this whole thing still does not feel real

This whole thing still does not feel real to me. I try to picture in my head that in December I will no longer be working outside the home, and I will have a tiny little being dependent on me. The other night at church a new first-time dad of a 3 month old daughter told me that this pregnancy will just fly by... and it scared me! I'm not ready yet. We don't have a crib or a name or anything. I'm still sewing maternity clothes and need some time to finish THOSE up. lol. Even after going to the doctor last week it still feels like all of a sudden one day I may wake up and find that I've dreamed this whole thing after all.

I'm still not having any "big" symptoms. I have had a few tiny bouts of vomiting, and I have little mini-waves of nausea that come every so often, and hubby says my bosom looks larger (I can't tell a difference myself yet though), but all these things are so small. I keep telling people that I want to hurry up and have a little belly so I can feel more pregnant. I want to feel the child kick and poke at me. I want to see my stomach contort into all kinds of weird shapes as the youngling inside me moves around to get comfy (but not TOO comfy... little one, I want you OUT when it's time... lol).

But for now I have to wait. For now it is still fun to walk around the grocery store and see a mama with a belly much more advanced than mine and smile a little secret smile to myself. For now it is comforting to rub my "belly" even though what I'm really probably rubbing is intestines instead of a baby. :) For now I will try to be patient and wait and dream and plan.

feeling unprepared and insecure

I'm still pregnant. I did take a bunch more tests on Sunday and Monday, managed to keep my willpower and skip Tuesday, then took another test on Wednesday. I will probably take one more on Saturday too (and the other digital since when I took the first digital I forgot to take a scrapbook picture of it, lol) and then taper off to twice a week until I start getting symptoms. I still don't have any. I am a little tired today but I don't know if it's the baby or if it's because the weekend lack of sleep is finally catching up with me.

But anyway, on to the topic. For close to 10 years now I have been reading and learning and talking and studying about pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood. I have yearned for the day to finally get here when I would be expecting a baby. But even though I spent ALL that time preparing, I feel so UNprepared now for some reason. I still have pretty much my whole pregnancy to go through but I just feel like it's going to FLY by and we will birth this baby with nothing for it (no crib, clothes, etc). lol. It's kindof weird... because in the past I would read a pregnancy book or whatever and be thinking to myself "that is so cool how a baby develops" or "I can't wait until I'm pregnant so I can start getting a big tummy" etc. But now I read those same books and it's very hard to shift thoughts to "wow that is happening inside ME right now" and "in just a few weeks THIS will be happening" etc.

And, I'm SO nervous about being a stay at home mom. It will be wonderful for us, but I've been working for 12 years. It is going to be a huge adjustment. I know that I will love it but I'm still in the nervous stage right now. Everything will work out though. I do have confidence in that at least. And I am very thankful to God for this blessing He has given us.

despite all odds, we are having a baby!

I did finish the bridesmaid's dress. Well I finished the machine portion of it. I still have to hand-sew the hem, lining, and hook/eye. But that is no big deal... I just have to DO it. And I also finished the curtains and had a GREAT night's sleep the first night they were installed. :) Unfortunately, they will not work for Lunaception though at this time.

Despite all odds and a really bad-looking chart this time, I did end up pregnant. I started wearing a pad on Wednesday in anticipation of my period coming any day the last half of this week. When it got to be Friday night and Saturday morning and my period hadn't arrived yet, I was confused but was enjoying my nice long luteal phase (after having a few 8 and 9 day luteal phases before this cycle). The in-laws were in town and Saturday afternoon I was able to sneak a quick test just before lunch. I went back after eating (probably about 9-11 minutes later) just to confirm that it "developed" into a negative test so I could keep on waiting for my period. I picked it up and was VERY shocked and surprised to see a second line. Then I put it down. I said "no way." I picked it up again and looked at it in disbelief. I smiled to myself and started to get a tiny bit excited. I put it down and went back into the living room w/ the in-laws and kept a secret.

I wasn't for sure if the second line was a "real" line or just an evaporation line though. It was pink, but it was likely read after the time limit. I waited 4 hours and tested again. I also tested with water just so I could see what a real negative would look like. Then I tested again 4 hours after that and 4 hours after that. (Gotta love insomnia lol... the last test was at about 2:00 am). All tests except the water one are positive. i'm still in a bit of surprise because I have been having NO symptoms at all. No nausea, no sore boobs, no hunger, no fatigue, etc. The only thing possibly different is that the past two mornings I've woken up a little warmer than usual. And of course the period that never showed up.

Hubby is SO excited. He keeps telling me, "You're going to be a mommy" or "I'm going to be a daddy" and wondering when we should tell people. I still want to live in the newness of this all before we start telling the world though.

trying lunaception next time

I think I finally ovulated this past Saturday. But, unless hubby's sperm are going to live 3 days (one of which was internally dry), our chances of conceiving this cycle are nil. And I'm really OK with that. It's kind of weird how in the past I notice that I get all despairing about my cycles thinking I'm NEVER going to ovulate and lamenting about that... then a few days later I get my temp shift.

Anyway. I am excited about moving on to the next cycle because I'm going to try Lunaception. Our bedroom is fairly bright at night, and in the past before artificial lights came into being, women's cycles would line up with the moon... they would ovulate at the full moon and menstruate at the new moon. I've been off the pill for well over 7 months now, and the package insert said that if I missed 2 or 3 pills (depending on when in my cycle I missed them) that I could get pregnant. Since it was necessary to take them every day to keep the hormone levels up, I have no doubt that after 210 days the artificial hormones aren't in my body anymore. And since I have apparently ovulated (albeit late most times) with every cycle, I know that my body knows what to do... but I wonder if the light in our bedroom is confusing my body and basically telling it that it's a full moon all the time. I'm making some nice dark curtains and hopefully will have them installed by next Thursday.

In other news, no credit card at this time for hubby. And the bridesmaid's dress is still being worked on. I hope to possibly finish it today.

keeping negative feelings at bay

Well it is now day 20 of my cycle and I am still waiting to ovulate. I was hoping that I would ovulate at least by Friday so that we would have a chance of getting pregnant, a chance of being far enough along to find out on the 31st, and a chance of being able to tell his parents (they live out of town) in person that we were expecting. But it doesn't look like this is going to happen. I'm ok with it, though, because I'll be seeing them in person at the beginning of May so if (all my if's are in a big, bold, loud font) I get pregnant before then, then I can still tell them in person. I'm in a wedding in early May so I would need to wait until after the wedding to not take away from the bride's big day.

I am still trying very hard to keep a positive outlook on this. I know there are lots of women out there who got pregnant with a very late ovulation but I don't think it will be me. What's really sad is how I am almost counting this cycle out when I haven't even ovulated yet. Someone out there help me keep hoping. I do get a little sadder as each cycle goes by, but I'm just hoping that the happy/sad ratio will stay more towards the happy side.

And really, now that this trying to conceive has been going on for a few months now, I am ok with not being pregnant already. I mean, if we got PG on our first try, then I would have been around 15 weeks pregnant now. Maybe not enough to be showing, but the time would be coming JUST around the corner... and I am a big procrastinator and I don't have NEAR the supply of maternity clothes built up that I want to. In fact, some more fabric is coming tomorrow and I have plans for a lot of "professional" outfits for it. A LOT of outfits, lol. (2 dresses, 2 skirts, and 8 tops). They will be fun to crank out since they don't have any zippers. And this is besides all the fabric that I already had, including 7 yards of khaki material for miscellaneous pants and a skirt. So since I'm not pregnant then I will have time to do some more sewing. I just need to not be on the computer so much. :P

And I'll get to work at my job for another few months. This year in Missouri I've had 3 different jobs already (since May). I won't feel like such a job hopper if I make it to a year with this one. And if I'm not pregnant this cycle then I won't have to worry about waiting to tell after my 90 day evaluation in 6 weeks. The next cycle will have me possibly just ovulating at that time or just finding out.

But getting back to staying off the computer. I need to do more things outside of the online world. Especially since most of what I come on to the computer for is pregnancy, childbirth, TTCing, and other related topics. LOL. Last cycle I didn't chart or check my CM at all and it was both my earliest ovulation AND my longest luteal phase. If this cycle would hurry up and put me out of my misery then I will probably do that for next cycle too. I did have 2 days last cycle (conveniently right around the time of my temp rise) where I had enough CM to notice it w/o actively checking for it. I found it very liberating and relaxing to chart only temps. Especially since a lot of the times my CM isn't really classifiable into a nice chartable category.

But anyway enough about that. It's time for me to go grocery shopping and get a book from the library that I've put on reserve. :) Oh before I go, not being pg now will also give me and hubby more time to save a little cushion to start us off on our staying at home, or paying for a midwife, or whatever. And it will also give us a little more time to help build up his credit. He has almost no credit at all so we are going to try to get him a credit card, and just use it very little, keeping a tiny tiny balance on it month to month to build up his history in the positive. I'm excited about that.

seven months off the pill already

On another message board that I'm on, I have a counting ticker that says how many days/months/etc it has been since a certain event. I chose the "event" of the day I took my last birth control pill and started charting. The other day my ticker rolled over to 7 months. I can hardly believe it's been that long. In my chart for this cycle and for all the rest until hubby and I are expecting, I am delaying updating the online version by a week. It's only fair to hubby so that he can be the first to know if I'm pregnant or not, even before all my online friends. :) It feels weird though to talk on the cycle message boards about my cycle... since I talk about things that happened a week ago, and I try VERY hard not to give clues about what is or is not happening currently.

Work is still going fine. We had a busy day today but it was all compressed into the last 2 hours. The bank lobby opened at 9 and I looked at the clock and felt like it should be 11, but it was only 10. I was so sad. But the day picked up and ended up going faster towards the end. We had a customer try to come by 10 minutes after the drive thru was closed, and they even waited at the window (that had blinds pulled down over it) for a minute or so before going on.

I get to be in a wedding in May. :D I am going to be this girl's only bridesmaid so she said that I could wear whatever I want. I love to sew so i am going to make a dress. I got the fabric yesterday. It's not _too_ shiny but it's not dull either. I think it's going to make a fabulous dress. I'm going to make the dress up (not sewing the zipper... just pinning that into the opening) in regular fabric first though to see how it fits and if I need to make any adjustments when I'm cutting it out. Also if I get pg this cycle then I will be a tiny bit along at the wedding, and may or may not be showing, but I am going to make it with a little extra room just in case. It is a dress with an empire waist anyway so it'll be very easy to have some room in the tummy area. I am looking forward to the wedding overall, though. It will be the first wedding that I've been in, besides my own. :)

october vacation scheduled already

So it turns out that I get a pro-rated amount of vacation in 2006. And I have to take a whole week of it at once, and then the other days can be taken piecemeal whenever. We are still on track to paying off our car and all debt in October, so I requested a week towards the end of October so that we could take a road trip to finally close out those bank accounts. (That particular credit union required me to keep an open account while my loan was active). And the road trip is going to be about 12 hours. We will probably try to stop along the way.

Our TTC journey therefore has been put on hold this month since it's probably not a good idea to be travelling while I'm 38 weeks pregnant. Then if we get pregnant next cycle I'll only be around 34 weeks or so hopefully. We only baby danced once, and it turned out to be right on ovulation day, but it was protected. But if you look at my chart, those high temps are the highest temps I've EVER had. And I'm not sick so I can't attribute it to fever. And my sleep schedule wasn't drastically different. And I don't drink alcohol so that wouldn't have made high temps either. The last time I had temps even close to that high it was just a single event around 3 days past ovulation (DPO). Now, with these high temps coming a week after ovulation, it is almost indicative of a tri-phasic chart, which sometimes indicates pregnancy.

The only thing that worried me most about being pregnant RIGHTNOW is the road trip to close those bank accounts. Until this morning when I crunched some numbers, I was pretty sure that October would be the payoff month for that car loan. But I looked at the debt payoff plan thing again and moved some payments around, and I can pay off the car as early as June. The rest of our credit cards wouldn't be paid off until probably January, but our budget indicates that we can make those last couple months' of payments just fine on hubby's income alone.

Having said all that, though, I'm still 99.9% sure that I am NOT pregnant this cycle. OOOOO I just had a very cute thought for how to tell hubby we're expecting if it happens next cycle. But I'm keeping my lips zipped about that for now. :)

lovin my banking job

I can't believe it's February already. Time is sure flying. I started my new bank job on Friday and love love love it. For several days I've felt "barely useful" b/c I didn't have my own computer login info, or my own cash drawer or anything. I would run the occasional transaction on someone else's number with them watching but I was new and slow-ish and just wanted to hurry up and be trained so that I could feel like I was actually working instead of just being in the way.

For those curious about "How Not To Rob A Bank" I have to tell the background story first. Yesterday in the drive through was a person who wanted to cash two checks that were written on a couple of our accounts. And we do that, but for non-customers they have to come into the lobby to do it. Well, this guy was NOT coming into the lobby and we WOULD cash those checks for him and he wasn't leaving until we would do that. Our manager came over and told the customer that he needed to come into the lobby also, so then the guy wanted to speak to our manager's boss. So our manager gave the guy the phone number and he sits in the drive through and calls him and of course gets all mad when he gets voice mail and again said that he wouldn't leave until he got those checks cashed. Well finally our manager had to tell him that he would call the police if he didn't leave. So the guy left... but veeeerrry slowly. He stopped around the corner in our parking lot for several minutes before going on his way. (He did end up calling and making a complaint saying that we treated him unprofessionally... but whatever). Anyway, getting to the how NOT to rob a bank part... the district manager came in a bit later to follow up w/ the situation, and while there he told us of this one time where a guy tried to rob a bank. Except this particular guy tried to rob the drive-thru. With a knife. The poor criminal of course did not get any money that way. :P

Today I finally got all my "stuff" so I could process my own transactions. The teller supervisor wanted me to start my own transactions yesterday but I didn't have any computer access until very late in the day (even though I did have all my keys). So it was a no go for that. And today I didn't really do any transactions either b/c of the late hour in the day when I got the money assigned to me. I basically verified that what was there was supposed to be there (with someone watching me the whole time) and then did my "final balance of the day" and signed off, then spent my last few minutes organizing it a little better. The manager asked me if I was nervous and I said no, but it is a teeny bit nerve-wracking. I just hope I remember vital bits of info when I start doing my very own transactions and don't mess something up.

Oh and one more funny thing that happened today... we had a customer in the drive thru, and if I or one of the other tellers has personally waited on them before, then we don't have to get their ID for cash back or cashing a check or something. Well this particular customer apparently had been to this branch a lot but it was back when other people were working. He got mad when we asked for his ID and said that "we need to keep the same people there all the time" b/c it's bad customer service to ask for an ID each time. As if we had ANY control over the hiring of people or people leaving or getting fired or anything. Once the customer made his point though he wasn't going to let it go until we agreed with him... he kept pressing us and asking "Don't you agree that it's bad customer service?" :P (insert rolling eyes icon here) I wonder what fun surprises will be in store for me tomorrow.

But seriously though, the best thing about this job is that I really feel like I can do it for a very long time. With the other two jobs I worked here in Missouri and even a few jobs before that, I was just counting the months and years to the time that we would be able to start trying for a baby and/or be pregnant, so that I could have a "countdown" to what my last day at work would be. But with this job, it's different. I no longer feel the need to hurry up and get pregnant so I can hurry up and have my last day. And the hours are great, the pay is decent, and it's very close to home. And, if I do get pregnant while there, then I will be able to wear my big stash of maternity clothes that I'm still trying to get motivated to sew up. :P But that may be in the near future OR the far future and it doesn't matter a whole lot right now. I am content to go one day at a time now.

hubby is flying

Some of you may have heard of Flylady. For those of you who haven't, she is a get-organized, get-rid-of-chaos guru. Hubby and I were talking the other day and I mentioned her and how she has this "control journal" to divide up your life into routines to get everything done that you need to, and to keep your house clean with little effort. Like if you clean a little bit every day then you won't have to work as hard when it's time to do the deep cleaning. So anyway he goes and checks out her site, and HE has started a control journal for our family. He knows that we are a little cluttery right now and he wants to help stop clutter in its tracks. I am excited.

Something else I'm excited about is going to visit my family, which I will get to do before starting my new job. My last day at my old job will be Monday and I don't start my new job until Friday so I had a few brief days off, so hubby and I are going to make the looong drive out to my hometown for a few days and I can finally meet my second nephew, born this past summer. I can hardly wait.

But something I'm NOT so excited about is my cycle. It is still being long and annoying. I go through these awful phases during the cycle where I just KNOW that my body is broken and it will never be able to fix itself again and the pill has messed me up permanently. If hubby and I have daughters (well that is if we even get pregnant at all) then I'm giving them a copy of Taking Charge of Your Fertility on their 12th birthday so they can learn about their cycles and will never have to go on the pill. These long cycles wouldn't be so bad if I had long irregular cycles beforehand, but they were 29-31 days. Regular, for 7 whole years before I went on the pill. I had ONE weird cycle where I had a few days of diluted-looking bleeding in the middle of my cycle, but that was IT.

Have I said that hubby and I want a baby really really bad? If I haven't, well we do. I wish I were pregnant right now. And I REALLY hope that I at least can get pregnant before my younger sister has her second (and last) baby later this summer. I will just cry if she completes her family before mine is even started. Writing about this helps, even if I don't have very many readers. :P I don't know how it helps, but just having all my thoughts OUT there seems to give me a tiny smidgen of comfort and hope. And I need all the little smidgens of those two items that I can get right now.

new job, but not where i first expected

Well the organization that I talked about last time is still going slow. For the half-sewn dress, it's actually a 2-piece set w/ a blue sleeveless dress and then a sheer duster that goes over it. I had only started the duster (the dress pieces were cut out but nothing was sewn). I managed to finish the duster and sew about 2 lines in the dress before my bobbin ran out and I had to refill it. At least I was able to finish the seam I was on when it ran out. And organizing is also stalled out... on the days that I go in early I am too tired to do any little thing, and on the days that I go in late I usually sleep in, and on my last day off I spent a bunch of it playing games. LOL. And on my NEXT day off we have to take a 4.5 hour road trip, have a little appointment for my LASIK, then take a 4.5 hour road trip again.

But anyway on to the new job. The pharmacy tech position that I was trying to look into was giving me major runaround, so Tuesday I was all frustrated. Tuesday evening I applied online at a few banks and at a cell phone place. Wednesday when I got home from work there was a message waiting for me from one of the banks I applied at. I called him back and he wanted me to come in for an interview just anytime so I went in that afternoon. Either he liked me or was just being friendly, but I think I would fit in really well there. He had two more interviews yesterday for a total of 5, and there was one position open right now and possibly another position opening up in a couple of weeks. Oh and a funny story about the interview... afterwards he was giving me a very brief tour of the bank (break room and training rooms in the back and whatnot) and there was one door, and I thought he said that was the door to the ETM. I was like "What's an ETM"... turns out he said ATM instead of ETM. No wonder I was confused.

Yesterday I waited until 4:15 to call since I didn't know what time his other two interviews were or anything like that. So he starts off and says "I'm glad you called. I was going to call you b/c the situation has changed." I was getting a little worried here and figured that it was bad news since he would have called already probably if I got the job. He goes on to say that one of his personal bankers wanted to step down and be just a teller again (so I'm thinking ok... so there is no position now after all since I don't have the qualifications for a personal banker) and then he continues and says that there is still a full-time teller position open, but it's the 6:45-3:00 pm instead of the 8:45-5:15 and wanted to know if I was still interested. I told him that I was, and he asked me to come down and pick up the paperwork for the drug screen and fingerprinting and to consider myself hired. It was funny because he was so mild about the whole thing I had to sortof rewind in my head to make sure I heard what I thought I heard. So I went and got that paperwork and this morning I'm going to take care of those errands and should be able to start in a couple of weeks. But now I'm a little sad about leaving Waffle House. I'm going to miss the people a lot. But overall it is good that I am leaving. There are a bunch of regular customers who use foul language (I don't have a problem asking my coworkers to watch their mouths but for some reason can't do the same for customers) and the smoke so overall it will be a good move. I just hope my manager isn't TOO mad at me when I put in my notice.