Oh injections, it's been too long!

I say this clearly with a lot of sarcasm since, well, who misses giving themselves injections? Never in a million years did I think I would be faced with daily injections so soon after having to do the Puregon to get pregnant with Peanut in the first place. Well it seems I just can't stay away. That, or my Pancreas has decided to take a vacation while I'm pregnant!

If you haven't guessed from that little rant it hasn't been going perfectly since I started checking my blood sugar levels. For the most part the Gestational Diabetes Diet has been controlling all the levels following my meals. There were a few random high numbers, but for the most part it's been going well with that. The bane of my existence right now is my fasting blood sugar levels. The level that caused all the problems in the first place. They would not drop the way they should by the time I woke up in the morning. In fact by the time I had the follow up at the Diabetes Clinic 5 out of 7 fasting numbers were high. I knew that my fate was sealed. I was on a one way trip to Insulin town. Thankfully I have a friend who unfortunately had been through this exact same thing before, and she was so great about sharing her experiences with me, so I was a little more calm when I went in for the appointment. (Thanks Megan!)

I was also pleasantly surprised when the Dietitian told me that she was optimistic about my chances of Shared Care. Basically there will be quite the wait to be referred to an OB, and then because they are so busy most of the time in this case they will be fine with sharing me with my Midwife. All the same anyone out there in Blog Land that would be willing to send out some good vibes for me I would appreciate it!

After having to complete a round of Puregon in June, the Insulin needle didn't scare me at all since I'm familiar with the pen-type injections. Now if it was an actual syringe, I would not have been so calm. They scare the crap out of me! So I completed the first injection last night and as expected, my fasting number was exactly where it was suppose to be, so it was worth it in the end.

Now the plan is to continue with the GD diet, regular exercise (thankfully we have a treadmill, because it's cold here in Canada now!) and Insulin. Hopefully the Glucose Intolerance will stay the way it is. Whenever I'm having a down moment I just wait and I can feel Peanut moving around or giving me a nudge and it helps. She's cheering her mommy on.

Hello Blog Land it's me Jenna

And I am a bad blogger.

Even our baby blog has had a serious shortage of blog entries lately. It's not that I haven't wanted to blog about anything. If anything there has been so much on my mind that I have wanted to share, but I wanted to get to a point where I could write calmly and not be a sobbing mess while typing. Ah, hormones!

First of all the good news!! Because everyone loves good news! If you didn't catch this entry on Our Little One then you missed the news about our anatomy scan on October 22nd. We had waited so patiently for this ultrasound, and were rewarded, because the ultrasound tech was able to tell us that our little peanut is a GIRL!!! We are so over the moon now that we know what our little peanut is. It has made everything feel so much more real now. Even my grandmother who was a staunch "it has to be a surprise" follower, totally caved and wanted to know. Now she is planning a ton of sewing projects, and even brought wool over for me to look at because she wants to make our little peanut a sweater and some other things to wear home from the hospital.

And since I can't resist showing off how beautiful our little peanut is, here she is almost half baked at this point!

Now onto the bad news. My PCOS is back messing up everything again. If you have PCOS, then you know that you are at a higher risk of developing Gestational Diabetes. It's not a big surprise, so I knew that at some point I would have to do the Glucose Tolerance Test. Otherwise known as the test where you chug Orange Crush for breakfast. Not as fun as you might think. In Canada you can either do the one hour GTT, and then if you fail (one of your blood sugar levels is high) you have to complete a two hour GTT, or just do the two hour test. I talked to my midwife, and she informed me that because of my increased risk I would have to do this extremely fun test twice. Once ASAP, at the 19wk mark, then again at a later date.

So I went to do the test. First they take your blood to test your fasting blood sugar. Then you drink "the drink".  The drink wasn't as horrible as everyone says, it was carbonated, cold and the consistency of regular pop (or soda for all of you in the States). The only gross thing was chugging it down at 8am. Then after one hour you have your blood taken, then after yet another hour you have your blood taken again. Basically after this test, no news is good news.

The Monday following the great news about our Peanut, I got a phone call from my secondary Midwife Shannon. I knew why she was calling. One of my numbers was elevated. This doesn't mean a diagnosis of Gestational Diabetes, but I am now labelled at "Glucose Intolerant". Not as serious, but it means that something is up. So I was given a date to attend the Gestational Diabetes Class, and a date to visit with the dietitian a week after the class to evaluate my blood sugar levels, and how my diet has been.

This news devastated me. I got off the phone and started crying. Not like little tears, but all out sobbing. This news meant that I was only two steps away from the possibility of being on Insulin. Insulin=No Midwife. Insulin during pregnancy is a one way trip to a OB. I never wanted an OB delivery. I just felt like once again my body was failing me. First failing me during the whole TTC process, turning something that is suppose to be natural into a science experiment. Now my body was failing me again, and I could end up with they type of delivery that I didn't want. Nothing was going my way.

This feeling hasn't completely gone away, and now after attending the Gestational Diabetes Class this morning I am unsure about how I feel about everything. I guess I can only take it one day at a time, and see what happens.

Cloth Diaper Confusion

I've been trying to avoid bombarding all of you readers with all things baby-related, but this has been and will always be my place to ramble about all things, so for all of you that are not interested, you can just skip over any post that is just too "baby" for you. After all, this is about Mr and Mrs M, and really little peanut is forefront in our brains all the time!

I've always been intrigued with the idea of cloth diapering, long before we were actually pregnant. I liked the idea of saving tons of garbage sitting in a landfill for hundreds of years, and saving our bank accounts hundreds of dollars (on average about $1000-1500) over the diapering life of our little peanut. After all if my mother could cloth diaper two of her three daughters with old-school prefolds and diaper pins, and a ringer washing machine, then with all the almost high-tech by comparison cloth diapers now I was sure to be able to manage right? Not to mention, I own a modern washing machine, so I can dump the laundry and go!

There are just so many options out there! And although we will be saving ourselves a ton over the course of a couple years, we will have to put out a large chunk of change as an investment in order to be able to make this venture work! I also wanted something user-friendly if you will so Andre will have no excuses about not changing a diaper. I quickly figured out that this involved some research. Thankfully I have friends both in real life and online that have been cloth diapering their little one's so I have been asking questions, and visiting websites that they have suggested. I've also been doing comparison shopping, trying to find the cheapest price on my favourite cloth diaper so far, BumGenius.

I have also been researching cloth diaper samplers, basically a collection of whatever type of cloth diaper you have chosen, in different brands so you can choose what diaper works best for you and your little one. The best part is that I've found a company that is Canadian (yeah!) and only about 45 minutes away that offers this, so I have bookmarked their site to save for this spring. Who knew that finding something to cover a baby's bottom would be so confusing!

Good-Bye Summer...

...hello Fall!

Otherwise known as my favourite season of the entire year. There's just something about having to break out the sweaters, and jackets, the freshness in the air, and the rich colours all around. I love getting out the cozy blankets that can be snuggled under in the evenings, and warm duvets to curl up under all night.

Just this week I brought out a spicy vanilla candle and let the whole house smell super yummy. Today on the agenda was breaking out the duvet for the winter. I think it will still be a little too early for me at least since peanut seems to be keeping me fairly warm while sleeping at night. I'm sure Andre will appreciate the extra warmth though.

We're getting ready for Thanksgiving around here as well. Last year Andre and I were holiday-dinner-hosting-dynamos after hosting Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, but this year Thanksgiving will be the extent of our hosting duties. I'm not a fan of hosting Christmas dinner, and will never do this again, and I will be too busy with a newborn to host Easter dinner this year. My mom has agreed to take over the hosting reins once again for these holidays. We also got news that we will be having house guests this fall! My friend Laura and her little girl joined us for a few days this summer, and she asked if we would be willing to offer them our guestroom for a few days again this fall. We're looking forward to it!

We've also been busy researching and planning all the things that will need to be purchased for our little peanut! For updates on all things baby related you can visit our baby blog at: http://ourlittleonemcg.blogspot.com/

The Journey

I don't know why I was reminded of this yesterday while at work of all places. But I was and figured maybe I thought about it because I was meant to write about it and share it with someone out there who needs to hear it. Who knows, it could just be the hormones talking!

So when Andre and I were going through treatments I all but stopped going to church. I couldn't do it. Couldn't handle seeing all the families. All the new babies. All the families that were blessed, when I thought that somehow God had it out for Andre and I. Going through Infertility is hard. It tests your faith, your marriage, the very core of everything you thought you ever wanted out of life. Needless to say church was too hard. For some during the hard times they are drawn to church, for me, I feel pushed away.

Since finding out we were blessed with this incredible miracle, (Yes, even though we used modern technology to get pregnant, it makes it no less of a miracle for happening.) we have slowly started going back to church. Some days are really easy, others a little harder.

In our church the ministers usually take the whole month of July off for vacation. We went a few times in July, then we went back again the first Sunday the ministerial team (a husband and wife) were back from vacation. I honestly believe that I was meant to be in church that day, to hear the children's story of all things. That Sunday there was not one child in the place. Go figure, they didn't want to be sweating in church! The minister still did the children's story. He said it was for "the big kids".

Him and his wife had gone to Southampton that year to go cottaging. He showed a picture on the big screen of his wife standing near a beach fence with an expanse of sand and water behind her. He talked about how the sand was so hot that year. How when you walked over the sand to get to the water you kind of bounced from foot to burning foot, kind of howling. All the while getting closer and closer to the nice, cool water. He talked about that journey to the water. How painful and long it seemed in that moment, but how once you got to the water, it didn't seem to matter. In fact, once you got there you would totally do it again in a second. In the end, it didn't matter how hard and painful the journey was, it was always worth it in the end.

The tears started. I couldn't help it. Hell, now that I'm typing it out the tears are coming again! I couldn't help but think of every failed cycle. Every follie check when the tech would tell me how none of my follies were growing. I thought of every needle during that last cycle, along with all those follie checks at the beginning when nothing was happening but I was told to keep going.

Then I thought of the day when we finally had one little follie. It was freaking amazing. I then thought about that morning when I saw those fainter than faint lines, then the next morning when I saw those words that I had been dying to see.

In the end yes, our journey was hard. I know that there are some out there that have gone, and are going through worse. But don't lose faith, even though it is so easy to lose faith. Yes the journey is hard, but the end, the end is worth it.