Lessons in Life

I got this in an email a year ago. I posted it above my computer so I could read part of it every day. My favorite lesson is "Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about."

"Lessons in Life By Regina Brett
"To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most requested column I've ever written. My odometer rolls over to 50 this week, so here's an update:

"1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.
16. Life is too short for long pity parties. Get busy living, or get busy dying.
17. You can get through anything if you stay put in today.
18. A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.
19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words "In five years, will this matter?"
27. Always choose life.
28. Forgive everyone everything.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.
35. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
36. Growing old beats the alternative - dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood. Make it memorable.
38. Read the Psalms. They cover every human emotion.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
41. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
42. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
43. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
44. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
45. The best is yet to come.
46. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
47. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
48. If you don't ask, you don't get.
49. Yield.
50. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift. "

Our Anniversary Getaway

Tim and I are taking off for the weekend to celebrate our Fifth Wedding Anniversary on Saturday. And do we have a lot to celebrate!! We plan to leave around noontime Friday, and drive up to Weston, a quaint little town on the Missouri River, and have lunch at The Vineyards, a favorite restaurant where we've celebrated our last three anniversaries. (They serve a wonderful baked brie with roasted garlic and fresh baked bread.)

We'll head further north along the small roadway to Atchison, Kansas, to check out Nell Hill's, a wonderful home decor store. It is in an old Kansas town with some charm.

We wanted to perhaps spend the night at Lied Lodge in Nebraska City, Nebraska, but we were shocked to find this 144-room lodge was booked for the weekend! Well it turns out that Nebraska City is home to the founder of Arbor Day, J. Sterling Morton. And National Arbor Day is celebrated each year on the last Friday in April, so everything is booked. Perhaps we'll go there another time.

Instead, we booked two nights at the Cornerstone Mansion Inn in Omaha. Lucky for us, they had a last minute cancelation, and we were able to book The Porch Suite. It is supposed to be lovely weather there this weekend, so we will be tempted to sleep on the bed on the porch! We plan to visit Old Market, a cobblestoned historic area with fun shops and dining, and perhaps the Omaha Zoo.

We will be leaving our ancient 14-year-old foster dog, Slow Joe, at a boarding place while we are away. (The shelter picks up the cost, which is nice.)

The placenta is working!

I got some lovely reassuring news today. The baby's placenta has "kicked in." The doctors reduced my medicines on Saturday, and the blood tests from Tuesday show that the hormone levels are remaining really high, even higher than before. That can only mean one thing: the placenta is now producing its own hormones. Hooray!!!! Baby is growing and doing well!! (They reduced my drugs even more today as a result.)

Yesterday was my first prenatal yoga class! It was a God-send. The yoga made my headache go away, that had been lingering since Monday, ugh! There were four other pregnant women doing the class, which is conveniently located downtown. I had done regular yoga lessons with the instructor over a year ago, so it was nice to work with her again. I have missed doing yoga. The last time I did it was exactly six weeks before, the morning of my embryo transfer! (I think yoga and acupuncture helped me get and stay pregnant this time. I was in the most wonderful sea of calm from January through March.)

Triple M day

M=Monday=Migraine=Miserable

An hour before I was supposed to head out this morning for some errands (blood test, acupuncture), I noticed I had a vision problem. I couldn't see what I was focused on, in the center of my vision. Then a squiggly rainbow line started cutting across my vision, even with my eyes closed. I knew I was about to have another Vision Migraine. This is the third one I've had in the past four weeks. They started about eight years ago, and I went to see a neurologist who explained that instead of migraine headaches, my migraines manifest as loss of vision. I have had one about once every year or two since the first one. (I'm grateful they aren't headache migraines, since I did have one of those when I was in my 20s, and they are horrible. Understatement of the year.)

My first vision migraine this pregnancy occurred on the evening of April 2nd, at 5w6d. I was able to sleep it off, but it gave me a headache, so I took a tylenol and that helped. (I can't take advil-related products.) Then I had a tiny one last Thursday or Friday afternoon - it only affected my vision mildly and lasted just a half an hour. Today's started at 9am, I slept for two hours and had normal vision when I awoke. But I had a splitting headache. I took a tylenol and laid back down again in the darkened bedroom. My head hurt no matter what part touched the pillow. I was worried I might get sick. The tylenol finally kicked in after an hour, and I slept until 2 pm.

I have been wearing sunglasses for the rest of the day, and my headache (had to take another tylenol) has become milder. My Colorado nurse asked me to tell my local OB, so I did. The nurse here said there is nothing more I can do about it, which is what I figured. (I had posted on a message board after the first one if it was more common to have migraines due to pregnancy hormones, and I had an overwhelming response of YES!)

Tim was his usual funny self. Last night I had sadly said that I sometimes worry if maybe the baby has stopped growing, because how would I know otherwise? I said I was glad I didn't suffer from m/s or nauseau, but still, it would probably let me know I was still pregnant if I was suffering. So when I called Tim to tell him, he replied, "See? You have to be careful what you ask for - you are now suffering from a symptom!"

Oh, and since I mentioned the bedroom: this is our new king-sized bed! We bought a Westin Heavenly Bed with the mattress, boxspring, pillows, duvet filler, and down blankets, and our own bedding to cover it all. We have decided this is our Fifth Wedding Anniversary present to each other. (It is this coming Saturday.) We love our bed. And here is a tip I learned online to keep your pillowtop mattresses fluffy: beat the surface of the mattress with a baseball bat when you change the sheets!

Pink is for girls

While we were waiting to see if "it" had worked, Tim and I talked about names and fun things like that. I told him I had several girls names picked out, because I guess I was hoping for a girl. If we had twin boys, I was going to be in trouble! Tim had some funny names for boys he apparently has been dreaming up for years: Ian Peter Daily (or I pee daily) and Ian Dewet Daily (I do it daily). Hmmm. I like the names Ian and Peter, but no thank you!

So shortly after we had that BFP (message board slang: Big Fat Positive), I dressed for the day in comfy pink loungewear. Tim quipped, "So are you trying to influence the baby into being a girl?"

He's had a few funny lines like that in the past four weeks...

Dating a pregnancy is funny math. Technically, the day that the sperm meet the egg, you already are considered two weeks pregnant. Wow, whodathunkit? I've been two weeks pregnant every month my whole life! Two weeks afterwards, when you can first tell reliably that an embryo (or more) has implanted in your uterus, you are then technically FOUR WEEKS or ONE MONTH pregnant. Trust me, every week you can add makes you feel a whole lot better - so whoever came up with this math was smart in a sneaky way.

After the ultrasound, when I was almost seven weeks pregnant, I had a wonderful dream. I was breastfeeding a baby boy - my baby boy! His mouth was all covered with milk, it was pretty funny. I was looking down at him at my chest, and I was filled with love. When I woke up, I decided it didn't matter if I had a boy or a girl. So now I am thinking I want to be surprised when the baby is born. Tim wants to know the gender, though, as will most everyone else who we will meet, I bet. If we had twins, I would probably want to know. I may change my mind over the course of the next seven months.

Which reminds me - our due date is Thanksgiving Day! So does that mean I have a turkey in the oven??

The positive test (+)

So this is what started this joyous period in my life:



I had very little hope I was pregnant at first. (You know: been there, done that.) But as the days passed, I started to think, well maybe these little tugs in my pelvis area are my uterus ligaments starting to stretch! And then I read somewhere that when you are pregnant, your pulse is much stronger and faster. So after I woke up from a nap (that should have been a clue, too, hehe), I found my pulse very easily and counted the beats for fifteen seconds, and multiplied by four. Instead of my usual 60-70 at rest pulse, which I sometimes have a hard time finding, I measured 84! So this was my first big WOOHOO! A positive sign! So I secretly bought some tests, and did one on 12dpo (dpo=days post ovulation, or when the eggs were retrieved, which is normally on the 14th day of a woman's cycle). My beta (blood pregnancy test) wasn't scheduled until 14dpo, so I was so happy to see a nice strong line on the HPT (home pregnancy test). It came up almost right away. My relief was palpable, quickly followed by sheer happiness. It had worked!!

I am such a nerd, I sent this picture of my HPT to my nurse in Colorado. She was so happy for me, but she had to laugh, I was the very first patient to send her a picture like that! But she admitted to sharing it with all the other nurses, and they loved seeing it, too. So my nurse moved my beta up a day, since I already had the strong positive result.

By the way, transfer day was Tuesday, March 11th. Tim got to see the embryos under the microscope. We transferred two. The embryologist described one as a "perfect blast" and the other as an early blast, or morula. This picture is of another woman's embryos, the blast on the left and the morula on the right; she had a transfer the day after me. Tim said the perfect blast looked like it was twice as big as the morula. (We have no photo of ours.) The embryologist said it would probably implant the next day, it was so healthy looking.



Pretty neat how babies first look, huh?

I am Two months pregnant (yesterday)

So here is my 8 Week belly shot. (You can even see some medicine patches.) The belly has "pooched" out a little bit below the belly button.

I have not had any morning sickness (knock on wood) or too many other symptoms like heartburn. Instead, I have cramping every once in a while, I get tired easily and love taking long afternoon naps. I also get really hungry every few hours, so have stocked up on healthy snacks like dried fruit, cheese sticks, wheat thin crackers, raw nuts, and hard boiled eggs.

According to this web site:
http://americanpregnancy.org/weekbyweek/week8.htm
my uterus is now the size of a grapefruit, instead of my fist!

This was my 4 Week belly shot. Not much difference, but I am now 2-1/2 pounds heavier!

My betas on 3w6d and 4w1d were 152 and 390, with a doubling time of 1.47 days. They were pretty high for so early, so we thought we might have twins!

I found my OB practice upon the recommendation of my friend Margaret's niece who went to a high risk OB. Tim and I went together for my first appointment on April 7th to see the ultrasound and learn if we had twins or not.

Here is the ultrasound of the (single) embryo at 6w4d (6 weeks 4 days). From top to bottom, it measured 0.62cm. They also found its heartbeat, and measured that at 116 bpm.

It is funny how many people have asked us if we know the gender yet! I don't think you can tell until at least five months. We will have to decide if we want to know or not.