Perfect Moment Monday -- Fur Baby Edition

My blogging and Twitter friend Suzy has had a feature on her blog for a few months now called "Perfect Moment Monday". Lori (who created Perfect Moment Monday) says "Perfect Moment Monday is about noticing a perfect moment rather than creating one. Perfect moments can be momentous or ordinary or somewhere in between."

Today I had one of those "perfect moments." I know many of us have our fur babies, and in many cases, our fur babies replace the babies we can't have due to infertility. We have a big ole Garfield cat. He looks like Garfield and often acts like him too. He has attitude and I swear he knows more than he lets onto. He's strangely human. He was my husband's cat before I came into the picture, but now he's my big fur baby too. He is aging and it makes me sad to think of the day he will no longer be with us. I had my first major pregnancy meltdown a couple of weeks ago when we left on vacation and I was saying goodbye to him for the week. I knew he would be spoiled by our neighbors, but the tears started anyway as I held him and he looked at me with his big eyes. I'm happy to say we both survived the week away.

We have a tradition, especially in the winter time, that I will lay on the couch and he will pop up and lay and purr on my stomach while I pet him. From the time of my embryo transfer up until about 20 weeks, I did not let him lay on my stomach. He was none to pleased when I made it clear he did not have that option anymore and he would sulk and go lay at my feet (which broke my heart). At my 20 week appointment awhile back, I asked my OB if it was okay to allow him to lay on my belly and she gave the okay to do so. It took him awhile to warm back up to doing so.

Today was a long day at work. I got home and the cat immediately let me know he wanted to cuddle (he likes to herd us). So I changed my clothes, laid on the couch with his favorite blanket on top of me and he popped up to join me. He maneuvered my ever expanding belly to find a comfortable place and we settled in -- me rubbing his cheek and he purring away. As soon as he started purring, baby started kicking away. After about a half hour (in which time we both fell asleep), he got down and then came back up about 5 minutes later and settled into a new location on my belly until hubby got home about 30 minutes later. The amazing thing to me was during those 5 minutes he was off my belly, baby stopped moving. As soon as he laid back down and started purring again, baby started moving again.

I love this connection between my baby and my fur baby. It makes me smile. It makes my heart happy. And it makes for a perfect moment Monday.

March ICLW

If you are visiting from ICLW -- welcome! It's been awhile since I've participated and since I've updated my blog (more on that in a bit).

Here's the backstory;
We started trying to conceive in November 2006 when I was 31.  I had been on bcps for 16 years to control heavy, unpredictable cycles.  I was happy to find that my cycles came back fairly regularly, but still very heavy (27 - 35 day cycles in general).  I always had a feeling that conceiving would be difficult for me (no particular reason to think this -- just intuition I guess).  

After about 15 months of trying on our own, we went to see my OB/GYN who put me on Clomid and hubby got to give a sperm sample.  The sperm sample came back as on the lower end of things, but not end of the world.  We were referred to our local RE and did about 3 cycles of Clomid (evil evil drug!).  The RE switched us to Femara and we did both timed cyles with this, as well as 3 IUIs.  Overall, we were very conservative with our treatment, starting and stopping treatment throughout.  Along the way, we determined neither of us wanted to do IVF.  We even started the home study process for adoption, but sadly determined that wasn't the process we wanted to continue.  

In September 2010 we found out we were pregnant on a natural/unmedicated cycle that we weren't even trying on.  While betas rose, I continually spotted and started bleeding before the first ultrasound which showed a blighted ovum at 7 weeks.  

I tried a lot of natural/alternative treatments over the years -- seeing a naturopath, taking vitamin supplements, going to a chiropractor and acupuncturist and making diet changes.  I lost about 25 pounds and got rid of all dairy and most carbs.  

In January 2012 I went back to see the RE because my periods had become even longer than normal and "wonky".  Following bloodwork, I was diagnosed with diminished ovarian reserve, even though the previous years my FSH and AMH had been completely normal.  So after much discussion and soul searching, we decided we would try just 1 round of IVF as we now had insurance coverage for it.  We scheduled it for our May cycle and I continued with the alternative treatments to get as healthy as possible.  

Long story short, my husband backed out 2 days before I was supposed to start the birth control pill for our IVF cycle.  This was a dark time for me and we entered couple's therapy and I tried to become comfortable with never being a parent.  

One day after my 37th birthday my husband told me he thought we should give it a shot and we proceeded with starting the IVF process in September.  I had 9 eggs retrieved and 3 of them fertilized.  My clinic only does 5 day transfers and we had one embie make it to that stage.  Based on my age, our fert results and age, we were given a 15% chance of it working.  

At 17 days post ovulation (dpo) I had my first beta and it was 1200+, and the second two days later was 2300+ -- we were pregnant with our miracle baby!  

Today I am 27 weeks pregnant and thrilled to be having this experience. 

However, I'm not going to lie.  There have been many struggles that go along with this pregnancy due to our infertility history.  Most days I'm still not confident that I will be taking home a baby, even though I know our chances go up everday.  I'm scared to register and schedule baby showers.  I don't want to sign up for birthing classes because those types of group experiences (with fertiles) make me incredibly nervous and anxious.  Each day is challenging.  

I have lots of things/feelings to write about, but have struggled with putting them into written words.  I am really going to spend this ICLW period trying to get some of it out.  

In the meantime, I look forward to reading all of your stories as well!  

If you have any interest, I started a second blog to document my pregnancy, which I plan to turn into a digital scrapbook for baby.  If you would like to check it out (I completely understand if you don't) you can at http://twinklelittlestar2013.blogspot.com.