No Snow Yet?

As I was moving some of my posts from my hosted server over here to WordPress, it occurred to me that we really haven’t seen much snow this year.  December 2009 and February 2010 brought us three major blizzards, dumping a combined total of over 5 feet of snow on us out here in cow country.  But we’ve pretty much nothing so far this year.  Amazing how much the weather can change.

Mommy Diary: New Years Eve 2011

My wish came true last year; we became parents in 2011.  It’s been a wonderful and amazing experience.  One of the interesting things that we’ve noticed is that a large part of our circle of friends have never had kids, so it can often be interesting trying to hang with our peeps just like old times.  Last night, we went to the same New Years Eve party that we’ve gone to for the past 9 years.  It went sortof like this:

• 5:30am:  Baby wakes up and demands food and play time.  Will this be a good day, or a bad day?  Should we forget about the party?
• 12:45pm:  Take the baby out to run some errands and for a nap in the car.
• 3:00pm:  Re-stock the diaper bag, make up four bottles, and select which baby gear is going with us.
• 3:30pm:  Mutually agree that we are absolutely not staying the night.
• 5:30pm:  Are we sure we don’t want the pack-and-play?  There’s no way she’ll sleep in it, so no point in taking it.
• 5:50pm:  Hit the road about 20 minutes later than we had planned.  And yet, we’re still the first to arrive.
• 6:10pm:  Take turns occupy baby with toys/trying to keep her from taking everything off of our hosts tables, and mingling with our friends.
• 7:50pm:  Explain for the fourth time that yes we really do need to leave because the baby is already an hour and twenty minutes past the bedtime that SHE likes and will rapidly turn into a nightmare if we don’t get her home.
• 8:15pm:  Baby goes right to sleep in her crib.
• 8:20pm:  Mommy starts cooking dinner.
• 9:15pm:  Mommy and Daddy eat dinner & have dessert.
• 10:20pm:  Absolutely NO WAY we’re making it to midnight this year.  Champagne toast and off to bed because 5:30am comes early.

Not the typical fabulous overnight food, drinks, and fireworks extravaganza that we are used to, but that was totally ok with us.

Tags: new years eve

Merry Christmas!

From us, to you.

It’s a …

That’s right — it’s a girl (at least this week, lol)!  We’ve certainly come a long way from the very first photo of two embryos and the first sonogram of a tiny little sac with a blinking heartbeat.  Sorry peeps, no names yet — we’re still in negotiations.

This weekend we’re heading to Strasburg, PA for some train fun.  I’ll post pictures when we get back.

From Infertility, to Adoption, to Pregnant

This post has been a long-time coming.  You’re probably wondering how we got here. 

WARNING:  This is a long post.

In March we were rejected by Korea for adoption due to “medical issues”.  It happened right before Easter and completely tore us up.  Crack moms have babies every day, but a government doesn’t like our medical histories so no baby for us.  We were in the process of starting the homestudy paperwork when it happened.  From there we decided to open a profile in the US, but just had a really hard time actually doing it.   The more forms we encountered the harder it got and we really started having issues with the sheer amount of information that we had to provide.

Again; crack moms can have 10 kids that aren’t taken away but the agency and the state wanted the following from us before we could even be considered:

• 8-page biography for each of us;
• 20 photographs of us, our families, our house and our pets;
• 3 – 5 years of tax forms;
• Account numbers and balances for every investment, retirement account, savings account or checking account that we own;
• Amounts and policy numbers for every life insurance, auto insurance, home insurance, health insurance, and disability insurance account we own;
• A complete fire marshal’s inspection of our house every year;
• Criminal, credit and child protective services background checks;
• Complete medical histories for one full year;

We Did What?

But we just couldn’t do it.  Some people can, but we just couldn’t.  Hopefully no one will think we’re bad people — but it just felt like an insult and a violation that we had to go through that at a minimum just because my body was failing us.  So one day we decided to put all options back on the table; and that evening I got an email from our fertility clinic that they were allowing people to go into their Shared Risk IVF program without doing cryogenic freezing.

I know what you’re thinking… but at least let me finish.

Between the two of us we were able to agree on the things about IVF that were objectionable to us.  I called my doctor and discussed it with her, and it turned out we could do the Shared Risk program without doing anything that we objected to — we had thought we knew all about IVF but it turns out we really didn’t know anything.  We got some information packets from the clinic and then discussed it all the day that we went to NYC.  We had very deep discussions; some tears, some prayer.

Later we had discussions with some people we really love and trust, and then made our decision — we would go ahead and do it with some boundaries in place.  We prayerfully considered every aspect of the process, and it was very difficult for us.  We’d rather not re-live it, so while we are totally ok with talking about our specific IVF process, we do not want to discuss the decision making that led us here. From the moment we made our decision, we both knew that this was it for us — IVF would work.  and it did.

Our Baby is a work of ART

Because it was so difficult and personal, we did the whole thing in secret with very few having any idea — we were not sure how our family or friends would react to us doing IVF so we waited to say anything until we knew it had worked.  At that point no one would care about the IVF, they would just be happy about the baby.

IVF typically starts with suppression and in my case it was a month of birth control pills.  Some physical problems were discovered when the “Mock Transfer” was done, so I ended up having surgery before the IVF cycle started.  But 4 days after the surgery I was taking my first round of injections.  Initially it was 2 shots every night and frequent monitoring via ultrasounds and bloodwork.  As we got closer to the retrieval I started taking 3 shots per night.  And then it was time for the trigger!

The trigger was an interesting experience for us — it was my first ever self-administered intramuscular injection.  All of the other injections I gave myself were subcutaneous (in my stomach), but this one had to be given to my hind quarters, which meant John had to do it.  The night before we had to do it, he was practicing on an orange as instructed by the clinic.  I think we were both nervous.  And then the time came…. 12:15am on the morning of June 16th.  Yes, we really had to set our alarms to get up at midnight in order to mix the HCG and prep the needle.  But we did it.

Our retrieval was scheduled for 12:15pm on the 17th.  For those who don’t know, it’s an actual surgery under general anesthesia.  I had quite a bit of pain afterwards (with a mild case of OHSS) and was still secretly on Vicodin 2 days later when we met the family for Father’s Day.  I hid it pretty well, I don’t think anyone had an idea.  Starting that day we got daily reports about how our embryos were doing, and on June 22nd we transferred two of them.

Happily Ever After

The rest is history; here we are, 18 weeks pregnant as of today.  There’s only one baby on board, and no we don’t know the gender yet.

We’ve got some complications we’re dealing with so all prayer is appreciated.  Will we have another?  Maybe… maybe not.  We will not be doing IVF again — we’re thrilled and blessed to have one on the way now.  If being pregnant magically fixed whatever is wrong with me then maybe there’s another in store for us, but we’re not going to try to make that happen.  We’re just going to be happy to have this one miracle.

Catching Up Again

I know it’s been forever since I’ve posted — there was so much to talk about that we just weren’t sharing yet.  But we’re sharing now.  Here’s something to keep your mind busy while I get my blog updated this weekend.

Parenting as a Project

Shortly after my last post we discovered that Carrie has acid reflux, which caused a few really bad days, and colic, which has caused way too many bad nights.  Soothing a screaming baby doesn’t leave much time for posting, unfortunately.  She’s napping in her car seat, so I thought I’d finally put these words that have been rattling around in my head to blog while I have the time.  (No, I’m not a bad Mommy — she’s just still out cold from a car ride a bit ago.)

I got my Project Management Professional certification almost two years ago and managed projects for quite some time before that.  In general you have to balance schedule, scope, cost, and customer expectations in order to complete a project successfully — defined by on time, on budget, and with a satisfied customer.  That’s not a perfect formula, unfortunately.  Sometimes you end up having to ride a project into the ground because of things that are totally out of your control (management that won’t make decisions, inadequate resources, uncooperative customers, etc).  I’ve had some real successes, I’ve had bad management, and I’ve had bad customers too.  It happens to everyone — but I digress.

I’ve spent my days for the last few weeks puttering around the house with a baby in tow (in my arms, over my shoulder, in a bouncer, or even strapped to me) and have found myself thinking a lot about managing projects … and babies.  I’m finding that being the parent of an infant is a lot more like being a project manager than I ever could have imagined.  I fully believe that this experience will enhance my project management abilities, once I can actually get a full night of rest, lol.

One of the most important things I’ve learned during this time is to do the best thing that I can be doing right now.  Every couple of minutes I’m asking myself: “What is the best thing that I could do RIGHT NOW?”  Why?  Well, situations change fast — the baby goes from sleeping to screaming in 3 seconds flat.  Maybe now isn’t the best time to finish washing the bottles.  Or, Carrie actually lets me put her down for a nap…. this might be the time to mop that yucky kitchen floor.  Sometimes the thing I started is no longer the best thing to be doing.  Sometimes the best thing for me to do is something frivolous in order to get some “me time.”

Sure, I have a list of things to do a mile long that I try to get done the second Carrie sleeps more than a minute:  wash the bottles; check her diaper station supplies; wash her laundry; feed the cats; vacuum the carpets; take out the trash; empty the Diaper Genie; get dinner started.  While all of those are very good things and need to be done, sometimes they’re not the BEST thing I could do in those infrequent moments.  Last week the “best” thing was to sweep, mop, and vacuum all of the floors — because it had been a while since it had been done and it just made me feel better; more in control of my house.  A couple of weeks ago, the best thing was to spend a couple of hours cross-stitching because I hadn’t been able to do that since we were discharged from the hospital.  Of course, often the best thing is to just hold Carrie and love her because I don’t have much time left before I go back to work.

So, how does this relate to project management?  Sometimes you end up doing something because it’s the next thing on the schedule — but it might not be the best thing you could do in order to meet the project goals.  A PM needs to be flexible enough to recognize when a different task would be more worthwhile done now than later (as long as it continues to meet schedule, scope, cost, and customer expectations, blah blah blah).  Managing a project isn’t just a suicide march toward a calendar date.  You’ve got to constantly look at where you are, analyze what’s going on, and be prepared to refocus your efforts elsewhere when it makes sense.  How often should you be evaluating what’s the best thing to do right now?  As often as you need to.

Carrie at 1 Month

Growing up too fast…

Not So Tiny Anymore

My cousin gave me two little kits to capture Carrie’s handprints and footprints with.  I did the deed last Thursday.  It wasn’t easy; Carrie’s feets definitely have a mind of their own.  Even though she was only two weeks old at the time, she had already grown quite a bit — she was already too long for her newborn clothes.  I started dressing her in 0 – 3 onsies, but the legs were so long that her little feet wouldn’t reach the bottom.  But suddenly they started actually fitting her yesterday.  I can’t believe she’s growing so fast — I feel like it will be time to take her off to college if I blink!

First Family Portrait

The hospital photographer was actually pretty good.  We had this family portrait taken before we were discharged.  I think it’s our favorite of all of the photos we’ve taken during the last two weeks.