Random Domesticity

I don't have any real theme for today's post; I just have a series of random thoughts.

Is it totally pathetic that I am ridiculously excited to play hookey from mommy-hood today? I am going with a couple of my mommy friends to lunch and a matinee movie SANS kids! Woo-hoo! Obviously, I love my daughter, but she's in a particularly clingy phase these days. Even now as I type, she's here yelling, "Up-oo, Mamma. Up-oo!". In other words, "Mom, I want to sit in your lap". So, I am typing with a 30lb 20-month old in my lap. Sooo, it will be kinda nice to have a couple of hours in which I have my lap to myself.

Warning: I am about to enter the gushing Mamma zone for a minute here. If you're sickened by mothers' tales of their offsprings' incredibly cute antics, this is not the paragraph for you. Please feel free to skip ahead. Okay, anyway I have to say that at each stage of S's development, I think that she's at the cutest one yet. Right now her communication skills are really starting to blossom -- she's been putting together rudimentary sentences and even using pronouns (apparently a concept that is fairly sophisticated for children first learning language skills). At the playground, she'll stand at the top of the slide and yell at the top of her lungs, "Mamma, I big girl!". Too cute. However, she doesn't quite get all of the rules of pronoun usage. For instance, she loves it when I hide and then jump out yelling, "Boo!". Her response every time is, "I scared me!". Every day brings a new language gaffe that is so adorable -- I have to remember to write them down so that I don't forget them when she's older and her language skills are full of different kinds of interesting nuances (such as, "Mom, why can't I take the car?! That's bull@$*&!").

I pride myself on being a pretty good cook -- I love to eat which is generally half the battle, I believe. Well, my best friend T hails from New Orleans and cooks a mean red beans and rice. Last night I used her recipe and attempted my own red beans and rice. Let's just say that it wasn't my finest showing in the kitchen. Where hers was creamy, mine was pasty. Where hers had a beautiful rich dark red color, mine was more of a sickening brown. Mine looked like refried beans -- which are tasty, but there is a reason that you generally hide them in a tortilla. They just don't look that appetizing. R insisted that it was very tasty (smart man), but I just wasn't very happy about it. I think that next time I will use some slightly different ingredients and make sure to add more water while it simmers. I think that tonight I'll try to redeem myself with one of my old stand-by recipes.

Oh and my final thought for now: is Britney Spears really pregnant again?!? Does anyone else think that's a bad idea on so many levels?

Wallowing

Well, despite my best intentions, I couldn't wait until Sunday to take another pregnancy test. I took one this morning and big surprise, it was negative. Try as I might, I could not detect anything that could possibly be considered a second pink line. I think it's pretty safe to say that I am not pregnant -- given that my period is due tomorrow, I am pretty sure that I would have seen even a very faint line if I were pregnant.

I can't express how bummed I am right now. All I can think about is how easy it is for other folks to get pregnant (like my friends M and T). And, each time I get back a negative test or get my period, the sadness of the miscarriage washes over me again. I keep thinking about how far along in that pregnancy I would be by now (just over the halfway mark).

So, I guess I'll give my doctor a call this week and talk about next steps -- tests, meetings with fertility doctors, etc. He and I talked about this before, but it's time to get new info.

Until then, I'll have a drink at dinner tonight and continue to wallow in my own crapulence...

Okay, let's try this again...

I've been reading all of these wonderful blogs lately and checking out some great podcasts, and I've felt like I really want to start contributing to my own blog again. I think I may need to get over my own perfectionists tendencies -- I am so reticent to publish something that isn't wonderfully witty, insightful, or well-composed that I don't publish anything. Which is really funny because I am certain that I am the only one reading this anyway! But, I am going to put my fears of mediocrity aside and try again with this blog.

So, some of the blogs I've been reading lately have to do with secondary infertility. That is, infertility in folks who have already had a first child, but are having a tough time getting pregant (or staying pregnant) with #2. I am not even sure if our situation could be considered secondary "infertility" -- I haven't gotten an "infertile" diagnosis. But, we are trying for #2 and having a tough time with it. I had heard a bunch of stories about women being super fertile after a miscarriage, successfully acheiving conception the first or second cycle after a miscarriage. So, naturally after our miscarriage in December, I was expecting to get pregnant again right away. Well, here we are three cycles later and still not pregnant.

At least, I don't think we're pregnant. Right now I am experiencing some spotting and I am not sure if it's due to implantation or if it's just the start of my period. Both times I've been pregnant, I had spotting about 10 days after ovulation. However, I also spot a day or so before I get my period. I started spotting on Wednesday and took a pregnancy test (well, actually two of them) which was of course negative. Now I've had light spotting for three days and I have no idea what is going on. I don't want to take another pregnancy test because I don't want to face the disappointment. Plus, my period isn't due until Sunday. If I take a test today and it's negative, I'll be disappointed, but I will still have a glimmer of doubt in my mind, thinking that perhaps it's too early for the test to detect the HCG. Then, if I get my period on Sunday, I'll be disappointed TWICE. So, I am just planning to wait to see if I get it on Sunday -- if not, then I'll take a test.

And, if it's negative on Sunday, then I guess we're back to trying again...