Story of Us

Trina and I dated long distance for 3 mos before she relocated to be with me. After we were together for about 9mos I knew she was "the one". Actually, I knew before then but that's when I started thinking about a proposal. I wanted it to be perfect. I found the ring and planned a romantic weekend getaway. I booked a cabana at a funky little place called Laughing Horse Lodge in Pt Aransas. All of the cabanas have cheesy "horse themed names". I almost choked when we got there and found out our cabana was named "Bridle Sweet". Our first night there, we took a walk on the beach. After a while, we went up into a life guard tower to sit and listen to the waves. I was so nervous. At the stroke of midnight, on one knee, I asked her to be my wife. To my great relief she said yes. :) 13mos later we flew to the Caribbean to get married on a beautiful white sand beach. It was amazing. We spent 8 days in paradise and met some really cool chicks. In some ways it feels like yesterday, but in reality it's been nearly a year. This Saturday, May 3rd, Trina and I will be celebrating our one year anniversary. We're going back to Pt A for a long weekend. We even booked the Bridle Sweet. :)

As luck would have it, my dad is also going to be in Pt A for a fishing trip. We plan on meeting up for dinner. I can't wait. We're taking him to our FAVORITE restaurant, Shell's. It's a tiny little place with the best food I have ever put in my mouth. I can't think of a better way to spend our anniversary weekend. Good food and good company at the beach.

Hello Again

It's been forever since I last posted. Lack of motivation I suppose. It was much more fun posting about getting pregnant and being pregnant. I have been keeping up with everyone else's blogs, though. I've been a grade A lurker as a matter of fact. So, what have we been up to? Here goes...

The "funk" only overcomes us occasionally these days. Trina has started playing the guitar again. I can listen to her for hours. She has the most amazing singing voice. We've both been eating healthy and Trina has been doing her yoga again. She even got a new pilates DVD that's been kicking her ass. She wants to be in even better shape the next time around. We've started several new projects around the house and yard to keep occupied. With so little that we can actually control, I guess we're just doing what we can.

We got alot accomplished for Earth Day. I was very proud of us. We took our recycling to the nearest facility which is a 30 minute drive. We went down to our local grocery who was giving away cloth grocery bags if you brought in plastic bags to recycle. We were given a Peace Lilly (thanks Haely&Troy) and purchased a Bamboo Palm, both of which are on NASA's top ten air cleaning plants list. We bought 3 recycling bins to make sorting easier so that we do a better job of collecting recyclables. I planted a vegetable garden & Trina started a "garbage can compost". We bought the cutest Earth Day gDiaper. I love it. :) I think that's it. Hmmm, seemed like we did more. Ah well, anything we do to make this a better place for our kids is a good step.

Better Together

Wednesday's appointment wasn't as horrible as I was prepared for. Don't get me wrong, seeing an empty ultrasound was crushing, but we got through it. Our OB has amazing bedside manner. He managed to console us for our loss and at the same time, be upbeat about our next try. The ultrasound showed that, although there was still a small amount of blood in Trina's uterus, everything else looked "great". He gave us a Rx to resolve the blood issue and told us that there would not be a waiting period for our next IUI. With any luck we'll greet CD1 in 4-8 weeks and officially get back on the TTC train.

Somewhere along the way, "minute by minute" graduated to "one day at a time". Trina and I are are slowly healing our broken hearts. We've found strength in each other and those around us. I've been amazed both at how supportive people have been and how inconsiderate others were. It wasn't the fact that some were good to us and some were not that was so surprising. It was finding out that people didn't necessarily fit into the categories we expected them to. I guess that's just the way life goes.

Irony & Cliches

Well, it's official. Friday's blood work already showed non-pregnant levels of progesterone and hCG so today's comparison panel was cancelled. Our doc seemed a bit alarmed at the fact that she was still bleeding and having pain. Trina's Rx for bed rest and iron supplements was renewed and an ultrasound was scheduled for Wed. The irony of it all is that we were supposed to see our baby for the first time on Wed. The ultrasound that was supposed to reveal our child's heartbeat is now searching for "leftover debris" from a failed pregnancy. I'd say I'm dealing with this reality "one day at a time", but I think "minute by minute" might be more precise...

Goodbye Seamonkey

Thursday morning Trina's bbtemp dipped, yesterday it dropped. Then came the bleeding and the cramping and the pain. Too early for an ultrasound so they did bloodwork. They'll do more Monday. Until then, Trina's on strict bedrest. Nothing to do now but wait for the inevitable news, the life we created has been extinguished.

That's My Girl

The fact that Trina is pregnant only seems real to me in small sporadic flashes. I'm still in shock that it "took" on the first try. It's a little less surreal for her considering her list of pregnancy symptoms is growing everyday. Her breasts are tender and her emotions are on overdrive. Yesterday she told me she was on the verge of killing someone and crying in no particular order. I told her she was pretty. :) She's been getting nauseous off and on. She has no interest in eating baked goods and has an all out food aversion to both donuts and brownies. This wouldn't be a big deal if she didn't work in a bakery. Yesterday she had to have another girl restock the donut case for her and gagged when she had to cut up brownie bites for people to sample. She's been craving tomatoes and pickles. Pickles may seem like a classic pregnancy craving, but I'm not convinced that this isn't just her normal pickle craving. My girl can put away some brine soaked cucumbers. Trina's really been impressing me by eating healthy and avoiding processed foods. On top of that, she's walking 2 miles and doing an hour of prenatal yoga nearly every morning. My baby-to-be has an amazing mama.

Speechless...

My beautiful wife is going to have a baby. OUR baby...

A Beautiful Mind

OK, remember when I reserved the right to freak out? That time is now, folks. For some unknown, very stupid reason, we decided Sunday was a good day to start POAS. We were wrong. Sunday's stick was negative. We were only a little bit sad because it was way early. Well Monday's stick had the tiniest, faintest, ghost of an almost line. Kind of...maybe. I stared and stared at that stick. I willed the "line" to show itself. After talking myself in circles to my best friend she sent me the link to peeonastck.com. It's the damnedest thing. A whole website filled with FAQ's and pictures on home pregnancy test results. Now instead of just staring at the 2 sticks we had (yes I kept them both, don't judge me), I was staring at pages and pages of sticks and comparing them to ours. This morning's stick, which was a different brand, was supposed to make everything better. It was supposed to be one of 2 things, Bold or Blank. Is that so damn hard? Apparently, because the damn thing had it's own phantom, barely there, hint of a line. The only difference was that it was pink instead of blue. Now I had 3 sticks and a website to analyze til my eyes bled.
Side note: Almost no one in our "real life" knows we inseminated this month, let alone that we're anxiously awaiting a damn urine soaked stick to tell us the most important thing we'll ever find out. This leaves me doing mental acrobatics silently and secretly. I think of sticks all day and all night. I've dreamt of nothing but HPT for 2 days. I even woke up the the sound of my wife using the restroom in the middle of the night and nearly ran in there to see if she was testing without me! Apparently that tied into the dream I was having. In my dreams sometimes the test is positive and sometimes it's negative and lots of times just when we have it figured out, it changes. Once when we decided it was "really positive this time" Trina looks at me and says, "oh wait, this is the one that YOU peed on, it can't be positive". When did I start peeing on tests? Stupid dreams, stupid subconscious.
So today I confided my lunacy in Vada. I laid out all my "what ifs", dreams, thoughts and comparisons and when I get to the part of my story where I'm peeing on sticks in my dreams she says "Well why don't you pee on a stick? It HAS to be negative, then you can compare it to the other sticks." Brilliant! I LOVE this girl. I run in and pee on the remaining stick in the 2-stick box we used today. My test is absolutely negative. One line. No doubt. There is definitely a difference between my stick and Trina's 3 sticks (yes I still have them ALL). What does this mean? Could be nothing. I'm trying very hard not to let my hopes soar, but hey, I'm human and very possibly insane at this point. :) It's amazing that I'm putting myself through all of this when nature will give me the answer in 3 short days. I know this is crazy with every logical cell in my body. That being said, both my wife and I will be peeing on sticks at 7:30 tomorrow morning.