The times, they are-a-changing

Yesterday was a big day in our house--big in the sense that miss J officially started real, live, gen-u-wine hands and knees crawling yesterday. Yee-haw!

She'd been belly scooting for several weeks, hands just a pulling herself along while she scooted on her belly but now, now she has entered the land of the fully mobile baby. And now she, our home, the dogs, and everything else, will never be the same.

To see her crawling along last night, keeping pace with us from her room on one side of the house to ours on the other side (ours is a split plan home), and to see the incredible delight in her eyes and on her face while she did so, was too much. How I cried, but they weren't tears of sadness...they were of joy. Joy at her happiness and at how incredible it is to see the world unfold before her. It truly does blossom...

though words are inadequate.

An island of health

The Dee house has been hit pretty hard with a nasty cold/flu bug this week. The youngest among us has a nasty ear infection/runny nose/fever/cough combo while the oldest among us (no, that's not me) has complete head congestion along with a fever/chills/runny nose; you name it, the two of them have got it.

I, on the other hand, remain an island of good health, unscathed by the recent invasion of germ/virus/bacteria that has unleashed its fury on the other two Dee members. Why me, I'm not sure...but it's about damn time. I have caught everything the girl has brought home from daycare, every.single.time for the past four months. For once it seems to have skipped me and hit the mister.

But being the only healthy one in the house does have its drawbacks. For instance, A does not want to pick up/hold Juliana or stay close to her in confined space for long periods of time. That means that the majority of her care and well-being is falling to me. See, whatever he's got is different from whatever she's got--there are two strains of something going on, and neither one is pretty. So I must wake her, dress her, change her, feed her, play with her, bathe her. You name it, I'm doing it. Now I'm not complaining as these are things I do and love every day. But it's different when there are two of you doing these things, giving one the ability to take a break for a while (a break that you so justly need and deserve). But with him so sick, there are no breaks for me. It seems that I now have 2 babies, only one is 37 years old, the other 8 months old (and I've gained a new respect for single moms).

In the meantime, though, the legit baby is surely on her way to no longer being a baby. The picture above shows you who's become a big girl lately, one who wants to hold her own bottle, thank you very much. The baby days, they go by so very fast.

So many aging eggs, so little time

Last week while talking with a friend about whether or not either of us should try to have another child, I blithely said, "I'm 37, blah blah blah." I attribute this slight lapse of time to the fact that I have lost my mind since having Juliana. The fact is that I'm still 36, and will be for another 43 days. But I digress....

Lately I've been thinking more and more about whether or not A and I should try for a second child. And I'm talking all-consuming thinking. Weighing pros and cons. Coming up with question after question (when would be the 'right' time to start trying? what if we get pg? what if something goes wrong? what if we have another mc? what if another child ruins our current family dynamic? on and on ad nauseum).

I know this discussion was big recently over at Julie's and there were so many valid reasons voiced as to why women tried for another child as well as why some opted not to try.

I'm on the fence on trying again but I know that time is running short if we do decide to give it a whirl. I'm staring down the barrel of the fertility gun age-wise. But my body, she is like a fine tuned machine (hormonally speaking, not physically) right now. According to my (non-RE) endocrinologist, my hormone levels are excellent post-pregnancy. Almost 8 months after baby and I'm ovulating on my own each month with almost textbook cycles running right around 28-29 days. Given my NCAH, and for my body, it don't get much better than that. I've been tempted to just start casually having unprotected lovin' with A but am scared--I mean, hell, what if it works a second time? Then what?

There are many pros on why I'd love to try for another child...but there is one giant con: I am absolutely terrified of another labor experience like the one I had with J. I mean, come on, forceps? Something like fewer than 2% of all pgs today end up being forcep deliveries. And, hell, have you seen the size of those things vs. the size of the average cooter? (Alright, I know--there's that whole 'size of the baby's head vs. the size of the average cooter' thing too but still, the forceps had to go IN in order to get that head OUT--and the bad bad anesthesiologist would not give this nice girl anymore of the good pain-be-gone juice in her epidural line since the stoopid bad nurse waited too long to call bad bad doc in and the nice girl's cervix was too big to permit more adios pain juice on board the mother ship). 'Nuf said.

In talking with another friend recently, a fellow infertile (who's due to give birth in 5 weeks), she bemoaned the fact that she wasn't ready yet. I told her what other parents told me along the way--you're never really ready, you just do it.

But it seems like if we're going to try to go down this road again, maybe I should heed my own assvice.

This blog in a nutshell...