Loose Tooth!

Nadia was extremely excited today when I confirmed that one of her teeth is loose. She was hoping it would fall out today, but it's not anywhere close to falling out yet. I said if she keeps eating an apple at lunch each day, that will help loosen that tooth. She can't wait to lose her first tooth!! Yet another sign that my little girl is growing up way too fast.

One of the advantages of living in Amish country is that the kids see horses all the time.

 If I put Oliver at the top of a slide sitting on his bottom, he immediately flips himself over so that he can go down on his belly. This is the ONLY way he wants to go down the slides. As long as he goes feet first, I'm fine with that although he'd be more photogenic if his face was showing. All three kids have been unique when it comes to the slide. Nadia loved to go down the slide at this age (sitting on her bottom). Ian was terrified of the slide, and it took a long time for him to work up the courage to go down without me holding his hand. Oliver loves the slide but prefers to go down on his belly. The one thing they have in common is that all three of them tried to climb up the slide.

This boy loves to wave (what he is doing in this picture in case it's not obvious). He seems to take after his sister in being a friendly little guy as he has started waving at other kids at the playground without any prompting from me. Also, he said his first two word phrase recently when he said to Paul, "Hi Daddy."

The last 5 days

When Ian came down with pink eye nine days ago, we went into "stay at home" mode. We skipped the co-op, only Nadia went to church last Sunday, I didn't go to handbell choir rehearsal last Monday night, and we didn't go to ladies Bible study last Tuesday. Life started to return to normal for the kids on Wednesday when they went to AWANA, and we did go to our two co-ops on Thursday and Friday morning. Oliver and Ian have gotten over their pink eye. Nadia and Ian seem to be  healthy again.

Oliver still has a cough, but his nose isn't running as much. Paul and I feel lousy. We both have really sore throats, runny noses, earaches, etc. I've had a fever. Paul has been coughing up a lung. We all want to get healthy in time to celebrate Paul's mom's birthday with her in a couple of weeks. Nadia had her next to last soccer game yesterday morning, and it was her second best ever performance. She again came VERY close to scoring a goal. We were proud of her. Another child's grandparent came up to us and commented on how much Nadia has improved. She's by no means the best player on the team, but she is a much bigger asset to her team than she was during her first season in the spring.

I had eight children in my 3rd-5th grade Sunday School class this morning (more than usual). The church's children's choir used to practice on Wednesday night, but they moved it to 10:00-10:25 on Sunday mornings so Nadia participated in the King's Kids choir for the first time today (in between Sunday School and church). Last week (when I wasn't there) she attended Super Church for the first time (the children's church program for kids in K-5th grade), and I think she was disappointed that I didn't let her go today, but I decided when our kids are in Kindergarten they will start attending the worship service with me.

We had lunch at church, and all three kids did a good job! Then we picked up Paul at home and headed to Williamsport to see a production of Rumpelstiltskin. It was very well done, and the kids (even Oliver!) paid attention and enjoyed it. I look forward to the day when Nadia is old enough to be on the stage of something like that. Then we came home, and I was able to watch my team win. Normally I would feel bummed about a 2-4 record, but after starting out 0-4, a 2-4 record seems much better. It's all a matter of perspective. Hopefully the Giants can end their 6 game losing streak tomorrow night.

Paul had his second peer observation on Wednesday night. He wasn't given any warning this time. I've submitted seven applications for him thus far, and I'm hoping to finish four more over the next few days. Those eleven applications are going to schools in PA (1), FL (2), SC (2), VA (1), NJ (1), IN (1), GA (1), and OH (2). I hoping that it won't take 88 applications this time around, and more importantly I'm praying for a tenure track job offer so we don't have to keep applying every year.

Last night we went on a date. Part of it included a stop at Rite Aid to buy Nyquil, Dayquil, cough drops, etc. We would have enjoyed it even more if we had been feeling better, but it still was nice to get out (just the two of us) for the first time in two months. A woman from our church who is a senior pre-med major babysat the kids for three hours. It was the first time in  more than a year that we paid a babysitter. The kids seemed to enjoy her. We'd like to get back in the habit of going out once a month, which we haven't been doing the last 17 months.

The reason for my lack of posting lately has been due to how I've been feeling emotionally. This miscarriage has hit me a lot harder than I thought it would. A woman at church today told me of a lady she once knew who had 11 children. She had a miscarriage in between her 10th and 11th child, and she said many couldn't believe she was upset about that miscarriage since she already had 10 children at home. The woman replied that she loved each child very much from the start. Having other children doesn't mean you don't grieve the loss of a child.

For me, the first two miscarriages were still harder since we had no children and wondered if we would ever have any, but the difference in emotional pain between those and this one is not as large as I thought it would be. While I was in the hospital during Oliver's pregnancy, I remember thinking that if the FET didn't result in a viable pregnancy, I would feel both sad and also a sense of relief as I dreaded the idea of being pregnant again. In reality, I haven't felt any relief. I've only felt sad.

Part of me feels like we need to try one more time asap (since I'm 41 years old), but actually I can't bring myself to go through another ivf cycle (and Paul would likely think I was insane for even contemplating it). If we hadn't ever pursued adoption before, I would be asking Paul to consider that, but I can't even think about doing our fourth home study, and I don't think we could afford it with me being a stay-at-home mom now. I thought over the past 14 months that I was completely adjusted to the idea that our family was complete, but I have discovered that actually I had been very aware of that frozen embryo that whole time. All the "lasts" didn't hit me as hard along the way because I didn't know at the time that it was the last time I'd nurse a baby, buy newborn size clothing, have people congratulate me on a pregnancy, feel a baby kick within me, wait for the ultrasound to find out the gender, cuddle my own tiny infant, etc. Now that I know Oliver will always be our youngest child, I find myself wanting even more to really savor every moment. As a silly example, he has a pair of brown dress shoes that used to be Ian's, but he doesn't have a pair of black dress shoes. Usually I'd think it frivolous for a 14 month old boy to own two pairs of dress shoes, but I have decided to buy him a pair of black dress shoes for Sundays. I won't ever be buying size 4 shoes again (at least not for a child of mine). Now is the time to do so. It's emotionally harder to sort through Oliver and Nadia's clothing when they outgrow things as I'm giving almost everything away, but the upside is that there is less clutter in our basement now that I know to only save Ian's things for Oliver.

I took two videos yesterday. Neither one is anything to write home about, but I figure their grandmas will enjoy seeing them. Nadia is really making great progress with her reading skills! She completed the Level 1 reading program and has started Level 2. Paul was impressed that she could correctly identify closed versus open syllables (we've started working on long vowels), as he didn't know what I was talking about at first. She also can correctly identify how many syllables a word has (from 1-4 syllables). We need to keep working on Ian's verses, but I will say that the new version of the Cubbies book is a lot harder (longer verses) than when Nadia did it two years ago. So there you have it, two videos, eleven pictures, and a lengthy post to make up for my lack of posting the past few days.

Foto Friday

Thankful Tuesday

1. Although the amount of money we've been spending lately has been a bit frightening for me (I'm by nature a saver not a spender), I am very thankful we had the ability to replace our broken television and broken dishwasher this month. I'm also thankful that we had a vehicle big enough to pick up the dishwasher (and save the $70 delivery fee) and that Paul was able to install it, even though he's never installed a dishwasher before. Way to go, hubby!

2. Our football teams have had a horrible start - put together they were 0-10 until the Steelers finally won their first game on Sunday. It was the first football game I enjoyed watching in 2013. Hopefully we'll get to watch at least a few other wins this season. :)

3. Paul, Nadia, and I escaped the pink eye that Ian and Oliver have had. I thought more of us might catch it from Ian, but it looks like three of us escaped that bug. Whew.

4. Ian and Nadia finally earned enough stickers from dinner (they have to feed themselves their dinner within an hour without crying or throwing up) so that we can have pizza tomorrow night. Yay!

5. The kids make me laugh every single day. For example, this morning when Oliver was babbling away Ian said to me, "Mommy, I can't understand what Oliver is saying. Is he speaking Spanish?". Ha ha!

6. The weather has been so gorgeous the last two days, and we're enjoying watching the leaves turn colors.

7. A woman from church who lives really close to us was able to take Nadia to Sunday School and church on Sunday while I stayed home with the two boys with pink eye. I was thrilled that she still wanted to go to church.

8. I'm reading The Secret Garden to the kids right now. Oh how I love that book!

Reset Button

Since I was a child I longed for the day I'd become a Mom, and for a long time I dreamed of having 3 or 4 children. Aside from Paul I only had one other boyfriend. That man wanted to have lots of children, and I remember that in my discussions with him we had decided as a compromise that we'd have five children. This was back in my naïve days when I thought you had some control over how many kids you had. When I was dating Paul, I found out that he thought two kids would be more than enough, and so I remembering thinking that three might be a compromise between the four I hoped for and the two he wanted. When we got married, I figured the most kids we would have would be three, and when we pursued Ukrainian adoption, we had prepared three dossiers in case we adopted three siblings at the same time. I thought that after we had Ian that my desire to try ivf again would be gone because of how long it had taken us to have those two children and also what our ages were at that time, but it surprised me how badly I still wanted to have one more baby. It took Paul a lot longer to also have the desire to try for number three, and I was actually surprised that he changed his mind. I knew when we did the our third egg retrieval it would be our last. I was hoping against hope the Lord might use it to give us our third child, but actually my expectations were very low given how close I was to turning 40 years old. The Lord graciously gave me the desire of my heart and allowed me to give birth a third time. After I had Oliver, I had zero desire to be pregnant again. That was the first time in our then eleven years of marriage that I had felt that way. I thought maybe this was some of the good that could come out of that difficult summer in the hospital. The traumatic pregnancy had taken away my desire to have another baby, but we still had one frozen embryo since the RE only let us transfer two of them that time. It took a long time for me to work up the courage to start the FET process, but once I started stabbing my belly, I wanted to be pregnant again as much as I did in 2007 when we were trying ivf for the very first time.

Then I saw those two beautiful lines on the hpt. On the first day they were so faint I really kept my hopes down because it seemed just like the ectopic pregnancy, but when the line was much darker the next day, my hopes started going up even though I knew that implantation seemed to have taken place too late for it to be a viable pregnancy. When I found out that the pregnancy was definitely doomed, it was harder to take than I thought it would be. I kept thinking that because I already have three children at home and because my last pregnancy was so difficult, it would not be hard to deal with a miscarriage. I was wrong. I am struggling to have our ttc journey end on this sad note. If we hadn't had a frozen embryo, I am confident we would never have darkened the door of a fertility clinic again. A year ago I had no desire to try for a fourth baby, but going through the FET cycle and then seeing those two lines on the hpt stirred the desire within me for a fourth baby. However, I have zero desire to ever take another fertility medication again, and after all the failure we experienced throughout the adoption process, I have zero desire to do another home study and try to adopt a fourth child. I have tried to remind myself of what the last pregnancy was like to try to get myself back into the mindset of never wanting to be pregnant again, but I haven't succeeded thus far. I wish there was a reset button I could push to get my emotions and desires back to where they were a year ago. We never planned to try for a fourth child. We only did because our third ivf resulted in a baby and a frozen embryo, something that didn't happen with our first two rounds of ivf. I am not sure I will ever understand why God didn't allow all three embryos to be transferred in January 2012. Up until last week I thought the reason might be that we were going to have a fourth baby in the spring of 2014. Maybe the Lord took our little one to Heaven to protect me from an even more dangerous pregnancy. All I can cling to right now is what Job said, "The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. May the name of the Lord be blessed."

Germs galore

Oliver has been sick for a little over three weeks. He's had a really runny nose that whole time, and at times he's also had a cough. A few days ago he also had the runs, and this morning he woke up with pink eye. Nadia came down with a cough about the same time Oliver first started having this runny nose and that has come and gone and returned a few times over the past few weeks. When it gets bad, it always leads to her throwing up. On Thursday all three kids threw up at one point in the day, which made for a lot of extra laundry for me, especially as Nadia threw up in bed during her nap. She took a long nap two days in a row last week, which was proof she wasn't feeling well as she hasn't taken many naps over the past year. Ian and I lasted quite a bit longer before we succumbed to the germs, but eventually Ian also developed a runny nose and cough. His cough seems to have gone away, but his nose is still very runny, and since Friday morning he has had pink eye. It started in one eye and spread to the other on Saturday. Oliver work up with pink eye in both eyes this morning.

Ever since I saw Ian's pink eye on Friday morning, I have been far more vigilant with hand washing and using hand sanitizer (for myself and also the kids). Nadia was the only one who went to church this morning due to the boys having pink eye. We didn't go to co-op on Friday, and we're not going to ladies Bible study this coming Tuesday. Hopefully we'll be healthy enough to go to co-op this Thursday and Friday. I'm ready for everyone to be healthy again. Also, due to Grandma's weakened immune system, we need to be completely healthy before she can come visit us again. We usually see Grandma and Pop Pop a few times a month, but we only saw them briefly on one occasion last month (at a soccer game), and we haven't seen them yet this month. We miss them, and I know they miss seeing the kids too. Hopefully Grandma will keep getting better and the kids will return to full health as soon as possible!

I recorded two little videos of Ian "reading" two books just as a way for me to reminisce in the future of what he sounded like when he was three years old. The pictures of Oliver (above) were taken last week. One was at the playground, and the other was of him eating his very first pumpkin chocolate chip cookie. If you want proof that two siblings of the same gender can have VERY different personalities, just get to know Ian and Oliver. They are opposite in many ways. Oliver eats everything and puts everything in his mouth. When Ian was that age he wasn't feeding himself anything or putting anything else in his mouth. Ian can't stand to be a mess or get wet. If there is a tiny bit of food on his face, he starts begging for a napkin. Oliver obviously doesn't mind if his hands and face get really messy. Ian has always had many fears and is not very adventurous. Oliver loves to climb and shows no fear. My heart almost stopped a couple of days ago when I found him standing on top of the piano keys. He had pushed a small white chair over to the piano bench and climbed from the white chair to the piano bench and then from the piano bench up to the keyboard. Oh my goodness. His siblings were in the room with them, and although they have never done such a thing, it didn't strike them that they needed to let me know that Oliver was doing something unsafe. As you can see from the one video below, Nadia will often alert me when Oliver is headed to the steps or the bathroom (we try to keep the door locked but sometimes the kids forget to close it). Well we shall see if Nadia, Paul, or I wake up with pink eye tomorrow.

Rough days

Yesterday was a trying day emotionally. First, Oliver is teething again. His third and fourth teeth broke through the surface of the gum yesterday. They are on the top but aren't the center ones; he's following his brother's pattern. Thankfully he was fine in the morning while he was in the nursery when I was at ladies Bible study. After he got up from his afternoon nap I got him some milk and put him in the stroller so we could all take a walk. We had to turn around and come back because he was crying his little head off and would only stop crying if I held him, and I can't hold a 20 lb baby and push a double stroller at the same time for very long. I gave him some Tylenol. He definitely liked the taste of that stuff. He's generally a very content baby as long as his belly is full, but he was fussing and crying from about 2:30 until I put him down at 8:00pm.

Secondly, Paul laid down the law on Sunday and said that Ian needs to feed himself. Unless we were having a food he really liked (such as pizza), I have been alternating bites with him at dinner each night. On Sunday he had the choice of ham and scalloped potatoes or ravioli. He picked the potatoes but didn't eat any of it at dinner that night or at breakfast the next morning. It wasn't until lunch on Monday that he was finally motivated to eat when he saw that I was having a brownie after my sandwich. Monday night I gave him a choice of ravioli or tuna noodle casserole. He picked the tuna noodle, and he didn't eat any of it that night or at breakfast yesterday morning. He did eat some goldfish in the nursery on Tuesday morning. He didn't eat anything for lunch, and he only ate a few of the carrots at dinner. About 15 minutes before bedtime, he came crying to me saying he wanted to eat his dinner. Finally. It took him 27 hours to eat that plate of food. That's the longest it's ever taken either of our children to eat. After he ate it, he told me that he likes tuna noodle. The problem is that he's being really stubborn about wanting me to feed him. Fighting this battle is not fun at all, but if he's eating independently by the time he turns four, it will be worth it. He hasn't been allowed to watch any tv, use the iPad, have anything to drink except water, etc the past three days. Not fun.

Those two frustrations paled in comparison to the knowledge that I am going through another miscarriage. The hpts were faint ++ on Sunday morning and Sunday night. The hpt was a darker + on Monday morning. I didn't test on Monday night, but on Tuesday morning it was back to negative. I tested then because I didn't want to be wondering all day while waiting for the blood work results. I contemplated skipping the Beta because I knew this wasn't going to be a viable pregnancy, but I went anyhow. There wasn't much of a wait, which was really nice. The phlebotomist did a horrible job. It was excruciatingly painful for hours afterward. After she stabbed me she said I might need to use ice later that day. I knew the number wasn't going to be good because of the BFN that morning, but it was confirmed by how long they took to call me back. My number was 6. She said the doctor said to continue the meds and come back on Thursday for a repeat Beta. I said there's no way this is a viable pregnancy. She said well it's up to you if you want to stop the medications. The way she said it made me think she also didn't agree with the doctor that there was any point in continuing the meds. I told her that the hpts had been ++ on Sunday and Monday and then negative that morning. I was sure the numbers were coming down, and did I really have to have a third Beta. She told the doctor what I said, but he said he needs to see it come down to 0 so he knows it's not an ectopic pregnancy. I said when I had an ectopic my numbers kept going up (way too slowly), but my numbers are coming down already. I am sure if I had a Beta on Sunday or Monday that my number was definitely higher than 6. As a compromise, I called my primary care doctor (less than 1 mile from our house) and got a lab appointment there for Thursday evening. This will satisfy the RE's requirement but save me the 70 minute round trip drive to the hospital. Please pray that it will be 0 on Thursday because having to keep have these Betas done is emotionally torturous. I had to go through this with the ectopic in 2005 although my hCG was over 100 that time so it took much longer for it to come back to 0. After all those years of longing to have some hCG in my system, it's really hard for me to wish it to go down to nothing. I ended up using a total of 8 hpts with this pregnancy. Five of them were negative and three were positive. I already threw 7 of them away. I am saving the one from Monday morning as I have no other proof that this pregnancy existed because they didn't give me an ultrasound picture from the transfer. I told Nadia and Ian yesterday that there was a baby in my belly but Jesus took the baby to heaven. I knew I had to have a conversation at some point to let Nadia know that she won't be having a sister, and I thought maybe she'd find comfort in knowing she'll meet another sibling in Heaven some day. I told her we don't know if the baby was a girl or a boy, but both Nadia and Ian have been referring to the baby in Heaven as "Nadia's sister," and that's fine with me. I know many women just pick a gender when they think about a child they lost so they don't have to refer to the baby as "'it" and some even give their miscarried baby a name. I thought about naming the baby we lost in 2005, but I have zero desire to do that this time around.

We started trying to have children in May 2002, and after eleven years and almost five months, we are officially done. In the beginning we thought all we needed to do was stop using birth control. When that didn't seem to be working, the first step was to start taking my temperature every morning when I woke up and to use ovulation tests. Then we sought medical help first from an OB/GYN and then from REs. We went from pills to shots to IUIs, and then we switched gears and pursued domestic adoption and then international adoption before trying IVF for the first time in 2007. If I could go back in time, I would have listened to Paul and tried IVF in 2004 rather than pursuing adoption first. I will never forget the joy I felt in Chicago in November 2007 when I found out that our second embryo transfer had resulted in a pregnancy (Nadia). Since it took us six years to become parents, I thought she might end up being our only child, but the Lord used the very next embryo transfer to bring us Ian. In the spring of 2011 I sold a lot of our baby things because I didn't think Paul would ever agree to pursuing IVF a third time, but a few months later he changed his mind, and we found out in January 2012 that we were expecting our third child and had one frozen embryo because the new RE would not let us transfer three at one time,  as the other RE had done two other times.

I am grieving the loss of this little life, the hope of ever having a fourth child, the hope of Nadia possibly having a sister, and the possibility of ever experiencing giving birth to a baby who doesn't end up in the NICU and doesn't have a lot of trouble learning how to nurse. But I also have an immense amount of joy and gratitude because God has richly blessed us with three beautiful children. I nursed a child at least once a day for a total of 30 months between the three children. I am not taking that for granted! I have been able to experience being a mother to both a girl and two boys. This miscarriage is so much easier to handle than the ones in 2005 and 2007. I wish that my ttc journey wasn't ending on such a sour note, but overall the journey has had a very happy ending - Nadia, Ian, and Oliver, and some day I will meet our other children in Heaven. I am very relieved to know I will never be stabbing my belly again, taking any other fertility meds, using any more pregnancy tests, etc. We are done. Our family is complete. In 20+ years hopefully we'll get to experience the joys of becoming grandparents. I hope and pray none of our children have as much trouble with having children as we have, but the tens of thousands of dollars we paid were absolutely worth it. Being a mother is a priceless experience, even on the bad days.

I was hoping today would be an easier day, but that hasn't proven to be true thus far. Ian's day is off to a much better start as he ate a HUGE breakfast to make up for his self-imposed starvation. He had two large bowls of cereal and a bagel. I hope he eats his dinner tonight. He can pick between impossible lasagna pie or tuna noodle casserole. Nadia threw up during breakfast and then somehow both Ian and Nadia managed to step in it and spread it more around the floor through their footsteps albeit I was urging them to steer clear of it. What a mess. Then Oliver threw up all over the place after lunch. In both cases I think it's from phlegm not a stomach virus. I am not back to normal yet (due to being 4w4d pg at the moment), so I came close to losing my breakfast while trying to clean up the mess. Then at lunch time I discovered our dishwasher finally gave up the ghost. We just replaced our tv last week, and now I asked Paul to go buy us a new dishwasher tomorrow. I am grateful that we have the resources to pay these bills, but the penny pincher in me is struggling with the size of our credit card bill at the moment - FET, tv, dishwasher, etc. Hopefully we won't need to make any other major purchases for awhile. I'm also hoping that Oliver's fussiness will decrease at least enough so we can take a walk this afternoon. I think a walk outside would do wonders for me emotionally. It's such a pretty time of year as the leaves are turning colors.

14 Months Old!

Over the past month Oliver:

1. Learned how to clap!

2. Started to seem like a toddler rather than a baby because of how much trouble he can now get himself into. We reinstalled one baby gate because he loves to climb up the stairs, but then he figured out how to go through a few rooms to find another way to get to the stairs. We didn't want to install both gates again, so we are now using a gymnastics mat as the barrier at the bottom of the stairs. When he is caught on the stairs, he has this impish grin and often laughs. He also learned the art of pulling all the books off the bookshelf. Lovely.

3. Switched to all size 12 month clothing and is now wearing "real" shoes (rather than those soft leather ones).

4. Is doing a lot more walking with the use of the toy shopping cart or the lion toy. He also can stand without holding on to anything for about five seconds.

5. His weight was pretty much unchanged over the past month despite what a good eater he is. These photos were taken tonight of him eating ravioli and peas.

6. When he is holding a toy phone by his ear, he says "hi", which is so cute!

7. Many times he doesn't cry at all when I put him down in his crib, and then other times he cries up to 30 minutes. His morning nap is always 30 minutes long. His afternoon nap is at least 45 minutes long. Many days it's 60 minutes long, and there have been more times that it has been closer to two hours long in the past month, although that has never happened two days in a row. Sometimes he wakes up too early in the morning, but the earliest I'll get him is 6:30am. It's rare that he sleeps past 6:45am, but he actually slept until 7:30am this morning (that has happened less than five times in his life).

8. Has gotten better about not crying so much when I leave him in the nursery.

9. Now drinks 3 sippy cups a day (the sippy cup holds 5 oz) of whole milk and an average of 2 sippy cups a day of juice - apple, orange, grape, or cranberry.

10. Has learned to flush the toilet. I am scared to see our next sewer bill. We try to keep the bathroom doors closed due to his love of #1 splashing in the water in the toilet and #2 flushing the toilet umpteen times in row. He also loves to climb inside the refrigerator and inside the dish washer.

A little bit pregnant

For a few decades I had hoped to have 3-4 children, but I never expected to be trying for number four when I was 41 years old. After my pregnancy with Oliver, the thought of being pregnant again was terrifying. It was the first time that I had no desire to have any more children. We considered giving our embryo up for adoption or having a surrogate carry our last embryo for us, but in the end we decided to do our fifth embryo transfer this fall. When I started stabbing my belly, I found myself again hoping and praying that I would see two lines on a pregnancy test one more time. No one was saying anything about the condition of the embryo the day of the transfer, and that was very different from the previous four transfers, which caused Paul and I to believe they must not have had much good to say about it. Despite this, I still was praying umpteen times a day that the embryo would implant and continue to grow. I was very disappointed on Thursday morning when I saw only one line because that is the day I got my first + in three of my four pregnancies, but I held out some hope that it might still be too early because I didn't test on that day with Nadia. I hadn't slept well at all on Wednesday night because I knew I was testing, and so I tested again on Thursday night to decrease the suspense so I could sleep better that night.

It was still negative on Thursday, and I slept much better that night because I had only a glimmer of hope that it would be positive on Friday. When it was still negative on Friday morning, I decided to stop taking my medications and have the Beta on Saturday morning. Friday night I resumed taking the medications because I thought I should have the Beta first. Paul bought a new tv that night, and he was planning to take our broken tv to the recycling center on Saturday. I decided to go through the baby stuff in the basement on Friday night so that he could donate those things at the same location on Saturday. I went through baby gear and clothes Oliver had outgrown as well as clothes and shoes Nadia had outgrown over the past five years and selected what I would save. I saved quite a bit of the preemie and newborn size clothing (boy and girl) because I thought the kids might be able to use it for stuffed animals and dolls, and I saved a few of my favorites in case I have grandchildren in the future who might be able to wear them. After Nadia's soccer game on Saturday morning I took one last hpt (one that only cost $1 compared to the other three had been FRER), as I didn't want to give away all the stuff unless I was sure I wasn't pregnant. I saw it was still negative, and Paul loaded up the van. Just as Paul was about to leave, the nurse called me with the Beta results. She said it was less than two and that the RE wanted me to continue the medications and have another Beta on Tuesday morning. I was at 14dpo (days past ovulation) on Saturday. In 2005 when I had my second Beta at 14dpo, the RE said there was little hope for the pregnancy because my hCG was only 25, and they expect it to be around 100 at 14dpo.

She said they still had some hope that the blastocyst had implanted late and kept emphasizing that frozen blasts sometimes are a little slower. I told Paul I wanted to hold off on donating our baby stuff and decided to stop at Walmart on the way home from the pumpkin patch because the Dollar General hpts are not as sensitive as FRER hpts. Later that evening I looked up my hCG level at 14dpo after my first embryo transfer, and it was 1.1 and that RE declared that to be a negative result and said I could stop the shots that day. I have no idea why at 14dpo two different REs would have very opposite opinions about an hCG level of less than 2. Since I bought the tests, I took one this morning, and as expected it was negative. I got a + with this brand when my hCG was only 11, even though they only advertise being sensitive at 25iu (compared to 50iu for the tests that cost $1). I decided this morning there is no way I am pregnant if I'm still getting  a negative at 15dpo and with an hCG of less than 2 at 14dpo. My hCG prior to starting the Lupron shots was less than 0.1 so that is a change, but it didn't seem to be enough for a viable pregnancy. I struggled emotionally Thursday and Friday, but by yesterday evening I was doing a lot better, which is pretty amazing as I got only three hours of sleep on Friday night (long story). I had been awake for 20 hours straight when I went to bed at 9pm last night.

Then this evening I noticed a little bit of spotting, and I knew it was too soon to be a result of stopping the progesterone. It reminded me of the spotting I had at the beginning of Oliver's pregnancy. I didn't have any spotting at the beginning with the ectopic, Ian, or Nadia. I decided to take another hpt, and it was a VERY faint bfp. It looked just like my first ++ for the ectopic in 2005, at which point my hCG was 11 at 12dpo. I quickly dug the medications back out of the trashcan and started taking them again. It seems I am pregnant. I say a little bit pregnant because that's what the RE said to me in 2005 when my hCG was so low. It seems I'm headed for another miscarriage, but I would love to be wrong. I wrote this last night but am adding an update. I took another hpt this morning (Monday - 16dpo), and the line is still faint but darker than last night. I am definitely going to keep taking my medications, have the Beta tomorrow morning, and buy some more hpts. I hope the line starts getting much darker because right now the level seems far too low to represent a viable pregnancy. What a rollercoaster ride! Yesterday morning I took many bags of maternity clothing and baby clothing to a donation shed at our church. I hope I can get them back if this proves to be a successful pregnancy! Please keep praying!! In 2005 when I saw the faint second line I was over the moon excited and had no worries about a miscarriage. This is the first time I've seen two lines and from the start been pessimistic. It feels strange to be getting ++ hpts and not be super excited. I would love to be wrong. I hope to be posting wonderful news from the Beta tomorrow.

Thankful Thursday

1. Today is Nadia's first spiritual birthday! When she prayed on October 3, 2012, I questioned if it was real, but over the past year I have been convinced, primarily through her attempts to help Ian become a Christian, that it was real. I pray that she will grow in her relationship with the Lord over the decades to come. To celebrate her birthday we are having cookies and cream ice cream cake this evening. The kids have never had ice cream cake before; they are very excited! I also let Nadia pick where we stopped for lunch after co-op this morning, and she picked Dunkin' Donuts, and in addition to the egg and cheese bagel sandwiches, I got 6 donuts for the five of us to enjoy as a special treat.

2. We got some new treasures at the yard sales last weekend - books, puzzles, costumes, a doll, a bike, and some clothes. I am also feeling relieved that yard sale season will be on hiatus for the next several months. The doll I got for $2 is Nadia's most favorite toy at the moment.

3. I attended an excellent parenting seminar at our church on Saturday afternoon with a guest speaker from California (Pastor Mark Holeman). Most of the things that he said parents should be doing with their children I have already been doing because I was following the pattern of my parents - praying at each meal, devotions and prayer at bedtime, going to church, talking about spiritual matters throughout the day, etc. The one thing that he also stressed, which I hadn't given much thought to yet was doing service projects together as a family. He suggests that in addition to random acts of kindness (meaning just helping various people as situations arise such as helping an elderly widow with raking her leaves) that each family should be involved in community service (pet shelter, crisis pregnancy center, food bank, etc.) as well as something international. The international part I had already put into place (we are sponsoring three children through Compassion International), but I hadn't given any thought to a community service project. He suggested that you might try a different one once a month for a few months until you find the one that's a good fit for your family.

4. I meant to mention this last week, but Nadia now likes me to braid her hair!! For pretty much her whole life she hasn't been a fan of having anything in her hair, and in addition to dressing her up in girly clothes, I had looked forward to doing her hair different ways (one of the perks of having longer hair, right?). She never even wants to wear it in a ponytail.

5. The weather has been really nice. The highs have been in the high 70's and even up to the low 80's, which is warmer than usual for October in Pennsylvania. I'm thinking we should take advantage of it and go to the pumpkin patch this weekend.

6. The kids did a good job with dinner tonight, which means we can have pizza tomorrow! We haven't had any in three weeks so we're really looking to it!