So I'm a Menopausal Woman

I took the Lupron shot yesterday afternoon. No ill effects so far. My arm itched a bit last night. I feel the same. Guess it's only been 24 hours and I guess the worse is yet to come. I don't think I will do it again next month, simply because it's frightenly expensive and I'm thinking we will know what we need to know in two weeks (when I don't ovulate) anyways.

I'm an E-Bay Addict

It's like a new sport for me. Back in August I saw something at a consignment store that I thought I could make a profit selling on E-bay (reason being I had bought the exact same item for MUCH more than the store was selling it for shortly before I stumbled across it) so I bought it and I did make a profit (not as much as I would have liked but it was worth my while). The stress of waiting to break-even almost killed me though; so I’ve abandoned that practice.

Last week we started clearing out our basement and I waded back into E-bay territory. They had a 10 cent listing day for Canadians on Monday and that prompted me to get off my keister and list a couple of things (my old/"like new" breastpump and the "breast bottles" that Kamryn summarily rejected as a newborn). Okay, I check my listing 80 gazzillion times a day watching it "grow" and hoping for questions. I watch other similar auctions like a hawk, as if it's a race. I stalk my bidders to see if they are bidding in the other auctions. I make little comments to myself or Daniel on those I think have shown their hands too early. Why do people bid on day 2 of an auction that is going to go 7 days. Are they saving their place in line? Or perhaps they are reassuring me that they care. I need that reassurance so I guess it’s good that they do it. :)

I feel bad for people auctioning items that I think are better than mine and that aren't being bid on. Daniel says I shouldn't feel bad for being better at "marketing" my stuff than other people (you have to wonder what some people are thinking when they compose their auctions). I'm not a marketing genius or anything, I’m simply a better researcher than some, I think (and with weaker scruples). I simply find a similar auction that is doing well and copy EVERYTHING that I think is doing it for that person. I think it has really worked for the Pump In Style breastpump because it’s doing REALLY well compared to similar articles. I was nervous when I put it up because my ad was almost identical to the one I had copied from (why I worry about not being liked by someone who will never meet me and probably could care less about me I don’t know). Luckily though their listing ended almost immediately after mine went up and they were a US lister so in most cases we were MILES apart in the category and the two listings were unlikely to be watched by anyone other than me. Hopefully, they never noticed the copycat following their every move. They got an AMAZINGLY good price for their pump to. I think someone really overpaid.

I’m looking forward to selling other stuff around our house. This seems much easier than a garage sale. I think we will have a garage sale in the spring anyway to get rid of the junk that I don’t think I could sell on E-bay. No way I would have gotten anything for these items at a garage sale. Okay off to gaze at my own listing once more. Cheerio.

Back in the world of infertility (well at least in the same solar system)

Had my first ever appointment with a gynecologist this morning. Can ya believe it? I never had any problems and I've never been pregnant so no reason to go. Well now I have problems (as I have whined about previously). So I'm dreaming about her waving a magic wand. There is no wand though. :( Ugh! She gave me three options:

1) the Pill (something my family doctor had suggested two years ago and I rejected)
2) Lupron shots
3) surgery

Well I don't want to do the pill. Problem won't go away (unless I stay on the Pill indefinitely); I'll just get fat/fatter. The Lupron and chemical menopause kinda scares me. I've taken Lupron for IVF but it has been explained to me that it's at a MUCH higher dosage and my ovaries will go dormant which she says they weren’t in prep for IVF (news to me). I took the prescription for the Lupron; it's sitting in my front hall.

If the Lupron helps, the Doctor explained, she will know it's related to my cycle in which case I'm not really sure what happens as she keeps saying I can't stay on Lupron forever ... duh! But then she totally confused me by talking about putting me on Lupron and then giving me Hormone Replacement Therapy which seemed totally antithetical to me (more explanations the HRT would prevent bone density loss but wouldn’t be enough to wake my useless pain factory ovaries). She did say at one point "when I do surgery I will know that it is probably something wrong with your ovary." Okay I know there is something wrong with my ovary but I don’t just want to say cut me open (okay my reasoning here is dumb – if she does cut me open and there is nothing there, if I haven’t jumped through hoops beforehand, I will feel like more of a hypochndriac than I already do).

If the Lupron doesn't work, she is proposing surgery to find out what is likely wrong. So either way I'm headed for surgery, I think, the only difference being whether I go through chemically induced menopause first. Wonderful. I guess when it comes right down to it a laproscopy is pretty banal when it comes to surgeries.

I have an appointment in three months (to allow me to experiment with the Lupron first)to see her again. The way things seem to be unfolding IF she does do I laproscopy it will be just as I return to work (to a brand new job/boss) after being off for almost a year. They are going to love me, I’m sure. Well, I didn’t pick this. The one good thing that came out of this morning is I’m reasonably certain that I won’t have to deal with this pain next month. I could almost shout from the rooftops in joy over that.

I’m sulking a bit (who am I kidding; I’m sulking A LOT) because Daniel never asked me what the doctor said. He knows how miserable I have been (I completely broke down in tears on Monday over all this and that wasn’t the first time). He knows I had a doctor's appointment this morning as we had to do all sorts of weird scheduling this morning to accommodate it. He either managed to forget in two hours (most likely explanation I hope) or he doesn’t believe it’s as bad as it is and has just been humoring me and pretending to care. :( I am not going to bring it up. I refuse.

It’s emotionally difficult being back in this world again which is just exacerbating everything of course. I try not to think about my reproductive organs at all. It’s a kind of "you stay on your side of the room and I’ll stay on mine and that way we’ll both be happy" kind of thing. Now I’m not happy and my ovaries (at least my right one) is certainly unhappy.

I have lunch tomorrow with a very good and very old friend tomorrow (male) who's in town getting set for a new job (I'm so excited he is moving here my teeth hurt). I'm not so certain I won't burst into tears when he asks me how I am.

With her own money

Kamryn is too cute.

A few weeks ago we were out shopping and she wanted a kid’s umbrella. I said “no” and she wanted to know why. I told her I had no money for an umbrella and asked if she had any money. She said she didn’t and I told her that when she did she could buy an umbrella. I told her that the next time she saw her grandfather to ask him for the money.

Well the next time she say him she did just that. When he asked why she needed money, she told him to buy an umbrella. Then a few days later she found a penny on the table at his house and told him she was taking it to buy an umbrella. So he called me and asked if he could take her to buy an umbrella “with her own money.” I told him to knock himself out (well not those words exactly but you get the gist. :)) So today, after her soccer class, he took her to Walmart to get her her umbrella. They come home and Kamryn is triumphant. What did she get? A pretty pink one with purple accents? A Beauty Beast umbrella? A little Mermaid? Nope – Spiderman! Makes me grin. She’s a spunky kid and no one is "princessafying" her.

Happy Days

Someone once berated me for being too melancholic in my writings. I think I started the “argument” but accusing my accuser of the exact same thing. I defended myself by noting that I generally feel the need to write when I’m feeling down. When I’m up I find it a much better use of my resources to spend my time wallowing in happiness rather than chaining myself to my keyboard. Today though I’m having a wonderful day AND feel the need to write about it. Nothing special has happened just a good day.

Daniel is working and he took our lone vehicle so I’m literally trapped here in suburbia with the two kids. It’s cold out and they both have colds so we’re not going anywhere (although Kamryn has been out today already). We started the day with showers for all (no protests at all from Sam who hates showers) and then Kamryn went off with my father (standing in for Daniel) to her soccer class while my mother and I hung out at the house, drank tea, ate banana bread and watched Sam poop. Boy can that boy poop! In the hour and a half my mother was here I changed my “fresh from the shower” boy twice for “sizeable” reasons to (enough on that).

When Kamryn returned I “let” the kids watch Monsters Inc. (the only movie Sam will really watch) and they “let” me read “The Time Traveller’s Wife” (awesome book!). They actually both ate their lunch, Zoodles, happily and then munched on homemade banana bread for dessert. After lunch and some play time, Sam got all snuggly which he does when he wants to nap AND actually let me rock him to sleep rather than squiggling all over until we both get frustrated and I am forced to put him down. Kamryn and I played a little bit and then she too went down for her nap without a huge protest.

I have made French bread to have with dinner, which will be spaghetti with homemade sauce, and it is rising as I sit and type this while simultaneous eating my lunch and losing at Scrabble to a perfect stranger miles away from here. :) When Kamryn gets up from her nap, I think we will make cookies.

I’m totally content and thought I should share it.

Last Visit for a Bit I Expect

Our meeting with Sam’s “birthfamily” went REALLY well. They were happy to see him and super gracious about our willingness to let the meeting go ahead. We met at our local mall which has a play area for kids. Sam remembered them and was very happy to see them. He was also sweet enough to his maman to demonstrate his attachment to me by calling out whenever I would leave his sight (I left him with them and Daniel to go an buy lunch) Normally, this is a bit of a pain but it was nice to see it demonstrated for them. They didn’t make a big deal out of his name except that they mispronounced it the whole time (I didn’t correct them just placed extra emphasis on the right way to say it whenever I spoke to him). It’s not a big deal as MOST people mispronounce it (it’s one of those names that seems obvious but I guess isn’t).

A good thing about the meeting is we “found out” about Sam’s temper. Well we knew about his temper; anyone who has spent more than half and hour with him knows about his temper. The thing is NO ONE mentioned that he had a temper and threw temper tantrums worthy of John McEnroe in the WEEK AND A HALF we spent transitioning him to our family. It’s like they thought we would reject him based on this or something. Amber (Sam's "aunt") must have asked me 5 times if he still threw fits. Ummm… YA! We have spent the last few months wondering about this spectacular temper he has and these monumental fits he throws. As I told our social worker yesterday afternoon, it would have been nice to know that his temper tantrums were completely unrelated to adoption and just “him.” While it is unlikely that we would have treated him any different, we would have been easier on ourselves. Ah well. All in all, a good (and short! Maybe and hour and a half) visit. They left confident (I hope!) that he is doing well and that we didn’t adopt him to murder him for the insurance money (stupid plot line on Law and Order last week).

We had a visit from our social worker immediately afterwards and she was really surprised when I told her that we had just gotten home from a visit with the birthfamily. She was really impressed with our “flexibility.” To be honest though, as I said in my first post, I didn’t think we had a choice in the matter. It wasn’t at all as awful as I expected it to be. We even got to meet one of Sam’s biological great uncles who came along for the ride I guess (Nana had 13 siblings ALL raised in foster care or adopted).
One more home visit from our social worker (in three weeks) and we can start the paperwork to finalize the adoption.

One more birthfamily post ...

Okay before I whine endlessly please understand - open adoption is wonderful and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Nevertheless, like anything good, it requires some sacrifice and while I am willing to make those sacrifices, they aren't easy ones to make at times.

Ugh! So Sam’s “birthfamily” are in town and want to see him. They aren’t really his birthfamily (his is a VERY confusing family). Technically they are his ex-step-grandfather and his step-aunt and step cousin. Regardless, for the first year of his life they were family and when we met them back in May and they asked about contact we told them that they could see him when they wanted and we wouldn’t cut them off from him. Oh… and they HATE us.

Doug (is Sam’s birthgrandmother’s ex-husband. They were no longer together when Sam’s birthmother was born. There is no biological connection at all BUT everyone is very friendly toward one another and they were all living in the same VERY small apartment building for Sam’s first year. Doug lived next door to Nana and Amber (aunt) lived upstairs with Gabriel who is six and autistic. No one’s door was ever closed and Sam was regularly passed around so they are important people to him.

They didn’t want him placed for adoption. They were of the opinion that Nana should adopt and raise him while she VERY much wanted something better for him (i.e. two parent household, siblings, nice house, grass …) They really resented her for making the decision she did. They really resented us for being the unwitting adoptive family. Then we changed his name … That pretty much nailed it.

Anyway, Doug’s step mother lived in Ottawa. She passed away on the weekend so they will all be in town today and want to see him. Nana called last night to ask us if it would be all right. She wants them to leave us alone (she regularly tells us that she divorced him for a reason and that she doesn’t agree with his approach to most things in life lol). We feel obligated to let them see him as 1) we said they could see him and 2) they hate us and we don’t want to perpetuate all the “bad ideas” they have about us. I told Daniel that I wouldn’t be alone with Doug (he really creeps me out) and Daniel is working until 8 both today and tomorrow. We agreed to lunch on Wednesday in a neutral location. At first I thought, well, we could go to a local indoor amusement park and spend the morning and then I reconsidered and thought it’s not his birthmother or birthgrandmother. Yes, they can see him but I’m not jumping through hoops for them (especially considering all I know they have been saying about us and the adoption).

So we’ll skip Sam’s swim lesson and meet them about 11 and hang out until around 1. At 2 we have the second of our adoption inspection visits by our social worker. At 5, we all have flu shots scheduled and at 7 we have an information session at Kamryn’s preschool (and Sam’s future preschool). Gonna be a VERY long and arduous day.

I’m a little worried about the name thing. I know they were all very angry. He’s adjusted so well and I don’t want them screwing it all up. Nevertheless, I have to remember he is my son and if I don’t like how they are behaving around him I can pack him up and take him home. This is MUCH more stressful than Nana’s visit was.

The end of my meltdown (oh what a meltdown it was too)

So I logged on tonight to erase my descent into melancholy of earlier today but I’ve decided to leave it. I hate reading about people feeling sorry for themselves for no good reason and figured I should erase it so that anyone reading this would continue their belief in me as the perfect woman and mother (lol). Then I decided to leave it. I’m not perfect and you guys know that so why pretend. I’m feeling much better – it got much worse before it got better though because of course Sam wanted nothing to do with his dinner and basically threw it at me – just what I needed. I was a mess but I’m very proud of myself for how I handled things. I took the screaming tantruming Sam upstairs and put him in his crib. I came downstairs and grabbed the phone (unfortunately before I had time to collect myself) and called my parents and asked them to come and stay with Sam for an hour while I took Kamryn to ballet.

They came, I took Kamryn to ballet and sat on the floor and chatted with Madison’s Mom who I think is becoming a friend (okay I’m not totally pathetic). She suggested that as they have just moved a couple of blocks away (they moved last week) that we make a real effort to get the girls together outside of school and other activities. I will invite them over very soon. Just have to take a look at our schedule a bit. 45 minutes sitting on the floor outside of a ballet class chatting and I feel SOOOOOO much better. Still a little weepy and sorry for myself but definitely not as awful as I was feeling.

I’m going to turn the TV on for the right now and let them watch a bit before bed (that was another change today we have had no TV time). I need them to watch a little TV each day; if that’s my failing as a parent so be it and long live Sesame Street!

Just Me Whining About My Perfectly Adequate Life

I honestly don’t know how single parents do it or even people married to absentee parents (i.e. they have a partner who is regularly away). Day after day after day. Yes, the rewards of parenting are rich but that doesn’t mean they come easily. I’m feeling REALLY isolated today. It’s gray and rainy. I’m tired. Daniel called around 11 to ask if I minded skipping my band practice tonight so he could work some overtime (he worked the weekend so this is his 4th day of work in a row). Some overtime means he’ll be home between 11 and midnight. He left at 8 this morning. What could I say but sure I’ll skip my practice but oh how I was looking forward to those 2 ½ hours. I’m such a wimp. I’ve felt so isolated home with Sam. So different than my parental leave with Kamryn when I couldn’t understand why people wanted to return to work. I’ve begun to look forward to April. Yes, I love the time spent with the kids but I feel so alone.

With Kamryn I could pick her up and just go. With the two kids though that’s not as easy. Sam is far from “portable.” He’s the kind of kid where all conditions must be perfect (he can’t be tired, hungry, wet, bored, warm, cold etc.) or he completely melts down. I just can’t handle that in public on a regular basis. Easier to stay home. Even the grocery store is a challenge. Someone is always poking someone else or pulling someone hair or Sam starts yelling to hear his own voice and Kamryn must chime in and then both kids are yelling and I’m asking them to stop like a demented freak while people look away with that “what awful kids and what an awful Mom” look. With Kamryn, there were a ton of other mothers on our street off on Mat leave and we had regular, weekly playgroups. The only Mom around this time is just “not me” nor am I “her.” There is always a politeness to our social interaction and I expect under different circumstances (she lives next door) we probably wouldn’t be friends or even friendly. It’s also so much easier to pop out with an infant than a toddler and a preschooler.

I go out twice a week to Mom and Me things with Sam. I can’t chat with the other Moms though because he is a full time job. If I stop to chat, he wants down (or out if he’s in a stroller). If I put him down he WILL hurt himself. I actually hate those mornings (music class and swimming) because I have to work so hard just to keep him engaged. Daniel and I have decided that the classes are good for him because he is getting something out of them (if nothing he is learning that this world has some structure in it and that it doesn’t revolve around Sam) still often I wonder what.

I don’t have a lot of good friends either. None that live near by. Lots of “small talk” friends but no one who would want to meet me for lunch for instance. My closest friend lives about a 45 minute drive away but she has a brood of her own and while she suggests often getting together – whenever I have tried to “make a date” she has had a reason it couldn’t work. I don’t make friends easily either. I never quite know what to do after the “hi, I’m so and so” stage. We make chit chat and might have a really good time together and then the cool person that I would like to be friends with goes off and I don’t know what comes next. No one ever calls when I say give me a call sometime – not that I call anyone – seems weird and fake and I don’t think people really mean it when they say it. There are a couple of moms in the classes I attend with Sam that I wouldn’t mind being friends with but I can’t help feel they probably have their own friends why would they need me. I’m so envious of the other Moms in the Mall I see having lunch or shopping with their two friends and all their kids. Not me; will never be me I’m just so social inept. So days when my husband calls and tells me he won’t be home until after 10 and I’ve been trapped with the kids for 4 days and there are another 3 looming just depress me.

Mom takes the kids for me as a break every Thursday. Two Thursday’s ago she had another commitment so she didn’t take them. Then last Thursday Nana was here so again no break and then this Thursday Mom is preparing for a big party on Friday so I won’t get a break either. Ironically in the two months she has been doing this Thursday is the day I could really use the break. I’m honestly in tears here and I really don’t know why. I’m just tired and really lonely. Oh this is just silly but hey we all can be silly eh.

Sam is up from his nap and he’s hungry and grumpy (no kidding he refused to eat lunch so he is of course starved) so I must run. Kamryn has ballet tonight. Daniel’s overtime means I have to keep a 17 month old entertained in the hall outside Kamryn’s ballet class for an hour. Wonderful. Must go feed them.

I'm not really as pathetic as I sound. Just one of those days I guess.