How domestic of me!

In light of all the baked goods conversation I've been having over at Jill's blog, I have decided to self-medicate with a butter pecan rum cake... it's baking right now. Yum!

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It didn't work. I still feel lousy. Oh well.

To the knowledgeable customer service staff...

I would like to register a complaint.

I would appreciate it if you could ask your registry website creators to make an option to completely remove a registry from your system. I have had two miscarriages since first completing a "BabyCenter Registry", back when I thought I was still having a baby in August. Women like me do NOT want painful reminders of the baby they were not able to keep. At the time of the first miscarriage, since there wasn't an option to remove it and I was in no mood to complain, I just removed all the items off of it and thought that would be enough.

It wasn't. I received your "special offer" for purchasing additional items off my registry today, which is midway between my due date from my first miscarriage and the date of my second. I would like nothing more than to be able to take advantage of your 10% discount, but unfortunately, I don't need it.

I hope that you will seriously consider making these modifications to your registry website.
Sincerely
Lisa P

AAAUGH!!!!

----- Original Message -----
From: BabyCenter
Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2005 6:00 AM
Subject: Save 10% on everything in your gift registry!

Dear Lisa,
We hope that you've received many of the wonderful things you chose for your BabyCenter gift registry. And now that the big day is only a few weeks away, here's a special opportunity to make sure you have everything you need for your new baby:

[insert "special offer," "coupon code" blah, blah blah...]

We wish you the best at this exciting time in your life. And if we can help with your gift registry in any way, please e-mail our knowledgeable customer service staff or call us toll-free at (866) 241-2229.
Sincerely,
All of us at BabyCenter
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Stupid website had NO way to completely delete the registry, you just had to take all the crap you picked *when you still thought you were having a baby* off of it. So THE DATE was still in their computer.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention... my first due date was 8/19. Looks like I'll be having a GREAT couple of weeks.

Confused...

We went to a couple's home for dinner tonight. The husband, who works with G (my husband) and who has been friends with him a long time, called to invite us over, and when I answered, said "oh, hi Lisa, I'm so sorry about, umm" and I let him off the hook and just said "thanks".

So, why did his wife seem to not be aware of what had gone on??

Since no one of the few people who read this really knows me, it's helpful to point out that G and I used to be in a band together with a couple guys G works with. It was a blues/rock cover band, and I was the singer. (Hence the pic of me in my profile with a microphone in hand). Anyway, we had told the band we were pregnant, and hence were stopping gigs because the smoke in the bars we normally played in wasn't healthy to me, or to the baby. (We had also told them about the first miscarriage in January, and had originally planned to stop playing then, but for some reason kept doing it.)

After the second loss, it seemed too unusual to just start back up again, as though nothing had happened. So we called it quits.

Tonight, the wife asked me if we had any gigs coming up.

I danced around the subject, figuring if she did know and I was assuming she didn't, she might be offended. But it really seemed like she didn't know. I just don't get some people.

Signs

The car parked next to me in the garage this morning had one of those window shades you put on the back seat to keep the sun out of your child's eyes. It had no cute little pictures like so many that I've seen, it simply read "Babies R Us".

I started thinking about that name, and my immediate thought was of "us" vs. "them". "Babies R us, but aren't for you though. " I wonder what kind of weird stares I'd get if I put a sign on my car that said that??

I've spent the past hour here at work reading the blog of a woman I don't know, who lost her baby at 35 weeks in May. My heart breaks for her. I want to tell her this, but I don't know if that makes me look like some weird person desperately searching for someone who might understand. I think that's just part of what blogging IS, but I guess I haven't really learned the rules yet. Is that what we do??

I spent another 45 minutes before that Googling "septate uterus" and trying not to let myself worry too much about that before I even have the HSG.

I can hear the pregnant woman who works on my floor laughing with another of my coworkers. She's due a month after my due date from the first miscarriage, and I am dreading the fact that we will probably have some sort of "shower" for her right around the time I would've been leaving this place, for good, to raise my child.

I've gotten next to nothing done at work today, and as usual, I just don't care. This horrible attitude was here before I lost either pregnancy, and it certainly hasn't gotten any better since.

what timing

A relatively new and young coworker sent several of us this article this morning with the subject "according to this link, I think it's time we all quit :)" (Yes, even with the smiley.)

Oh, if only she knew...

Ummm, how many??

Eight tubes.

Three big, five little.

One red, one yellow, one green, five blue.

The tech tied the tourniquet too tight at first, and I thought I might pass out.

They put the blue ones on ice.

So now we wait for results... and I have to decide if I'd be happier with some kind of positive result or all negative ones.

Poke me, prod me...

My doctor has agreed to send me for testing. I am in shock about her willingness to do this, because for some reason I expected a much bigger fight.

I've got a script in my hot little hand right now for several tests: TSH; fasting glucose; ANA; anticardiolipid and antiphospholipid antibodies (I feel like I should break into a song from "Mary Poppins" whilst talking about these two...); Factor V Leiden; MTHFR; prothrombic gene variant, and protein S and protein C.

I *didn't* win on getting a 7dpo progesterone draw. She's one of those doctors who doesn't believe in it, I think. After my first miscarriage, she told me "there's no normal level"... but, at least she agreed to give me progesterone supplements, if I want them.

She's also letting me get an FSH level, and this one seems to be a "since you want it so bad, I'll order it" kind of test. She doesn't see the point, but she'll do it.

One kind of scary thing: I may have a septate uterus. They're going to have me schedule a hysterosalpingogram to see if there are any abnormalities. I think this is the scariest part of all the stuff I'm getting right now. If there is a septum, they'd have to remove it surgically... after all we've been through, the thought of surgery there is not just scary, it's DAMN scary.

So, tomorrow I get the big blood draw (wonder how many tubes they'll need for these??)... and then we wait.

Open mouth, insert foot...

About a half an hour ago I was on a conference call meeting that my boss had asked me to start attending. This week, I had to represent someone else's proposed changes on this meeting.

I started getting asked sharp questions that I didn't know the answers to. I said that I would need to check with the person who was asking for the changes. Well, she heard me say her name and walked over to my cubicle to see what was going on.

I put the meeting on speakerphone and THOUGHT I pushed the 'mute' button. We started talking about what was going on (and since I'd been backed in a corner while I was on the meeting myself, I probably was more than just a little frustrated) -- then all of a sudden I noticed the rest of the meeting had gotten very silent...

We weren't on mute.

I started crying silently. The other woman took over the discussion and I sat there weeping to myself because I'm such an idiot, such a baby, and so ready to be out of here it HURTS.

On display

Last night, I dreamed that I was in a class or a large group of some sort. Everyone in the group had to fill our own large display case - in my dream it resembled an old-fashioned bakery display case with shelves - with objects relating to some theme of our choosing.

I kept coming up with really good ideas, but would then forget them when it came time to actually start the project. Everyone else in my group completed their display cases. At the end of the dream, I was showing someone (can't remember who, unfortunately) around the room so that they could view these wonderfully neat displays. Except I didn't have one. Never started one, in fact. I woke up feeling really disappointed that I never got to make my display case.

Metaphors take the strangest forms sometimes, no?

my life's work?

For the past three years and five months, I have worked on an IT project, first as a trainer, then as a systems analyst; the latter fancier title serving only to make my life more stressful than anything else. Along with this lovely title comes the part of the job description that reads: "provide ongoing troubleshooting, support, and maintenance, including 24/7 coverage as part of an on-call rotation". Yep, this is my week to "babysit the beeper", as we call it.

I have come to dread my week in the rotation more than nearly any other aspect of my job, which I don't particularly like anymore, anyway. (If you looked in the dictionary under the word "burnout" you might see my picture, haha). I suppose that since I can't seem to muster up the energy to find a new job, that I've got little right to complain, though, but that hasn't stopped me so far.

The real problem is... what I want to DO with my life, is be a mom. That is the only job I've ever really seen myself holding since I was about 10 years old.

Having your chance to be a mom taken away from you once is really bad. Having it taken away twice - and the second time *right* before you'd have gone on maternity leave with the first chance - is devastating. At least for me.

I have to figure out if I can continue to do something I *really* dislike until I can manage to snag the only job I really want. Time will tell.

Weekends are so short.

It's Sunday, and I've decided to start a blog. (Terrific, you say.)

I've seen links to others' blogs on Fertility Friend, particularly among those of us who were unfortunate enough to join the "I've had a miscarriage" club. Today I visited the blog of someone I've never met but feel I know a little better through her words, and I was about to leave a comment on one of her posts, when I learned I'd have to create a blog in order to do so. Okay...

I've never been good at journaling, except in my head. I can compose entire articles to myself in my thoughts but when it comes to getting them down on paper (or its electronic counterpart) I have been notoriously bad. I start fine, but eventually something happens that stops me from continuing. My first miscarriage was one such something.

Before that day, I wrote about not getting pregnant, I wrote about wanting to be a mother, I wrote about hormones that messed with my head. When the test finally displayed two lines, I wrote about how happy I was to have that little one with me.

Somehow I didn't seem up to continuing after my world was shaken.

But now, after going through this yet again, I feel like talking. To myself, if no one else, I guess.