Well, so far the new toy is not very entertaining. I turned it on and it told me it was the first day of my period, which... um, thanks, Toy. Every day I've turned it on since, it's added one to that number. I'm now on day five of my cycle and I still haven't been told to pee on any sticks. I suppose that's normal since it'd be pretty odd to be ovulating right now, but still...

I paid good money for this damn thing and I want it to let me pee on it!

So, other than that, things are good.

Here, in Omaha, we got 14 inches of drifting snow over the holiday weekend, and we were all trapped inside our homes, unable to get to our extended families for festivities. So, my husband and I made due with our chosen extended family--the boys trudged over and we had a Christmas Eve filled with cocktails, old movies, records, and Cheers trivia. Seriously, that's the way to spend the holidays.

The husband and I decided not to exchange gifts with each other this year, because of that whole "being poor" thing, but it really wasn't missed. To be honest, being trapped in your cozy house with the person you love, eating junk food, listening to records, and burning candles all day long... that's a much better gift than any one money could've bought me.

It was a very merry Christmas.

Santa Brought Me a Present!

It's going to be a crampy, bloody Christmas for this very nice girl!

I guess he got my letter.

My period came this morning at work, so I'm not going to be able to use my new toy until tomorrow morning. I guess that, while everyone else is waking up to put honey glazed hams in the oven and open Christmas gifts with anxious children, I'll be jumping out of bed to go turn on my little fertility monitor and set it to "Day 2." Oh, boy!

Not Yet...

So, I realized that it's hard to update a blog about babymaking when there's absolutely none of that happening.

Still, life goes on and this particular life is going pretty swimmingly right now. These last few weeks have been an oddly nice reprieve from the whole duty of reproduction. I haven't counted. I haven't tested. I haven't updated little online calendars about what my vagina is doing today. Instead, I've had drinks with friends, gone on outings with tons of energy, and basically felt like a normal person again.

Now, don't get me wrong, being pregnant had (and hopefully will have) many beautiful things going for it.

But this is nice. Being Kelly and not Pregnant Kelly or Trying to Conceive Kelly has been pretty cool.

In a week or so, it'll all go away and I'll be peeing on sticks and counting down days with the best of 'em. For right now, though, I'm just a happy, freewheeling kid again... who's 30 and married, but whatever.

My New Toy

Okay, so check it: I bought one of those expensive-as-hell Clearblue Easy Fertility Monitors. Only, instead of paying $150 or whatever ridiculous amount for it, I paid $60 for a used one that came with 30 new sticks. Thanks, Ebay! It's all reset and ready to go, so all I need to do is start my "womanly time" and I can start using that baby.

We're not trying for that first cycle. I just want to get the little machine (and me) trained, so that I can plot my strategy for the next month.

That strategy being: seeing a little egg on the monitor, turning to my hubby, lifting an eyebrow and saying, "hey, wanna bone?"

Our future baby will be brought into a world full of romance...

Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon

I think I'm finding my stride again. You know... feeling more like myself and positive about the future and all that crap.

Soooo, that's good.

As is often the case when miscarriages happen, it seems like everyone I know is currently pregnant. The blogs of so many of my friends are filled with ultrasound news, nursery furniture shopping, and baby name decisions. I think that, considering the circumstances, I'm rollin' with it pretty well. I even kinda mean it when I tell them I'm excited for them.

Right now, I'm just looking forward to my first period.

That's right. I'm LOOKING FORWARD to my period.

Shit.

That's because, once she rears her ugly head, I'll be able to start counting days and plotting ovulation points and doing all of the silly math that makes me feel somehow in control.

Until I'm on an actual cycle again, I just feel kind of washed out to sea.

So, let the tide bring me back in.

3-5 more weeks to go.

Believing What I Want

Well, it's been a week. I can honestly say that I feel... better. Not good. Not myself. Not back to normal. But better.

Coming into work on Thursday morning and seeing all of my bookmarked pregnancy sites on my computer (Yes, I surf at work. Don't tell anyone) was rough. I didn't want to delete them, because I knew I'd forget where to find all of that stuff once I get knocked up again. So, I just left them. They're a constant reminder, but I can deal. I keep telling myself that I'll need them again in a few months.

That's what I've gotta let myself believe. Hey, it only took us two months to get pregnant this last time. So, that's my goal again once we can start trying. Two months. Of course, if it doesn't happen that easily, it's gonna be rough. I can't stop thinking about going through 2010 without a baby. That's when I was supposed to have one! 2010. Not 2011. So, yes. I'm being a bit reckless and foolhardy right now. I totally get that. But I can't help it.

If I were reading this on someone else's blog, or hearing it come out of my best friend's mouth, I'd be secretly shaking my head, "Doesn't she know it's not always that easy? Doesn't she know you can plan and plan, but life just really doesn't give a shit?"

Yes, I know.

But come February or March, I'm gonna be knocked up again. That's what I'm letting myself believe.

Pregnant No More

Well, the title says it all, right?

It all started on Saturday afternoon. I had a little brown spotting. Not a big deal, I kept reminding myself. Brown is old blood. I kept that little facade up in my head until Sunday afternoon when the blood turned bright red. It was time to call the nurse midwife. She told me that, unless I started filling up a pad an hour with blood (dude, I didn't have any damn pads at home. I had to stuff a bunch of toilet paper in my underwear and truck it to Walgreens), then I should stay at home and wait it out. She scheduled an ultrasound for me on Monday morning.

Well, Monday morning came and my lovely husband convinced his new job to let him off for the day (unpaid) to take me in. I assumed the position on the table, spread eagle in the stirrups, and the ultrasound tech proceeded to wand me for at least 15 minutes without saying a damn word. I could see it all plain as day, though. I saw my uterus. I saw the sac. I saw no baby. Nothing.

She finally said as much to us when she took the wand out and let me put my clothes back on.

So, the husband and I walked downstairs to see our midwife. She was amazingly warm and hugged us both, telling us the requisite "this is nothing you've done" and then brought in a doctor to talk about my impending D&E. They both sat there and told us that this was the way to go. It was safe and uncomplicated and would allow them to get everything out without worry of leaving behind any tissue. So, we scheduled it for Monday morning at 5:00a.m. and went home to stare at each other solemnly, hug and, every so often mutter things like, "this sucks."

You know what sucks more, though?...

The fact that my body decided to say "screw you" to that scheduled D&E in the morning and get rid of everything that night. Yep. Around 7:00p.m., I started cramping. Not just minor period cramps, mind you...searing, horrible, doubled-over in pain cramps. These continued on about every 5 minutes, getting worse and worse each time. By about 8:30, I was in so much pain that I felt like I was going to die. Now, I know that's a term that's bandied about here and there, but I'm not exaggerating when I say it now. I literally felt like my body was being torn open and I wanted nothing more than to be put out of my misery. I couldn't imagine a worse pain in the entire world.

My dear husband, for his part, did everything humanly possible to help me through it all. He stayed on the phone with the midwives. They assured him that I should stay at home and let things pass, and that going to the ER would just cause needless bills and have the same outcome. He put cold washcloths on my sweaty face, drew tubs of water for me to lay in, made a nest of towels in our bed for me to move to afterwards, dried me off, changed me, rubbed my back...he was amazing.

Then, around 10:00, I finally passed some clots and a ton of blood. About 45 minutes later, my body started calming down. My back was still spasming. My abdomen was still in pain. My whole body felt like I'd run a marathon. But he put me to bed with some Advil and I slept. I slept off and on for about 6 hours and then, this morning, I woke up feeling completely new. I had no pain. Just an emptiness.

This morning, we went back to the doctor's for an ultrasound. They saw that I'd passed most of the clots and sac from my uterus and took my blood in order to begin counting down my Beta levels.

I've still got a couple more weeks of appointments, in order to make sure everything goes back to "normal."

But now I'm sitting here at home. The husband's gone off to work. I'm taking tomorrow off. I don't know why. I could probably work, but the thought of facing all those people and their "I'm so sorry" faces is just too much for me right now.

So I'm waiting for me to feel like Kelly again...

We'll see.