Moving forward

Oh a more positive note, we are moving in less then a month!

We have been discussing the fact that our less then 800 square foot house is not adequate to raise a family for quite a while now, mainly because our kitchen is so small that we have to utilize our second bedroom as a dining room as we can't fit it anywhere else. Originally we thought that we would expand the kitchen with an addition to the back of the house but when we started looking into quotes we realized that the amount we would have to spend, not mention the headache of not having a kitchen for a month or more, would require loan repayments equal to our mortgage payments and at least 7 years to repay! If we could afford to do that, then we figured we might as well just double our mortgage payments and buy a new house that doesn't need to be renovated.

We made this decision at the beginning of October, contacted a realtor that set us up on automatic emails where we got updated on new houses on the market that met our criteria, and we were very specific....

We wanted it to be:

1. In the North East end of the city (where we are currently)
2. Built in 2000 or more recent (preferably 2007 and newer)
3. At least 3 bedrooms
4. A large kitchen with an island
5. finished back yard

We also gave a realistic price range we wanted to spend. Knowing how the housing market has been a 'seller's market' for the last few years and the fact that we weren't in a rush to move, we were fully prepared to take up to 2 years to find the house for us. We did not expect to go to our first open house at the end of October and love the house. We talked to our realtor the day after the open house to set up a second viewing, as well as two other houses for comparison (we didn't want to be hasty!), and went to them the next day. Still loved the house and couldn't think of a good reason NOT to put an offer in.

We got lucky because the seller's were motivated to sell since they were relocating to Alberta. The house had been on the market for a month and they had already dropped the price by $15,000. There was NO bidding war, we were the only offer. It is NOT a seller's market right now. 4 day's after going to the open house, our FIRST open house, and we had bought a new place with a possession date for 21 days later....crazy!

We plan to rent out our current house, rather then sell, and tonight we have 5 different viewings for it, with another 4 on Friday. We thought we may have troubles finding a tenant but it isn't looking like that is going to be an issue. Crossing fingers things continue to fall into place.

Here are some pictures of the our new place....

We are very excited to get to celebrate Christmas and a new year in our new home!

Limbo - an update

I realize I kind of left things hang with the last post a month ago, mainly because there has been no major changes. I feel like I'm in limbo, let me elaborate...

I got into the ultra sound appointment two days after my follow up appointment with my doctor as he put through the order as an 'emergency' a second time. I felt weird having it termed an emergency since nothing was really happening but it made it happen so I guess I should just let that go.

Ultra sound confirmed that the miscarriage was pretty much complete but since she was just a tech (really nice though!) she didn't know anything about me getting the shot for the RH. This was a Friday so I couldn't really call my doctor. I decided to do what any modern girl would do...I Googled what happens if you have a RH+ miscarriage and don't get the shot. Needless to say I confused myself with the limited data on line and slightly freaked myself out. There really isn't a lot out there on the 'what ifs' of miscarriage and most of the information I could find was just on GETTING the shot to prevent RH sensitivity.

So I stopped looking as I knew I would convince myself that I would never get pregnant again if I carried on!

Tuesday I got home to a voicemail from a OB-GYN's office wanting to book an appointment - I guess my doctor's office finally got around to that as well. Wednesday I got a hold of them and ran over to get even more blood work done (FUN!) and Thursday I met with a wonderful OB-GYN. She said that there was no need to proceed with a D&C and I should have no trouble getting pregnant soon enough. Before she finished I asked 'But what about the fact that I'm RH-?!' Apparently she thought that I had already gotten the shot...ummm No....Good news was that you apparently have a month after a miscarriage/birth/etc to administer the shot and it be effective and I was only 3 weeks at this point. Bad news...I was leaving that night for The Pas for Thanksgiving Weekend!! So after a stressful afternoon of what ifs and where will I go my OB got me into her hospital's maternity ward so I didn't have to wait in an emergency room for 8 hours! It still meant that we didn't leave the Winnipeg until 9:30pm and got into my parents at 3am but at least I got the shot and could stop worrying.

On October 17th, D got in to see his doctor and have his blood type tested and a week later (yup it took that frickin' long!) we got that news that he's A-! Negative!! He has the same blood type as me and all of this stress was for NOTHING!

I would really suggest that if you are trying to get pregnant to get both of your blood types BEFORE you actually conceive and save yourself this stress.

So now that I don't have to worry about conceiving a RH+ baby I can focus on getting pregnant again....except.....seven weeks after the miscarriage I have YET to get me period! And yes I've taken multiple pregnancy tests just in case we were really THAT fertile, all have come back as negative.

Which brings us back to the LIMBO stage I feel I'm in right now. I depend on my period to help pin point when I ovulate and tell me when I'm not pregnant. Not having it is frustrating! I know that its ONLY 7 weeks and since I didn't have a D&C its normal for my body to take awhile to get back on schedule, I just wish I didn't feel so out of the loop.

Closure

So I had a doctor appointment yesterday. It originally was booked as my prenatal and pap exam but when that no longer was necessary it turned into a followup appointment.

He had sent in a request for an ultrasound appointment for me at my last appointment, 2 weeks ago, and I hadn't heard from anyone to set this up but since I had been bleeding for the last 2 weeks like I was having the worst period of my life (granted still not a lot of pain or discomfort) I had assumed that it was a sure thing a miscarriage had happened and not being a doctor but loving my google searches had decided it was a full miscarriage so it didn't really bother me not to have them do the ultrasound.

Apparently, I still need the ultrasound just in case it wasn't complete....so much for self diagnoses. He sent in a second request yesterday and marked it urgent. They actually called me this morning and I'm going in this afternoon.

Secondly, we had a nice discussion on the fact that I am in fact RH-, something that I vaguely remembered but wasn't positive on until now. Why is this important? Well now that I've had a miscarriage (would have happened after I gave birth the first time too) my body has potentially built up antibodies to destroy RH+ bodies. The reason I say potentially is because I currently have NO IDEA what D's blood type is and neither does he. I have donated blood before and if necessary I could have called up the blood bank for my blood type at any point, D has never donated. I thought his mother would know....she doesn't. So he called his doctor yesterday and can't get into a lab without a request from a doctor and he can't get into his doctors until October 17th!

Why is this a big deal to me? Because if D is RH+ I will require injections of Rh immunoglobulin (RhIg), a blood product given to help me by "minimizing my reaction to the Rh positive red cells". No big deal about the injections, as they aren't suppose to cause me any problems but if I get pregnant before getting the injections I have no how my body will react and I have the potential of having another miscarriage immediately after my first one.

I realize that I may not even be ovulating yet but the idea that I could be and not knowing if D is RH+ is not making me want to have sex anytime soon. Which ALSO pisses me off because now I'm having to postpone trying to conceive until mid October or November is I don't get the results and then injection (if necessary) soon enough.

I'm planning to try and impart a sense of urgency onto D about this and see if he can go to a walk in or something for the body test sooner.

I'm also crossing my fingers that he's RH- and then this won't even be an issue!!!!

Kicking a Habit

I never thought of myself as someone that was addicted to a drug, and will admit that I couldn't understand women that would continue to smoke during their pregnancies (and still don't, actually) but when faced with cutting out caffeine I'm having a really hard time.

When I found out that I was pregnant in August I immediately quit drinking coffee cold turkey. The first day was hard, lack of concentration and pounding headache by the end of the work day. The weekend was my second & third days which made them bearable as I rarely drink coffee on those days because I have the opportunity to sleep in and take naps if necessary. I'm also not staring at a computer screen for 8+ hours. When Monday rolled around I was back to the lack of concentration and pounding headaches, and since Advil - my usual headache & pain remedy, was out of the question, I was running around looking for Tylenol.

For some reason the idea of replacing caffeine with Tylenol didn't sit well with me and then I started reading that its actually OK to consume 200mg or less of caffeine a day (which is just under 16oz of coffee) so I justified my morning coffee and went back to drinking it. Technically I also would have chocolate and other products with caffeine some days, on top of the morning coffee, but chose to ignore that.

When I miscarried I couldn't help but think "OMG if I had only stopped drinking coffee...". Now rationally I realize any number of things could have caused me to miscarry and the fact that I was moderating my coffee intake it probably WASN'T the cause but I really don't want to run that risk again.

I had NO PROBLEM stopping my one glass a night of wine, or starting to take a daily prenatal vitamin when I'm TERRIBLE with remembering to take vitamins, all in the name of a healthy pregnancy and baby. So why can't I let this coffee thing go? You would think that I would take this opportunity to stop before I get pregnant again so that I can deal with the withdrawal symptoms before they are compounded with the exhaustion of pregnancy, but I'm sipping on a Venti Pike from Starbucks as I type this.

Hello my name is Carmen and I'm a coffee addict...

Any tips on quiting?!?!

(I realize this is pretty much a private blog with a readership of 4 at the most so I guess this is more of a rhetorical question at this point...)

How is this NOT amazing

I saw this photo on Facebook and needed to share and pass on the article, abosultely amazing...

Read more about this picture and article that was published in 1999...apparently I've been living under a rock...

Coping

Last night pretty much confirmed that this is in fact a miscarriage. I'm full out bleeding like I was on my period and require a tampon (I hope its okay that I'm using a tampon because everyone online mentions wearing a pad and I don't OWN pads). I still need an ultra sound I guess to determine if its a complete miscarriage though.

I'm surprisingly handling it really well, I guess it was so early that I had yet to be attached to the idea and had prepared myself for the possibility of loss. Aside from my sleepless night on Tuesday where I still clung to the hope that it was just an abnormally large "spotting" incident I am actually okay with it all. No urge to cry, no depression.

Is it weird that I almost feel guilty that I'm NOT that upset? If anything I feel like I should apologize to my in laws that they aren't going to be grandparents yet! Even though I know its not my fault....

Not what I was expecting

So this is DEFINITELY not what I thought my second post would be about, regardless of how prepared I was for this outcome. I guess I was finally starting to accept the whole "I'm really pregnant" thing so was caught off guard.

**Please be aware that this may be TMI for some people***

Tuesday night I woke up to go to the bathroom only to be greeted with clots and brown "old" blood discharge. It was a lot more then what I would expect from normal 'spotting' but not as bad as the amount expected for a miscarriage. Not to mention that it wasn't 'fresh' blood.

To say that I couldn't sleep for the rest of the night was an understatement, as I was completely exhausted I called in sick to work and phoned my doctor's office to make an appointment. I couldn't get in until today which didn't relieve my worrying about the unknown but I didn't experience any further discharge for the rest of the day so I started to think that perhaps it was all good. My body just needed to rid itself of some old blood that had been sitting there since implantation or something else, and rather then do it slowly it got rid of it all at once.

Until I went to the bathroom just before bed and the discharge was back, still not 'fresh' but its there and is still here this morning. Its not heavy like my usual period but I feel more and more that this is not going to end in a happily.

I just got back from my doctor's appointment and I still don't have a confirmed answer as I have to have an ultrasound now (waiting to hear when that is!) but he was not hopeful. Along with the clots, which apparently are not a good sign, my hormone levels that came back from my lab work were a lot lower then expected, more like 4 weeks then the 6 weeks that they were suppose to be. This further adds to the likelihood that my pregnancy miscarried a few weeks ago and my body is just getting around to 'flushing' me out now. Until they do the ultrasound they won't know for sure.

My doctor has informed me that having a miscarriage has put me in a higher risk category (I was already higher then normal because I was 30 which was news to me since I thought I had until 35!) and will be referred to an OB-GYN as soon as I'm pregnant again.

I suppose there is a small chance that everything is still fine and obviously I would prefer it to be still 'okay' but I knew this would be a risk and at least I know now that D and I are fertile so we will start trying again as soon as I figure out when my next ovulation period is and hopefully it will happen quickly and stick this time.

Didn't expect this blog to turn into a "Trying To Conceive" one but that's life...throwing you curve balls.

Feelings that I'm currently experiencing:

1. Disappointed that we need to start again and that I will no longer be due around the same time as my friend (who also just found out she's expect).
2. Resigned to the fact that this is life and there really wasn't anything I could have done. Putting me in the higher risk category has now removed my reduced to ONE cup a day coffee consumption. Guess I'll need to start weening this addiction now so that I'm not suffering headaches when I can't take Advil! (Please note that I use to drink multiple cups a day and when I first found out that I was pregnant I cut it out completely, suffered from headaches, read that it was okay to have 200mg of caffeine a day while pregnant and so brought back ONE morning cup during the work week - there is a small part of me that wishes I had disregarded the Internet and 'What to expect when expecting' advice and never went back to caffeine but I realize that I can't play the what if game)
3. Reluctant as I am NOT looking forward to telling my in laws, as they were the only people we have told so far that I was on the fence about. My MIL is a little overly emotional and I do not want to listen to her cry about something I haven't really cried about! Nor do I want her obsessing the NEXT time I'm pregnant about what I'm doing and if the baby is okay.
4. Relieved that Facebook friends and work colleagues do NOT now that I was pregnant. We had chosen only tell a handful of people that we were comfortable sharing the bad news with and I'm glad we decided that because it would definitely suck having to update your facebook status as NOT pregnant and I absolutely hate the insincere condolences from people that rarely talk to you.
5. Optimistic that the second time will be the charm and now we just need to wait.

Is it terrible that I'm annoyed that my tarot card reader, who I have been going to for years now and find her very reliable, recently said (I went to her 2 weeks ago but didn't tell her I was pregnant because my friend that was with me didn't know) I would get pregnant quickly (check), that I thought it would take a long time but D was very fertile (check) and that I would have a very easy pregnancy.....(ummm). When I asked if she saw miscarriage and problems she said that it looked like a easy pregnancy. (So basic NO check) I realize that an educated woman, who is an accountant by trade, should not be putting her hopes into predictions from tarot cards but it is what it is. I believe in stuff like that and her so I keep going back to this think "it can't be a miscarriage, I was suppose to have an easy pregnancy" and then I think "but maybe the reason she didn't know I was pregnant 2 weeks ago was because my miscarriage had already happened and that the NEXT pregnancy would happen quickly...October!?...and THAT one will be easy." Crazy I know, but that's what goes through this girl's head.

So that's where we are at right now.