At my six week follow up after having Joshua, my OB recommended the Mirena IUD. I was hesitant to get it because of the low dose hormones but she insisted it really didn't affect people. Sounded good to me. Four weeks later I went to it put it.
I had read horror stories of it being excruciatingly painful. It wasn't. It felt sort of like getting an HSG, if you have ever had one, but so much quicker (like seconds) and not that intense.
Within two days of having the Mirena inserted, I put on 8 pounds. And I was on a post baby diet so I know it wasn't what I was eating. 8 pounds. And I couldn't get any more than a pound off the entire time I was on it, while dieting. Next, I realized I was feeling moody. Just sort of down and that is not my personality.
I went back to the doctor and was seen by a nurse. She told me that people don't gain weight from Mirena and it something I am doing wrong with my diet.
I left and researched it on the internet and there were lots of other people that had this weird weight gain phenomena. The common link seemed to be people who got Mirena before they had lost the baby weight. Next I saw countless accounts of women saying they felt like there were in a fog and then had it taken out and life went back to normal.
Next, I never stopped bleeding. I had it in for four months and maybe had 10 days I wasn't spotting or having a period. This birth control works great, because you are never going to want to do it if you are bleeding all the time. I think eventually your period is supposed to stop all together but that never happened for me.
Reading that all these other people had similar side effects convinced me to have it taken out. Eight hours later, it was just like I read, I felt a fog lift off me. It is hard to explain in words, but I just felt better. I wish I could saw I lost 8 pounds over night. I lost about 2 in a couple days.
Apparently, side effects are rather rare with the Mirena. I guess I am just one of the lucky ones.
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Got some 'splaing to do
I have gotten a couple of e-mails since my last post asking where I disappeared to. Well a funny thing happened. Not terribly long after I was pondering what my future held in my post "Unknownitis", we started filling in the blanks.
First, we decided to leave the city and move to the suburbs. As we began looking for houses, we decided to throw some more stress into the mix and started trying for baby number two. Our grand plan was to have them three years apart. Clearly, we weren't in the express lane with having our first, so we started trying early.
I decided I would be breezy and by breezy I mean I would be completely obsessive but not chart my temperatures. I began by getting round up all my old friends: The Clearblue Fertility Monitor, Sticks, and pregnancy tests. My Ob had given my a prescription for progesterone to combat my luteal phase defect.
As we all expected, I wasn't actually breezy, I was more like the dictator of conception. Romantic right? 9 days past ovulation I tested. As I waited nervously, the faintest, and I mean faintest of lines emerged.
I told my husband, who was in an utter state of disbelief, and then I called the fertility doctor to get seen immediately. I didn't have to go to the fertility doctor, but I like that you get monitored weekly. After the trauma of miscarriages, I needed all the reassurance I could get.
The nurse calls and tells me my HCG was at 24, expect to miscarry. Kudos to her for her exemplary bedside manner. I remind her that I am 9 DPO. She wasn't impressed and told me if I didn't start to miscarry come back in two days. Two days later my numbers were about 50. The nurse said my numbers doubled but were still low and she thought I would miscarry. I asked to speak to a doctor. He comes on the phone and says my numbers are low. I said I was 11 dpo. He said, oh, then you are fine, congratulations.
And those were the first few days of carrying Joshua. The pregnancy was relatively uneventful. He was another anterior placenta baby, which worked out great for me because he was active enough to let me know he was alive and kicking, but his kicks were buffered so I wouldn't be kept up all night by his acrobatics.
During this time we decided to build a house. I spent my days playing with Evan and taking him to classes, working on the house, and feeling guilty that Evan's world was about to be turned upside down. He was very clear that he wasn't in the business of being a big brother. He literally would take my clothes and pillows to cover my belly. If someone asked if he was excited to be a big brother, he would shout "NO!". But his most notable act of defiance took place four days before my planned c-section.
It was a Thursday- my last morning Evan would be at preschool before the baby would come. I had big plans. I had a pedicure lined up and planned to spend the rest of the time preparing for the baby's arrival.
The night before, Evan started fighting us about bed. He was still in a crib, and in an effort not to make hate this baby more than we all anticipated he would, we didn't take his crib from him to give to the baby. Back to the bedtime war. He had been in a sleep sack up until a week before when he started unzipping himself. He hoisted one leg over the crib railing. I threatened, "if you jump out of your crib, you will never sleep in it again". He loved that crib. He returned his leg to the crib and began whining. I left the room and then thud. He flipped out of crib, and landed flat on his back. On the hardwood floor. I about died.
And so, what was to be my last carefree morning turned into a frenzy of converting a crib to a bed, buying new bedding, and decorating a room, so Evan would be happy to see his beloved crib was no more.
A couple days later Joshua was born. He was much calmer than Evan had been and seemed to be an easy baby. Being a second time mom, I was convinced, I wouldn't stress the small stuff.
Every thing went according to plan until my little guy ended up getting meningitis at 10 days old. After he recovered, we were on lock down for six months. We had to minimize his interaction with kids and Evan did too. He could only go to school - no activities, because they didn't want him to bring home germs. That made for a long winter. Joshu is a littler fighter and is completely healthy today.
The week after Josh turned one, we move to our new house. I honestly felt lame, for lack of a better juvenile term, not living in the city. I felt like an impostor watching the evening news, since I didn't really live in Chicago. But life is easier. You don't have to add 30 minutes to go anywhere to make sure you can park. You don't have to feed meters to go anywhere. And playdates- it was so easy to just have people over and go to there houses and park in their driveways. The boys loved having a basement and a yard.
And now you are up to date on the 40,000 foot view of our lives these past two years.
First, we decided to leave the city and move to the suburbs. As we began looking for houses, we decided to throw some more stress into the mix and started trying for baby number two. Our grand plan was to have them three years apart. Clearly, we weren't in the express lane with having our first, so we started trying early.
I decided I would be breezy and by breezy I mean I would be completely obsessive but not chart my temperatures. I began by getting round up all my old friends: The Clearblue Fertility Monitor, Sticks, and pregnancy tests. My Ob had given my a prescription for progesterone to combat my luteal phase defect.
As we all expected, I wasn't actually breezy, I was more like the dictator of conception. Romantic right? 9 days past ovulation I tested. As I waited nervously, the faintest, and I mean faintest of lines emerged.
I told my husband, who was in an utter state of disbelief, and then I called the fertility doctor to get seen immediately. I didn't have to go to the fertility doctor, but I like that you get monitored weekly. After the trauma of miscarriages, I needed all the reassurance I could get.
The nurse calls and tells me my HCG was at 24, expect to miscarry. Kudos to her for her exemplary bedside manner. I remind her that I am 9 DPO. She wasn't impressed and told me if I didn't start to miscarry come back in two days. Two days later my numbers were about 50. The nurse said my numbers doubled but were still low and she thought I would miscarry. I asked to speak to a doctor. He comes on the phone and says my numbers are low. I said I was 11 dpo. He said, oh, then you are fine, congratulations.
And those were the first few days of carrying Joshua. The pregnancy was relatively uneventful. He was another anterior placenta baby, which worked out great for me because he was active enough to let me know he was alive and kicking, but his kicks were buffered so I wouldn't be kept up all night by his acrobatics.
During this time we decided to build a house. I spent my days playing with Evan and taking him to classes, working on the house, and feeling guilty that Evan's world was about to be turned upside down. He was very clear that he wasn't in the business of being a big brother. He literally would take my clothes and pillows to cover my belly. If someone asked if he was excited to be a big brother, he would shout "NO!". But his most notable act of defiance took place four days before my planned c-section.
It was a Thursday- my last morning Evan would be at preschool before the baby would come. I had big plans. I had a pedicure lined up and planned to spend the rest of the time preparing for the baby's arrival.
The night before, Evan started fighting us about bed. He was still in a crib, and in an effort not to make hate this baby more than we all anticipated he would, we didn't take his crib from him to give to the baby. Back to the bedtime war. He had been in a sleep sack up until a week before when he started unzipping himself. He hoisted one leg over the crib railing. I threatened, "if you jump out of your crib, you will never sleep in it again". He loved that crib. He returned his leg to the crib and began whining. I left the room and then thud. He flipped out of crib, and landed flat on his back. On the hardwood floor. I about died.
And so, what was to be my last carefree morning turned into a frenzy of converting a crib to a bed, buying new bedding, and decorating a room, so Evan would be happy to see his beloved crib was no more.
A couple days later Joshua was born. He was much calmer than Evan had been and seemed to be an easy baby. Being a second time mom, I was convinced, I wouldn't stress the small stuff.
Every thing went according to plan until my little guy ended up getting meningitis at 10 days old. After he recovered, we were on lock down for six months. We had to minimize his interaction with kids and Evan did too. He could only go to school - no activities, because they didn't want him to bring home germs. That made for a long winter. Joshu is a littler fighter and is completely healthy today.
The week after Josh turned one, we move to our new house. I honestly felt lame, for lack of a better juvenile term, not living in the city. I felt like an impostor watching the evening news, since I didn't really live in Chicago. But life is easier. You don't have to add 30 minutes to go anywhere to make sure you can park. You don't have to feed meters to go anywhere. And playdates- it was so easy to just have people over and go to there houses and park in their driveways. The boys loved having a basement and a yard.
And now you are up to date on the 40,000 foot view of our lives these past two years.
Friday, August 22, 2014
And it all comes back
Today I saw on Facebook that a friend of my husband had a baby. I actually fought back tears reading the news. Years ago, before I even started trying, his wife confided in me that they were having trouble getting pregnant. It took them nine years to get their baby. Nine years.
I feel my life was changed for the year and a half we struggled to keep a pregnancy. The disappointment, the feeling that it will never happen for us, the pangs when it happened for other people, the tests, the doctor appointments, the rise and fall of testing every month.
I want her to know that all she has been through will one day be something she will be thankful for having endured, because it all led to their beautiful baby girl.
I thought about how I felt when I first brought home Evan, rocking him in his glider at night. I used to think that no baby could ever be more loved or more wanted. But then life happens. Cuddly babies turn to obstinate toddlers, and hard core negotiators. And somehow, that feeling of immense gratitude that glided me though colic, teething, and sleepless nights dissipated. So today, when I saw our old friend's news, I felt the yin and yang of parenthood. Babies are miracles, the greatest gift you could ever dream of- not a guaranteed rite of passage. And babies are hard. Toddlers are harder and if I don't stop and give myself one of those time outs I am always threatening, I will lose sight of how lucky I am to be fighting over bedtimes and sweeping the floor around my 1 year old's chair four times a day. I could just get a Roomba.
I feel my life was changed for the year and a half we struggled to keep a pregnancy. The disappointment, the feeling that it will never happen for us, the pangs when it happened for other people, the tests, the doctor appointments, the rise and fall of testing every month.
I want her to know that all she has been through will one day be something she will be thankful for having endured, because it all led to their beautiful baby girl.
I thought about how I felt when I first brought home Evan, rocking him in his glider at night. I used to think that no baby could ever be more loved or more wanted. But then life happens. Cuddly babies turn to obstinate toddlers, and hard core negotiators. And somehow, that feeling of immense gratitude that glided me though colic, teething, and sleepless nights dissipated. So today, when I saw our old friend's news, I felt the yin and yang of parenthood. Babies are miracles, the greatest gift you could ever dream of- not a guaranteed rite of passage. And babies are hard. Toddlers are harder and if I don't stop and give myself one of those time outs I am always threatening, I will lose sight of how lucky I am to be fighting over bedtimes and sweeping the floor around my 1 year old's chair four times a day. I could just get a Roomba.
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