Blog mail

You never know what’s going to show up in the blog mail these days!

First, I received a note from Deirdre, a fellow doughnut-lover from Winston Salem. She wrote:

I just read your “Ode to Doughnuts” and absolutely loved it. I am in the process of writing a happy little (short) book about doughnuts and would like to include a snippet of it. May I do so? I shall credit you and site the source (url). Just let me know.

It never fails to amaze me what catches people’s fancy. I’m sure a good ten per cent of my hits have to do with doughnuts in one form or another, mostly about Tim Horton’s and Weight Watchers points. Oh well, it’s not the worst imaginable internet legacy. And of course I told Deirdre that I’d be honoured if she quoted my post, and that I was grateful that she asked me first, rather than just lifting the text. And I told her I’d be happy to review a book about doughnuts on blog, since it seems to be a theme around here.

Back in February, I blogged that I was thrilled to be offered my first book to review, but that I coveted some of the other cool things bloggers had been offered to review, like DVDs and even trips. Offering free stuff to people who are considered opinion leaders among their peers is a new spin on the age-old word of mouth marketing technique, but this time around they call it buzz marketing. Get a few people who are respected opinion leaders to start talking about your product, and the buzz it generates can be more valuable (and way cheaper) than all the traditional media ad space you can buy.

A couple of days ago, I got an e-mail from a buzz marketing firm in Toronto called Matchstick. The e-mail said that if I met a few criteria, I might be eligible for a free multimedia smart phone – all I had to do was blog about and with it. Apparently we’ve found my price, and it’s free. Free!! I’m all about the free stuff.

I had to stretch and wiggle a little bit to meet some of their criteria – I get about half the daily hits they were looking for, and am a week short of two years older than the age group they were targetting, but I blog daily and with enthusiam, and can be bought for the price of a single multimedia smart phone, so I guess that made up for my shortfalls.

They put the phone in the mail yesterday, so I’ll keep you updated when it arrives. I feel a little disingenuous, because they think they’re getting a respected opinion leader who is tech savvy enough to exploit the phone’s many features, and they’re getting a mediocre blog junkie and recovering luddite who is more than a little intimidated by a phone that does anything other than ring and dial out.

Not only is it a phone, but it’s a digital camera (still and video!), it received e-mail and has an internet interface, and it’s equipped with Bluetooth technology, which seems to engender appreciative nods and sighs from my tech-savvier friends.

Our existing cell phone (‘our’ because we don’t even each have our own) is about four years old – not even a flip-phone – and the account is a bare-bones one grandfathered from an old employee plan back in 1998, so I’m curious as to whether it will support this fancy-ass new smart phone. (Being an existing Rogers wireless customer was one of the criteria.) Whether I’ll be able to figure out how to even turn it on, let alone answer a call or take a photo or blog from it remains to be seen. But in the spirit of free, I’m more than willing to try!

And, as a post-script, in doing a little bit of research for this post and my previous one, I found this link to a blogger in Italy who is willing to give his 60G iPod Video to a random blogger who links to him before August 4.

I’m shameless, aren’t I? I’d be embarrassed, but I’m too busy being gleeful over the free multimedia smart phone.

The cutest pirate on the seven seas

I’m either really late for last Halloween, or really early for the next one. But, despite that, is he not the most adorable pirate ever?

Johnny Depp’s got nothing on Tristan the Pirate!!

Tristan was invited to a costume birthday party yesterday, and I was in a bit of a panic as to what costume he could possibly use for a party in July. All our Halloween costumes have been carefully chosen for blustery October evenings with a decent chance of snow – the more fur, the better!

I’m rather proud of this costume, because although I fancy myself on the creative side, I’m not good with imagination stuff like this. The T-shirt is from his drawer, and the track pants were about to be sacraficed to the god of torn out knees anyway. The inflatable sword came from a Happy Meal box, as did the eyepatch not showing in this picture. The only thing I bought was a 97 cent bandana and 89 cents worth of red satin fabric, both courtesy of WalMart. Add a curlicue of moustache thanks to Clinique bonus leftovers and his own rubber boots. Voila – instant pirate!

More important than anything, though, was the fact that he loved it. He was the proudest pirate you ever would meet, and we practised his “Aarghh!” the whole 30 minute drive to the party and back again.

***

Posting may get a little sporadic, not to mention lightweight, over the next two weeks. I’m on vacation! Hooray! Turns out my vacation perfectly coincides with the two week wait, through no actually planning on my part – I couldn’t have made it work out better if I tried.

Are we there yet?

Technology, baby!

We were at my parents’ house on the weekend. Tristan was sitting in Granny’s lap and she was reading him a book. Simon was elsewhere, and made some sort of appealing noise that attracted Tristan’s attention. He hopped down from Granny’s lap, on his way to investigate what Simon was up to, and Granny protested.

Granny: Where are you going, Tristan? We’re in the middle of a book.

Tristan: I’ll be right back, Granny. Just pause the book.

***

It’s my birthday next week, and my family has been asking me what I would like. I have absolutely no idea. Well, there is one thing I would especially like, but no amount of money will alter nature’s plan for that.

Beloved suggested my family combine forces to get me a 1G iPod Nano, and I’m seriously considering it. As you may remember, Beloved and the boys got me a generic brand MP3 player for Mother’s Day last year. I agonized for months on what music to load, and then it took me an embarrassingly long time to get around to actually put the music on the MP3 player, which was in and of itself an entirely frustrating experience. Despite carefully crafted sets and links between song groups, the laptop and MP3 player conspired to jumble the playlist, but the player itself doesn’t have a scramble feature. And then when I used it at the gym, my primary reason for wanting one in the first place, I found the volume wouldn’t crank loud enough to motivate me.

Will an iPod solve any of these problems? Probably not. But I want one anyway. I’m embarrassed about what this says about my not-so-latent consumeristic streak.

Do you have an iPod? Which one, and would you recommend it? If not an iPod, what else do I need for my birthday?

Baby pictures!

So I didn’t get the artistic blog photo I wanted, but I can at least share this picture of the transfer. You’re looking at an ultrasound of my interior plumbing – isn’t it exciting? The big dark ‘sea’ at the top of the picture is my very, very full bladder, and the bottom half shows my uterus, with the cervix on the far right. You can see the catheter in the centre, and three or four bright white spots that are the fertility goo that surrounded the embryo in the catheter. (Ya, I know, what it really looks like a big grey smudge. But humour me… )

I had asked Beloved to scan the ultrasound picture for me the night of the transfer, but the editorial comments were an unexpected addition.

"Your mucous is lovely!"

It’s not every day you get a compliment like, “Your mucous is lovely” but being the affirmation-junkie that I am, I’ll take it!

That’s what one of the two (two!) reproductive endocrinologists (RE) who helped turn frostie into a toastie yesterday told me. He also said I have an ideal uterus, and I’m filing that one away for a day when my self-image is feeling particularly low. “Yah, I may be pudgy and dull today, but at least I have an ideal uterus and lovely mucous.”

So yes, everything went extremely well yesterday, and frostie is now officially a toastie, snug in my womb. He/she came out of the five-year deep-freeze extremely well. They look for an embryo to be six to eight cells, and this one was seven cells – bang on average. And they grade them in quality on a scale of one to five, five being the best quality – but, the nurse assured me, they almost never see a grade four or five quality- and frostie was a grade three plus. I am absurdly proud of this, as if I had anything to do with it. I’m as proud as when Tristan passed his first year of swimming lessons, which again, had basically nothing to do with me.

Jojo, I did ask about the placement of the embryo in the uterus (that, and about a hundred other questions – it was like Curious George goes to the Fertility Clinic) and one of the REs said that yes, there is in fact an ideal place, high up in the uterus. A few minutes later, the nurses, REs and lab technicians clustered around the ultrasound monitor gasped appreciatively, in much the same way you ooh and aah over a particularly vivid fireworks display, when the RE skillfully launched the embryo and a small amount of fertility goo into exactly the place the RE had just indicated on the monitor. One of the nurses later said that the fertility goo drifted placidly out of the catheter in the most ideal way, and again I was absurdly proud.

The whole procedure only took 15 or 20 minutes, and then I was free to empty my way, way, WAY overfull bladder. Oh yes, and the RE also complimented me on my bladder capacity. He said, “You must be great on a road trip.” Why is it that I attract comedians wherever I go? (Cool aside – you know why they want you to have a full bladder? Because it presses on the normally curved uterus, making it straighten out and providing a much more direct path for the catheter. The RE said they have a statistically improved success rate with a full bladder during transfer. I am endlessly fascinated by this stuff.) I had already gone three times in the half hour leading up to the procedure to let off a bit of pressure, and by the time they had launched toastie out of the catheter and then sent the catheter back to the embryologist to verify that it was empty, I was just about cross-eyed with the need to relieve myself. And let me tell you, no amount of kegels will prepare you for the exercise of trying to empty your bursting-to-capacity bladder as quickly and efficiently as possible while simultaneously contracting your cervix snuggly and tightly closed around a microscopic embryo.

Like a good blogger, I had wanted to bring my camera into the clinic with me. I had visions of a particularly amusing photo taken from my perspective on the table, looking down past my stirruped legs to the accumulated medical personnel at the business end of my anatomy, but the nurse and Beloved disabused me of the idea.

The good news is – I have pictures! The bad news is, Blogger won’t let me post them. I’ll try to put them up later. Evil, wicked Blogger – how you vex me!

The rest of the day was entirely uneventful, in a mildly hedonistic sort of way. We went to the movie (just average, but I’d happily fork over $10 to watch Johnny Depp read from the telephone directory, so it was a pleasant afternoon) and by coincidence of timing, I had a previously scheduled appointment to get my hair cut yesterday, too. The only thing I lacked was a massage, or maybe a pedicure, to make it the perfect “all about me” day.

But of course, it isn’t entirely all about me. For those of you wondering how Beloved is faring through all of this, I have to tell you I’ve been a little concerned about that myself. He has a few more reservations than me about the whole ‘third child’ thing, and he didn’t seem nearly as invested in the whole idea of frostie as I was – but then, that seems par for the course in many male-female relationships in these types of circumstances. I think it takes a little longer for guys to be able to give themselves over to hope, and a little bit longer for them to internalize a pregnancy, or even a potential pregnancy, as a reality.

Any concerns I might have had about his reaction evaporated last night when he performed what I can only describe as an impromptu interpretive dance of the embryo gaining cells and implanting in the uterine wall. Oh, how I wished I had a camera nearby, because it was a thing of beauty!

It’s all good. It’s all very, very good! And now, I think I’ll consider myself pregnant until I find out otherwise. (You should see the grin on my face!) My blood test is two weeks today, on August 4.

*glances at watch*
*taps watch face*
*glances away*
*looks at watch again*

It’s gonna be a long two weeks!

Candygram!

Patience may be a virtue, but it’s not one of my personal strengths. Turns out some things are worth waiting for, though. Who knew?

No, I’m not talking about that other thing that’s happening today, I’m talking about the arrival of my package this week for the great candyswap of 2006! Bethany not only came through for me, but she must have felt awfully guilty for being a little bit late (as if I’m ever on time for anything) because WOW! what a lot of great candy. But I’m getting ahead of the story…

I completely forgot to check the mail on Monday, so the poor package might have been stuck in the community mailbox in the blazing sun and 43C-with-humidity temperatures all day Monday. I was on my way home to a house full of in-laws when I picked finally retrieved the package on Tuesday afternoon, but couldn’t justify putting off saying hello to them in order to tear into my package. (I tell ya, this being a grown up thing calls for a lot more restraint than I ever would have anticipated.)

In the bustle of our very-short overnight visit from the in-laws, I never did get the chance to open the package, but it didn’t escape Beloved’s eagle eye for candy. (I could paint the living room turquoise and puce with magenta accents, or come home shaved bald, and he might not notice. But a seven inch cubic square box of candy inside my messenger bag inside a closet he manages to ferret out. Go figure.)

He called me at work.

Beloved: “Can I open this package?”

Me: “Back off, Jack. That’s my candy! You had your chance and you decided not to participate in the candy swap. Get yer paws off my box!”

Beloved: “But I shook it three times now, and it sounds like it’s got some great stuff in it!”

Me: “Step away from the box. Don’t mess with me on this one, I’m ovulating.”

Beloved: *careful silence*

In the end, he managed to restrain himself. As he was leaving to teach his class after dinner tonight, he impelled me to open the box tonight, so he could inspect the bounty within. “It’s full of American candy,” he said reverently, his eyes glittering with expectation. “They have all kinds of candy down there that we don’t have.”

So shortly after we cleared away the dinner dishes and sent Beloved on his drooling way, notions of exotic American candy dancing in his head, my ‘helpers’ and I set about opening the package.

Inside, there was not only candy, but this really funky rainbow striped box. Is this a coincidence, Bethany, or did you know I have a container fixation?

And it was full – bountifully, blissfully FULL of snack-sized Twix Bars (mmmm), and sour Altoids, and sour Jelly Bellies, and Sour Patch Kids (my mouth is puckering just thinking about it) and a box of assorted flavours of Pop Rocks – remember pop rocks? I haven’t seen them since grade school! I can’t wait to freak the kids out by feeding them some. Watch for that excellence-in-parenting video to debut here soon! And last, but far from least, the biggest honkin’ box of Willy Wonka Everlasting Gobstoppers I have ever seen. Bethany, you ROCK!!!!

And you know what? I know the perfect time to start making a dent in this most excellent stash of candy – this afternoon at the movie theatre. Heck, let’s give that little embryo a sugar rush right out of the gate, shall we?

Thanks, Bethany, for the cornucopia of great candy!! And thanks to Andrea, too, for conceptualizing and creating the great candy swap of 2006… what a great idea!

3.. 2.. 1.. GO!

Oh look, it’s yet another post in the ongoing saga of “oh for the love of god, will you either get pregnant or shut up about it already”.

Well, we’re almost there. And when I say”we” I mean “we” as in all of us, because I’m really enjoying having a couple hundred of you along for the ride. I like knowing that a lot of you have been there (and been there, and been there) but I also hope that this has been an informative little peek into the world of infertility for some of you.

And now, on with the show, because tomorrow’s the big day! After an epic amount of waffling and no small amount of coaxing from my colleagues, I finally decided to take the whole day off. We have to show up at the clinic for 10:30, and I have to have a ‘very full’ bladder. The nurse suggested I drink a litre or more of water starting around 10:00. (Do you think a litre of Tim’s coffee would be an acceptable subsitute?)

Around the time we show up at the clinic, we’ll know whether frostie has survived the thaw, about an 80 per cent probability. The actual procedure will be at 11:30. (Are you squirming at thinking of sitting on a ‘very full’ bladder in a waiting room for an hour? Because I sure am.) I think they encourage me to have a little rest for another 20 minutes or so after the transfer – and who am I to say no to the rare opportunity for a daytime nap? – and then we should be out of there by 12:30 at the latest. We arranged for the caregiver to take the boys on Thursday instead of Wednesday this week, so Beloved will be there for the whole thing, and then we’re going out to an afternoon matinee after that.

The only decision that remains is whether to see Pirates of the Carribean, Superman, or You, Me and Dupree. I’m leaning toward a little Johnny Depp action, if only I can claim later in life that he had some impact on my fertility and reproductive capability.

Don’t you love it when a plan comes together despite a complete absence of planning on your part? Yet another sign from the universe that we’re on the right track!

I wish I had something more coherent for you today. I don’t even have a cute anecdote from the boys to apologize for this week’s relentlessly self-obsessed drivel. Bear with me, we’re almost done, and soon I will get my head out of my reproductive tract and turn my gaze back to the rest of the world. But, although it’s a tight call, my reproductive tract is still marginally less scary than the rest of the world just now.

I’m floundering for a way to end this that doesn’t seem like I’m fishing for a sea of “good luck!” comments (hey, lookit that – flounder, fishing, sea – and I didn’t even do that on purpose!!) but other than my newly discovered marine theme, I got nothing.

Um, so – how’s life with you these days? Oh wait, here’s another idea – we could play “Infertility Questions”. As in, if you have any questions about infertility treatments or the emotional rollercoaster or any of that stuff, me and my panel of experts will answer them for you. Or, you could tell me about your dog, or your goldfish, or just about anything to distract me from tomorrow.

(And if you think this is bad, you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen the new low in neurotic obsession that is the ‘two week wait’. Stay tuned, it’s likely to get ugly.)

Hurry up and wait

I was going to post a really big whine this morning. I’m starting to get a little impatient with the whole daily bloodletting thing (no updates because there’s nothing to post, just a lot of holes in the inside of my arm and the back of my hand), and this morning on the way into the clinic I managed to spill most of my coffee all over my white cotton blouse. Three days in a row, I went from the clinic back home or to the gym – it figures that I douse myself in coffee the day I’m heading to work. In white.

And I was going to whine that my in-laws are stopping by for a last-minute overnight visit tonight. I’m pretty lucky in the in-law department, but this is not exactly the best week for a visit. Oh well, aside from the fact they sleep in my bed when they visit, they’re pretty low maintenance and I enjoy their company – just not on a weekday, when I’m working and in the middle of a flippin’ fertility cycle!

And then there is Sassy, my parents’ gorgeous and goodnatured but absolutely dumb as a post malamute husky, who is vacationing with us this week. She has a tendency to use the rug as a toilet, and no amount of walking has encouraged her to use the outside facilities. My dad walks her three to five kilometers morning and night, but sadly, I just don’t have that kind of time just now. I’m hoping she deigns to use the back yard sooner rather than too late.

All in all, I was in a pretty crappy mood when I arrived at the office this morning, and then I saw that Nadine from heathifica.ca had extended my plea for information to her own health-related blog – wasn’t that nice? And then I opened my e-mail, and Jojo the commenter (and godmother to my boys) who really should write her own blog sent me the link to a wonderful blog called The Shape of a Mother. It’s one of the best new blogs I’ve seen – I love it!

In other words, I’ve got nothing today, but do go check out The Shape of a Mother. One of these days I might post my own saggy self over there, too!

Tummy trouble

I’m a little bit worried about Simon.

(Warning: there will be talk of barfing ahead. Consider yourself warned.)

He’s always been a great eater, but he’s been a little off his food lately. And maybe five or six times in the last couple of weeks, he’s finished most of his dinner, started to whimper, and barfed it all right back up again. Each time it has happened, it’s been a fairly hot day, and up until last week I was attributing it to the heat.

Last week, he was sick three times, but showed no other symptoms. And once he finishes yakking, he’s fine – energetic, playful, in good humour.

So Beloved took him to the ped on Friday, and the ped weighed him. He’s actually gained weight since his well-baby appointment six months ago, so that’s a good sign. The ped told us to simply keep an eye on him, and let him know if other symptoms (food avoidance, ill temper, etc) manifest. He also gave us a prescription for Prevacid, the same reflux medication both boys were on around four to six months of age. Even though he’s now two and a half, the administration of the medication is the same – with applesauce.

Just wondering if, in the beautiful symmetry of the Internet, any of you have any experience with random barfing (looks pointedly at Nancy) and any advice? Thanks to Tristan, I know from fevers, but barfing is new (not to mention messy) territory for me.

And now, as a reward for tolerating a post about my two year old’s tummy troubles, a bonus conversation and non-sequiter:

We are at my parents’ house for dinner. Tristan is downstairs watching TV and Simon is playing in the kitchen while my folks and Beloved and I are finishing our dinner. Tristan comes upstairs and asks for some crackers, which I give to him with the admonition to be very careful and not make a mess with the crumbs. At no time does Simon go anywhere near the basement family room.

Tristan is downstairs all of two minutes at most, and comes upstairs with a comically worried look on his face.

“Someone made a mess with some crackers downstairs,” he confides with wide blue eyes, “and I think it was Simon!”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

Frostie update

I’ve been promising an update for a couple of days, but I’ve been holding off for two reasons. One, I don’t really have anything of substance to report, and two, I wanted to be able to capture some of my thoughts and impressions on being back in the world of the infertile again. Whatever thoughts might have been floating around won’t float close enough for me to capture them in writing, so you’ll have to make due with a bare-bones update.

The ultrasound on Thursday showed that my lining is around 6.5 mm, which I think is right about bang-on average. The nurse to whom I spoke certainly seemed satisfied with it, anyway. (I’d appreciate any comparisons from those of you who have been through FETs before and are as neurotically obsessive about remembering and noting these things as I am!)

As of yesterday morning, I’m paying daily visits to the clinic to have them draw a vial of blood, which they analyze for the surge in luteinizing hormone (LH) that will precede ovulation by about 48 hours. There’s no way of knowing exactly when that will happen, but based on my fairly regular cycles, I expect the surge to occur Monday or Tuesday, with transfer two days after that.

Each morning, I get to the clinic between 7:30 and 8:00, and wait only 10 or 15 minutes for my turn with the phlebotomist. I have small, rolling veins, and getting a blood draw is always a pain in the arm. They’ve resorted to taking it from the back of my hand, which is slightly more uncomfortable but better than having them dig around the inside of my elbow with the needle, which is what they did the first two times. Youch! After four or five hours, the nurse calls me with an update, telling me (so far) simply that I have to show up to do it all over again the next day.

I’m still on the fence about how to go about the transfer itself. Actually, it’s how to accomodate the transfer that I’m waffling about. The wisdom on the subject of the amount of bedrest required after the embryo transfer runs the gamut from “you can leave the clinic on a pogo stick after transfer and not pose any risk to the embryos or implantation” (a favourite saying of the head of my clinic) to a week of absolute bedrest, as advoated by a lot of American clinics.

When we went through the IVF that resulted in Tristan, I took nearly three weeks off work to encompass the last few days of stims, the unexpected coasting, the retrieval and transfer (three days apart) and a few days after. The actual day of the transfer, we left the clinic and went out for lunch on the patio of our favourite restaurant, then went to the video store where I rented three movies and spent the rest of the day lying on the couch. It seemed like enough. Oh, and I ate about three pounds of fresh pineapple, shredding the inside of my mouth in the process.

This time around, I am considering working the morning of the transfer, or going back to work afterward, depending on the time of day of the transfer. I have a hell of a lot of work to get through and two weeks of vacation starting on Friday, and I’d like to get some stuff off my desk. Quite frankly, it would probably be more restfull to sit in my quiet, air-conditioned cube and work at my computer for an afternoon than be at home with the whirling dervishes that are the sunshine of my life. I dunno… I keep waffling about this. I’ll play it by ear, I guess.

I’m not even sure if Beloved will be able to accompany me to the clinic the day of the transfer. There’s no official reason for him to be there – he made his, ahem, contribution to the process five years ago, when the embryos were created. The transfer doesn’t involve any medication for me, so there’s no reason I might need assistance after the transfer. That leaves only the more intangible fact that it would be nice to have him there, but we’d have to arrange for someone to mind the boys, no easy feat on a weekday. Only a few days remain, so I guess we’ll play this one by ear, too.

If I seem a little detached about this whole process, it feels the same from here. If I really stop to think about what we’re doing, my stomach fills with butterflies – but I try my best not to think about it too much. Whatever happens happens, right? If I don’t invest too much up front, there is less to lose – and everything to gain.

Now I have to go do some laundry so I can wash my new skort and take a picture to post so Marla will quit pestering me about it, and I can settle once and for all the debate raging about how far above my knees the hem actually falls…