Things are

Bee and I just got back from visiting my parents in Montana on Tuesday morning after two very long flights with one very awake little girl. Bee slept a total of 1:20 in about 20 hours. She is a determined one! I'm very glad to be home and to be getting closer to done with jet lag.

My grandmother passed away in July and the funeral was while we were home, so it was great to be able to attend that and help my mom out with some of the planning. Bee loved the party atmosphere and kept asking to have a party every day, even after people had left. She came out of her shell with my family and opened up, which was wonderful to see.

Bee starts German kindergarten in 16 days. It's more like daycare than kindergarten as Americans know it. Boy am I ready for her to go! She has so much energy and wants to, as she puts it, "play and play and play!" It wears me out, especially since there's no family here to help me out.

On the baby #2 front, things are not looking good. I did one cycle with a doctor in Nuremberg, but I knew from around CD 16 it was not going to work. He increased my dosage, he had me continue injections, but I just felt that it was doomed. I did the trigger on CD 22 and got my period a day or two after I arrived in the States, on the same day a good friend got her positive test after a miscarriage. So hard.

While I was home my cousin, who got pregnant with her son while I was doing treatments for Bee, told me that she was going to plan on having another baby when her husband gets home from deployment. The fact that it could be that easy for some people is another kind of blow. Just hearing that again, it's tough.

It doesn't help that youtube and the rest of the internet knows what I'm thinking and I'm being bombarded with pregnancy and ovulation test ads. Lay off internet!!!

DH and I talked about things before I left. I think we are going to be done. Done trying, done hoping against hope. Done fighting with the insurance company. Done with injections and scrambling for childcare for fertility appointments. Just done. I keep hoping for a miracle, but I don't see one on the horizon.

After this cycle that I am currently on in which my body starting producing beautiful EWCM the day before I flew home and has yet to drop an egg, DH will be scheduling a vasectomy. I want to let go of this part and enjoy life as it is. Stop thinking about the sibling that is not coming.

So, that's the plan. On to life with an only child!

Update

Bee is officially 2.5. Amazing. Driving me crazy on a regular basis. Starts German kindergarten in 67 days.

Last Friday I went to a specialist in Nuremberg for further fertility treatment. I had a big, fat 22.5 mm follie, so he popped that baby with a trigger shot. I'm supposed to pick up some FSH to start using if I have another cycle, or if I do not bleed, go in for a blood test 6 July.

I have mixed feelings about having another one. I grew up an only child, so I can see the positives of that, as well as the negatives. I always wanted a sibling. But on the side of being the parent, I am almost free. Bee is potty trained. She can dress herself, feed herself. She's even occasionally helpful by doing things like putting her laundry in her basket upstairs or helping to load the dishwasher. Having another baby means that I will be back to square one. Diapers and spit up and waking up four times a night.

I'm still giving it until September, but I could totally be content with the life we have now.

Trying again.

Bee is two, almost 2 1/2. Last April, DH and I started not preventing, just to see what would happen. I got another prescription for Metformin, although I didn't really take any. Life went along. My cycles were fairly regular for a while, and then slowly but surely they got longer. This March I went to my new doctor in a new town (we moved again within Germany last July). I told her we had been trying a year with no success. I was referred to a gyn. I did one cycle where I showed up with a 16mm follicle and got a trigger shot within a couple of days. No luck. The next cycle (the current one) I got the vag cam a couple of times. At CD 16, my biggest follicle was 10 mm. So, now I'm on CD 41, having ovulated last weekend. I have a referral to an infertility specialist in Nuremberg for 19 June, the day after we get back from vacation. I don't have high hopes because I'll be 2ish weeks into that cycle and I'm leaving in August to go back to the States for three weeks to visit my parents. And if I have another baby, I want it to be in Germany because of several various reasons.

So this is my plan. I will give it until 1 October of this year/finish out whatever treatment I'm on as of 1 October. If nothing happens, I'll go back to not preventing. If still nothing happens (which it probably won't), then we'll close up shop and be happy with one.

Ein Jahr später or One year later

Today Bee is one year old. It's been a year that's gone much to slow and much too fast. They say "The days are long, but the years are short," and oh, how true it is.

Bee is walking, signing, drinking out of a cup on her own, putting her pajamas in the laundry basket (and then taking them back out). When you compare her to the baby of a year ago it's hard to believe how much she's changed.

She's still waking up once a night. She is occasionally very clingy and annoying. But, mostly she's a lot of fun to be around. I am so glad to have her. So thankful.

DH and I are discussing trying for another one, but we have decided that we won't go the ART route. Whatever happens, happens. For now we are using birth control because I don't want two under two. Maybe April or so we'll pull the goalie.

Until then I hug my girl to me and tell her everyday that I love her. She has changed our lives and I am so glad to have her.

October

November

December

December

Meine erste Mutterstag oder My first Mother's Day

I meant to post this on Mother's Day, but got distracted. Oh, well.

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Little Bee has been around almost five months now. She's rolling over (both ways) and is working on sitting up. It's amazing how much she's changed in such a short time. She's been sleeping through the night (eleven to twelve hours) for about three weeks. It's amazing.

Spring has been cloudy here in Germany, but we're finally seeing some warmer weather. The ice cream shop and the restaurant across the square both have tables outside. DH and I have had ice cream once Bee is asleep for the night once or twice. Last week, there was Schlemmerwoche in my town and all the wine sellers in town had little restaurants. One evening, DH and I went to one that was within range of the baby monitor after Bee was down. The move in January was hard, but this place is great. 

Sunday is Mother's Day and I can't really believe that I get to be part of this for the first time. Now that things are getting better, I am enjoying being a mother and getting to experience things that I had hoped for and dreamed of while I was trying to get pregnant. Smiles, coos, occasional laughter. Snuggles and kisses. All those wonderful things. Today I had to remind myself that sometimes when people do not smile, they might have another reason for it. I had my fair share of time scowling at women with babies. 

Life is lots different, but in some ways still the same. It's still not perfect, but there are moments that make everyday great. 

Happy Mother's Day! To those that are mothers now and those that are still on their way to motherhood.

It's hard to read, but her jammies say "kleine Nacht-Eule",
 little night owl.

Es wird noch besser oder it gets better

For weeks, months, people kept telling me that this whole parent thing would get better. It was to the point that I told my husband that the next person that told me that I was going to sock them in the mouth. I was so sick of hearing it. But, you know what? It's true.

I don't know if it's just that I'm getting better at being a parent, or if Bee is getting better at being alive, but it seems like in the past couple of weeks, we have turned a corner. We've been doing a nighttime routine for several weeks now, but in the past couple of weeks we've (I've) started a nap time routine and I am now getting some time to myself back. Bee is starting to laugh on a regular basis, which is awesome. The weather is getting better. It is getting better. This is the kind of stuff I imagined when I thought about being a mom.

I didn't imagine my husband going out of town for a week and me immediately coming down with a fever and then (ahem) unpleasant intestinal issues. Not fun, but I survived.

Also, I've been doing the cry it out. Don't judge me! It works for me. If something else works for you, more power to you. I needed to get some time to myself during the day and a longer stretch of sleep at night and not be getting up at 12 and 4 am to socialize and again at 6 am for the day. That isn't happening (regularly) anymore.

The weather is still cold, but it's warmer and I occasionally see sunshine. The ice cream shop across the market square has its tables and chairs out for the season. I'm getting out about once a week to see other moms. Life is good. And it's getting better.

Not enjoying our time out at the Easter market.

But maybe enjoying being in Mommy's arms.

How is life with you?

Eight weeks postpartum

So, now I have an eight week old. It's nearly impossible to believe sometimes. There are moments when I almost forget she is here. I also am having a hard time realizing that a little more than eight weeks ago, I was hugely pregnant. I look at the pictures, and it seems like a dream. I understand why people say you forget these things and that's why you do it again.

I'm still having a hard time accepting that the c-section was the right decision. In my head, I know it's true, but my heart tells me different. I'm still physically hurting from it and still bleeding. DH and I did the PODO a couple of times before six weeks postpartum and it was excruciating. When I went to see Dr. H for my 6 week postpartum checkup, he said that we should wait some more, but that the pain was normal. It sucks.

Dr. H also said that I should not get pregnant again within a year of Bee's birth and c-section. That was hard to hear. I don't know that I even want another baby because Bee is challenging (thus why I haven't been doing blog posts), but to hear that I can't even try...it broke my heart a little. After trying so hard to get Bee, it would be nice to be able to "just" get pregnant if there is another one. Not having the option for at least a year feels lousy. It's another way the c-section robbed me of something.

Other than that, life is starting to get easier. We moved when Bee was 3 weeks old, which I would not recommend. It was very cold out, but I was outside nursing Bee in my Moby (yay for hands-free nursing!), directing the movers while DH was in the apartment putting things together while we had the movers' help because I was not able to lift heavy things. We are all unpacked as of a week or so ago. Eleven years in the Army make for organized people. Once everything got unpacked, I started to feel better.

I also gave up on trying to get Bee on a schedule. I had read all of these books about how to get your baby to be on a schedule from the beginning and really wanted to try it, despite multiple people telling me that it would take some time. My moment of clarity came when I had been trying to get Bee down for a nap for about 2 hours, and then it was eating time, so I was trying to feed her and she was falling asleep and I was trying to get her to wake up. It just clicked that that made no sense whatsoever. So, since then I've been trying to go with the flow. Some days it works better than others. I'm hoping that as Bee gets a little older, I'll be able to coax her on to a flexible schedule and not be subject to her dictatorial whims.

It's still really hard, and there are very few moments of reward, but occasionally she gives a little love back.