inspira-stash

 I'm not so sure when or where along the line my fabric stash accumulated so many nudes and peaches and lacey details (because obviously my stash accumulates things, and not me...ahem..)

But I'm very much diggin it!

I have a couple projects I'm working on right now (bad ADD seamstress, I know) that I'm really excited about. AND! Since picking up my new sewing machine, I'm able to actually make things in a reasonable amount of time with an almost saintly lack of swearing.

Almost.

It has been really good to get some stuff finished and start on other things

...now to just finish the one thing I should actually be working on.

You know when you get halfway through with something (usually just before finishing neck edges and hemlines) and you look at it and think...from what 90's/40's/80's/early 2000's mangy love child did you come from? 

Pinterest is weeping right now at some of the half started/half finished projects I have tucked away around our spare bedroom.

Growing a foot or two...

I've been experiencing an interesting phenomenon... 

Through the years of infertility, the gory treatments and the crazy hormonal swings, I had no problem opening up to people (fellow infertility sufferers, friends, curious bystanders, etc) about our journey with infertility.

Until...

A few months ago we decided to start looking at adoption. For some reason I was anxious to talk to anyone about it. There were a small number of people I had questions for and told, but for some reason adoption hasn't been something I have felt confident in confiding we are looking into.

Maybe it is all the uncertainty that comes with it...the lack of any sort of timeline guarantee.

Maybe its just being tired having so many people involved in my little family becoming a bigger family. (Who aren't already friends and family, ya follow?)

Or maybe it is all the negative rhetoric floating around between birth moms and adoptive moms...can't we all just be moms? 

I was so worried that people would judge me. I've had some (hopefully) unintentionally harsh experiences working in nursery where moms would 'joke' about me not pretending their kid was mine, after they found out I was struggling with infertility. What? Yea....I hope this was just poor comedic prowess on their part, but it hurt my feelings and it scared me. On discussion boards there were inevitable comments from birth mothers calling adoptive mothers 'baby snatchers' and making remarks about adoptive mothers pressuring birth mothers into giving up their babies. 

I'm sure there are truths and exaggerations to both sides of the story, but the idea of another woman thinking of me as someone who took her child and was now 'pretending' to be that child's mother weighed on my heart. (It's about time I stop being so caught up in what other people think of me, right? ugh, right.)

With all that flapping in the wind, I have reached my point of excitement and being truly able to invest my hopes in the adoption process as a way to add to our family.

So, I guess all that is left to do is wish us luck.

and patience...

cause we're going to need it.

But really guys...

really truly...

WE'RE SO EXCITED!

queue the never ending paperwork!

Growing and Growing

So, I'm back after last weeks kinda gloomy post! 

Russ and I have been presented, at this point in our lives, a huge gathering of doors to be opened.

Every.single.one of these doors holds absolutely amazing opportunities to potentially grow our family, secure better financial stability, help us grow closer together and help us grow as individuals.

Here's the catch, time frames are a little skewed. So, we can choose 3 of the 5 options if ordered one way and 2 of the 5 if ordered another and 4 of the five if ordered even another way! We can't choose all options and we can't exactly choose which order they come in...so there is still that crazy level of unpredictability that I'm trying to see around and not get grumpy haha. 

But! One of these options is for me to fully embrace that for here on out, as my career, I want to design and sew. (eventually for myself, but not RIGHT NOW). So in pulling up my big girl panties enough to commit to something, I'm bringing home this little gem:

Say whhaaatt??? Yes ma'am that is an industrial zigzag machine. IN.DUST.RI.AL. 

I'm going to lose a finger, I just know it. 

But after much deliberation and hemming and hawing (..that could almost be a seamstress pun) I've decided to stop being such a coward and do it. 

So, say hello to this gorgeous little blue number and watch as we start making the most of our talents!

Fertility...everyday: When to call it quits

This picture has nothing to do with anything. 

Except that I like it. 

And I liked the moment.

And sometimes that just has to be enough.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what is enough. Good enough, fast enough, patient enough, hard enough, easy enough

...long enough.

It has been brewing in my mind and in my heart for the past several weeks, but I guess finding myself sobbing in our second bedroom melt-down-cleaning late last night is what it finally took for me to realize that. I've tried long enough.

I've been carrying this whole infertility bit for going on 7 years now.

7 years...

There were times when I felt that I was growing, times I felt like I was failing and times that I just felt like I was being left behind or forgotten. But worst of all...there were times that I just felt numb. Infertility didn't hurt anymore and I came to realize that infertility didn't hurt me anymore because it had entirely consumed me and there was little left of me to hurt. 

I've been fighting to see what me there is left and what parts there are, are all defined by my ability or lack of ability to have children. I've entirely lost who I am and have let a struggle define me instead of enrich me. And I can't do it anymore.

Well, that isn't necessarily true...because I can, and will, but not right now. Right now is about getting myself back to the girl Russ wanted to marry and still sees, but I'm sure misses most days.

This will be a big year for Russell and I and I so badly want to be fully present, so for the time being, for I'm not sure how long...for the first time in a really long time...

I'm letting the whole infertility thing go.

---

2014 is the year to like little things and just have moments that are happy but aren't on a checklist to getting closer to being pregnant.

Its the year of chickens in leaves and letting go of the weight.

Insta-caved

So this happened....

Arizona: land of the sun(set)

It has been an adventure being new to an area.

We've already met some amazing people and have seen some amazing beauty.

I just started working for a local ballroom costume shop, and couldn't be more thrilled with who I am working with and what we are making! Russell is loving his job as well, it is tiring and he works long hours but he comes home genuinely excited that he has helped people. 

My little stock broker :).

We've been doing a lot of talking and a lot of research and are anxiously approaching some big life changes here in the next couple of months. We're just so happy to have each other and the love that we share.

I never get over how exciting it is to be Russell's wife. I just look at that man in awe and can hardly believe he was once the 17 year old boy I fell in love with. He's so steady and honest. The best. Man, with that consistency I'm certain I could do anything...go and be 'new' anywhere with him and it would be the greatest adventure of my life.

Fertility Friday: Nature Throid

This is my third week on Nature Throid, having switched over from Levothyroxin. 

The doctor will be calling next week to check in on symptoms. 

I just get to tell them that my hair is STILL falling out.

But, on the bright side, I do feel a difference with the vitamin D.

That's about it.

Fertility Friday: Acupuncture

Since opening up my acceptance to non-conventional, non-westernized methods of approaching this whole fertility thing, I started seeing an acupuncturist. I had read a study that supported the use of acupuncture in conjunction with other fertility treatments as beneficial, so I figured why not. 

Weird, right?

I was pretty nervous because, well, someone was going to stick needles all over my body and from any pictures of acupuncture I've seen, there are just needles everywhere and your in your skivvies and whatever. But it wasn't like that at all. 

I got to my appointment 15 - 20 minutes early, just like going to any clinic/doctor for the first time. Filled out the same paperwork: how old are you, what are you symptoms, when was your last cycle, blah blah blah. I feel like I should just have an infertility resume that I can just give them so I don't have to fill it all out again. 

Oh, yes, I have experience in consecutive treatment cycles and over 5 years of experience with hypothyroidism, I think I'm a perfect candidate to frakin be pregnant already!

anywho...

The acupuncturist just went over all the paperwork with me again, took my pulse, looked at my tongue, and then had me hop up on the table laying on my back with a pillow under my knees. He sterilized each area where the needle would be going and then just popped them in there. He put 2 -3 in each foot and each leg, 2-3 in the back of each hand and 2-3 on my forehead and 2-3 in my hair in a line straight back from my nose. 

He had warned me that I might feel an 'electricity sensation' running up and down or itching or heaviness but I really didn't feel anything. If I wiggled it just felt as if something was brushing up against a hair. There was the tiniest of pinches on one of the ones he put into my hand, and one of the ones in my forehead made my forehead tighten up for a few minutes at first but other than that, I really didn't feel them and it wasn't uncomfortable or painful at all. He  had me hang out for 10 minutes and then came back in and 'stimulated' the needles, it just felt like he twisted them, which didn't hurt either. I hung out for another 10 minutes, he came in and took all the needles out and told me to just take my time getting up because some people feel dizzy. 

I didn't feel anything really, I felt relaxed but I was just focusing on my breathing for 20 minutes so it may just have been from that. I did, however sleep like a log the night after, which he said I would, so if nothing else, that was awesome :)

I go back in the first week of December for my second round, we're going with an every other week thing since I'm still getting things figured out with my new doctor. But, from my first experience I'd say acupuncture is a potential thing that definitely doesn't hurt and worst comes to worst you get some extra meditation time. 

Fertility Fridays: Liquid Sunshine

All of my blood work came back really quickly and I was able to get back in to see my doctor yesterday. From all of the results everything was in a normal range, although potentially not 'optimal' for me specifically.

The one glaring result that my doctor was concerned with, was my low levels of vitamin D. The 'normal' range for vitamin D levels in an adult female is between 30.1-100.0 ng/mL and I'm limbo-ing low under that bar at 19.5. 

I'm familiar with vitamin D, and I know that vitamin D3 is the best to take. I started taking vitamin D last winter to help chase away the winter blues and it did a great job. However, once the sun came out, and after I moved to Zion and worked outside, and especially since moving to the sun state, Arizona, I've become incredibly lax in my vigilance towards my vitamin D routine. My doctor said that a lot of people in the Northern Hemisphere are vitamin D deficient (D for deficient, I guess) and that I should be taking 5000 iu's a day every day. 

She told me it should help with that 2 pm crash that leaves me wanting to sleep the day away and my apathy. (Funny story, I guess my 'depression' manifests itself more as apathy than actually weepy, moody depression...this explains a lot...sorry house, dishes, laundry, sewing...everything).

As I do, I googled the link between vitamin D deficiency and fertility and found several studies that claimed 93% of women facing infertility have a vitamin D deficiency. 

Say what? 

Why has no doctor ever tested my D levels before? 

I also learned that vitamin D is fat soluble whereas most vitamins are water soluble and that vitamin D, although a vitamin, is actually a hormone as well. And that the whole dang shebang is pretty much the vitamin equivalent in function to the thyroid, it controls/contributes to the function of EVERYTHING. Awesome, right? So thyroid on the fritz? Strike one. Vitamin D levels also on the fritz...you're just driving a fertility lemon at this point.

So, summary for all that, I'm taking 5000 iu's a day in conjunction with switching my levothyroxine over to nature throid at a slightly higher than equivalent dose to what I'm on now.

Bikram Yoga: Or the most I've EVER sweated in my life.

Thankfully, my instructor was gracious enough to cover a little bit more. 

I mean, at least they were shorts.

Yikes.

For my birthday my Mama Lady got me a month of unlimited Yoga. Bikram Yoga.

I've been practicing Yoga on and off for the last 5 years but I had never tried 'hot yoga' so I was excited for this opportunity.

As soon as I walked in the studio my first thought was...it freaking stinks in here, why did they use carpet instead of an easier to disinfect surface. OH MY GOODNESS ITS SO HOT! 

Namaste, right?

So I squelched my panic and rolled out my mat in the beginners section, like instructed, and laid down regretting coming into the studio 10 minutes early and just hung out in savasana. Just trying to convince myself I wanted to be there.

Now, I'd subject that Bikram yoga is a lot more like Pilates than the 'yoga' I was used to. The instructor claps his hands, doesn't necessarily do the poses so much as just instructs them and over all I would say (ugh, without trying to sound to ohm about it all) less of a spiritual/meditative environment.

The poses weren't necessarily difficult if you factored out how stinking slippery-sweaty EVERYTHING is. I was actually amazed how much I sweated during the class. About ten minutes in and my legs were mimicking weeping rock. By the end of class it literally felt as if I had just gotten out of the shower. A salty, yucky hour and a half long shower.

I made sure to hydrate well the day before and the hours leading up to my session. I ate a good breakfast that morning and I banana about an hour before I went in at 2:30 but still, towards the middle (I hope it was the middle, an hour and a half turns out to be a REALLY long time) of the practice my vision started to get a little dark around the edges. I didn't feel dizzy, which I would expect with starting to black out, but I decided to hang out in child's pose for a bit. After watching a couple other people take breaks, I noticed that no one was going into child's pose to rest but just sitting down with their legs out or laying on their backs, so I just followed suit with that.

45 minutes in, I was sure the class was almost over. Nope. So I'm hanging out back there sipping water and trying not to look like a totally goof when the instructor decides to say "Hey! It's Cambra's birthday today! Let's all sing to her while in triangle pose"

I shook my head and mouthed 'please, no' and 'that's ok' but whatever, I guess.

So 20 something sweaty, tired bodies sang happy birthday to me and I don't know if I could feel any more ridiculous.

Anyway, my goal for the class was to ... get through the class and I accomplished just that. Afterwards I felt really great and I slept like a rock last night. I feel a little bit like someone injected my body with lead, but I'm not really sore. I'm supposed to go back for my second class within 24 hours...so I'll have to do that after my acupuncture appointment today.

Yea, acupuncture, who the heck am I?

I'll let you know how that goes.