Getting pregnant the high-tech way

Three years old

My little frozen embryo, the only one who survived the thaw, celebrated his third birthday recently.  Somehow the boy managed to score THREE birthday cakes -- an elegant pound cake, a Dora cake, and a rainbow Jello cake.  I told him that when he is 20 he'll probably get 20 cakes.

Three is an exciting birthday.  He knew there would be presents, he knew there would be a cake with candles and everyone would sing.  The party was at Nanna's house, and as he leaped out of the car he proclaimed "It's MY birthday! It's MY birthday! It's MY birthday!" 

This was a happier moment than the other three year old birthday parties we've been to recently where some other kid got all the presents and he crumbled into tears at the end saying "I need a toy!" and breaking my heart.

He is 32 pounds and 36 inches tall.  He seems like a total stringbean to me but of course the doc says he's in the 50th percentile for weight and the 10 to 25th percentile for height.  Say that to his 3T shorts which fall down around his ankles when he walks.  He'll be in the 2Ts for this summer again.

He was very brave for the single shot he got at his three-year-old doctor appointment, mostly because he was so excited about the promised lollipop.  The real pain came later when, after his bath that night, he ran down the hall to his room, his hands inside his froggy towel, and stumbled.  Unable to get his hands out of the towel in time, he broke his fall on the hardwood floor with his forehead, resulting in a huge knot and a panicked mommy who insisted that he sleep with his parents that night so they could keep watch over him.

He is sad this week because he is one of three children in his daycare class that did not move up to the next class.  His best friend moved up without him.  It's because he has yet to consistently muster the confidence to poop in the potty. He's been peeing there for months.  On his birthday he went in there alone, pooped, and came out declaring victory.  This was the first time he'd done it, and he hasn't since then.

So I say to him: "You have a lot of new friends in your class" and he says "I miss my old friends. When I poop in the potty I can be with my old friends in the big kid class."  I just want to make all that happen for him right now.  Again, it breaks my heart to see him sad like this.  But at this point I've done all I can do and so has his teacher.  It's now between the boy and his potty.  I tell him that when he's ready he will do it. It's OK.  And he smiles and gives me a hug.  And I thank the universe for this moment and this amazing child.

My blog midlife crisis

So where have I been? Mostly lurking and reading other people's sites and posts. Also thinking about the fact that this blog's name and original intention is different from where I am now, and wondering what to do about it.  I like having a personal blog like this one.  But I'm troubled that most of my search engine traffic gets here because they are pursuing infertility treatments and searching words like Follistim and embryo.  When they arrive at this site they are seeing stories about my kiddos, or photos.  I know it would have been hard for me to stumble on things like that during some points of my infertility journey.

And yet, I think there are some posts and resources here that could be useful or comforting to those in the midst of their infertility journey. That's what I wanted this place to be, after all -- a place where I could share things about my journey with others who followed me (and plenty of others) down that path.

Also, I've been thinking about Wordpress and switching to that platform.  But that would involve MOVING everything which seems like a big deal until you do a search on it and other people have done it.  And while I do have some nice Feedburner traffic here, there's not a huge amount of other traffic here that I would lose by moving from this URL.

So I guess I could move the infertility content to one domain and the personal blog stuff to another one.  I would just pretty much gut what is here to do it.  But maybe gutting it is better than leaving it here to languish because I'm frozen in time unsure about what to post here because my place in life has changed from what it was two years ago.

But, I haven't made up my mind. Probably because it makes me a little sad to think about gutting what I've built.  I've "met" people I really like and I've learned a lot. I want to be able to take all the good stuff with me too.

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On a separate note, it's Spring still and there are pregnant women everywhere.  You'd think that I'd be all satisfied with the amazing wonderful sons that I have (and you know that I am full of joy to spend every moment that I can with them) but I have found myself secretly longing to be one of those pregnant women again.  Am I out of my mind???!!!  I've just started getting sleep again.  I'm still nursing this last one.  And, most importantly, I am 43!  I finally succeed in dismissing this whole thing as total foolishness on my part, and then James' teacher at the daycare tells me that her 50 year old aunt is pregnant.  And the other teacher tells me that she had her three children after she was 40 years old.  And there's one more story like that.  And then someone else has another story like that.  Where are these people coming from? 

Barack or Hillary?

Last week David invited Barack Obama to join his LinkedIn network.

Now, we don't know Barack.  We haven't even gotten a recorded phone message from his campaign.  However, David now counts Barack among his 49 contacts on LinkedIn.

You see, somehow David joined the Democratic Party group on LinkedIn, said he and Obama were both members of it, and managed to send an invitation to Obama based on that. In the invitation, he also mentioned to Barack that he planned to vote for him in the Pennsylvania primary next week.

Tonight when David checked, Obama had accepted David's invitation. And, damn, if I haven't been trying to figure out how David got the invitation to Obama!  David can't even remember now.  I think the door is closed. Damn!

David's been a Barack supporter for a while now, and I have been undecided.  Over the last few months, many of the people I know have moved to the Obama camp, with the exception of my mother and stepfather. I have just been happy with the amazing crop of Democratic candidates we've had to choose from this time around, and would have been happy with ANY of them. Really, I've never seen anything like it, and I'm 43 now.

But although I spent quite a while in the undecided camp something that I read a month or so ago pushed me into the Barack camp. It's a blog entry from the inventor of the Netscape browser and founder of Netscape, Marc Andreessen. He met with Obama for an hour and a half in 2007 when things were getting started, and in this post he gives his assessment of the man. Check it out.

Don't wanna go to THAT family reunion

We have been potty training here, in recent months. If you've been down this road before we have, you know that for some reason pee-peeing in the potty is a much easier to learn than pooping in the potty. Indeed, Jack has been pee-peeing in the potty with regularity for a month or more now, with an accident here and there. But for the most part, peeing is a done deal.  Jack wears underwear.

But we recoil in fear when it comes to weekend afternoons when the poop is due. (As he is at daycare during the week, we are off the hook those days.)  He still hasn't gotten the hang of this one, and he has some stinky poo.  However, one day maybe three months ago Jack and I were together and no one else was around. I caught him in the act and swiftly put him on the potty, and he pooped there.  I cheered, he was pleased, and then he said he wanted to flush.

He flushed, and then with his face close to the opening of the potty said, "Bye bye poop," then looked up at me and said "he's going home to his family."

The effects of sleep deprivation

Saw a segment on 60 minutes last night about the effects of sleep deprivation. Various studies showed the physiologic effects of sleep deprivation on humans ( and fruit flies).  The studies found that people who are sleep deprived:

• are hungrier and eat more, even though their caloric requirements remain unchanged
• are more at risk for Type 2 Diabetes (after just seven days of disturbed sleep, a young healthy human was having more trouble processing sugar)
• have slower reflexes (but don't realize it -- this was compared to how a drunk person doesn't realize they are impaired)
• have lower comprehension (but don't realize it)
• score lower on memory tests
• are less able to cope with negative images
• are less interested in sex

Among the interesting facts cited: In 1960 a study of 1 million people (I think it was americans, but I don't remember), found that the average amount of sleep they got per night was 8 hours.  In a recent follow up study that number had dropped to 6.7 hours.

And, on the anecdotal side of things, it was pointed out that sleep deprivation was a factor in many catastrophic accidents including the Exxon Valdez, Three Mile Island, and the Staten Island Ferry crash.

A sleep scientist from Berkeley found that those who got a good night's sleep performed BETTER on a simple memory test than they had the previous afternoon when they first saw the thing to be memorized.  He contended that those who get enough sleep would be more productive than those who tried to cheat sleep to get more done.

One of the scientists, an endocrinologist, whose study turned that healthy young man into a pre-diabetic in a week (but said he would go back to normal once he got regular sleep again), said that Sleep should be cited with Diet and Exercise as the third thing that people needed to pay attention to in order to stay healthy.

She noted that young people spend 100 minutes in deep sleep and that number gradually decreases as we get older.  By the time we are 50 we only spend 20 minutes in deep sleep a night. She speculated that perhaps that the decrease in deep sleep perhaps contributes to the aging process.

 

But today, (and I think particularly about the place we moved away from a year ago, Silicon Valley) it's a 24 hour culture.  People are working harder than ever, and have so many responsibilities outside of work as well.  And kids are way over-scheduled too.

I am not any better.  My life is so full, I don't know how to slow down anymore.  I keep trying to figure out how to squeeze a little more time out of my day.  One day I got up an hour earlier and ran on the treadmill.  It was great to get the exercise, but there was a price to pay too. One less hour of sleep.

I also know that when I am sleep deprived, as I was for James' first 5 or 6 months of life, I eat too much.  Perhaps that has contributed to my inability to drop any significant weight since I started trying in September.

James is still not sleeping through the night. For a while over the months I sat in the glider chair each time he woke up and fed him.  Now he just wakes up one time, but being back at work it is hard to sit in that glider chair.  So lately I've just been taking him into our bed where we both sleep from 4 am to 7 am, but not very well. 

I told the ladies at daycare about this today and they said that James is playing the mommy card. So I flirt with the idea of CIO, getting enough sleep, having time in the morning to exercise before everyone else wakes up (impossible when James is sleeping next to me.)  But just so hard to let go of my last baby, you know?