blech...

I've said it before but you ladies really are fantastic for my self esteem! I wish I could keep you in my pocket or something ;)

Survived the glucose test. Not sure when I'll find out if I passed or not, I'm hoping before my next appt since it's a ways off. The stuff was sickeningly sweet. I started to feel a little sick to my stomach as we approached the hour cut off and was a little dizzy. I had a banana in my bag that I was unpeeling as I walked out the door of the lab. Really hope I pass, I don't know if I could manage the 3 hr.

Worked from home the rest of the day. Should have went in because I've ended up on the phone all day. To me, working from home always involves an afternoon nap....no such luck today. I did manage to sign up for our childbirth class. I'm not sure what I think about a breastfeeding class. Anyone think it was useful? I know there are lactation consultants at the hospital so I don't know if I want to drop the 50 bucks.

Ugggg....phone is ringing again....

So much to say? ** belly pic in post**

All morning I had a ton of posts jumping around in my head and now that it's lunch and I can log on...nothing. What a pain.

Instead I guess I'll bore people with stupid pg updates. I am apparently now huge and 4 different people told me yesterday that I started waddling. Thanks...I was pretty aware of it since my hips are all achy and creaky and hurt like a bitch all night long. Speaking of bitch, I am a raging one right now. Anything can set me off. I feel bad for everyone around me since I'm a time bomb. I've got my 1 hr glucose screening tomorrow morning. I'm eating a nice spinach salad with hard boiled eggs right now ;) Really nervous about this for some reason. I'm sure some psych person would say I'm displacing all of my other anxieties and making it all about this test...and they'd probably be right but I'd go all she-bitch on them so it would be a pretty pointless conversation.

The irritable old ute is getting a little better. I went to the H.ealthy Back store and spent way to much money on a fancy lumbar thing which helps the BH when I'm driving. Now that I've got that under control, I can pretty much manage them by never letting my bladder get too full. That was the other big trigger. And for now, Q has changed positions so she isn't kicking my bladder anymore. Those kicks use to cause some pretty bad BH. I think she's moved on to the liver or something underneath my ribs. My doc isn't as worried anymore since they're decreasing in frequency, so that makes me feel a TON better. (not going to lie though, part of me wanted to get a medical leave from work b/c of the whole driving thing so I could collect my short term disability. Otherwise I'm working right up until I give birth in this freaking school)

I was hoping some of my brilliant thoughts would come back to me as a typed but no luck. So for now go wish Shelby a happy birthday.

Oh...and since I'm feeling brave. Here's a pic from 4 1/2 weeks ago (exactly 24 weeks), very staged from my brother's wedding. Mr H is on the left and that pink cotton candy explosion...well that's me ;) Looks like a bad prom picture in front of the fireplace, doesn't it???

Tagged times two

First off, thank you all for all of your kind words and thoughts about all my family crap. In my anger at the time I didn't really portray my dad in the best light so I'm clearing his name a little right now. It's going to take a little while to come up with a new 'normal', especially we always were a family that loved vacationing together and big long dinners, but we will. This weekend my mom is going to visit her sister so I'm going to let my inner 6 year old do her selfish thing and wallow for a little bit.

On to the tagging. Yoka (as an aside, please go click over and give her some hugs, she just got not so great news about her dad) tagged me for this meme:

1. What did you do 10 years ago?

Hmmm...summer 1998 I was temping at F.idelity In.vestments and re-affirming my beliefs that I wanted nothing to do with the business world. I was also enjoying my last summer of extended adolescence, getting ready for my senior year of college

2. Five things from your ‘to do’ list?
- Realize that everyone else thinks I'm crazy and need to accept the fact that there most likely will be a 3rd little person in this house in September and maybe get something set up for her
- Call closet people (house came with custom avocado green floor to ceiling doors...you know you're jealous)
- start researching a second car as soon as ours is paid off
- along with the first thing, find a pediatrician
- find a pool to join (actually a very high priority for me right now)

3. Favorite snacks
- most ice cream related desserts
- chips and salsa


4. What would you do if you were a millionaire?
move out of this old townhouse with avocado doors
actually save
take fantastically amazing vacations with all of my loved ones every year

5. Places where you’ve lived?
New York
New Jersey
Massachusetts
Maine
Maryland
Virginia

And then Bean tagged me forever ago for this meme. I'm hereby acknowledging the tag but recognizing that I am WAY too spent to come up with a decent 6 word memoir. I will get to it though, I promise.

And I tag anyone who feels like doing either one!

Parents

Sorry I've been MIA. Work was crazy and then we took off to FL for a few days. Came back to a shitstorm of course. So yes, I owe you all a real legit post but this is going to be a quick little vent before I get back to work (yes, it's 9 PM) about parents acting like children.

Just found out tonight that not only is my dad moving out and getting a divorce, but that he's moving 8 hours away....on Friday. Seem a little hasty?? Not for someone who's clinically depressed and regularly self-medicates with car bombs (the drink, not an actual bomb). When my brother talked to him about his drinking, he said it's ok because he typically only binge drinks 1-2 times/week and he never drives. Sounds like a teenager at all???

So I'm left with a wreck of a mother, an insane amount of work to do, and pretty crappy mental health of my own. My mom is staying with us tomorrow night so she doesn't have to be around when my dad loads up his truck. Ridiculous.

Again, sorry for the dump and I do promise a real post as soon as I get my head above water

thanks ladies

Thanks for all the thoughts and advice. For now I'm going to go with some denial and put off any decision making until sometime next year. I really appreciated everyone's thoughts on future treatments and I'll probably talk to my RE before we would start up again to see if what knowing would change. So there....I'm wiping my hands of it for now (or at least trying to).

Can we talk for just one minute about the crazy weather and traffic around DC yesterday. It took me an hour and a half to get home from work last night. As I'm pulling in, Mr H calls to tell me that there is a power outage on the metro and everyone has to get off about 4 stops away from us. So I run in to the house, use the bathroom, feed the cat, grab a granola bar for myself, and get back into the car. It should take me 20 minutes to get to this metro station. One hour and 10 minutes later I pick Mr H up. Some of you might remember that I found out last month that my uterus does not like sitting in the car. As soon as I had that car in park, I jumped out, ran to the passenger side and lied down...felt so much better. Then, instead of trying to go straight home, we decided to go to a little cafe less than 1/2 mile from the metro. In retrospect, we should have just parked the car and walked but instead it took us 30 minutes to get there. Then 45 home. So all in all, four hours in the car. I could have been somewhere fun in that time, but no, I spent it on the beltway and 66.

Thankfully, schools were closed today. I soooo needed it. I thought it would give me the time to catch up on all the end of year paperwork but I had no power or cable (therefore, no internet) until 4 today. So I was forced to relax. And I walked over to the grocery store for lunch since there was no way I was getting back in that car today!

hmmm....reads like a very whiny post, sorry. I really came on just to thank you all for your help and good thoughts. This community never ceases to amaze me!

Bowing out (and some questions for ya)

First, thanks for the birthday wishes. I am another one of those 'birthday month' people so no one ever has to apologize for being a day late ;)

And now I have to respectfully bow out of NaComLeavMo. It's crazy time at work, gearing up to hire and train new staff and I barely have time to read, let alone comment. My reader is getting a little bit overwhelming. I have loved checking out some new blogs and getting to know new bloggers and I'll try to keep up but there is just no way I can do it every day.

Here's where I get selfish though--since I've gotten so many new readers the last week or so I figured it's a good time to ask my latest round of questions. You ladies are all brilliant and I know a bunch of you work in the medical field so I welcome all advice and ass-vice on this one.

Sometime last year some of my aunts and one of my cousins decided to get tested/screened (not sure exactly how it works) for the breast cancer genes since we have such a significant family history. I didn't do it at the time because I was getting poked and prodded enough with all of the preliminary testing for the RE and quite honestly, just couldn't handle the thought of it. Well I found out recently that they tested positive. Now I know it doesn't mean that I will get cancer, just that it increases the likelihood that I will. My biggest hang up right now is that you all know what else increases your odds of getting breast cancer right...injectible FSH. So while I was lucky enough to get pregnant, in the process did I ensure that this little girl will grow up motherless? Did I pass the gene on to her? I was talking about all this with family last weekend and they all told me to go get tested. But I don't know how I feel about it. I can't be anymore proactive than I already am. I got my baseline mammogram at 29, do self exams religiously, and insist that my gyno do exams yearly instead of every 3. So what would it change? But it also raises the question of starting IF treatments again in a few years. At that point I'll be older so we'd probably be moving straight to IVF, which increases the amounts of hormones I'd be putting into my system. For now, I'm not thinking too much about that last question.

So that's where my head has been at lately, it's a little bit of a messy place. And I have one more selfish, shameless thing to do. Every year I run in the K.omen R.ace for the Cure with my family for my aunt. She was first diagnosed 19 years ago and is the strongest lady I know. In fact, she was my rock during all of this IF crap. This year I signed up to show my support but didn't really plan on doing it or doing too much fundraising, I'm a little pre-occupied and I know I couldn't do run a 5K right now. But I decided to walk it (in the spirit of full disclosure, probably the 1 mile instead of the 3) and I want to at least make an effort to raise some money. I know we've all got different causes that are close to our heart and many of you are trying to figure out how to pay for treatments and testing. But if you've got a few spare singles floating around (literally), please consider heading over to my race webpage. (just a warning--in order to get the rest of my fam motivated to donate, I do talk about how I'll be "walking for two").

So to wrap up, sorry for bailing on the comment-athon, thanks for any advice about the breast cancer gene crap, and double thanks if any of you click over to the race.