Father's Day

I'm a little bit tired of hearing that acknowledging my husband, and other men who are living without their babies, puts a downer on the Father's Day celebrations of others.

Why is it ok for people to post about the fathers and grandfathers that they miss on this day, but it's not ok to acknowledge that there are men the world over missing spending this day with their precious children?

Once again, I am pregnant on Father's Day. The first time this happened, as I have posted about before, I didn't even acknowledge my husband as a father. I simply thought that you weren't a mother, or father, until you had a baby to hold. I know now how wrong my thinking was, for so many reasons.

This time, everything is so different. This baby is growing and kicking away inside and I can feel her get extra active when she hears her daddy's voice when he comes home from work. The way he is looking after both of us this time around just proves to me beyond any doubt that he is a father already, and that he is doing everything he can for his little girl.

He copes with Father's Day by not thinking about it, and as he is working today already told me when I asked how he was doing that he doesn't really want to talk about it until he gets home. Long ago that would have bothered me, but everything we have learned these past years reassures me that he can do whatever he needs to cope with this in any way he likes, even (especially) if it is not what I would do. We both grieve so differently.

And honestly, it is hard to celebrate, even with this little one here, knowing that our first baby could have been 16 months old and ready to spoil her daddy on this special day. It will always be this way for us on special days, there will always be little faces missing from our table, from our photos and from our memories.

So I am not sorry for acknowledging my husband as a father today. My heart aches for the hugs, kisses and memories that he has been denied. He is the best father our little ones could ever wish for.

We've got ourselves a fighter!

To get the best and most wonderful news out of the way first, our little baby is growing perfectly and we saw its tiny heartbeat for the first time. So amazing. Such a miracle.

Now to how we got there...

For the third week in a row the clinic messed up our appointment. This time they actually had us booked in (makes a change) but had us booked for the normal antenatal clinic, not the specialist early pregnancy clinic.

This meant not only sitting in a room full of hugely pregnant bellies not even knowing if our babe was still there (and lots of tears on my part due to the extreme anxiety of it all) but it also meant waiting three HOURS for an appointment that we should have waited no more than 30 minutes for.

When we were finally called in, the specialist asked what I was there for. I know they have so many patients to see, but considering that our last appointment with him lead to the week from hell it was a little hard to hear. I explained. He asked me how the week had been and I told him I'd had a little spotting on a couple of days and he just nodded his head as if confirming his diagnosis. I was shaking like a leaf by this stage. He then suggested we head over for the scan to 'confirm things' and go from there.

In the end we had to wait another 30 minutes or so and then the lovely midwife who we had seen two weeks ago came to see how we were doing. She asked us to fill her in on all that had happened and was very understanding. Then the specialist flew in, poked around with the probe causing quite a lot of pain, looked at the monitor and said 'fetal heart.' He turned the screen around and there for the first time we saw our little baby and the oh so tiny flicker of it's rapidly beating heart. I must have let out a terrible sound, I know I was sobbing like mad, because the midwife came running back in, then looked at the screen and grabbed my knee and said something encouraging. I have no idea, all I remember was squeezing hubby's hand so tight, and seeing the enormous grin on his face, before turning back to the screen. I didn't take my eyes off it again until the scan was done.

Baby was measuring 6 weeks 3 days (according to the single measurement he did, still not convinced it was 100% accurate) which is about 2 or 3 days behind where I thought we were, SO much better than the two WEEKS behind we were told last week. The tiny little heart registered 123bmp.

Now we wait for next week. In the meantime, I have baby's first photo to stare at in amazement.

Something for the dads

One thing hubby comments on quite a lot is the way he gets ignored by doctors and nurses when we have our appointments.

Whether it's follow up testing after miscarriages, or an ultrasound to check on our baby, he's almost always overlooked and excluded from the conversation.

He asks me questions later about things he heard but didn't understand and I've encouraged him to ask questions if he has them, because he might think of something that I don't. But in general it's very true, one doctor doesn't even really acknowledge that he's even in the room.

I know every couple and situation is different, but in our experience, hubby is very involved in each pregnancy right from the beginning (this time it was even him asking me to POAS to check if I was pregnant!). How hard is it really to look at a man and ask, "Do you have any questions?"

It is important to me that hubby feels supported and as much a part of this pregnancy as I am. I don't know exactly how to do that, but I'm going to make a really conscious effort from now on. If the doctors won't ask him, I will, while we are still there.

He's also found that people are much less understanding of his feelings regarding our losses, and just expect him to 'get on with it.' Admittedly, he finds it easier to keep to his normal routine as it helps him to settle his mind, but that doesn't mean he isn't impacted. Even now, when people find out we have another baby on the way, the first questions he's asked are always about me.

When it comes to work, it's just the same. I have been told to take all the time I need for scans and appointments, and to let them know if I can't come in after a scan. Hubby on the other hand is being mucked around and made to feel like he is wasting people's time trying to find someone to cover for him so he can attend our scans. He didn't even dare try to come to the follow up GP appointment. He's asked to have regular cover, or to have his day off changed (with approval from his area manager) but his boss is trying to make him take sick leave - which he shouldn't have to when there are so many other choices!

I've bought him a special pregnancy book for dads, by dads, which I was going to give after the scan yesterday, but given how that went I think I'll hold off until the next one.

Father's Day

Life goes ever on

Sometimes I wish it could just slow down for a bit!

Being back to full time work is proving more of a drain than expected. Not just on my energy reserves, but on having any time to do anything else. This is not where I want to be. I want to be able to spend time with hubby on his days off. I want to be able to spend time in my workshop and not feel guilty about it! My doctor advised me again today to quit...

I'm also starting to worry about what impact this may have on TTC. I am 7dpo today and we gave it a really good go this month. Hubby decided, without even talking to me about it, to stop taking his anti depressants. His drive, while never that high to begin with, has at least turned up again and he was the one asking which days were going to be the best for us to try. I still had to do the initiating when it came to it, but after the last 5 months, it was a huge turn around.

I know that people do worse things than go to school every day and still manage to fall pregnant, I just wonder, given my history, if I should be doing ANYTHING that has the potential to make this harder than it already is. I also know that I am thinking about it more now because of this darned TWW!

I have had pulling, crampy pains in my lower abdomen on the left side just like I did when I fell pregnant in early September. I keep telling myself that it's just coincidence, anything could be going on down there, but it's a hard thought to shake.

I suppose, once again, only time will tell.

Coping with the 'frequency' change when TTC

If you're not interested in questions about baby making, look away now!

Being Valentine's Day, hubby and I were 'practicing' baby making the other night, and afterwards it got me to thinking... Due to a whole lot of factors that I won't be going into here, we have never had a regular schedule, just an understanding that once a week is the minimum we (...I) am willing to settle for. Some weeks it's more than that, others only barely, but obviously for maximum baby making efficiency, this is going to have to change!

I have heard others talk about the struggle to keep things seductive, spontaneous or even just relaxed. I have even read on forums about people whose hubbys suffer ED during this time due to the added stress, expectation, etc. I've read about men who feel like their partners see them as baby making machines and nothing more.

Hubby has already mentioned that he's not sure he's going to be able to 'keep up' and wondered how long it might take, and I am not sure if the comments from his co-worker about him being tired for the rest of his life are really helping! I am trying to be supportive and show him all the evidence which says once every 2-3 days is the best way to go for sperm number, quality, etc but I think that if we find that the first two or three months are uneventful then I am going to have to start paying super close attention to my cycle so we can just schedule the days that are going to be most effective!

I'd love to know how other people cope, especially men, but it's not really a conversation that happens all that often in the real world. I'd love to know if there is anything I can so or do to make the experience a little more enjoyable for hubby, besides the obvious.

Less than  two weeks to go till all this becomes reality rather than theory, so I guess we'll see!

We Have A Go!

After two weeks of worrying myself sick about my blood test results, we finally went in for our appointment on Friday. It was pretty intense as I also had my final Work Cover appointment to give me the all clear for returning to full time work and hubby had an appointment to discuss recent xrays he had.

By the time we finally got to our 'baby appointment' I'd almost forgotten how nervous I was! Our doctor was happy to see that hubby had come along for support, she told him that's a good sign for what's to come. I thought she meant my results, turns out she meant in the future, my heart rate shot through the roof!

So, in the end, almost everything was fine. I was worried mostly about Rubella (being ages since I was immunised), blood sugar (diabetes in the family), and possibly cholesterol - all perfect. The things is, and doc reinforced this, that although I am carrying extra weight, this is mostly due to my back injury and not necessarily poor diet, so my results reinforced this. I have also lost another 2kg over Christmas, which is a huge plus. Liver function showed one raised enzyme, no problem she said as long as it's not two or more, and the only other problems were low Vitamin D (take a pill each day, along with my pregnancy vitamin) and low Hep B. I went and had the booster right away and they said two weeks wait before TTC, but preferably 4 weeks to be sure.

With all this news in hand, we returned to the reception desk and booked in to have my BC implant removed - February 28th! Amazing. Seems so soon!

Stay tuned for more as our journey continues =]

The Name Game

One of the things I have read over and over about pregnancy and parenthood is that it can be really difficult for the father to really connect with the whole concept.

I have been making a huge effort over the last week or so to have little informal 'baby' conversations. usually they are prompted by something hubbys is watching (he loves his documentaries) so it is easy for me to say, "What would you do/think/say if one of our children did that?" and it gets us started.

We have talked about presents, Christmas traditions, bedtime routines, manners, religion... all sorts of things and I have a few posts planned about some of these.

Over the weekend, we started talking about names. We have quite a few criteria that we agree on, which is a good start! We both want something relatively traditional, but not necessarily common. We want 'normal' spelling! And, apparently, all we can think of are boys names...

I really like hubby's middle name, which also happens to be his dad's name. I'd love to use this name for our child, but don't want to upset my family if they feel we are favouring hubby's side. It's a name I have always liked, so not sure if I should hold on to it given the situation. I even posted about this topic on the Essential Baby forum, here.

Out of the blue, hubby also mentioned he liked the name Aaron, which I do quite like, but I can see my brother laughing about forever, as he maintains to this day that I had a secret crush on a school friend of his with this name.

Hubby had a very close relationship with his grandfather, being almost raised with him as the main male influence, and has a super old fashioned name. I like it for the meaning it has to him and hadn't thought of it in any other way till I did a google search for the name and this appeared!

Not sure I can face the thought of putting my child through the torment of being called "Ducky" or anything like that! Disappointing though, as "Don" is also part of the special code hubby and I developed to talk about ourselves after we got engaged. Maybe as a middle name it's not so bad?

The other trouble I have when it comes to names is being a teacher. There are so many students I have taught in the past that I have destroyed my ability to ever think of anyone but then when I hear certain names.

And girls' names? Well, I have no idea where to start!

A Nervy Wait...

If all of this goes according to plan, this wont be the last time I am nervously waiting for test results! I suppose I should get used to it.

Had my pre-pregnancy blood/urine tests yesterday. I was surprised by how much blood they had to take for all the tests. I had no idea there was a urine test to go with it so I had to drop that back later in the day. So now I have to wait 3-4 days for the results. Hubby wants to go with me and so that means waiting till next Friday.

I'm suddenly really worried about all the things that they might find with these tests, I even had a moment of panic last night thinking they would tell me I had cancer. This then widened to a fear that I would find out about something, anything, that would mean I can have children at all.

I mentioned to hubby that I was a bit worried about all this and he said, "I don't think you have given this enough thought. If you are worrying now, what are you going to be like when there is an actual baby to worry about?"

So yes, this could very well be the beginning of a lifetime of worry! Am doing school work to keep myself occupied, and the heat (it's 36 here at 11am in the morning, heading for 43) is certainly giving me something else to think about!

What do you do to keep your mind occupied while waiting for test results, or to stop you worrying in general?

The Next Step

Our pre-conception appointment on Friday went pretty well. I was a little worried at first at how hubby was going to be, an appointment like this makes everything seem a little more 'real' but he was fine and jumped right in with the questions.

Before anything else, here is what my doctor had to say in response to our prepared questions:

How long after removal of my implant is it possible to fall pregnant? Same day! So we need to consider this carefully.

What effect will the painkillers I have been taking have on a baby? Not good, so I need to stay off them and stick with the TENS machine. If this doesn't work, we'll need to re-consider what treatment I am receiving. 

Do I need to consider alternative pain management while trying to conceive or when pregnant? As above.

How long should we ‘try’ before scheduling another appointment? Didn't really get into this, at this stage she sees no reason to worry about this.

What prenatal vitamins does she recommend? When should I begin taking them? I'll be seeing her again next week after my blood test results come back and we'll talk about this then.

What can hubby do to help? (e.g. vitamins of his own, etc) Stop smoking and stress less, best advice she could give at the moment =]

Am I at risk for any problems? Do I need to take any specific precautions? I was told the the two biggest risks to me are gestational diabetes and high blood pressure, which may or may not go away after the pregnancy. For the baby, the said the risks are not so high at this point that I should be concerned.

How can I safely continue weightloss? (diet, exercise, etc) Stick with what I am doing now and we will re-assess if/when we are successful. This was reassuring, she also mentioned that there are some women who actually lose weight during pregnancy (not counting on that!) and that it was important not to 'eat for two.'

Are all my immunisations up to date? If not, what do I need and when? Will this mean we have to wait before trying to conceive? I am having a full blood test on Monday to answer these questions and then we will go from there.

Are there any health problems or conditions I should take care of before trying to conceive? Again, blood tests should indicate any concerns here.

What effect could my back injury have on trying to conceive or during pregnancy? Possible, but at this stage not likely to cause any issues.

Given my back injury, what impact might being pregnant have on my ability to continue working? Possible, but at this stage not likely to cause any issues.

What can hubby and I do to increase the chances of getting pregnant? Didn't get to this, but will be asking when tests are back.

Overall, the appointment was really positive. I felt at the time that she didn't take my worries about the effects of my age seriously, but she was trying to point out to me that with medical care as it is these days, there is no reason that things shouldn't go well for us.

It was really good to be able to voice some of our deepest fears (problems for me, for baby, not being able to conceive, etc) and to have them answered in a sensible, logical way.

The plan now is this. I have a full blood test Monday, results by end of the week. At that appointment, we discuss anything that has shown up in the results. If all is good, I start taking my vitamins and book in to have my implant removed and we get on with it. If not, we address each thing as it needs to be.

Needless to say, hubby and I have had a LOT of interesting conversations over the last few days. Stay tuned for more!

Why do you even WANT a baby?

I am really hoping to get some feedback here. My hubby asks me this question every now and then and sometimes I find that I can’t answer him. “I just do,” isn’t really an acceptable answer.

Last night, the conversation got quite intense. He thinks that the fact I want a baby means I am unhappy with our life together, that he is not enough for me, that I need someone else to complete my life. That without a child I feel as though we are not a real family. I asked him if he thought he met every need I have, he said no. I asked him if he thought he should be able to fill all of my needs, he wasn't sure, but he seemed to think that if he was a 'good' husband, that he should be able to do this. 

I asked him if he thought I fulfilled all his needs, purposely asking about the things that he prefers to do with other men rather than me (watching football, talking about football, and so on). I found his answer interesting. He likes doing those things with others, but needs to do them with me too. If I do something else while he is watching football, even if I am sitting next to him reading, he feels like I am not giving him the attention I should. I think one book I read referred to this as "Recreational Intimacy."

He voiced the thought that if we don't have a baby, by choice or through fertility issues, that he doesn't think he alone would be enough to make me happy and that I would end up resentful, unhappy and depressed for the rest of my life.

It was quite hard to explain to him that the love I have for him is different to the need I have for a baby and the love I would have for that child. I don't think I managed to express it in a way he understood - to him, love is love.

He often talks of 'giving' me a baby and I think that is part of it. I feel as though bearing his child is the greatest gift I could give him. He sees it as something I am doing for myself. In some ways it is a little selfish of me, I want my life to be worth more than the things I have, I want the value or quality of my life to be measured by the people I love and the love they have for me.

For those of you that have children, why did you want them? Now that you have them, has that want been fulfilled? How would you answer this question?