I am a proud La Leche League member, and (eventually) future LLLI leader. Apparently it is common to not start cycling again until more than a year post-birth if you're still breastfeeding, especially if the baby is not sleeping through the night. (My son isn't, unfortunately, even at approaching 10 months...) I had issues with getting my period anyway before getting pregnant, thanks to my PCOS. We are still breastfeeding, and cautiously introducing solids. (There are a lot of allergies in the family, so we need to watch for possible reactions, especially when introducing foods that commonly cause allergies. I also agree that breastmilk is the best basis for nutrition through the end of the first year, and that solids are more for acclimation and learning than actual nutrition before a year. I would rather give our son a variety of foods in smaller quantities instead of lots of the same few foods. So, we're not rushing the solids.) So yeah, I'm not cycling yet, and odds are at this rate, it'll be at least another 2-4 months before we even have any chance of getting pregnant. Plus, I had a reaction that could be termed an allergy to Clomid (one of the easiest and cheapest fertility drugs to try), so I can never take it again. So if I have to do fertility treatments, we would almost certainly have to go straight to injectables, and maybe even straight to injectables plus IVF.
So, where does all that leave me, as far as any chance of getting pregnant without significant interventions? Who knows... it's frustrating. I just keep hoping that somehow I have a "suitable ovulation" (sometimes with PCOS you can ovulate, but have the egg not form correctly, so it's very unlikely to fertilize), we actually do the deed at the right time, the pregnancy "sticks", etc. Given my challenges, the odds seem long. But then again, I know women with half a reproductive tract, or were told they were in premature ovarian failure years before, or who did fertility treatments that didn't work, etc. who managed to get pregnant on their own and carry a baby to term. So I keep hoping that somehow it'll work out for us without treatments, but who knows. And at our ages, we can't wait forever before going back to the doctors.
Breastfeeding is known to reduce fertility, especially in the first 6-12 months. But I value breastfeeding for the first year or more, and don't want to rip off my son by forcing weaning on him, when given my fertility challenges it may not significantly increase my odds of getting pregnant.
That said, we're working on getting our son to sleep better at night, without doing cry it out methods. We're trying to get him to be better at settling himself when he wakes up at night by putting him down when he's half asleep instead of fully asleep. Since he's teething, it also means having to make sure we address his discomforts more aggressively so we have better odds of him staying asleep. The next step - whenever that comes - is to start limiting his nighttime feeds, and eventually eliminating them. My loose plan is to try to help him to sleep better (and as a consequence, feed him less often at night, hopefully only 1-2 times most nights), and by around a year, hopefully eliminate night wake-ups entirely. But we'll see what actually happens. Once he sleeps through the night (around the same time as his solids intake will be increasing), my husband and I can try to sleep better ourselves, and have more time for activities that could lead to another baby. :)
Showing posts with label PCOS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PCOS. Show all posts
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Reviving my blog!
April 27, 2010
I’ve been saying for a while that I was going to get back to blogging. Here we go! After going through fertility treatments, I am a mom, and an educator by both training and interest. We live outside New York City, in a condo. I am married to my second husband - I was widowed by cancer in my late 20’s. Even after getting remarried, it took a while (and assisted technologies) to get pregnant due to my Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). Since Mommy-hood took a while to come to me, I am continually grateful to finally be a mom. However, I’ve found that both for a little additional money, and for my sanity (and resume), I would like to find work that is hopefully interesting and leaves me with a few bucks after independent-contracting taxes are taken out and we pay the babysitter. Since we live in an expensive part of the country, and I’m finding that something that actually meets those criteria is quite difficult - more difficult than I’d expected. But I keep trying, and I’m sure I will be writing about it!
Who is the little guy? I have a fabulous 9-month-old son who thinks he’s already a toddler - crawling, pulling up, cruising, generally getting into everything. He is NOT a consistent sleeper, so that has been a challenge, particularly over the last few months as he’s gotten more active. We are breastfeeding, and plan on continuing until 12 months and possibly beyond. I’m a strong advocate of breastfeeding, and am actually just starting the process to become a La Leche League leader. At least that will be good for my resume!
Since I am not 25 anymore (and my husband isn’t even 35 anymore), we’ll be trying to get pregnant again soon... although it will almost certainly be a challenge with my PCOS issues. We’re open to adopting, but after being able to be pregnant and breastfeeding my son, I’m really hoping we can get pregnant on our own. (Plus, the older we get the harder it will be for us to qualify for adopting, especially in the current climate surrounding international adoptions...)
I hope my blog will be interesting enough for people to read - at least now I’ve gotten started!
I’ve been saying for a while that I was going to get back to blogging. Here we go! After going through fertility treatments, I am a mom, and an educator by both training and interest. We live outside New York City, in a condo. I am married to my second husband - I was widowed by cancer in my late 20’s. Even after getting remarried, it took a while (and assisted technologies) to get pregnant due to my Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). Since Mommy-hood took a while to come to me, I am continually grateful to finally be a mom. However, I’ve found that both for a little additional money, and for my sanity (and resume), I would like to find work that is hopefully interesting and leaves me with a few bucks after independent-contracting taxes are taken out and we pay the babysitter. Since we live in an expensive part of the country, and I’m finding that something that actually meets those criteria is quite difficult - more difficult than I’d expected. But I keep trying, and I’m sure I will be writing about it!
Who is the little guy? I have a fabulous 9-month-old son who thinks he’s already a toddler - crawling, pulling up, cruising, generally getting into everything. He is NOT a consistent sleeper, so that has been a challenge, particularly over the last few months as he’s gotten more active. We are breastfeeding, and plan on continuing until 12 months and possibly beyond. I’m a strong advocate of breastfeeding, and am actually just starting the process to become a La Leche League leader. At least that will be good for my resume!
Since I am not 25 anymore (and my husband isn’t even 35 anymore), we’ll be trying to get pregnant again soon... although it will almost certainly be a challenge with my PCOS issues. We’re open to adopting, but after being able to be pregnant and breastfeeding my son, I’m really hoping we can get pregnant on our own. (Plus, the older we get the harder it will be for us to qualify for adopting, especially in the current climate surrounding international adoptions...)
I hope my blog will be interesting enough for people to read - at least now I’ve gotten started!
Friday, July 4, 2008
Tonight - or why I started blogging now
I've been thinking of starting a blog for a little while (likely topics: the TTC thing, PCOS, young widowhood, young adult cancer, remarried young widows, work stuff, etc.). So, I finally did it. (BTW, "LH" in my world is "Late Husband" - it will be a somewhat frequent reference, so there you go.) This will be a bit long, since I'm trying to give you guys some background.
As I alluded to in my first post, issues of pregnancy/babies/etc. were HORRIFICALLY painful for me while my LH was slowly dying of cancer and for 2+ years after he died. I literally couldn't deal with most things related to those topics. It was like the proverbial "Why don't you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it? We're CLOSED!" Only, times about 100. At least.
And now, L and I are having trouble getting pregnant. I ovulated once right off the pill back in January - and then nothing since then. I'm doing the whole temping/charting THING, so I KNOW I haven't O'ed. I have freaking pretty charts and statistics (those of you doing this too will totally get what I mean). Lots of pretty pictures showing why I'm not pregnant, why I could have two martinis tonight (I was not a happy camper, so sue me). And I'm doing occasional ovulation predictor kits, not that they're overly useful for many of us with PCOS anyway, but whatever, just for sh**s and giggles.
The cause of my not being a happy camper tonight? Within about an hour of each other, I found out that two friends are pregnant - one, an old friend of my LH's (who I also knew going way back) whose wife is due any day now, and the other, a close friend who had been not really hardcore TTC but kind of not NOT trying for only a couple of months... and bingo, two lines. The first set already has a 2+ year old daughter, and this friend had already accidentally put his foot in it. When his wife was pregnant the first time, he sent an e-mail to me about how overjoyed he was to feel his baby move inside his wife - to his friend's widow who had already told him that pregnancy stuff was incredibly painful to her - hello?!?!?! The second friend and I had wanted to be pregnant together. Oh well.
I feel absolutely awful - almost dirty - about not being able to be happier for both of these friends. And I'd suspected it, too. I've developed a hyper-sensitive radar for pregnancies in the last 5 years. But at the same time, I am ANGRY and HURT that I can't be there with them. I hate - loathe - that my LH's friend has become one of these obliviously happy parents who just don't get (and worse, don't really respect) the fact that no everyone's lives revolve around children (even if they ARE parents!), and thus I pretty much have nothing to talk to him about anymore. And clearly they have had absolutely no problem getting pregnant either time (I know they got pregnant pretty much immediately the first time, and I can do the math with the fact that there is not much time between kids). I had even told him that my new husband and I were having trouble in the TTC area, and he barely even acknowledged it much less offered any kind of empathy when he wrote back to tell me that they were pregnant again. Um, thanks for even trying to be empathetic!
I also absolutely hate that my other friend and I will not be able to somehow have the stars align and both be pregnant together. And now I am afraid I will lose her as a friend, as has happened with so many others, especially given how hard pregnancy/kid stuff has been for me in the last few years. Not that she would purposely leave me out of her life, but kids have a way of doing that to so many friendships. Especially if you don't live really near each other, and my friend and I don't. And so of course, I am really upset that I can't be more supportive of her, happier for her pregnancy, etc. She was very sweet on the phone, saying that she knew this may be hard for me, that she wanted us to be friends but she would understand if I needed to take little breaks from her pregnancy news as long as they weren't permanent breaks, etc. Of course, that only makes me feel worse.
After all this, I walked into the bar where I was meeting my husband and some friends for drinks to kick off the holiday weekend... and promptly burst into tears. My heart felt like it was breaking in a way it hasn't - well, pretty much ever - about anything other than my late husband's death and related issues. My husband steered me back outside to the curb, and I sobbed into his chest in front of all the people at the outdoor tables. Yeehaw! How classy. Good thing I had lots of training in getting over crying in public during the intensive young cancer spouse/young widow period. It felt like something was coming open in my chest, and such painful, deep sadness was pouring out. I hadn't cried like that in a while.
Anyway, as far as our TTC, I more or less knew I probably had PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) even before going to the reproductive endocrinologist a few weeks ago. I went off the pill last December, ovulated once, and then nothing since then. I guess I never figured I wouldn't have ovulated at least 2-3 times by now. (Ah, to believe that again...) To make things even more fun, since we went on a big trip this spring (for which I had to get extra unpaid days worked into my contract) and have another "command performance" family trip next month, I have basically absolutely NO vacation/sick days left at work. So, I feel like I can't even really start medical intervention to TTC - even Metformin, a diabetes drug that helps some women with PCOS to ovulate more regularly - because I really can't take much time at all for the doctors' appointments. Not to mention possible sick days due to potential drug side effects. Ugh.
So I feel like I'm really between a rock and a hard place. Especially after news from two friends who are PG and how I felt tonight, I want to jump on either the Met or Clomid freaking tomorrow. But I feel like I'm barely holding on at work as it is (my job isn't that hard, but it's been really annoying and rather stressful for the last 6 weeks or so, and will probably not get any better in the next 2 weeks). So how would I be able to deal with all the feelings about getting treatment, how the drugs may make me feel, etc. - and still function even halfway decently at work? But I am pretty much over acting like there is "plenty of time", like it's not a big deal if I don't start treatments until more like late fall or so, etc.
So anyway... that gives you an idea of some Stuff I'm dealing with, may be writing about, etc. Thanks for "listening".
As I alluded to in my first post, issues of pregnancy/babies/etc. were HORRIFICALLY painful for me while my LH was slowly dying of cancer and for 2+ years after he died. I literally couldn't deal with most things related to those topics. It was like the proverbial "Why don't you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it? We're CLOSED!" Only, times about 100. At least.
And now, L and I are having trouble getting pregnant. I ovulated once right off the pill back in January - and then nothing since then. I'm doing the whole temping/charting THING, so I KNOW I haven't O'ed. I have freaking pretty charts and statistics (those of you doing this too will totally get what I mean). Lots of pretty pictures showing why I'm not pregnant, why I could have two martinis tonight (I was not a happy camper, so sue me). And I'm doing occasional ovulation predictor kits, not that they're overly useful for many of us with PCOS anyway, but whatever, just for sh**s and giggles.
The cause of my not being a happy camper tonight? Within about an hour of each other, I found out that two friends are pregnant - one, an old friend of my LH's (who I also knew going way back) whose wife is due any day now, and the other, a close friend who had been not really hardcore TTC but kind of not NOT trying for only a couple of months... and bingo, two lines. The first set already has a 2+ year old daughter, and this friend had already accidentally put his foot in it. When his wife was pregnant the first time, he sent an e-mail to me about how overjoyed he was to feel his baby move inside his wife - to his friend's widow who had already told him that pregnancy stuff was incredibly painful to her - hello?!?!?! The second friend and I had wanted to be pregnant together. Oh well.
I feel absolutely awful - almost dirty - about not being able to be happier for both of these friends. And I'd suspected it, too. I've developed a hyper-sensitive radar for pregnancies in the last 5 years. But at the same time, I am ANGRY and HURT that I can't be there with them. I hate - loathe - that my LH's friend has become one of these obliviously happy parents who just don't get (and worse, don't really respect) the fact that no everyone's lives revolve around children (even if they ARE parents!), and thus I pretty much have nothing to talk to him about anymore. And clearly they have had absolutely no problem getting pregnant either time (I know they got pregnant pretty much immediately the first time, and I can do the math with the fact that there is not much time between kids). I had even told him that my new husband and I were having trouble in the TTC area, and he barely even acknowledged it much less offered any kind of empathy when he wrote back to tell me that they were pregnant again. Um, thanks for even trying to be empathetic!
I also absolutely hate that my other friend and I will not be able to somehow have the stars align and both be pregnant together. And now I am afraid I will lose her as a friend, as has happened with so many others, especially given how hard pregnancy/kid stuff has been for me in the last few years. Not that she would purposely leave me out of her life, but kids have a way of doing that to so many friendships. Especially if you don't live really near each other, and my friend and I don't. And so of course, I am really upset that I can't be more supportive of her, happier for her pregnancy, etc. She was very sweet on the phone, saying that she knew this may be hard for me, that she wanted us to be friends but she would understand if I needed to take little breaks from her pregnancy news as long as they weren't permanent breaks, etc. Of course, that only makes me feel worse.
After all this, I walked into the bar where I was meeting my husband and some friends for drinks to kick off the holiday weekend... and promptly burst into tears. My heart felt like it was breaking in a way it hasn't - well, pretty much ever - about anything other than my late husband's death and related issues. My husband steered me back outside to the curb, and I sobbed into his chest in front of all the people at the outdoor tables. Yeehaw! How classy. Good thing I had lots of training in getting over crying in public during the intensive young cancer spouse/young widow period. It felt like something was coming open in my chest, and such painful, deep sadness was pouring out. I hadn't cried like that in a while.
Anyway, as far as our TTC, I more or less knew I probably had PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) even before going to the reproductive endocrinologist a few weeks ago. I went off the pill last December, ovulated once, and then nothing since then. I guess I never figured I wouldn't have ovulated at least 2-3 times by now. (Ah, to believe that again...) To make things even more fun, since we went on a big trip this spring (for which I had to get extra unpaid days worked into my contract) and have another "command performance" family trip next month, I have basically absolutely NO vacation/sick days left at work. So, I feel like I can't even really start medical intervention to TTC - even Metformin, a diabetes drug that helps some women with PCOS to ovulate more regularly - because I really can't take much time at all for the doctors' appointments. Not to mention possible sick days due to potential drug side effects. Ugh.
So I feel like I'm really between a rock and a hard place. Especially after news from two friends who are PG and how I felt tonight, I want to jump on either the Met or Clomid freaking tomorrow. But I feel like I'm barely holding on at work as it is (my job isn't that hard, but it's been really annoying and rather stressful for the last 6 weeks or so, and will probably not get any better in the next 2 weeks). So how would I be able to deal with all the feelings about getting treatment, how the drugs may make me feel, etc. - and still function even halfway decently at work? But I am pretty much over acting like there is "plenty of time", like it's not a big deal if I don't start treatments until more like late fall or so, etc.
So anyway... that gives you an idea of some Stuff I'm dealing with, may be writing about, etc. Thanks for "listening".
Let's get this started
Let me briefly (ha ha) introduce myself.
I'm KJ. I'm 32 years old. I have lived in a few different cities before returning to the Northeastern U.S. area where I grew up. I had been married a few years, we had bought our first home, and were probably a few months from trying to get pregnant. Instead, my late husband developed a rare and super-aggressive cancer. He lived almost a year before the cancer took him from me. Thus, I was widowed at 28. Other than the loss of my LH himself, the loss of our planned-for and much-wanted family was by orders of magnitude the second-most-painful part of the whole widowhood thing.
Incredibly, though, I was lucky enough to meet L only a little over a year after losing my LH (and after several mistakes related to "men" - quotations needed - dating too soon after being widowed is rarely a good idea). Although it was a bit tough in the first few months given all I was still dealing with, we fell in love, and then got married last summer.
Now, we are moving onto that next part of things... trying to get pregnant. However, I had my diagnosis of PCOS confirmed a few weeks ago, which is kind of a problem. Yeah, I would say not ovulating since right after I went off the pill 6 1/2 months ago is a problem. At least it seems my husband's part of things is all good, fortunately. It's just me who has "issues" in trying to get me knocked up.
Anyway, I hope that this blog proves helpful for me to work out all my swirling feelings, that maybe it winds up helping some other people also, or at least is somewhat amusing.
Thanks for indulging me.
I'm KJ. I'm 32 years old. I have lived in a few different cities before returning to the Northeastern U.S. area where I grew up. I had been married a few years, we had bought our first home, and were probably a few months from trying to get pregnant. Instead, my late husband developed a rare and super-aggressive cancer. He lived almost a year before the cancer took him from me. Thus, I was widowed at 28. Other than the loss of my LH himself, the loss of our planned-for and much-wanted family was by orders of magnitude the second-most-painful part of the whole widowhood thing.
Incredibly, though, I was lucky enough to meet L only a little over a year after losing my LH (and after several mistakes related to "men" - quotations needed - dating too soon after being widowed is rarely a good idea). Although it was a bit tough in the first few months given all I was still dealing with, we fell in love, and then got married last summer.
Now, we are moving onto that next part of things... trying to get pregnant. However, I had my diagnosis of PCOS confirmed a few weeks ago, which is kind of a problem. Yeah, I would say not ovulating since right after I went off the pill 6 1/2 months ago is a problem. At least it seems my husband's part of things is all good, fortunately. It's just me who has "issues" in trying to get me knocked up.
Anyway, I hope that this blog proves helpful for me to work out all my swirling feelings, that maybe it winds up helping some other people also, or at least is somewhat amusing.
Thanks for indulging me.
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