Craving

Tonight I had a craving for Pad Thai. I have never craved that before.  My lovely ManWeif picked some up for dinner while he was running errands.  I love that guy.  And I'm already planning how, when I find out that I'm pregnant next week, I will laugh with him about our baby's first craving.  Hee Hee.

Ooh, the hypopregnia's back!

In Current Family News

With all this waiting, I have finally come to a place where I really enjoy my family as it is right now without always looking forward and thinking of the children that will be coming.  I don’t feel that my family is complete, but I don’t feel any hurry to move on.  I’ve actually started thinking of it as my “Phase 1” family.  Someday, we’ll outgrow this phase, but I am going to enjoy it while it is here.  

We have been trying to have another baby naturally since Rhys was 1 ½.  There have been a few convergences of circumstances that I felt sure would result in a pregnancy, but none have.  And, as much as I want a baby, I am OK with is.  I know that we are exactly where we need to be, and I love my Phase 1 family.  I will try hard to get as much done as I can during this time where I have more time, because I know more kids will mean less time.  I am not anxious to move beyond now.  I am happy in now.  Even so, I am excited about someday, too.  My heart is so full of love to share. 

In other news--I don't have nausea every time I ovulate any more. Thank goodness. That was getting annoying. 

Maybe not Pregnant for a Long Time

No, we're not doing anything different, we're just not pregnant. Mostly I just wanted to mention a weird quirk of my body recently--I have been getting morning sickness every time I ovulate since December. Whether Kevin is in town or not. It is annoying, and weird, and silly. But I'm learning to anticipate it, and it does make it easier to know for sure when I ovulated, especially since my cycles have been increasingly irregular this year. Which has worked out to make is so Kevin is not home most of the times I ovulate. I am confident that our family will grow at exactly Heavenly Father's ideal rate. It seems very strange to be so settled and satisfied in not having another baby. I still have baby hunger, and I yearn to be a nursing mother again, but I'm OK. :) Whatever God's plan for us, I'm certain that I will not get pregnant before He wants me to, so maybe it will still be a while yet.

Not This Time

Still not pregnant. But I'm at peace with this for right now. With Kevin being home and knowing that there's not really any more we can do on our end than we have done (without medical intervention, but I'm pretty sure we don't need that right now), and finding that the Lord is still contriving events so that no new child is coming to our family right now, He must have a really good reason for it. I don't know what that reason is, and I would still love to have another one soon, but I am beginning to see the wonderful things about not having a baby coming.

I can continue training for a triathlon like I want to do someday. (I just started this--don't be shocked. I'm nothing amazing right now, though I did swim 5/8 of a mile in the pool and run 3.25 miles on the track today, thankyouverymuch. I haven't been back on my bike since the hand surgery yet. I'll tell you how it goes, though probably not here.) I can spend lots of individual time with Willow and Rhys, which is way fun. I can take whatever medication I feel like. Plans for the next few years will likely only need to include potentially one more child instead of 2.

I still want a big family. I'm still planning that our family will grow. But I'm also beginning to find contentment with here and now, not always anxious looking for future happiness. I know this feeling comes from the Lord. I am grateful for his blessings in my life. I am thankful for His comfort when my hopes are not realized, especially with the prospect of Kevin probably leaving in the next week or so, meaning not pregnant now means probably not pregnant until sometime in the Spring. I love my Husband, too.

I guess that's all for now.

Signing off.

It Was A Sign

This is why I am pregnant today:

So, it is possible this is the first day of my pregnancy. And then this morning I waited to eat as I was making breakfast. I got to the point, as I do every morning, of feeling some pangs of hunger that usually pass after not too long and then I can enjoy my meal. Only this time they didn't pass. They got worse. And worse and worse. And I started feeling nauseated. I thought, "I need to eat something now before I can't and then I throw up. So I got some crackers and some peach juic e. It helped a little, but not completely. I was making pancakes and I continued mixing up the batter. I heated the griddles and poured the first ladles full when suddenly the smell of the batter hitting the hot griddles hit my olefactory nerves and I almost lost it. I had to leave the room so I didn't retch. I traded Kevin getting the kids dressed for making pancakes, and I stayed out of the room until they were all cooked and was then able to eat them for breakfast.

Later on that morning I learned about a medical emergency that a family in our ward is having and for which we were being asked to fast. Knowing how sick not eating made me this morning, I decided that I will join in prayer, but it would be better for me to keep eating regularly. Is it absolutely horrible of me, in the midst of another person's crisis, to even let such self-centered thoughts cross my mind as that perhaps I was given morning sickness today so that I would know not to fast my now (probably) pregnant body later on? Cause if it is horrible, I didn't think it. But if it's not so terribly horrible, then maybe I did just a little bit. Maybe if I don't feel sick at all tomorrow morning I will fast then. I do really hope and pray that all is well for this family and that recoveries are swift and complete.

OK, that's enough obsessing for the day. I do see the Hand of the Lord in my life. In real ways as well as neurotic ways. Even the mere fact that our bodies hold together and continue running every day, all day long seems like a miracle sometimes, especially when you see very close to home a medical issue come up out of the blue and strike down a seemingly healthy and normally functioning mother. Why did it happen? Wrong question. How is it that that doesn't happen to each of us all the time, every day? I am so grateful for my health and my family's health. I love my God, and I am grateful that he provides for me even when I twist every blessing to fit my own (widely publicized) secert desires.

Still not Pregnant

Not that there's really been any time for this to change yet, but I did say I would keep you posted. It took a couple of weeks of intermittent temperature taking to determine this definitely. I guess I must have miscarried both not-yet-implanted twins. I decided that I must have been carrying twins because of how very strong my pregnancy symptoms were from literally day 1. I am very confident that I didn't make them up or induce them because I didn't think I had ovulated yet and I know that I am not feeling them any more. My sense of smell is back to normal, I'm not feeling sick every morning, and I can eat whatever I cook.

So, being pregnant for almost two weeks during your luteal phase is closer to being pregnant than not being pregnant at all, right? So probably I have a better chance of getting pregnant next time than I have had previously, right? So since my I'm a week and a half past the start of my last period and it's very likely that I will be getting pregnant next time then I get to claim to be in my second week of pregnancy, right? Right.

Low Temperature Day 1

No September Baby for us this year. I just need to keep my mouth shut sometimes I think. But it's so hard when it is constantly on my mind. The only way I can think about anything else is if I give myself permission to blab somewhere.

I was so sure this time. Even Kevin was sure. Or maybe I just infected him. Personally, I think there probably was a little blastocyst in there for the last two weeks wreaking havoc on my hormones but for whatever reason it did not stick. In any case, I'm currently menstruating.

I was blessed by the Hand of the Lord in all this. Yesterday, when I still had a high temperature, I had a brief moment of crampy-feeling ache in my back. It wasn't itself so bad, but it suddenly made very real the possibility that I would get to Christmas--the day I got to say I officially knew I was pregnant--and not be pregnant. This was a depressing thought. But because of the blessed premonition, I was able to take the time to pray about it then and refocus myself out of my own desires and on to what the Lord has in store for our family. That made it a lot easier this morning when I just couldn't get the thermometer to go any higher than the average low.

And be this all as it may, there is no way that it has cured me, because since the first realization this morning my mind has been working very hard and finally shared with me the (I'm sure) true explanation that probably I am just miscarrying a twin and I'll probably still be pregnant when it is all through. I'll keep you posted.