Rocky Road

A story of a rocky road through life including marriage and trying to have a baby we so desperately want.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Early ovulation

I am ovulating, today I think. I don't want to be ovulating today, that may make my next ovulation fall terrible for insem timing. I know just a few weeks ago I seemed kind of excited about the possibility of our first insem being moved up to the end of April if my cycles went on the short end of my normal range instead of the long end. Well, it looks like it's happening and I'm not extremely excited and this is why. We are supposed to be at my parents the last weekend in April for an anniversary party and normally it would be easy to say I just won't go, but we have family flying in from California that I haven't seen in years. So I guess I'm just going to hope that I don't ovulate when it looks like I may...if it just holds off until May 1st we'll be fine. Early would be okay too I guess, but then I run the risk of not having the tank early enough. I never thought it would be this tough to have a baby. So many years of being told you have to use protection so you don't get pregnant, and now I come to find out it's not that easy.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Oooh am I MAD!!!

Just had to come on here and vent a little. WARNING: This post may be a little racy! I know some people may read this and think I am nuts, but I got home from work today and I wasn't feeling well all day, had a mild migraine. And I go in to my office and I notice that there is something that that is a dead give away that Kev masturbated while I was at work. Well, for some reason this has always been a sore spot with me. Maybe a pet peeve I guess. It really makes me feel inadequate. I really think that I have a rather healthy sexual appetite and I've thought from the beginning of my relationship with Kev that he had a somewhat low sex drive for a man and since his diagnosis, I've just chocked it up to low testosterone. Anyway, all that is beside the point, it just bothers me when a man that I am with feels the need to masturbate, it makes me feel like I'm not good enough. If he was that horny I would have rather he waited until I got home and dragged me off to bed the minute I walked in the door. I would have found that way more appealing that coming home to find that he had relieved himself without me. Maybe I overreact to this, I just can't help how I feel. I'm thinking now though, since I am horny, despite the fact that I am/was kinda mad at him, I may just jump him when we go to bed and maybe it will make him feel guilty and he'll realize maybe I figured it out and he'll think long and hard before he does it again. Heck, maybe I'll wake him up and jump him again before I go to work in the morning. Man.....that evil Scorpio red-head coming out in me this early in my cycle. This may be a wicked week or so leading up to ovulation.

Anyway, off to the good stuff. Our new Sleep Number bed will be arriving tomorrow and I am so excited, I can't wait to sleep comfortably.

Monday, March 20, 2006

The Good News & The Bad News

Wow, I didn't realize it was a week since I was on here. Things haven't been the greatest, but I always look at the fact that it could be worse. One of the good things that happened in the past week is that Kev and I went to the Select Comfort store and learned more about the Sleep Number beds and we ordered one. So hopefully that will get here sometime this week so we can get to sleeping better. My mom and dad have one and they just love it. Another good thing is that I had AF and now she is about gone, so we are in our last cycle before insems. It seemed like it was so far away and now I'm already on something like Cycle day 5 or 6, can you tell, I'm really charting this cycle...NOT!
Now for the bad news. Kev is laid off from work again. This is the 3rd time in 9 months and I'm getting a little sick of it. But, what can you do when you are the low man on the totem pole. Anyway, Kev has decided he would like to take a class or two to learn properly how to be a welder since that is what he has chosen to do for his career. So early May he is going to start classes, right about the time we are starting insems. We sat and had a talk, we discussed the fact that his unemployment is about 1/2 of what his paycheck normally is and we can't really survive on that, so he called an acquantaince of his, and thankfully he has some work for Kev. In fact, he is going to start this Saturday and next week will have about 50 hours of work. YIPEE!!!! Pretty much we talked and I told Kev he either had to find some work or I need to start working another job and he really doesn't like when I work more than one job, so he made the effort and I am so proud of him. We also talked about whether we should put ttc on hold for now until he gets through classes and gets back to working full-time for the company that laid him off and we decided not to wait. Everything will be fine one way or another and if we wait for everything to be perfect we will never have our family because we don't live in a perfect world. So we are still on track, I am so happy. I was afraid we were going to have to wait. His classes are only until the end of June, so I'll barely be along even if it works on the first try.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Been a while

It's been a few days since I was here. Thursday ended up crazy, Kev got in trouble at work for something stupid and is not allowed to work in the facility where he was working, their rules, not our company's rules. They gave him the day off on Friday which was fine because he stopped on his way home from work and his truck wouldn't start. So I had to run to pick him up. In the meantime, Sue, the nurse for the insurance company was at our house, but we weren't there. She didn't get my messages, apparently she placed the original call to us using her husband's cell phone who was out of town when I called on Thursday. I called her back Friday after work and rescheduled for today after work. Hopefully everything goes well, if not I guess we cross that bridge then.
I've officially labeled Kev's most recent attempt at quitting smoking as a failed attempt. He is back to smoking a pack a day. I'm not sure he was even smoking that much before he was hypnotized to quit. I asked him if he wants to do the research to see what our health insurance covers and he said "you can." I told him that he didn't sound too enthusiastic and I'm not going to force him to quit, if he wants to quit I will do the research, but he doesn't seem to want to quit right now. I'm thinking once I get pregnant he may become comitted to getting healthier. I sure hope so, the cough sounds horrible, it makes me want to cry. I couldn't imagine coughing and stuff like that all the time.
On to me, I don't technically have cramps, but I have that feeling like I'm getting AF anytime now, looks like she will have her usual Wednesday appearance. I'm getting more excited as we get closer, this AF means one more cycle until our first insem cycle. I can't wait. It's all started to become more real now.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Please reschedule

Well, dh and I talked this morning and he told me that Thursday night is the night the guys go out after work and he already told the guys he was going out, so he doesn't want to have the tests done this evening. So I'm going to call this person back and ask her if we can reschedule for next week. Hopefully this doesn't turn out to be a huge problem. That gives a few more days for everything to hopefully flush out of Kev's system. I told him he has to drink lots and lots of water. This just makes me so nervous and flares my temper a bit. If he just wouldn't do this stuff I wouldn't have to go through all this worrying and being mad. Uhhhhhh, it's so frustrating. Hopefully this will be no trouble, she'll just reschedule and I can just try to forget about it until next week.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Yet another reason to quit

Just a quick post because I'm really tired and need to go to sleep in order to be at least somewhat lively at work tomorrow. I am so bored, have nothing to do at work. It makes the day go so slow when I have nothing to do. Anyway, we got a call from the lady to come draw our blood and get the urine samples for our screening for our life insurance. She is coming tomorrow and I asked what all they would be testing for and of course she answered "the normal, cholesterol, blood sugar, tobacco if you said you don't use it and other substances." Great!!!!! So I know mine will come back just fine, but Kev's, not so sure about. He claims it's been 2-3 weeks since he used that other substance, but I'm not so sure I believe him, and even if it has been that long, I'm not sure if it would be out of his system. Ughhhhhhh.....just one more thing for me to stress about. And of course I couldn't restrain myself, I said to him, "do you see why I want you to stop doing this stuff? Everyone tests for it and it effects everything I do to try to better things for us." Probably not the smartest thing to say, but I wish he would realize that things would be so much less stressful for me and easier for us in general if he would just stop all this. Hopefully I can try to not think about it tomorrow and just go with the flow, if it comes back positive, it does and we go from there. At least I'll be covered, but I really want both of us covered.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

TMI

Things are much better. I got home from work yesterday and Kev was playing on the computer. He came out to eat dinner and we sat and watched part of a movie and then went up to bed and finished watching the movie. I can't remember if he had a cig after dinner, that's how much I'm trying to not pay attention to the bad parts. TMI....we went up to bed and bd and he went down to the kitchen to get me a glass of water and got himself a yogurt instead of going outside for a cig. Regardless of how much he is or is not smoking he isn't drinking as much as he was last week and he is being nice to me, back to being himself feeling me up in the kitchen while I'm trying to make dinner. I make a little bit of a fuss about it, but he knows I like it. We are planning to go to a dance club this coming weekend, I just made a hotel reservation near the club so we don't have to worry about driving home intoxicated. Adds a little more cost, but we will make it home safe in the morning, and sometimes it is fun to spend a night away from home. It's like a mini-vacation. Besides, we have to do these things now, because we have our babies we won't be doing these things, we will be at home enjoying our long awaited babies.

Monday, March 06, 2006

Weekend

I haven't posted in a few days. We were visiting my parents this weekend. Mom and I have a tax accounting business so I was really working a good bit of the weekend. I really need it for a couple reasons, one reason is it gives me a refresher on everything and the other reason being that we still owe mom for money spent on our wedding in August, she says she is not worried about it, but it bugs me. All these doctor bills haven't helped us get ahead any. At least I have worked off some of that debt. Not sure if Kev and dad talked much about his cigarette smoking or not. They spent a majority of the weekend together out at the shooting range and shopping for new guns and hunting & fishing stuff. I've not been mentioning Kev's smoking at all and have been trying not to pay attention to how much he is smoking. He was nice to me all weekend, not sure if that was just because we were at my parents or if he is feeling better or what. I know he told me the other day that he knows he hasn't been the nicest to me over the past week. We will see how things are when I get home since we are back to the daily routine. I'm a little tired today, I was up too late last evening. I'm thinking I should research what our insurance pays in the way of quit smoking programs. I know they cover some things and just let Kev know because he did ask at one point because someone asked him and he didn't think they did cover anything. I have to try to remember to check that out tonight.

Friday, March 03, 2006

Realizations

Last night was another pretty good evening. We had an appointment for an insurance agent to come to our home and offer us Life Insurance, so we did that and got it all taken care of. And in that process we found another reason for Kev to not smoke anymore. Once he has not been smoking for 1 year his policy premium will be lowered by $12/month, $144/year. That is a great difference considering my policy premium is only a little more than that total. Anyway, despite that conversation with the insurance agent Kev got his coat and got ready to leave the house and I asked him where he was going. I really should learn not to ask questions that I don't want the answer to. He told me he was going to get a pack of cigarettes and I can't even remember what I said, but I did keep my calm. I don't know if he really did buy a pack, I think he did because I think his coat smelled like cigarette smoke when he came back. But I decided while he was out last night buying that pack of cigs, that I am not going to say anything to him about his smoking and drinking anymore. Substance abuse is another story, I can't just let that go, but he says he isn't doing that so I believe him. I think maybe if I take the pressure off it may help him more, maybe me mentioning the smoking and drinking is putting him more on edge and making it harder. So we will see how this works. I don't really know how much he is drinking, I just can't keep track, but the same case of beer is in the fridge that has been there since Tuesday, so it can't be as terrible as I thought it may be. And this morning I dumped a whole beer and another half down the sink which would normally make me mad because I picture it as money going down the drain, but this is more about the health of my husband than the money. So from now on I vow to not mention it and hopefully he will really just do this on his own and tell me if he needs my support and how I should go about helping him. I figure if he does go back to smoking it isn't the end of the world, eventually he may make the full commitment to quitting and then he will be able to do it. No amount of pushing by me is going to make it happen.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Insems late April?

I just spent the early morning hours paying bills, balancing checkbooks, and budgeting. Fun, fun. I love doing that, probably why I chose Accounting as my career. In budgeting I've included what we will have to pay for our donor sperm and I had it budgeted to pay the end of April which would have been fine. But I got a temp rise this morning so I'm absolutely certain I ovulated yesterday and that means I may ovulate again the very end of March moving everything up to ovulating the end of April instead of early May. Now it's starting to seem not so far away. WOW!!!! I'm getting excited.
In other news, Kev got up after the alarm went off the first time this morning and got dressed and went to work. No fussing or whining at all. I was so relieved. I just hope this evening he is better or hasn't slid back to being mean or even worse, started smoking all over again. He says he really doesn't want to, but he really had to fight the urge to get a pack of cigs on his way home. He also mentioned someone at work asked if he wasn't joining them for a cig and he said "NO" and they said it was great he quit and asked if he quit his other substance and he said "YES." I'm so glad and since I openly told me that I believe that he has quit. It was such a relief to just sit and talk last evening over dinner. I really feel a lot less stressed today than I have all week. Thankfully it is Thursday and tomorrow is Friday. I'm excited to see my family this weekend, we are all getting together for a birthday dinner for my youngest sister, I can't believe she turned 22 yesterday. Well, off to get ready for work and take my puppies out. We were supposed to have snow and sleet last night, but low and behold we wake up and there is nothing. Now it is raining. I hope it doesn't get bad during the day today, I don't like driving in the mess even though I do have a 4X4.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Ovulation & Understanding

I got through work today. I had a strange pain in my side last night and knew I was close to ovulating so I did an OPK last evening and low and behold it was positive, so I was thinking the pain was the onset of ovulation. I was okay all day, but having these twinges in my side and by 4pm I was having some serious pain in my side. I got home and explained to Kev that I think I am ovulating and I don't normally feel it, I normally have to rely on other signs. I took an OPK this evening and the line is light, so I'm sure that is what the pain was. Not that I like the pain, but I think it would be nice to have the same signs 2 months from now when we do our first insem. Had we been doing an insem this month I would have done it last night and felt great about the timing with the events of today.
Anyway, as for Kev, I got home from work and we actually sat here and talked and he was smiling. I asked him if he had any idea what he wanted me to make for dinner and he said he would rather someone else cook for us tonight, so we went out. It was only to Hoss's, but it was a good dinner. I love their salad bar. Kev cheated having one cigarette today as well. He said right after we were done with dinner he had the urge to have another one, but he doesn't want to buy a pack because he knows he will start right back up again. He explained to me how it feels like he really has an angel on one shoulder and the devil sitting on his other shoulder and all they do is fight for his attention all day, but when he's sleeping he can't hear them. Thus why he didn't want to get out of bed this morning and just wanted to go to bed when we got back from dinner. It doesn't help that he isn't busy at work either. There is one guy at work he doesn't get along with and he had to work with him today and he thinks if that guy wouldn't have been stupid and asked something about our family Kev wouldn't have smoked a cigarette today. I also explained to Kev that I am trying to be supportive, it's just very hard for me because I've not been addicted and therefore never had to go through withdrawing from an addiction. And he realized there was no real way to explain it to me so I would be able to understand what he is going through. Although he was able to liken it to me having that bag of candy on my desk and if it's on my desk I will eat it, but if I put it in my desk drawer I won't eat as much, but I know it's there and I really want it and eventually will open the drawer and take them out and eat them. He feels like him not having a cigarette is like that feeling I have just before I open the drawer and take those candies out, except he doesn't have cigarettes in reach so he just keeps having that feeling of wanting them. We also discussed him drinking more beer is not the answer to not smoking. I point blank said to him, my father was an alcoholic, Kev's father was an alcoholic. I asked him if he liked his father when he was an alcoholic and he said "NO, Not at all." Well I didn't like my father when he was an alcoholic either and I don't want our children to have to view their father the way I or Kev have viewed our own father's. Unfortunately I never knew my father when he wasn't an alcoholic. He was one until he was on his death bed and he only lived 4-1/2 months after diagnosis. Not long enough to recover 20 years of a broken relationship. Fortunately Kev's father has managed to stay away from the alcohol. To a certain degree I believe that alcoholism is possibly partially genetic in which case Kev could really easily get in to trouble drinking the way he is now and he doesn't say that he disagrees with my thinking that way. I did tell him I am very proud with the progress he has made and I really think he can make it if he just stays away from the cigs a little longer. Today he is better than he was yesterday and yesterday he was better than any day from Saturday to Monday.
He went up to bed and I went up and we talked, reminiscing about old times, when we met and started dating. It was great. He was drifting off to sleep at the sound of my voice and I wasn't ready to go to bed yet, so I hugged him and kissed him and told him I love him very much. I really do. We have been through so much lately and I have always tried to put myself in the other person's shoes instead of judging them and lately it just seems like there are things happening to him that I can't put myself in his shoes. It just seems so impossible to know how he is feeling and therefore makes it hard for me to know how to support him. It makes me feel powerless when I am such a caring person and I am best at nurturing. It's heartbreaking to watch the love of my life go through all this and not know how to really help him.

A little better

We dropped Kev's truck off at the garage after work on Monday for inspection. So yesterday we woke up to snow and Kev drove my truck with me in it to work and then I left, went to get breakfast and McDonald's and my morning White Chocolate Caramel Cappucinno which I really shouldn't drink, but it's so mm mm good. Anyway, the McDonald's food had me feeling less than great most of the day. Kev was dropped off at the shop/office and he confessed that he had cheated, he had a cigarette and it made him dizzy and his body felt all tingly. I was a little upset that he caved and had one, but he was a little nicer to me last evening. We drove to the garage and picked up his truck and then drove home. We had Lasagne for dinner, it was a frozen meal, not near as good as if I would have made it from scratch, but still it was okay and I didn't have to do much work for it. Kev went to bed at 7:30pm. I think he was trying to hide from the fact that he couldn't have a cig. This morning Kev's alarm went off for him to get up for work, I took my temp and he actually cuddled with me this morning. We laid there for a little bit and his alarm kept going off, I told him he needed to get up for work and he told me he wasn't going to work today. Certainly not how I want to start my day, I nagged a little and we ended up bding, under the condition he would get up and go to work. Afterwards, I told him he needed to go to work, he said again he wasn't going. I told him that was not the right answer, he needed to get up and go. He can't just not go to work because he doesn't feel like it, he just wanted to lay in bed all day, easier than dealing with the nicotine withdrawal I guess. Seemed to me like sign of depression, coupled with the low testosterone, he just didn't feel like getting up. I told him he can't just not go to work, we need the money in order to do our insems and once we have children not going to work because you don't feel like it is not an option, children have needs and are costly. Besides, he promised if I gave him what he wanted he would get up and go, not holding up his end of the bargain would mean he used me. He did then get up and go to work, I was proud of him that he did that even though he didn't want to. I'm so glad he knows I'm right and only pushing him because I love him enough to make sure he does what he needs to do. Hopefully this day gets better and he isn't a complete arse when I get home. I just hope I'm not pushing too hard, especially while he is going through this quitting the things that are bad for him.
On another note, Vee from fertilityfriend found my blog. I was so excited to see she commented. She is a great gal and she understands what Kev is going through. I haven't had to quit an addiction, such as smoking cigs, so I don't know what it is like to go through that. I just wish it wasn't so hard on us.