I just realized it’s been a while since I posted anything. A lot has been going on lately, I promise to update it soon with pictures from our trip to Seattle, pictures of the new house, and the most recent pictures of the babies…even though I’ll have new ones in 2 weeks!! Stay tuned and I promise I’ll update.
Yes, we finally sold our house!! I am so excited and can’t wait for May 6th to get here to we can close on our house here in Red Oak as well as our new house in Forney. Our house has been on the market for around 8 or 9 months, we’ve had several offers, just didn’t have the right one until recently. So we will be pretty busy for the next couple of weeks packing, moving and unpacking. Did I mention I was excited!! I’ll have to post pictures of the new house soon!
Now that I’m pregnant, I am experiencing a wide range of emotions, from joy to apprehension. It can be difficult to relax and enjoy a pregnancy after dealing with infertility for so long. Going from infertility to finding out your pregnant will leave you, not only feeling like you are back on the rollercoaster, but almost like you are in denial of the pregnancy. It’s just hard to imagine that it finally happened and I guess in a way you can’t believe it. It is hard to keep from thinking that something will happen between the time you find out your pregnant to the time you go to your first doctors appointment. While the whole time you are extremely excited, you don’t want to get your hopes up. My biggest fear was that we would get to the doctor and there wouldn’t be a heartbeat. But, to my surprise, there were TWO…and both had excellent heartbeats! They both had a heartrate of 171 and it was so cool to see that little flickering heart beating.
The goal of every couple dealing with infertility is to have a positive pregnancy test. When that finally happens, most couples feel both elation and fear. For many couples who have experienced the hope and disappointment of infertility, it may be hard to believe something is really “going right.” The only way I can even comprehend how this happened to us, is that it is a complete gift from God and for that I will be eternally grateful for my two little miracles.
Infertility is about so much more than the inability to conceive. It can rock a woman’s very foundations — her sense of control over her own future, her faith in her own body, and her feelings about herself as a woman. It can result in a loss of innocence, as a woman finds herself on the wrong side of the statistics. Suddenly, bad things don’t just happen to other people. Despite all her efforts, she is unable to achieve the experience that many women see as a birthright. Pregnancy likely cannot be achieved except with substantial medical help, and may very well never be achieved at all.
When a pregnancy finally does occur, it can be difficult for a woman who has experienced infertility to view herself as just another pregnant woman. This long-desired pregnancy may not be the joyous experience I had always dreamed about. The experience of infertility brings its own baggage to a pregnancy: grief for previous losses or inability to get pregnant; anxiety; and fear that my body, unable to conceive on its own, may not be able to carry a pregnancy.
Going through a pregnancy after infertility has it own unique challenges:
* You may feel like you don’t belong. You feel like the average pregnant woman can’t understand your feelings, yet you may feel uncomfortable talking about your pregnancy with your infertile friends who are still undergoing treatments.
* You distrust your body’s ability to carry a pregnancy since it took so much medical intervention to get pregnant in the first place.
* Fear of preparing for a birth, buying maternity clothes, or purchasing baby items so as not to “jinx†a pregnancy. Although, I’m so excited I can’t help myself so this one is pretty much thrown out the window for me.
* I think the biggest one for me is the fear of complaining about pregnancy symptoms or discomforts because you might seem ungrateful. I feel like if I complain about anything people will just think, “you asked for it, you wanted to get pregnant”. And because I did want it so bad and went through so much to get it, I don’t feel like I have any right to complain. Now I’m not complaining about this, but 24 hour nausea and vomiting is not fun…but I take it as a good sign, that’s why I don’t complain. The truth is, pregnancy can be uncomfortable, but disliking frequent vomiting, 24 hour nausea, or heartburn does not mean I cherish the pregnancy any less. The way I see it, the two little babies I will have in the end will be completely worth all the discomforts in the world.
Just thought we would give you guys an update on the baby front. February was our last month of fertility treatments. After a year full of some sort of fertility treatment, including a total of 4 IUI’s…February was the last month of it all. At that visit I talked with my doctor and we both decided that enough is enough and agreed that February would be our last month of treatment. She did, however, want me to at least have a consult with a fertility specialist who deals with a certain type of infertility, so I agreed to have a consult with him and discuss our options, including IVF.
It is funny though because at that visit with my doctor, she did a sonogram and it showed this…
It looks like a peace sign, well an upside down peace sign, and my doctor was joking and saying maybe it was a sign – Haha. I thought there might be something to this “sign” but not in the same way my doctor was thinking.
For 2 years I’ve been praying for a baby and when it didn’t happen I was frustrated, disappointed, angry and every other emotion possible. So since around December I have no longer prayed for God to give us a baby but for God to make me OK with the fact that we won’t have our “own” baby.
I prayed for peace with the situation, that I would find peace in it and know that God was in control. So for me, the “peace” sign meant something else. I took it as a sign that this was God trying to give me peace with the situation and that we would build our family through adoption.
So we went ahead and did the last IUI and I went home, knowing that in a few weeks all the physical discomforts, drugs, etc that go along with infertility treatment would finally be over.
Today I went back to the doctor for a check up and some blood work, and left with another picture…this time it wasn’t a peace sign, it was a whole lot better!
Yep, that’s a baby….that’s our baby, Baby Blundy!! I’M PREGNANT! actually I should say those are our BABIES!!! We’re having twins!!!!!! So I guess that “peace” sign did mean something. Sometime in mid November we will get to introduce to you baby boy or girl Blundell. We are beyond excited and thank God everyday for this miracle, and all of you who have prayed for us and shared in our journey. It’s not over yet, but I can finally see a happy ending in sight.
I was just thinking about how much I love spring and how it births new life! All the flowers and trees start to bloom again after a long hard winter. We started the week with a few of these on our rose bush…
And, by yesterday we had a few of these…
Hopefully we’ll have a great spring before summer really heats things up.
Things are getting interesting at Casa de Blundell. But more about that in a later post 😉 We have had several people come see the house in the last week or two. We’ve had 3 offers so far but they have all been horrible, and I repeat HORRIBLE offers. We had one offer that we actually accepted, but never heard back from them after we accepted it so needless to say, it fell through. That offer led us to put a contract on our house in Forney. Now I just want to sell this house so I can move to the new one and be closer to our families. So if you know anyone that wants a great house in Red Oak, send them my way!
On another note, we got a call this week from the agency saying they had a 15 month old for adoption and were calling to see if we were interested. While a part of me said, “yes, I’ll take him/her”. We ended up telling them we were going to wait because it was a little older than we are looking for and we would like to get moved and settled before we bring a little one in. I just don’t want to have to uproot a child right after they have been uprooted and placed in our home shortly before.
Stay tuned, you never know what will happen next in the lives of the Blundy’s….
Jonathan and I booked our anniversary trip for next month. We decided to go to Seattle, Washington. We started out going to NYC, then it was San Fransisco and we ended up with Seattle. I’m super excited and can’t wait to get a way for a few days. If any of you have been to Seattle, let me know of some fun places to go and see.
Things can change overnight…obviously. We went from leaving work one Monday morning just me and Jonathan and by the time we got home from work we had two extra little ones in the house. How life can change in an instant. Well yesterday life changed again for us, but this time not unexpectedly. We left work yesterday morning with two little boys that were going to daycare and came home last evening just Jonathan and myself. For those of you who are lost…the boys were placed in another home yesterday. There were spots that opened up in a group home with children their age and the foster mom has more experience with that age group/discipline issues. Its what is best for the boys. We will miss them, they are really sweet kids! We are now back to waiting for a new placement. This time we expect to be waiting longer because we are asking for such a younger age (8 months or younger) and only 1, no siblings this time.
Here are some things I learned from being a “mom” to two little toddlers!
* Your time is no longer your time
* You are constantly on the go
* Sleep….what’s that
* Expect 4 to 5 tantrums a day
* Bedtime is my favorite time of day
* Expect to have toys, diapers, clothes, shoes, juice cups and such EVERYWHERE
* Its hard to have your house ready to show for selling purposes all the time with two toddlers
* It’s easier just to eat at home
* Our schedule revolves around nap time…give or take 2 hours
* They will often mimic each others behavior – good or bad – especially when they see it gets an adults attention
* They don’t need a lot to be content
* They can be content with the basics- a blanket and a few toys-until they see someone else has something different.
* The best way to avoid meltdowns/tantrums is to redirect their attention–but sometimes no amount of redirecting will help.
* It’s difficult when you only have 2 people that can watch your kids and they live 45 minutes away.
But we also learned that having two little ones in the house can be fun, enjoyable and exciting. It was nice to see how, even for a short time, we changed their lives and their behavior. Knowing we had an impact in their lives and hopefully that will affect them throughout the rest of their life. We are excited to get a baby and have a whole new set of challenges! We’ll keep you all updated.
For those of you who have the password, you can pretty much disregard this post.
For those of you who don’t, I’m sure your wondering why a password? Monday afternoon we got a call that CPS had two little boys that needed emergency placement. They are ages 1 and 2 and the sweetest kids ever. We told CPS we would take the boys and by Monday night our lives changed dramatically. Because the boys are in foster care, I have made any posts/pictures about them private with a required password due to safety reasons and to protects the kids. I also won’t refer to them with their names unless its in a private post.
We have had the boys for about 4 days and have enjoyed having them in our home. We don’t know how long they will be with us, it could be for a month, 6 months, or it could even be permanently. There have been some meltdowns with the boys but nothing out of the ordinary from a normal toddler. I’m pretty sure they have never been told no before and always got what they wanted. They are only about a year apart and because they are so close in age, they tend to fight over toys a lot. If any of you have little boys and know of a way to keep them from fighting over the toys and then melting down because we told them no or to share, please advise! we are going to have to start using time outs for the oldest one, that’s not going to be fun but it needs to be done, something needs to be done. It does just break my heart though because, not only are these people they hardly know telling them no and putting them in time out but their whole environment has changed, they smells, the food they eat, the people that are around them, how they are responded to, etc.
They do sleep pretty well at night, the last few nights they have slept about 10 hours a night. We actually have to wake them up in the mornings, they won’t like it when we have to start waking them up 2 hours earlier than we are now for daycare. As I type this, the little one just woke up and the oldest is still sleeping. He fought it and fought it for about 30 minutes before finally crashing, he needed a nap. He has been cranky all day and clingy. I sat in the rocker with him just holding him as he fell asleep for about 45 minutes. then once I put him in his bed he woke up and wanted me to hold him again…that’s when he started crying for a a while. I went in to get the youngest when he woke up and the oldest had curled up in the chair with his blanket and fell asleep. I don’t think the oldest feels that well so that’s probably why he’s been cranky today. Like I said earlier, my heart breaks for these kids, when they cry, I have no clue what’s going through their heads…even though they are 1 and 2 yrs old.
It will be interesting when we start them in daycare, to see how they handle it. We are having issues with getting their immunizations, what they have had and what they need and so forth, and we need them to start daycare, so we’ll have to stay home a few days next week before we can put them in daycare.
I’m sure in another week or so I’ll post another update about the boys.
