Trying to Conceive After A Miscarriage

I know that it has been months since I last posted and so many things have changed. We purchased, renovated, and moved into our new home. We also started trying to conceive in August and found out we were pregnant in September. On September 19 I miscarried my first pregnancy. It was awful and yet I am still here. I was only 5.5 weeks pregnant, but I was still an emotional train wreck. I wanted that baby...more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. The second I saw that first positive pregnancy test, I was in love. Sure, I knew that the odds of a miscarriage are startlingly high...but, as usual, I just didn't think it would happen to me. Well it did...and it was awful...and I survived it.

This  isn't a post about the miscarriage, but about moving on after it. When it happens, everyone tells you "at least you can try again." There were lots of days when that thought didn't help at all, where it seemed to belittle my loss. I didn't want to try again, I wanted the baby that I had lost. Yet, as the weeks went on, it did start to help. In fact, it became all I could think about. I don't want to replace the one that we lost, but after knowing the depth of the love that sprung up just from knowing that I was pregnant (before any real signs or symptoms even existed), I can't imagine my life without a child. I want to know the full depth of a mother's love.

We took the month of October off, my doctor said to wait one cycle before trying to conceive. Now, I am in the wonderful "two week wait" part of our first cycle trying again. For now, we are just trying to time it right. I am not doing basal body temperatures or ovulation predictor kits, but that might be in my future. My feelings are so mixed this time around. I am excited at the thought of trying to get pregnant, but I am also  terrified. I know that a 15% chance is a bigger than it seems and that this type of loss is harder than I could have imagined before. However, I also know how badly I want this future and the risk of loss is more than worth the chance at having a family.

So that's where I am at right now. I am moving on, going forward with our plans, and trying to conceive again after a miscarriage. I am hoping for a rainbow after the storm.

Our House Wish List

We had a very specific list of requirements that our future home would need to meet. Some of these we ultimately compromised on, but during our search this list was both our best friend and worst enemy. We knew exactly what we needed and many houses were never considered because one or more of these "non-negotiables" were missing.

We wanted our new house to have:

• At least one acre of land (the more, the better)
• Some privacy 
• A smaller mortgage payment than the house we currently live in (which left us looking at foreclosures and short sales)
• More than 1500 square feet
• 3+ bedrooms
• 2+ bathrooms
• No more than a 30 minute commute to my husband's workplace
• Access to either cable or DSL high speed internet

In the end, we were able to find a house that met all but one of these initial requirements. We ended up being forced to compromise on internet access. I will be writing a post on rural internet access in the very near future, because it's a very frustrating and surprising predicament. 

It took us about three months of constant searching to find THE house. Price, location, land, and internet ended up being very limiting and prolonged the search. We had our fair share of frustrations (there were houses that sold before we could even see them) and compromises were definitely made in the end. In spite of all challenges, I'm glad  that we stuck by our list and ended up with this lovely home.

What would be on your list of "non-negotiables" if you were looking to buy a new home?

I'm back!! And why we decided to buy a new house!

I know, I know...terrible blogger alert right here. Luckily this blog is still in its infancy and I'm not really letting anyone down. However, I still really want to give this blogging thing a chance. Life has been a little crazy over the last few months and it's about to get even crazier because we're moving!! In March or April we decided that we wanted to sell our house and buy a new one. We wanted to stay in the Greater Lansing Area, but move out of the city of Lansing itself. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Lansing, it's a great sized city and I have enjoyed living here. However, the hubs grew up living in the country surrounded by farmland and I grew up in a small town. When we thought about our future, we just couldn't see it unfolding where we are now. 

Budgeting also played a major role in this decision. Since I'm not working due to health concerns and the awful job market, my husband's salary is what we're living on. I'm not going to lie, money is tight. We can pay all of our bills and loan payments, but there's not much room for an emergency fund (or say a future child). Nathan is planning on going back to school and finishing up his bachelors degree (he has an associates  right now), which will give him a hefty raise where he's at and open up lots of new career opportunities. However, in the mean time we wanted to find a way to save some money. After looking at it, we really thought that our mortgage was a sure fire way to save some money. 

Our house is financed through my husband's grandfather. We have a mortgage through the bank of grandpa. Now, that sounds somehow not very legit...but lawyers were involved and everything. The reason why this is important is that after a long discussion, grandpa agreed to give us a mortgage on a new home before we sold the one that we are currently in. We will just hold off starting payments on the new house until the old house sells. Complicated? A little. Risky? If our current house doesn't sell, definitely. While we have a completely legal and standard mortgage through Nathan's grandpa (with comparable interest rates and all), we are so grateful for the benefits that having our mortgage through a family member brings. We could not have gotten another mortgage through a bank before selling our current house. We also know that if we end up in financial trouble that our "bank" will work with us. 

Anyways, we knew that we could save some money on our mortgage if we bought a foreclosed home...so that's what we set off to do! My next post will be about the joys (sarcasm) of our house hunting experience. Stick around cause I know you want the details on the new house!!

How We Met...

I am going to be totally honest with you guys about how I met my husband. It's not glamorous and it certainly doesn't say much about my ability  to "catch a man." So, here it is...Nathan and I met on Match.com. That's right, your truly is no good at meeting people in person. Which is alright, it's part of my personality and if I was good at it, I would have never met my husband.

I had just gotten out of a 3 year relationship that had been heading nowhere for most of that time. I didn't really know anyone in the area that wasn't one of my exes friends and I'm not a fan of bars. I felt like my options were limited for how to meet men. If we're being honest here, I wasn't looking to get married or even necessarily find a long term relationship. I was looking to date, mostly so that I could feel good about myself again. Either fate or irony had different plans however, because Nathan was the first guy that I went on a date with  from the site and of course the last.

One of the first pictures of us as a couple.

I knew that he had potential from the very first e-mails  we exchanged. We had lots of similar interests and he seemed like a smart guy. We were both geeky, liked some of the same video games, shared similar movie interests, and most importantly he seemed like a nice guy.

I knew that I wanted a geeky guy and the fact that we had both played World of Warcraft

in the past was a strong indication to me that we had a lot in common.

We went on our first date and it was awkward, it was pretty clear that neither of us had been on a first date in awhile. Luckily for him I gave him a second chance and he pulled out all  the stops. He cooked me a delicious dinner, had a rose on the table, and tiers of candles lit in the fireplace. We ended up eating dinner and watching two movies that night. I knew he was something really special then. 

Our relationship progressed rapidly after that. It wasn't long before we were living together and a mere 6 months or so after we met we got engaged!

The day we got engaged!

My ring.

Engagement picture taken by Creative Photos by Caroline

Exactly 364 days after our first date we got married in my hometown. It was one of the most wonderful days in my life and I loved every minute of it. 

Wedding Photos by Magdalene Photography

So you're probably thinking "That's crazy!" or maybe even something worse. Trust me, we know that getting married after knowing each other for only a year was a crazy thing to do. I had been in several relationships for longer than that and I could not have imagined marrying any of those guys. This was different, this was my soul mate. It's hard to explain or justify it, but I just knew that it was right. Would I recommend that other people get married after a year? Depends on the couple, but for us it worked and 13 months later we don't regret it. 

How did you and your significant other meet? Have you ever done anything "crazy" for love?

My Secret Addiction

I can't lie, I am addicted to reading blogs. I follow about 7 or 8 and am always looking for more to follow. Most of them are written by women with children and I particularly love pregnancy blogs. Maybe it's just me feeding my maternal side, but I genuinely feel like I care about these moms and there children. Unfortunately, for now, I am a little bit of a creeper. I don't generally comment on the blogs I read. I just feel like since I don't have children, that I am not really part of the "club" yet. Sure I have opinions on things, but there are just that, "opinions." I have no experiences to share or advice to give. I am hoping that starting my own blog here will change that and allow me to become more active in the blogging community. So, this is basically a request for any secret readers here to link to your blog so that I can read about your life (and I promise I'll comment  from time to time too!).

Being a Mom to "Fur Babies": Introducing The Cats

This is going to be the first of a series of posts that I plan to write about being a pet parent. Since we have such a zoo here, it only makes sense to introduce our pets and explain what life is like with each of them. 

I always had pets growing up. My parents had a dog before I was born and my mom has always had at least one dog at home. There were also two family cats. We got the first one when I was 8 and the second when I was around 14. In fact, the cat that we got when I was 14 was "my cat." His name is Merlin, but that devolved into just "Meow" (pronounced more like Mao, than the traditional Meow) due to his signature way of vocalizing. Ultimately my mom ended up keeping him because my zoo of a house would have been very traumatic for him. He gets to be a happier cat after each of my mom's beloved pets die of old age and he would be miserable here at our house.

This is a pretty old picture of Meow

Leaving for college was a little bit of a shock for me. It was the first time that I had never had a pet of any sort. I missed the snuggles and pets that a furry companion can offer. I missed watching them play. Of course while I was living in a dorm there was no feasible option to get a pet, so I settled for visiting my "babies" at home. A few years into the college experience, I moved in with one of my boyfriends and a few of his friends. One of those friends ended up adopting a kitten named Oscar. The next year that friend moved back into the dorms and we were left with Oscar. After my boyfriend and I broke up, I kept Oscar. Oscar is my first pet as an adult.He is an orange domestic short haired cat with stripes and some white markings. He is also full of personality and spunk. I have never met a cat with more of an attitude. He either loves you and wants to snuggle or he wants to hiss at you and bite you. There is absolutely nothing in-between. In spite of his personality "quirks" (or maybe because of them), Oscar has made himself a home in my heart and he quickly won over my husband as well.

Baby Oscar

Oscar's Christmas Portrait

I never really had any intentions of owning more than one cat. Oscar was a cat raised by himself, he had never met another cat (and hated dogs) and I just assumed that it wouldn't go very well. I ended up having to reevaluate  those opinions after I met Nathan. He was also the proud pet parent of a cat of his own. "Kitty" (Nathan didn't like the name that he had when he adopted him and apparently never got around to changing it)  is a big grey striped domestic short hair. In fact, Kitty and Oscar look a lot like they could be from the same litter. They are both rather large cats with similar markings, just in different colors. 

Kitty is a fairly typical cat. He generally speaking has a shy personality. He is terrified of strangers and will hide for hours. As I've gotten to know him over the years though, he has really blossomed into a sweet guy. He is still a little "stand-offish," but pretty much every day he'll come up to me for 15 or 20 minutes of pets. He absolutely loves to be pet and scratched, when he purrs it really sounds like a boat motor. Kitty is also the hunter of our two cats. He is an indoor cat, but during the summer we let him into our fenced in yard for several hours at a time (Oscar isn't allowed outside because he seems to have no normal sense of self-preservation). He loves it! He also brings back critters for me to freak out about and leaves them on the porch (or one time, on my sandals!). 

Kitty's Christmas Portrait

Now that you've met our cats, I hope you'll stay tuned for introductions to the rest of our zoo as well as some posts on taking care of them all. Do you have cats with unique personalities like ours?

Starting a Family

Isn't that a funny phrase? I mean, we already are a family anyways. Nathan, the animals, and I. It really does feel like a family to me, but it feels incomplete somehow. That fact in itself is really amazing considering where my mindset was before we got married.

Gratuitous Wedding Picture Since I Said the Word "Married"

(Photo by Magdalene Photography)

I went into my relationship with my husband with the plan and expectation that I would never have children. It's not that I don't/didn't like children, it's just that children require so much from a person and I didn't think that I wanted that for myself. My mom is honestly the best sort of mom that someone could be, but she gave up everything to be that. She moved across the country from her family to live in a safer place near my father's family, she worked hard at low paying jobs because that region didn't have any careers in her field, she stayed with my father for longer than she should have for us, after they finally got divorced she still stayed in the small town that we grew up in because she didn't want us to have to change schools as teenagers, and my sister and her 4 year old daughter are still living at home due to the economy. That's an awful lot of sacrifice. She never got to have the career she wanted or go back to school to start another one. She lived in an unfamiliar environment where she didn't know anyone, just because it was "a great place to have kids." Those big sacrifices, combined with the everyday sacrifices that moms have to make (no sleep, spending money on kids instead of yourself, stress and worry) are what made me decide that I didn't want to be a mom. It might sound selfish, but I didn't want to give up my life and the things that I love now to be a mom. You might be saying, "you don't have to give up everything," and I know that's true now, but at the time I think I was terrified. 

So my husband and I went into our marriage with a "I don't think kids are for us" sort of mindset. I told him that I didn't want any kids, but that "I reserve the right to change my mind in the future." Haha, "the future!" Honestly, it's hilarious thinking about it, because almost immediately after getting married I did a complete 180 and decided that I definitely wanted a child. We had a pregnancy scare a couple of months after getting married that made me really analyze my feelings on the issue. I wasn't pregnant, but the ramifications of the experience were monumental none the less. I realized that I was genuinely disappointed that we weren't having a baby and realized that I wanted one terribly. A few months of baby fever happened and after some talking we decided that we would have kids, just not yet. It was such a relief to know that Nathan was open to the idea, but the waiting was/is heart wrenching for me. I did end up getting my fur baby, Thor, as a "consolation prize."

Our Boston Terrier Thor

The puppy worked for a little while. He took up a lot of time, woke me up in the middle of the night to go outside, and wreaked havoc on our well-ordered house. We fell absolutely in love with him and in spite of his puppy antics, I wouldn't trade him for anything. He will always be my "baby dog," even though he's almost a year old now. However, now that he's trained and sleeps through the night baby fever has kicked in again. We had another scare and this time all I could think about was how desperately bad I hoped I was pregnant. I know that our financial situation is shaky right now, but I wanted nothing more in the world. That leads us up to the present, where negotiations are currently in progress to determine what steps we need to take to prepare our wallets, home, health, and relationship for a baby. I hope to share the results of these negotiations soon. 

Since I don't have a picture of an adorable baby to end this post with,

here is a picture of Thor as a puppy!