little Nelson. In the mean time, it is Ben's spring break. Yesterday we took Eliza to a local little zoo. She had a good time even though it is so goddamn cold here for the end of March, and she's a little sick. (In fact, she's still asleep right now and it's 8:30.) And I started painting our upstairs hallway, which likely has not been painted in this century. It is going to be a challenge once I get to the high walls with the stairs, so I can see why this task had not previously been accomplished.

Recent early spring pics:

Choo-choo excitement!

From 2011.03.27 Eliza fun

Early spring Eliza (since this picture was taken, the winter coat had to come out again...grrr):

From 2011.03.27 Eliza fun

Multitasking with reading and exercise:

From 2011.03.27 Eliza fun

A long, hard week

Maybe it's because Eliza seems to have a cold (hopefully it's just a cold, anyway), and maybe it's because I've been crabby, and maybe it's because the once-promised spring has returned to February-like temperatures, but last week was hard. Last week was screaming and vomiting and runny noses and fatigue and winter coats pulled back out of the closet. But we got through it, maybe a bit worse for wear and further away from carefreedom (I don't care; that's a good made-up word), thanks to a good friend's visit and a bottle of wine and enforced early bedtimes. And, it must be mentioned, a wonderful husband who, when I balk at the possibility of being up in the middle of the night with Eliza, volunteers to sleep in the guest bedroom with the baby monitor. That is a good man, folks.

This blog was started to document our journey to our next baby, but I haven't actually talked about that yet, mostly because there hasn't been a need. I took my first pregnancy test of this cycle today when I woke up to pee at quarter to six this morning, and my result was totally ambiguous. To the untrained eye, it is negative, but to my eye, which has stared at hundreds of pee sticks over my years on my trying to conceive/pregnancy chat board, I see possibility. I know that my particular brand of pee stick has developed a reputation for mind games (First Response Early Response, I have peed on the last of YOU), so I tested again later in the morning with another of the same test. This time, I saw a second line, but no color in it within the time limit, but when I took it upstairs to show Ben, the line had disappeared. So I am in the same place as I was this time yesterday, except that I had not yet peed on $10 worth of merchandise.

I'm going to test again tomorrow, and I hope I'll have a definite answer on a different brand. The waiting is so frustrating. The getting one's hopes up is so frustrating. This is the last time we'll be going down this road, trying to make another baby, and when you have roller coaster days like this you worry that the road will be long.