All Anyone Needs Is Respect & Support

Posted on April 28, 2013 by imfluffyowl

All this week, I’ve been sharing information about infertility. It’s one of the few weeks out of the year where I’m actively using facebook as a way to get information out there. I normally use facebook in a very superficial way. I update my daily photo for project 365, I have a couple of ongoing chats with a handful of friends, I check in on our private group for the parents of our Brownies, I stop by my secret girls night group to check in with my girlfriends and laugh at some racy cartoons or photos that either my dad or some of the ladies from darts decided to share or share something funny on a friends wall. I just simply don’t have much use for facebook. Many of my friends will share pictures of me from stuff I do with them, I let them tag me in whatever they want because I never do anything racy enough to garner any negative feedback from anyone. And other than an occasional article on infertility that I share with the heading “for those that might be interested” knowing that I have a handful of friends on my feed struggling privately with infertility, I generally keep quite on facebook. I like to leave most of my ranting for other social media.

Prior to the start of NIAW, I shared a status update to let everyone know I was taking part in social media activities for NIAW and apologizing upfront for any news feed spamming through the week. While many in the past have shared their dislike in my posts or have come to me with questions wondering why I can’t simply be happy with all that I already have, I still ended up shocked (in a good way!) by the response I received. Many applauded me for sharing and expressed their eagerness to learn more. One person in particular, someone I went to high school with no less, was the most supportive. She was saddened by the fact that I felt the need to preface my participation. But she was also the one to understand more than anyone else. She has opted not to have her own children because she is a step-mom to her husband’s two children from a previous relationship. She shared with me her frustration at people questioning her decision to not have biological children. Her own frustrations helped her to have empathy and understanding for my own struggle, even if we were on opposite ends of the family building spectrum.

The reason that I’m sharing this information with you is because my response to her comment received a lot of positive comments and really gave me my direction for this week:

“If I learned anything over the last 4 years, it’s about respecting everyone’s decision on family building. It’s not for everyone and not everyone will fall into a perfect cookie cutter idea of a family. Some have step children they adore and don’t need to add to their family. Some want to adopt. Some choose to live child free. Some want to have many children. Some prefer to go the foster care route. Others need to pay for expensive treatments out of pocket for just a chance. Many of those people dealing with other conditions that are causing their infertility. And no matter what, every single one of those people and their choices need to be respected and supported.”

And that right there is the point of everything we are doing. Everyone’s family building choices need to be respected and supported. Whether you never wanted children in the first place, you are infertile and choosing your family building options or anyone else in between. All any of us want is to be treated as equals. That it be the same for everyone. That we have access to whatever resources we need to reach our goal. To have those options available to us regardless of how much money we have or don’t have. To have access to treatments without it costing an arm and a leg.

We just want to be treated with respect and want our choices to be respected and supported.

Such a simple request falling on deaf ears…

Preaching To The Choir

Posted on April 26, 2013 by imfluffyowl

So as most of you know, this week is National Infertility Awareness Week. It’s a very important week for me. In my heart, I’m an advocate in a province that has a greater problem with youth pregnancy than people not able to get pregnant. I’m the girl walking against the crowd, the one walking into the oncoming waves even if I know its bigger and doesn’t see me, knowing it will knock me down while I fight to get back up, desperately trying to give a voice to those scared to admit they are in this struggle, those who are made to feel like this is some dirty little secret and just can’t bring themselves to talk about it. I’m Canadian and the IAAC has their own infertility awareness week in May, but I’ve always taken part in both. Publicly on my Facebook, I always become the outspoken advocate during Resolve’s NIAW. This year’s theme is “Join The Movement”. One of the main goals for Resolve during NIAW is to fight for comprehensive medical coverage of infertility treatments in all states in the US. But since I’m Canadian, I stick to the other side of their mission: speaking out about infertility, getting rid of the taboo, spreading proper information and breaking the stigmas attached to infertility. All week, my facebook feed is filled with information, links, videos, articles and so many blog post from so many wonderful infertility bloggers. Even with that, I figured writing my yearly post NIAW here on my blog should be a breeze, right? I write about our infertility so much on here. I don’t hide anything here. Yet I’ve been wracking my brain and coming at this post from every direction and I find myself in the middle of a writer’s block.

So what do I write? You all know my story. You know our struggles. You know the resources. You’ve read every link I could send your way. Most of you who read this blog are in a similar boat. You don’t need to know to “Join The Movement”. WE ARE THE MOVEMENT.We are the people leading this movement. Whether we are public about our struggles or not, we are sharing our voices this week and every other week. We are putting our voices out there all year long with every post we decide to hit “publish” on. Maybe you only posted about a doctor’s appointment on a blog with your identity hidden, but you posted it publicly and people can find that post. Those words are still out there for anyone to find. I don’t need to encourage that. Your voices and posts encouraged me to break this writers block.

But here I am, trying to find a way to add my voice. And I have nothing to say. I could tell you about how the first time I watched Keiko’s “What IF” video it changed my life entirely. I could tell you how that was the first thing I ever publicly posted about anything infertility related and by posting that, I came out of our infertility closet. I could tell you all about my introduction to the infertility community through Keiko’s blog, Mel’s blog (and her amazing blogroll) or the post by Tertia that I found at one of my lowest moments when I broke down and started searching online for infertility information. That those things resources gave me the courage to start blogging about our struggles. I could tell you that blogging and the support in blogging through things like ICLW, Creme de la Creme and the Blog Roundup helped heal me in ways I never expected. I could tell you about the infertility friends I’ve met here who I love as much as my own family. I could also tell you about my need to help others in my community who have no one else to go to with their fears. I could tell you that sharing my story and helping others with their struggles helps to heal me. But alas, if you read this blog for any length of time, you already know that.

By all measures, I’m preaching to the choir in this space. Many of you know the pain. I’ve shed tears over your posts about failed cycles. I’ve shed tears of joy for those BFP’s. I’ve felt jealousy and envy of those that have moved forward and never bothered to look back at the rest of us, and I mourn the losses and feel the pain of those still here with me, struggling for something that comes so easy for most.

So while I post with such ease on my facebook this week, sharing facts, data, videos and stories, I find myself at a loss when it comes to the people in the trenches with me. I have no words to encourage you to do more. Because, honestly, you are doing amazing things all on your own. This community leaves me speechless. This community gives me courage and I only hope that I give that to others as well.

So this week, know that I’m thinking of all of you. That everything I do is not just for me, but for you as well. I share, post and talk this week for all of us. I do it because you all gave me the strength to do it. So while this year’s theme is “Join The Movement”, my own personal message this week on my blog is thank you for giving me the strength to have a voice to join the movement.

She Was Never Alone

Posted on April 26, 2013 by imfluffyowl

For anyone who has read my blog for any period of time, you would realize that one of my favorite shows on TV right now is How I Met Your Mother. The show is about Ted Mosby telling his children the story about how he met their mother. Ted has four friends, the man whore Barney (played by the amazing Neil Patrick Harris), couple Marshall and Lily (played by Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan) and Canadian Robin (played by Cobie Smulders) and the show is about their adventures together in New York in the years leading up to Ted meeting his wife. I fell in love with this show from the beginning and now most of my friends are hooked on the show because of me.

It’s the type of show that you catch yourself using as references for many different life events. When my cousin broke up with her fiance and he started dating someone new right away, I used episodes to help explain why him moving on didn’t make her mourning of the relationship any less important. (This also introduced her to the show and she’s hooked.) When my other friends started to get as hooked as I was to the show, we would randomly laugh at something and know it was because something happened in real life that happened in the show. We could simple refer to something in an episode and laugh. So while it’s a sitcom and provides a lot of laughs, the show also takes a serious tone at times. Episodes that make you think. Marshall loses his father. Barney meets his long-lost father. They attack topics like job loss, breakups and cheating. But what really shocked me is that they did something I never expected: they tackled the topic of infertility.

Episode 12 of season 7 titled, “Symphony of Illumination” was their holiday episode. Every episode starts with Ted talking to his kids in the future, but this time, its Robin talking to her two children telling them about how she met their father. Lily is pregnant, there is an underlying story arc of Marshall planning to do some extreme decorating at their new home and a kid trapping Marshall on the roof and using the house for a party. The story starts out where, after a one night stand, Robin tells Barney that she might be pregnant and if she is, he’s the dad. Barney loves the idea that Robin might be pregnant. Robin never wanted children and thinks that her life is over. Not knowing about Robin and Barney’s possible predicament, Lily asks them to go shopping with her at a baby store for her upcoming baby shower. After visiting the doctor, Robin finds out that she’s not pregnant and is happy with the news. While enjoying the benefits of not being pregnant (smoking a cigar and drinking), Robin is called back into the office where she is told that the results on the tests they ran shows that she can never have children.

Instead of talking about it with her friends, Robin decides to hide it from them. She knows that dealing with her friends reactions to it will be harder than dealing with it on her own. We then get a visual of the others going to extremes in their reactions. When her friends ask her whats wrong, she makes up a lie and tells them that she found out that she can’t pole vault in Canada. The friends start reacting just how she expected them to react to the real bad news. Later, when she goes back to the baby store with Lily, she sees a Canadian onesie and leaves crying. While talking to Lily under the guise of “pole vaulting”, she says:

“I never wanted that. Its one thing not to want something but it’s another to be told you can’t have it. It’s nice knowing that you could someday do it, if you changed your mind. But now, all of a sudden, that door is closed.”

Afterwards, Ted tries to cheer her up by offering to take her home with him for Christmas. Robin goes for a walk by herself and while she’s sitting in the park, voice over Robin is talking to her kids and says, “If you wanna know the truth of it, I’m glad you guys aren’t real.”, as the picture of her kids sitting on the couch listening to her dissolves into an empty snow filled park. She’s shown sitting alone on a park bench drinking eggnog from the carton as the snow falls on her repeating out loud, “really glad”. She comes back to her apartment that she shares with Ted where Ted has set up a Christmas light show to AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell”. The voice over returns, but this time it’s Ted talking to his children:

“Kids, your aunt Robin never became a ‘pole vaulter’ but she did become a famous journalist, a successful business woman, a world traveler, and she was even briefly a bull fighter. That’s a funny story, I’ll get to that one later. But there was one thing your aunt Robin never was. She was never alone.“

As Robin realizes just how wonderful her friends are, she finally breaks down and cries in the arms of Ted, as the song comes to a close and the lights begin to dim. Cue the credits and I’ve also gone from crying to a full on sob.

It’s wonderful to see such a popular show tackle such sensitive topic. For a half hour sitcom, they covered living child free, resolving to live child free and dealing with the initial diagnosis of infertility. I liked how they covered the feelings of having the choice of family building taken away. Its a deep topic but they did still manage to hit on the major points of it without really losing anyone by going too deep. It’s only 23 minutes long, you can only cover so much. In the end though, it’s a loss and it has to be mourned and by having a character who was happy to live child free in the first place without the diagnosis facing the diagnosis, it really gave it more depth over someone who would want children from the beginning. I think it packs a deeper punch. It makes sense that someone wanting children would be sad, but to see someone who didn’t necessarily want children still mourning that fact packs a deeper punch. It instills the loss of choice and that losing the option can be painful, regardless of if you wanted it or not.

Every once in a while when I have a lull in my TV viewing choices and I don’t know what to watch next, I go back and re-watch the show from the beginning. I didn’t plan it, but Sunday night as I’m relaxing at home, this episode comes on. The one episode about infertility airs on the eve of National Infertility Awareness Week. This episode gave me the energy, motivation, and filled me with hope as I headed into a week of spreading the word and joining the movement.

If you’ve never watched this show or have no interest in it, at least give this episode a shot. Use it as a starting point to introduce people to infertility. Maybe people will realize that the best way to be supportive to those dealing with infertility is to just be there, to listen, to care, to try to understand. That even if some of us can’t share our pain, we still need support. That no matter how strong we are, we all need support in the wake of a diagnosis, regardless of what that diagnosis is. And maybe if a popular sitcom is willing to tackle what is considered by many to be such a sensitive and taboo subject, maybe it means that infertility is moving more into popular discussion.

No one should be alone with their pain.

Spring Shed: Week Five

Posted on April 20, 2013 by imfluffyowl

Welcome back to the Spring Shed! I had a week off due to Brownie camp. By the time I got home and back on my feet after camp, it was almost time for the next leg of the Spring Shed so I just decided to just double up this post. I also didn’t bother to post yesterday out of respect to everyone affected by what’s been going on in Boston. So lets get caught up, shall we?

Living a healthier life in 2013 in preparation for “Future Baby B”.

What have I learned about March and April? That most of my friends seem to celebrate their birthdays in this 8 week period. Because of this, I’ve had a lot of dinners out, cake and a lot of unhealthy stuff that I’m not used to having now. But I’ve done my best to keep my portions small and limit how much sugar I’m taking into my body. Sometimes that includes me pushing food around my plate to make it look like I’ve had more than I actually did.

Because of the craziness going on the past two weeks, including camp, I didn’t get to the gym as much as I normally do, but the workouts I’ve had are longer than normal and I’m upping my workout a bit. I now average a mile and a half on the treadmill each time I go and I just recently added the stationary bike to my workout and I’m already topping 4 miles on the bike alone. Plus I’m still doing the full curves circuit on top of the rest of my workout.

Camp weekend was interesting for my eating habits. I’m not used to snacks between my meals and I’m definitely not used to bread with my meals anymore. Meals for camp are pre arranged and while it was healthy, it was also much higher in carbs then I’m used to. I went from dropping bread almost entirely from my diet to having bread with every meal. I’ve been struggling a bit with getting my meals back to a sense of normal and I’m trying to stop myself from carb loading at night, again. And while I didn’t get to the gym the weekend of camp, I was on my feet all weekend. You get no rest as a Brownie leader and I still feel like I got a decent workout without the gym.

To make progress towards resolving our infertility.

Nothing new to report here. Things are at a standstill until I get my blood work done and get those results back. I’m currently waiting to see if I’m actually ovulating this cycle or not and if I am in fact ovulating, then sexy fun times will have to happen.

To work towards making our house a home.

Mia is about to have puppies, so we are trying to get ready for that. And while I was away for camp, my husband completely cleaned the downstairs for me. I came home to a sparkly kitchen and living room. We also got all of the laundry in the house done once I came home from camp. We started to straighten up one spare bedroom and I’m starting to organize my craft room.

To make more time for myself.

It’s been a busy two weeks so I haven’t had much time for me lately. I had a busy week prior to camp, then camp and then recovering from camp. But finally over the past couple of days, I started to make some time for myself. I read a couple of short stories, went to bed as soon as I got tired and even took the dog geocaching when I went with my husband. I’ve also started taking Mia for walks and I just talk to her the whole time while she looks at me with those big, sad beagle eyes. Its become less about the exercising and more about the getting out and enjoying the spring air and letting myself just relax. Mia is a great companion for that because she just wants to be around you, no matter what. You never feel unloved around my dog. She’s just one great big bundle of love, just giving it away for free.

I hope that everyone is doing well and I look forward to getting back on track!

Love and hugs to my fellow Spring Shedders!

Brownie Camp, In Numbers

Posted on April 15, 2013 by imfluffyowl

I’m home from one of the longest weekends in my life. And I don’t mean long weekend in the fun kind where we get an extra day off from work. This weekend was exhausting. Rewarding on a level I didn’t know existed, but exhausting none the less. No one does this for money, fame or fortune. You do it for the enjoyment of girl guides, seeing kids smile and genuinely enjoy themselves. Your payment is happy and excited girls, their gratitude, smiles and watching shy kids open up, get involved and meet new friends.

But this weekend has been hectic. The best way to explain my Friday, Saturday and Sunday is to use numbers.

61 is the number of girls we had all weekend.
42 is the amount of names I had to learn with the assistance of name tags.
17 is the number of leaders all weekend.
11 is for how many times we ate.
2 is for how many days it snowed at our “spring” camp.
4 is for how many pots of tea I finished off in a sad attempt to stay awake.
2 is for the energy drinks I polished off as well in attempt to keep me alert and awake.
2 is also for how many hours I slept the first night.
6 is for what time I was up, on my own, after the second night. The event has been documented with photo evidence.
1 is for how many of our girls went home sick at 3:30am after she puked on one of the leaders and said leaders bed.
1 is also for how many of our own girls got the courage to come to camp at the last minute and loved every minute of it.
2 is for how many duplicates we of each: campfire, breakfast and lunch, craft sessions, hike, drop offs and pick ups.
20 is for the number of girls who hated the all natural face masks on the first night. In 20 years they will be paying for professional face masks.
2 is also for how many times I was sprayed with water as part of my “initiation” into Brownie leading and my first Brownie camp as a leader by the other leaders.
1 is for the video that was recorded of my initiation.
1 is also for the extra air mattress another leader had and was so wonderful to lend it to me for the 2nd night.
10 is how many times I turned a shirt into a bag.
12 is for how many rounds of “hair dresser Kimmy” happened.
3 French braids
9 ponytails
15 would be the number of camp songs I’ve been singing on rotation in my head since Friday’s campfire.
0 is for the actual campfires we had. Sadly no s’mores were had.
10 was the number of times a girl told me they were having so much fun that they didn’t want to go home.
3 is the amount of times Chris has caught me doing hand actions to camp songs I’m singing in my head when I wasn’t even aware I was doing them.
3 is also the amount of times I offered to switch drivers on the way home with my cousin (and fellow leader) because we were both bleary eyed.
30 would be how many minutes I spent in my hot shower upon getting home because that’s when the hot water ran out.
6 would be how many episodes of Veronica Mars season 3 episodes I slept through after I got out of my shower.
9 is for how many new homemade swap crafts I have for my yet to be purchased camp hat.

Since we have so many registered brownies in our district, we split the camp up into two nights. Half of the girls on the first night, half on the second. Our girls were there on the first night and they had so much fun. My initiation was done in front of my girls and I didn’t know it was my initiation until after it happened. But when myself and my friend (also initiated that night) got sprayed with the water, our girls lost their minds laughing at us. That night a girl got sick and we had to call her parents to come and get her. We were sad to see her go home but she had fun while she was there. That first night, I really struggled to sleep. Two of us leaders were uncomfortable in the bunk beds and are natural night owls while the other leader is battling a bad tail end of a head cold and was having trouble breathing. We got to sleep around 2, woke up at 3:30 to our girl upset and getting sick. The girl got sick on one of the other leaders bed when she went to tell us she wasn’t feeling good, so between waiting for the parent, trying to find another bed and blankets for our leader, and checking on the other girls, we didn’t get back to sleep til 6am and wake up was at 7. I managed to stay awake until bedtime that night. But I was told by the kitchen staff we stayed with the second night, that I was out in minutes of us turning out the lights.

The weekend was long, busy, non-stop and exhausting. But it was also fun, rewarding and full of excitement. We sang songs, went for hikes, played games, made crafts, joked around and made friends. We also made plans with some of the other groups. One of our leaders will go to the other groups Brownie night and lead some craft activities. I got to meet a handful of Guiders ranging in age from 24 to the kitchen ladies who come to every camp just to help with meals who are well into their 70s and given most of their adult life to guiding and leading. And even though I was a newbie, I never felt left out. You could walk in for a cup of tea and just talk to anyone. We took turns leading activities. I even ran a couple of crafts and some songs during campfire. Then during the 4 hour break between pick up for group one and drop off for group two, the leaders all sat down to a group supper. We all made something in advance and we just spent an hour relaxing, enjoying a delicious supper and enjoying each others company.

Camp with Brownies and Girl Guides of Canada was an experience. A wonderful experience. Something I look forward to in the future. An experience that has me wanting to volunteer to help out at other non-Brownie camps in the future. As much as I missed my hubby and pets at home, as much as I missed things like hot showers and a quiet minute to myself, I barely had time to process it because I was too busy having fun. Just like many of the girls hated to go home because they were having too much fun, I’m already missing the fun and excitement of camp. I can’t wait to go back!

For now, I leave you with some camp pictures:

For those taking part in the Spring Shed, I’m just going to do the 2-in-1 post on Friday. I’m just gonna try to relax for a couple of days as I get back to my normal routine. I hope everyone is doing well! ❤

Spring Shed: Week Three

Posted on April 9, 2013 by imfluffyowl

Welcome back to the Spring Shed! Click on the link to your right if you want to learn more and join in. It’s been a quiet week for my goals but still some small progress to report on.

And my apologies for the lateness. I’ve been slammed with stuff to do this week. No day was my own to sit and relax. Multiple birthdays, get togethers, a trip to the hospital for hubby, a movie date with some friends. So when I finally got home, I was too tired to write.

Living a healthier life in 2013 in preparation for “Future Baby B”.

This week was a bit of a cheat week. I was hit with multiple birthday celebrations, a dinner out and I was so busy this week that I actually broke and had take out. And I didn’t get to the gym everyday. But when I did work out, I put an extra half hour into my workout knowing that I would be missing out a bit. I’m gradually adding more jogging into my workout though and I’ve added a few extra miles into my workout via the exercise bike.

I’ve also noticed that I’ve lost my taste for bread and pasta. Which is a good thing because I was bad for eating these things all the time. But now I find my body naturally looking for healthier options. I also tend to notice myself shying away from anything deep fried as well. And I don’t miss them as much as I thought. But I am searching for healthy drinks outside of water. I drink so much water now that I’m getting sick of it. I’m trying the crystal light and mio sweeteners but outside of apple and orange juice, do you have any suggestions for go to drinks that aren’t pop or high in sugar drinks? I make smoothies sometimes for a snack but they can be more work than I want when I just want a quick drink of something.

To make progress towards resolving our infertility.

Finally hit the 6 week mark for my blood work but I’ve been so busy lately that I simply haven’t had the time to get to the hospital for the blood draw. It has to be done before this weekend though, so I’ll go either tomorrow or Wednesday.

The other piece of news I already posted about. The IAAC had a call for people to share their infertility stories for a possible future issue of Creating Families magazine. I sent our story in and didn’t think anything of it until the editor of the magazine emailed me to inform me that our story will be used in their fall issue. I’m quite excited by this news. I want to share our story with as many people as we can because I don’t want people to give up if their doctors do nothing but give them the run around. I want people to find the courage to fight for it.

To work towards making our house a home.

Chris and I started to do little things around the house. Despite being busy, my sink is empty, I just emptied the last load of dishes from the dishwasher and we are half way through our laundry. Once I get back from Brownie camp this weekend, I plan to start on my craft room.

To make more time for myself.

I’m calling this one a success because I finally used one of the gift certificates that hubby gave me for my birthday and went for a hot stone massage. It was the best hour of my week. All the pain in my back is gone and I didn’t realize how much stress I was putting on my body until it was worked out of my back. When I got there, I turned off my phone, let go of everything that was bugging me and just lived in the moment. That was on Saturday and I’m still enjoying the benefits of the massage on Monday. The pain in my back is gone, my shoulders feel lighter and already my sleep schedule is moving into a more normal state because I’m going to bed (and falling asleep) earlier and waking up earlier. This, in turn is giving me more time in the day to do stuff.

Overall, I was a bit more lenient this week but its ok to have a cheat week every once in awhile. But even with the cheating, I still found myself naturally trying to stick to my routine. My body craved the exercise and the gym when I couldn’t make it. When I was out for supper, I found myself turned off of bread and pasta when in the past I would’ve been all over it. And I found out that our infertility story will be shared with others.

As a side note, my next spring shed may be really early or possibly late. Early Friday afternoon I will be leaving for Brownie camp. 2 days with approximately 20 other leaders and 80 girls all between the ages of 7 and 9. It’s my first time at Brownie camp since I was a Brownie so I’m quite excited. I’m expecting to be run off my feet, get next to no sleep and just coast through it until I get home on Sunday evening. So if I don’t post Thursday evening, I may just wait and post on Sunday or Monday. So don’t think I disappeared, I’m just…really occupied.

I hope everyone is doing well!

Creating Families Magazine

Posted on April 3, 2013 by imfluffyowl

So a couple of months ago, IAAC’s (Infertility Awareness Association of Canada) Facebook group put our a call for people dealing with infertility willing to share their story that may then be published in an upcoming publication of Creating Families magazine. When the information was released, I shared the information on my Facebook wall and wrote up the condensed version of what happened to us over the past four years and sent it off, not even giving it a passing thought afterwards.

About a week later, I received an email from someone at IAAC to let me know that they received my email and thanked me for taking part. The woman went on to write that she would pass it along to the editor of Creating Families and not really promising anything. If there was enough interest and response to the call for stories, they may move forward with it and if they moved forward, someone would contact me if they choose to use my story. Again, I thought nothing of it. I figured the call for stories would flop and I’d hear nothing, or if it moved forward my story probably wouldn’t make the cut anyway. I sort of have luck like that. Regularly overlooked so I do it anyway and forget about it.

Until this afternoon. I went to pick up movie tickets for me and a friend and her husband to see The Host tonight and when I got back to town, I went to the gym to get a nice long workout in since I knew I was gonna let myself have a snack tonight. So I get in from the gym and I’m about to make supper when I get an email from the editor of Creating Families magazine. She was writing me to not only thank me for sharing my story with her but that she would also like to publish it in their fall issue.

I read it once.
Laughed to myself.
Read it again.
Checked the date to make sure it still wasn’t April Fool’s Day and this wasn’t some funny joke hubby decided to play on me.
Read it again.
Smiled.

She asked for some updated information as a fill in since I sent the story probably almost 2 months ago and asked me to send some pictures of me and hubby to accompany the write up.

I don’t know how the write up will be presented but it will be in the September issue. The infertility advocate in me is squeeing with joy right now. Our story will be getting out there. Our fight with doctors will not be in vain. Maybe someone will read it and find the strength to speak up and demand answers from their doctors when otherwise they would’ve put up with it. The other side of me is kind of shocked silent. It doesn’t entirely feel real.

But regardless, I think something pretty cool happened today.

Spring Shed: Week Two

Posted on April 1, 2013 by imfluffyowl

Welcome back to the Spring Shed! Click on the link to your right if you want to learn more and join in. It’s been a quiet week for my goals but still some small progress to report on.

Living a healthier life in 2013 in preparation for “Future Baby B”.

This week I’ve managed to go to the gym everyday. And overall, my workouts are getting more intense. I started at baby steps because I was really out of shape. This past week I even started attempting jogging in spurts. My treadmill exercise has increased to higher elevations, faster pace and longer overall. It takes me longer to get tired and ever since I purchased an armband to hold my phone, my workout playlist has kept me motivated for longer periods. It looks like I’m hovering around the 33-35 pound weightloss mark and I’m hoping to hit my next small goal in the next two weeks. But I won’t share that goal until I hit it.

I did break down and on my cheat day had take out but my favorite seasonal place is open finally and I let myself order my favorite (hotdog and fries and gravy) but kept my portion down.

To make progress towards resolving our infertility.

Not much happened this week. No tests, no results. The only thing I did was work on my healthy eating and exercise. I did buy an ovulation kit and I’m tracking to see if I ovulate this month, but so far no luck even though I should be by this point.

To work towards making our house a home.

Chris and I slacked this week when it came to the house. I keep telling myself that I will empty the full sink of dirty dishes into the dishwasher but I just don’t have the energy. I will after I hit post. I swear. And I’ll also fold and drag all those clean clothes we washed upstairs instead of letting them pile up on top of the dryer.

To make more time for myself.

Its been a bit of a busy week, but I’ve made time for myself a little bit and in little ways. Instead of rushing through my hot shower, I give myself a few more minutes. I attempted to set up my massage but with the holiday, I forgot that everything was closed on Friday. I started to re-read The Host in prep for my movie date with a friend and her husband on Tuesday. We’re going out for supper first then going to the movies. Hubby hates anything related to Twilight, even if its a movie based on a stand alone book by the same author so he won’t be joining us. And finally, last night, I sat down and sorted out my feelings about my dislike of Easter and posted about it. It felt great to write, vent and release. I’m still feeling down but that’s pretty much on par for this time of year and it’s already much better than it was before the post.

Overall it’s been a quiet week for goals. Nothing bad happened, its just…quiet. Next week should hopefully show some progress all around. See you all next week!