Men, Marriage Counseling and Maybe some Hope

It has been a wild not so fun ride these past 6 months...I have totally lost focus on who I am and who I want to be. I finally realized I was depressed about my marriage and the baby not happening thing and well....I let myself be sidetracked by men who showed an interest when my husband did not. I'm going to be honest here and say "NO....I did not sleep with any one else" but I was flattered by the attention of other men who made me realize that I am not dead and that I do want a baby but a baby should not define me but I think it actually does or the lack of one does. Does that sound harsh? I am not trying to say a baby will make everything hunky dorrie but I am saying that it is actually quite important for me to have a child and continue to make a go at trying to have my own child. I want a child, I want my husband to want to have a child with me to be more engaged in our marriage and OUR family unit and his seeming apathy because he doesn't like to "plan" has worn thin these past several months and I have let myself be sidetracked, not a good thing but there I've said it and I've been using these past six months to really work on myself for me, not for him....is it working, not 100% but I think some progress has been made and I certainly have gained a friend and well more up soon on the trip to the new Reporductive Endocrinologist/Infertility Specialist but I just wanted to at least post some kind of blog because it has been so long....I definitely need some support...

Where Have I Been?....even i don't know

I feel like Alice down the rabbit hole. I haven't been updating this web site very much in the last few months and if I'm honest with myself it is because I have been depressed and confused all this past Autumn. Depressed about not having a child, about my marriage, and in turn that affects my life. I know I shouldn't put so much into my status as a non-mother, but it just makes me reevaluate all the other things in my life I could be doing and haven't or thinking that I am a failure at procreation, what other things have I wanted in life that I have failed at as well?

In turn I have been very angry at my husband for what seems to be his apathy at the baby making process/let's have a child whethere by birth or adoption, his apathy in my opinion towards our marriage and I just have gotten a bit overwhelmed at my feelings of loneliness and failure and have gotten sidetracked by the attention of others. Honestly....I know that sounds sad or pathetic, but a person needs validation from somewhere and I just haven't been getting it at all lately on any fronts. And so I have lost focus on the baby thing (well not really, just trying not to think about it as much while waiting to see my hopefully new infertility doctor in March), on my marriage, and on my goals in life. It's just all so lonely and hard feeling like you are alone in life even if your husband is living right there in the same house as you.

Does anyone else out there ever feel the same way? If so, what do you do to cope?

Getting to the "Make It or Break It" Line

So, I did a dance of joy yesterday morning when I got on the scale and was down another three pounds! That makes it a total of 28 pounds I've lost since the middle of August!

Usually I plateau at 30 pounds then end up backsliding. I've got two more pounds to go till I hit 30 pounds lost and I am going to do my damnest to break that 30 line and keep going.

I've been taking a spinning (exercise bike) class on Mondays, yoga on Tuesdays and Thursdays and trying to treadmill on the "off" days. I haven't gotten much swimming in lately but I think I'm going to try to do that on the weekends with my work schedule the way it is unless something changes.

In the meantime though, I've signed up for a personal trainer! I have my first session today and I'm trying to schedule her for Wednesdays and Fridays which would give me at least five straight days of some form of organized exercise! I am nervous about it, but I know it is the right thing to do. I need to start weight training so I can firm everything up and I want some one to show me the "proper" form. I am worried I look horrible in front of all the "already thing" exercise junkies at the gym, but I keep telling myself that "Rome wasn't built in a day" (of course, I also try not to think about the fact that "Rome also burned down") and a little embarrassment is worth it if I get the results I want in the long run.

I keep telling myself that 38 is still young and that I should want to be fit, healthy, and try to look prettier for not only myself but others. I keep thinking that my new RE appointment is in March and that 28 pounds is no mean feet in two months and at this rate I could lose another 60 pounds by March if I keep it up and don't plateau too much. That would put me not back at the weight my BMI rating says I should be, but it would definitely give me a healthier BMI to show the doctor and the weight lost would make it easier for me to hopefully support IVF and hopefully make it "stick".

So, while a very nervous me grabs my gym togs to take to work today, I know in my heart I am doing the right thing. That I am shaking off this "no baby" depression and doing something positive for myself (even if I know I'll look like a cow this afternoon at the gym)!

"Mooving" right along towards a healthy me! I'll let you know how horrid it was tonight!

In Limbo

Sorry, it's been awhile since I posted. I meant to write more, but I've had a personal issue going on for about 1 1/2 months and it has been really distracting. I don't know what I am going to do, but it's something I really need to deal with just so I can move on and get back to concentrating on getting pregnant.

In the meantime, I have lost a total of 25 pounds since the end of August. That's pretty awesome for me! I am really starting to embrace the treadmill. I'm back to spinning class and yoga class and I am starting weight training with a personal trainer next week.

Even though my clothes are getting a lot baggier, I'm not going to buy any new pants until I have dropped at least 2 sizes, so that will take a little longer to achieve, but I don't want to get a bunch of new clothes, then gain the weight back, so I figure if I can go down 2 sizes, that will deserve some new pants for work!

So, I'm trying to keep up the exercise and watch what I eat. If I could just get down another 10 pounds I think I could get into some new pants!

I'll keep you posted!

Spinning My Troubles Away

So, I decided to try a spinning class today. My gym calls it "Power Pedal" but it's spinning. I used to do it and loved it and so I decided to get back into it now that I'm back at the gym. I also figured that since yesterday was a long day on the treadmill, I would try something different today.

It was great. Fifty minutes of biking and sweating and just enjoying the endorphins. It was a nice change up for a day and it gave me time to just enjoy the burn and think about some things and mull them over/get them in and out of my head. Definitely a good workout. I'm going to sign up again for next Monday!

I'm so happy to be getting into the exercise finally...it feels great and it really burns off some emotional energy too!

2 hours 34 minutes=5.755 miles!

So, I went in for my annual ob/gyn appointment on Thursday (more about that in another post). The point is that by the official doctor's office scale, I have lost 22 pounds since the middle of August. SHOCKING, I KNOW! Well, I can't really get into it, but I've had some motivation and it is working.

I joined a gym so I could go swimming, works been getting in the way of that lately, but I started and I hope to get back there this week. In the meantime, I've been really trying to use my treadmill. I've been watching episodes of "Alias" while I walk/jog on it. An episode of "Alias" is approximately 45 minutes long, so I'm hoping to eventually work up to 15 minutes of walking (warm up/cool down) and 30 minutes of jogging. My goal is for at least 5 days a week, but so far I'm trying to just do it at least every other day.

So, last week I could only get on for about 25 minutes on Sunday and then the rest of the week was super busy both personally and professionally, so no treadmill the rest of the week. I had an article due for work and finally completed that on Saturday, so Sunday I got up and got motivated. I decided to finish the episode of "Alias" I didn't complete the week before, then watch another full episode. I got through that and thought about stopping, but since I hadn't been on all week, I felt guilty and so I ended up walking through another episode of "Alias". A total of 2 1/2 episodes of "Alias" ended up being 2 hours 34 minutes on the treadmill for a total of 5.755 miles! Amazing and I felt great afterwards. Now I know that a slow pace for miles per minute, but the point is I did it!

After my shower (I'm trying to embrace the sweatiness of the treadmill-not my overall favorite feeling, but getting used to it) I decided to weigh myself. I hadn't been on the scale since Thursday. I got on and since Thursday, I was down another 4 pounds! Now, I'm taking my home scale with a grain of salt (since it's never the same as the doctor's office one) but still even if it's off a little at least it's still going down!!!! Yeah me!

Bedside Reading

So, I stopped at Barnes & Nobles to pick up another special order. This time it was this book: The Fertility Handbook: A Guide to Getting Pregnant. Has anyone out there read it? If so, did you like it? I know it is slightly dated (copyright 2002)but I have heard good things about the doctor who wrote the book, so I decided to try it. My stack of infertility books is pretty high. At some point I'll do a post covering the different books I've already got and what I think about them. If I added up all the books I've purchased about getting pregnant, pregnancy, baby name books, female health books, I could probably afford at least 1/10th of the cost of IVF! Now, off to the treadmill, then some new infertility bedside reading!