We are going to wait for ONE month....

After much discussion, we've decided to hold off on the IUI this month and wait until next month to see how the concussion is progressing. I am on a couple of prescriptions now and the acupuncture is really helpful; I just need to see how I feel in a month's time.

Acupuncture: I urge you all to go for any and all reasons. Anything that hurts, aches, twinges, whatever, they can help. I've only been twice and going again today, but with each visit, I have felt almost imediate differences. As for the drugs, I have Celebrex for daily use and Tylenol with codine for use when I get headaches. Excelent. Most of the time, they work pretty well.

The neurologist says that I have a labrynth concussion, meaning that the injury is in my inner ear, which is why I am so dizzy and nausous. I'd say that there are good days and bad days with the dizzy/nausous. And I am so exhausted from working this past 'holiday' week, that I am only making it worse. I called my sister yesterday to wish her happy Mother's Day, and she agreed that I probably didn't want to feel twice as dizzy and nausous if I were to get pregnant.....I am totally on board with that. Plus I really don't want to confuse the symptoms; I want to know exactly why I feel a certain way.

Before I turn this blog into a concussion blog, I will sign off. Baby making will hopefully commense again in about one month. Until then..... :-(

Not pregnant......post concussive syndrome I DON'T LIKE YOU.

No, not pregnant. And having crazy period. Somehow though, I am OK with that. I have GOT to feel better soon with this head stuff. It is making me literally crazy. I approached a conversation last night with my partner about possibly holding off on baby making until we get this under control. I think we're still talking and thinking about it. Not that it's my first choice. I finally really want to have a baby and feel ready, but something has got to give.

The other day someone asked me if I had considered going to see a chiropractor. What a great idea! I asked my doctor what she though, and her immediate response was to not go to a chiropractor, but to instead go and have acupuncture. Again, amazing idea. It makes complete sense.

I am going today for my first treatment. The person I spoke to over the phone said that he has treated people with concussions before with much success. I am actually very excited to get poked with a million needles; I must be turning a new leaf.

dizzy I why am so?

Today is the big day......tinkle day. I will unpack that fancy digital pregnancy test later today when my partner gets home from work. And I have been dying to now for at least four days.

Four days ago I had an insane dizzy spell coupled with the biggest migraine I've had in a decade, and essentially, I've been in a range of somewhat to ridiculously dizzy ever since. Part of me wants to blame it on the concussion. But that was almost a month ago now and I hope I am not so dizzy due to that! Another part of me wants to blame it on an Easter hangover. After all, if you all could have seen the amount of kielbasa I ate, you would be sick to your stomach too. And then, a big part of me wants to blame it on a baby in my belly!!!!! The issue is that the dizzy, nausea, ringing in my ears, etc. can totally be post concussive syndrome symptoms, but somehow, I think this is different than the way I felt earlier this month.

I don't have any crazy boob pain or other weird symptoms like last month. As a matter of fact, I didn't feel anything possibly relating to pregnancy until just four days ago. And, interestingly enough, I don't feel entirely premenstrual even though my period would start in a day or two.

Oh, I will be analyzing every little ache and pain today that's for sure. I seriously can't wait until she gets home. I hope she leaves early.....

Down and dirty legal stuff: Get excited about spending more money on pregnancy.

So, the other day my partner and I decided to visit a lawyer and learn about what our potential pregnancy and child means legally to our relationship. Oh my, it was a lot to focus and concentrate on given my concussion!! Here's the deal; gay, straight, a-sexual, it doesn't matter; Everyone should know the implications of your legal rights as a family. Make an effort to figure it out for your particular family.

In the state of New Hampshire, I can legally marry my partner, of which we have yet to do. We own a home that has both of our names listed on it equally. We formally share everything legally with the exception of the '98 Wrangler....and I am sort of OK with that. It was her first love anyway, long before I came into the picture. Love the jeep on a nice day....don't need it to be willed to me. Sorry Grape Ape...

That being said, most couples, gay or straight, figure that they are all set as long as they're married in terms of the legality of their relationship with or without kids. The one thing I learned today that was most shocking is that even if you are married, your spouse has no legal right to make health or financial decisions for you if you are unable to make such a decision on your own (let's say you're in a comma for example. Even if your spouse is listed as your next of kin in your will, you technically still need more documentation that proves they are the one to make these potentially life-altering decisions). The reason most people don't understand this is because our society assumes that if you're married, you've made strides to give your spouse this legal right. But technically if you haven't filled these documents, you could be held liable in a court of law later down the road.

And then there's the gays. We gays really get ticked off when we find things in our world that put us at a sub-human level than that our straight peers. Like for example, even if we were married, our doctor could potentially decide to be an asshole that day and make us prove our dependence on each other with documentation before they let one of us make a decision for the other, or on a lesser level, make a joint decision for our child. I've never heard of a straight and married couple with this issue.

And what happens when we decide to move out of New Hampshire? (Sorry NH, we're not staying here forever...) If we move to a state where gay marriage isn't recognized, then what? Our lawyer recommended that we go ahead and have my partner adopt the child to guarantee 100% protection. You see, as long as we get married before the baby is born, both of our names can be on the birth certificate...which is huge! The tiny little bit that's vague and would be helped with an adoption is if A). we break up. Let's say in 5 years it's over. I could actually claim through paternity whose kid it is....and guess what people, it's not hers. or B). we move to any state that doesn't recognize gay marriage. The birth certificate is good, but because my partner and I have would have no legal relationship, it sort of nullifies the perfect, straight-forward birth certificate.

More money. Everything costs money doesn't it. The adoption will be about $2,000 and the rest of the paperwork (living will, all that personal health and financial decision-making stuff) another $2,000. There are a few other fees that the lawyer recommended we pay directly to the court or the town offices, giving us a grand total of about $4,500. Peace of mind combined with enough papers with signatures to sock it to anyone and everyone is priceless I guess.

PSA #1: Watch out for metal pipes.

Today was IUI #2!! Very exciting. Back to stage one again and I'm feeling very good about it. But that is not to say it's been an uneventful two weeks since my last post. Definitely not...

On day one of my cycle, exactly two weeks ago, I found myself at work. It was a normal morning of doing my rounds and checking things. At about 8:45am I walked my head into a metal steam pipe while blindly turning around in a circle, one of many exposed pipes around the old hotel. At first, the only thing I felt was a headache...to be expected I guess after hitting your head, right? At noon I had a meeting. As I sat there, severe ringing in my head got louder and louder. But it seemed to pass. By 4:30 I started having really bad dizziness and nausea, and at one point I almost passed out. I was having a hard time forming a sentence; words just wouldn't come out easily. That is when I knew something worse had happened; I had got a concussion.

I drove home without going to the hospital right away. My initial thought was to wait a bit longer; I wasn't having the 'severe' concussion symptoms I had read about online. After much thought, I decided to wait until Monday (naturally these things happen on Friday's, right??) and go to see my PCP for a check-up.

I worked through the weekend which proved to be interesting. Confusion, difficulty focusing, nausea, dizziness, blah, blah, all of it. By the time Monday rolled around I asked the HR department how I go about this workers comp thing and they sent me to their preferred physician instead of my PCP. It was good to finally go to a doctor, but the woman made me very anxious about what was happening with lots of information I couldn't focus on and lots of situations that could happen in the upcoming days. It was so much that I experienced a huge panic attack while I was driving home and actually called 911 from the road. Never in my life have I ever had such uncontrollable fear. I spent a few hours in the hospital, where they finally did a CT scan and gave me something to control the nausea and anxiety. The test came back negative, providing me some relief. My poor partner drove all the way to the north country to get me and bring me home. I then stayed home for two days on the couch calming down and resting.

At my follow-up with the doctor, I expressed my concerns about how the concussion would effect our efforts towards pregnancy. She reassured me that physically it shouldn't make any difference. It wouldn't reduce the probability of pregnancy or effect the outcome of the health of the hopeful baby. However, I may still feel the effects of the concussion for weeks, perhaps months. She encouraged me to continue IUI's as long as I felt emotionally up to it. After all, stress will definitely effect the outcome and perhaps make it more difficult to conceive.

Last night I had a huge dizzy spell, one much bigger than any of the others of recent. As I layed in bed unable to close my eyes because of the bed spins, I thought that maybe tomorrow would be the day I got the smiley face on the ovulation kit. Was I ready to continue? In a month or two, will I be confusing symptoms of pregnancy with my concussion symptoms?

Today is a better day. Not so dizzy, not so nauseous. And maybe pregnant.

No really, it's fine, we're going to try again.

I feel as though I've spent the past days since the test explaining how making babies works to very successful parents. Seriously people, chill out.

We took our pregnancy test on Wednesday. Even though the instructions say to wait 3 minutes for results, it only took that tiny digital screen about one minute to produce a 'not pregnant' reading. After the initial shock wore off, (it is shocking simply staring at a piece of plastic that you just pee'd on at a flashing hour glass symbol for an undisclosed amount of time and then BAM! a result appears,) we sat in the bathroom trying to pump ourselves up for next month. There were statements like 'Oh, I knew we wouldn't get pregnant on the first try,' and 'How could we have been so lucky as to only have to do this once?' But ultimately, our doctor and nurses told us that the majority of people in my category (under 30...) and my health (average body build, average excercize patterns...sometimes) usually get pregnant on the second or third try. We've been reminding ourselves of that for the past couple days now.

I know this sounds awful, but I had an amazing martini later that night. Well, as amazing as mid-grade gin, vermouth and olive juice shaken until frigid can possilby be. Stress, stress, stress.

Today is Sunday morning and the now third day of my new menstral cycle. I haven't drank since the martini on Wednesday, which is fine. I think that now I'm even more mentally prepared for this whole process. A little bad news really puts you in a different mind set. What a reality check. It's a reality check for my circle of close friends, family and others who are 'in the know' as well. It's as if they all think that this IUI thing is a scientific guarantee for baby. My mother for example has been preaching to me since day one that we'll only need one vial, one shot, one time. Apparantly she and my sister were both superbly fertile. I sort of didn't want to know that information. I've had to re-explain to many what we've been told about concieving. It's still a very simple yet complex reaction between sperm and egg, regardless of how they meet up. We will have to see if this month they share a little more chemistry down there. 

Anticipation is keeping me waiting...

It has been twelve days since our IUI and the air is thick with anticipation. Our nurse told us to wait two weeks before taking a pregnancy test, as if we'd have no problem waiting fourteen long days before we knew the outcome of all our time, hard work and money. Are we going to get pregnant on the first try? Does anyone? What if we have to start all over again?

It certainly has given me plenty of time to read up on my hopefully impending pregnancy. We literally have two big stacks of books that have been given to us by other formerly preggo mommies-to-be. The books are all the same; sappy intro about the wonders of mommyhood, chapter about habits you'll have to change, chapter about symptoms, chapter about the weeks of development, chapter about honest and actual infertility, and all sorts of innuendos about you and your fantastic husband and what he should be doing to help support healthy pregnancies. My partner looked online for a book on the lesbian pregnancy experience, but she found only one or two, and neither of which pertained to our insanely, outrageously  normal situation. Apparently all hopefully preggo lesbos are either single or in an uprooted, unhappy, unstable relationship.

The weird symptoms I felt at first (you know, all the usual pregnancy symptoms....nausea, indigestion, heartburn, constipation, achy boobs....) were in full on preggo stage for the first 48 hours after the IUI, but then faded to nothing. I feel totally normal. Is that normal? The one thing that I still feel is ridiculous thirstiness. It's as if I've morphed into a camel and I'm heading into the desert for a 1,000 mile race and will be without water for weeks. I literally can't drink enough of it.

The rest of my drinking habits have changed as well. Coffee, my first true love, has become something I drink now only once a day, one cup of half regular, half decaf. If I'm feeling saucy, perhaps a cup of decaf in the afternoon. And liquor, my second true love, has become something of a distant memory. I am so missing my one cape coder or one gin and tonic after work that I practically have the shakes.

As for my third true love, she is getting rather mushy and gushy about the probability of baby on the first try. Not that there's anything wrong with positive thinking or hope, but my partner has literally gone from 'don't talk to me about it, I don't want to get my hopes up' to '***sigh***I think you're pregnant...' as she loving looks into my eyes, in a mater of 12 days.

We have two more days to wait, but then again my period wouldn't start again until 5 or 6 days from now, so maybe we have longer to wait. We bought a pregnancy test today......anticipation for a few more days. Keep your fingers crossed....