The Room

As infertiles, thoughts of babies can sometimes consume us.  I have been one of the more hopeful ones that has taken my imagination to another level.  Some of us dream of having a nursery one day and even go as far as moving forward with the hopes that a baby will be on board in the near future.  To add to that, I haven't made it a secret, that I've been stocking up on pre-conception baby buys.  I KNOW I'm not alone, as I have bonded with other gals for this very same reason.  It is without doubt that my  imagination has been filled with thoughts of one day having a baby to go with that nursery.

Right now, our "nursery" serves as a junk/storage room.  I will quote one of my fellow TTC bloggers, Liz, from Wishing on a Snowflake.  "Many infertiles have a junk room just like this. It's the room that is the would-be nursery, but ends up being a messy, cluttered, and out-of-control physical representation of their lives. It's a painful reminder of what they don't have, and may never have. It's limbo."  So you can only imagine how this makes me feel everytime I step into The Room. Hopefully that will all change with this new chapter of our lives.  As I had mentioned in a previous post, DH and I were considering hosting a foreign exchange student this coming school year.  Well after discussion, we have decided to move forward with the process and have already passed the first stage... background checks.  We got the word that we have now been accepted into the program and are in the student selection process.  Because we feel that we will be such AWESOME parents one day, we both decided that we would like to host TWO students!  I can't describe how undeniable my maternal instinct is right now.  It's on overdrive!  LOL.  So we talked about it and we are planning on hosting two girls.  I have two nieces that will be around the same age, so I think having female students will be nice.  They will both be high schoolers.

So with that, today will be spent cleaning and getting our house ready. I know that doesn't sound very exciting at face value, but it actually is. Because today marks the start of moving away from the dreadfulness of that room.  Some time ago I wanted to paint The Room, so had to move all the junk that was stored in it into our guest room. Well, after finding out about that failed cycle, I quit mid-paint project and now we literally have a half painted empty junk room (metaphor for my uterus.... perhaps, hahaha) and a junky guest bedroom (my ovaries?  bwahaha). I wasn't  motivated enough to finish or organize either.  But that is changing today.  We now will convert The Room into a study/home gym.  The girls will be sharing the guest bedroom, and we will put two desks, a computer and workout equipment into the newly defined extra room.  That means packing up and storing all of our baby stuff.  It's kind of a bittersweet feeling, but I'm super excited to make the changes.  This is very symbolic, it means I'm ready to move forward and stop obsessing about TTC.  I'm hoping that by hosting the girls this year, it will help soothe some of those maternal cravings.  I can "RELAX" (sarcastically speaking), like so many of the unsolicited advise people say.  Of course this doesn't mean we are going to stop trying, and I don't know if we ever will.  But I AM GOING TO FINISH painting that room and until we do become pregnant, I can put it to good use.

Finally, the pain can slowly subside....

AF marks CD1

Well today is official CD1!  I couldn't be more excited!  Yes, I know it means that I'm not pregnant, however, it also means that I can finally start my fertility treatment.  My nurse told me to schedule a cervical dilation once my cycle starts and this morning I called for an appointment.  I made it for Friday which is in three days.  In the meantime, I've still been temping and taking my prenatal vitamins, metformin, and dostinex.  Thursday I will start Serophene (clomid) which will be CD3!  I'm super excited about that too!  I will take it consecutively for five days then starting on CD16 I will start the prometrium (progesterone supplement).  Also starting on day 10 we will BD, which I'm sure hubby will be happy about :)  I'm hoping for a little surprise at the end of this month or something really big to celebrate the new year!  I think Christmas will be a little too early to tell anything.

Also, I decorated our Christmas tree last night.  We still have the same blue and silver decorations.  I've decided to start adding a new Christmas tree ornament each year to commemorate something big that's happened that year.  We didn't add anything last year, so this year I'm buying two ornaments.  One for last year and one for this year.  For last year's ornament, I chose a white birdhouse ornament with two birds.  It says "New Home".  I bought it on ebay for $5.  It says 2010, but I will try and change it to 2011.  For this year's ornament, I chose a blue light-up Houston Texans ornament (also bought on ebay).  We really haven't done much this year, other than me getting re-hired and JC going to school, but I figured with the Texans cinching the lead in the playoffs this year with current stats at 11-1, I would support my team and buy an ornament in their honor.  When JC graduates school we can get an ornament to commemorate it which will be in 2014.  And hopefully on next year's Christmas tree, we will have an ornament saying "Baby's First Christmas"!  I'm sooooo excited!

I've also been doing a little splurging and induging in my guilty pleasures.  I've been making some pre-baby buys.  Most recently taking advantage of After Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday deals.  So far I've purchased a bassinet/playpen/changing station baby center, a walker, and a Boppy with slipcover.  Another thing I've been scouting are cloth diapers.  I've been looking at various reviews and tutorials on youtube and alot of users recommend purchasing a few different brands/styles to see which work best for you.  So far I'm leaning more towards prefolds/inserts and all in ones.  I have a few that I'm tempted to purchase already.  Hubby knows this and is trying to get me to go easy.  Damn my compulsive shopping.  LOL.  I may be jumping to soon in buying everything, but with this new burst of renewed positivity and optimism, I'm looking forward to starting on the nursery and baby buying.  I don't want to leave things to the last minute.  And speaking of the nursery,  I've already purchased wall paint in a pale yellow (straw) that I will be using on the walls.  I will paint the trim and shelving white.  It is gender neutral so it won't matter on the sex of the baby.  Also still undecided what theme to run with.  I love the jungle/monkey theme, but I think it may be to boyish, and therefore still contemplating the circus theme.  We shall see.... Also working on redecorating the rest of the house so that it has our personality infused in it.  It still has paint from the previous owner that I despise... ugh.... pink everywhere.  I've done some inspiration boards on pinterest as I brainstorm ideas.

Well that's about it.  I will update on testing and my cycle when things change.  Keeping fingers crossed!

Baby Itch!

I'm totally feeling the baby itch nowadays, and yesterday it was pretty strong.  I was thinking about getting started on the nursery.  Thinking about what colors I want to paint it and what style(s) I want to go with.  Since obviously I'm not pregnant yet, I don't know what the sex of the baby will be, so it will be something gender neutral.  I started to Google nursery ideas and saw some pretty cute ideas for the nursery.  I also made a purchase online for our future baby.  Over the past year I've made a couple of "baby buys".  So far I have a Texans infant girl outfit (only $5 at Target on Clearance... can't go wrong) and an elephant hand puppet.  Yesterday I bought a musical bear on Ebay.  It's used, but when I came across it, it was something I just had to get.  It was super cute.  Here's a picture of it:

So cute, right? Anyways, while browsing I came across some youtube videos about cloth diapering and I am seriously considering doing this with the baby.  There are several brands of diapers and different ways of doing it.  I will probably buy one of several brands to try them all out, but I think so far, based on what I've seen, the prefold diapers will work best for me.  There's a great set of videos on youtube where she goes over the basics of cloth diapering.  It's called Cloth Diapering 101.

After all that... I was still fienin' for baby stuff, so I jumped the gun and started a baby registry on Amazon.  I know, I know... I'm kinda going overboard on everything.  But I've got the itch pretty bad.  Today is a little better, so I'm trying to occupy my mind with other things.

Anyways that's all for today.  I kind of like the carnival/circus theme, since I have a vintage carousel horse that I've had since childhood and I'd like to incorporate it into the nursery theme somehow.  Here are a few pics I dowloaded for nursery ideas.