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So this month we start trying! We don’t really know if it’s going to happen or when. But we’re determined to go into it  having fun and with no expectations.

In the meantime of course my planner brain is working.
I am thinking about all the things I’d like to get done before the first possibility of being pregnant:

• cut my hair
• go to a dentist to make sure all my teeth survived the wisdom teeth extraction just fine :)
• finish some home projects
• CLEAN the house {I’d like to have a clean house in case I get a debilitating morning sickness}
• buy and install a kick ass reverse osmosis water filter
• clean up the garden and explain to the hubby how to take care of it {can’t do garden work due to risk of toxoplasmosis} DONE!
• paint the hallways {yeah like that’s going to happen}

And that’s just the stuff I’d like to do before we get pregnant. Let’s just say that if we don’t get knocked up the first month, I won’t be TOO upset, because it’ll give me one more month to get that stuff done.

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We’re both super busy with work. It’s a great feeling- I love working and being busy.

For a while there, I liked the idea of being a stay at home mom- no work or money worries, just cooking, cleaning, blogging, picture taking and taking care of the baby. And for some people it might work, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that I really need to work to feel fulfilled.

So we had a few discussions about what it’s going to be like when we have an infant, how we’re going to deal with it. Hubby might like the old-timey idea of being a bread winner and having his wife “barefoot-and-pregnant”, but even he realizes that everything would fall apart at work without me. I’m the client relationship manager and the marketer and the processor and the paper pusher, among other things. And those are the things you just can’t teach. You either hate it or love it, have it or not. I do, he doesn’t.

He does other things fabulously though, but we both know that as soon as I am gone, those things will go by way side and while the processing and administrative stuff can be neglected for a while without huge consequences, the marketing and the client relationships are something that needs to be done daily for as long as you need your business running, or soon it’ll slow down to a turtle walk.

He can’t be a stay at home dad for those reasons as well, besides the fact that I’d never in a million years trade time with my baby for career. We’re lucky we have options!

We sort of decided that we will BOTH be stay-at-home parents ( since we mostly work from home). We will make sure that we are home 100% of the time, except for client meetings and showings and we share the duties equally. Since our fully equipped home office is right next to the room that will be a nursery, we will attend to our newborn, based on turns and/or whoever is available at the moment. Tentatively, we decided Andrew will have the diaper duty and I will be doing breastfeeding in the very beginning, since newborns tend to pee/poop and eat at the same rate. And evenings and weekends will be spent as a family.

Right now our cooking/cleaning has pretty much the same agreement. We do it all together, unless one person is less busy than another. But we really end up waiting for the other person to free up so that we could go make lunch/dinner together. Hubby is more active in the morning, making breakfasts, I’m usually the dinner person. So we’ll see how it works with the baby.
Plus I am really hoping my mom, who’s recently retired, will be here for the first 3+ months. She’s a HUGE help! I love having her around, she doesn’t mind helping with cooking and cleaning and is a super loving person. I’d trust her 100% with our baby not just from the safety standpoint but knowing that she would give him/her all the attention and love a new baby needs, because she was a terrific mom to us and grandma to my niece and nephew.

One thing I will mind losing when I get pregnant though – my friends and our weekend boat and beach outings. I had to bite my tongue when they were making plans for May, because there is possibility I won’t be able to go again until I have the baby if I get pregnant in May. It is definitely going to be hard to resist the temptation to go see people, especially with how they just don’t get why on earth I’d limit human contact during the pregnancy ( lowered immune system during pregnancy+germs+toxins=not a risk I care to take ).

J. (pictured below) even volunteered to be our baby’s Naples grandpa, so it’ll be extra hard to say no to him when he wants us to come by.
(both our families are far away, but we already lined up our 1 st set of stand-in grandparents and working on second starting with J.)

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This one I am asking for a friend of mine! I hope there’re girls out there who have had some kind of experience with this.

BREECH BABIES

Does anyone have stories of breech babies before delivery that either got flipped over manually or on their own or didn’t change their position?

Basically, any experience in that matter than you had or know of?

My neighbor’s kid is breech and she’s doing everything she can imagine to get her to flip over. She’s stressing over it quite a bit, just like we all would, so I’d love to get some positive experiences as well real ones too.

Thanks, guys! Your answers are always the best!

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I had an amazing amount of response on the last pregnancy question. I really appreciate all of your answers. I loved reading all the details. It’s amazing how much more helpful just hearing other experiences is than reading books ( though I will continue going through my 20 pregnancy books stacked on my bedside table ). Thank you all so much.
I hope you’ll get to share your opinion and experience on this week’s question.

DID YOU WAIT THE THREE MONTHS TO TELL THE WORLD ABOUT YOUR PREGNANCY?
WHAT WERE YOUR REASONS? OR WHY NOT?

Since the miscarriage risk is pretty high in the first trimester, I find a lot of women waiting it out until they tell people they are pregnant.
I’m not superstitious, I am not worried about jinxing or anything other silly stuff. I think the motivation for most women to wait is so that they didn’t have to deal with questions if anything goes wrong.I am not a secretive person at all. When it comes to my life, there’s pretty much nothing that I keep to myself. I like sharing, and I really hate the feeling of keeping something from people unless there’s a really good reason.

My instinct is that I should not wait to tell for a few reasons:
1. This is a pregnancy blog, therefore it’d seem silly to wait out three months before writing anything
2. All my friends and family know we’re going to be TTCing, because they’ve been asking about when we’ll have babies for 8 years now
3. I seem to be mentally prepared for a good posibility of a miscarriage, so if it does happen, I’d rather have the support (i think?)
4. I don’t think I can keep something like that to ourselves.
5. I want to be able to “acknowledge” the baby right away, and that’d be harder if I am keeping it a secret.

So I’d love to hear what you think, what your experience have been, what decision you made and why and how did you feel afterwards. Basically, any words of wisdom would be appreciated.
Who knows maybe you say something that I didn’t even think of and would totally make up my mind.

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So like I said previously, I’d like to start a weekly question regarding pregnancy and parenting.

As I go into this journey, I am reading a ton of books, but what books can only tell us is the medical facts, but what i want to hear is the experience of normal people all around me, mothers who went through this.
Each week I will post a question that I have been wondering about.

This weeks question is:

How long did it take you to conceive?

Write as much or as little about this as you’d like. I would really appreciate if EVERYONE could answer even if it’s a short answer or an approximation.

I know statistically it takes a healthy couple on average 6 months to conceive, with some couples taking a year, but what I’d really like to know is your experience. We’ll be starting in May and I am setting my hopes as low as I possibly can so that my perfectionist self wouldn’t get frustrated. I know my ovulation well ( iphone charting), my husband’s sperm count is perfect , but we will be doing Shettles method to try for a girl. We know it’s not a sure fire way, but the method seems logical and we just re9ally want to do anything that will increase our chances of making a baby girl. :)

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This week I was trying to examine why on earth I am having doubts about having kids.
I mean we had already discussed it all and decided that the time is now and that we’re ready emotionally ( while we really weren’t ready before… at all) and that we want kids.

Then why all of a sudden I am having doubts and fears?

Well, fears are understandable…
Unless you turn off your thinking cap, I don’t think anyone who’s never had kids can safely say “Hell yeah it’s gonna be easy and I’m looking forward to it”. That’s not a realistic expectation. And some women find out that the hard way. The most important thing of this whole journey for me has been preparedness: mental, emotional, financial, physical.

If you think about it, those who just decide they want kids, toss birth control and get pregnant are doing it the right way from the stand point of not over thinking it ( though I am sure they could improve from the preparedness stand point). Not too much time to think, analyze, decide if they REALLY want it, or if it’s just a whim and they don’t realize how hard it can be. Because once you’re pregnant, there’s no way back. You love the child growing inside of you more than anything.

So what I’m concerned with are the doubts.
I’ve always been a kid lover, like insane lover. I enjoy being with kids, I prefer a kid’s company to an adult. I’ve always known I will be having kids, but the time had to be right. I never had a NEED to have kids though. Like, you know, where i just HAVE TO have a baby right now. It was more of a logical thing: I want to have children, I want to give them all I have, I want to do attachment parenting, love them to death, teach them all I have to teach. Not having kids was never an option. Everyone knows kid-less couples are miserable. Or are they?

Recently I read an article talking about how it turns out that based on multiple different studies, people without kids are HAPPIER than people with kids. And that parents really have a lot of unhappiness they don’t like display ( for obvious reasons) and that the “reward of parenting” isn’t a reward at all, like most like to believe.

That sort of took me back! I always thought that for my happiness I need to have kids, and now they’re telling me that I will be more miserable when I have them. I mean I love my life, the way it is now, what I do, my hobbies, my family. Why would I want to change that, ruin that?

So all that got mixed in my head into this mush of thoughts and feelings and doubts… and I keep thinking and discussing it with hubby. I am a super analytical person, very logical and straight forward. I am sure that can be seen in my approach to pregnancy and parenthood. If you have read my blog from the beginning, you know the amount of preparation I’ve gone through to make sure everything is as perfect as it can be, before we start TTCing.
So it’s completely normal for me to logically analyze whether life with a baby is better than life without. I have my doubts, concerns and fears, but at the same time I try to keep it in my head that they say that it changes so much when you get pregnant, have a baby. That’s it’s no longer a decision, it just is….

And i think I believe that, because when I think …like really think and imagine having a kid that I love more than anything, and being pregnant, I can see that glimmer of all-consuming love and happiness.

So I guess it’s natural to be a little bit scared. I mean, anyone going into their first pregnancy without any kind of fear is a fool, because they must not realize the importance and grandeur of creating a life. It’s natural to worry about lifestyles changing, never having time, financial matters. I always see mothers with 2-3 kids and they look exhausted, they smile at you and pretend they’re ok, but I see how fed up their are with diapers and bottles and constant 24/7 attention. So I want to be prepared for that, I want to know what I’m signing up for. I want to do this because I’ve debated the positives and negatives and decided that former outweigh the latter. I want to go into this knowing with certainty that I am ready and I will take it whether it’s good or bad. Because if I know now with my logical mind, then when I’m finally pregnant, then there’ll be no doubts whatsoever.

See, what I figured out is that my feelings are being muddied up by the wait. We thought we were going to start TTCing in November, so we started preparing in August, but things took a lot longer than we thought, specifically my maternity coverage and my wisdom teeth, so in November, we counted out three months and were going to start by Feb ( surely the insurance would come through by then). And now, it’s March, finally the insurance is through ( supposedly), and now we have to wait the 30 day waiting period, plus skipping April, puts us at May, which is about 30 days away ( wow, actually sooner than I thought). I have ALL this time to think and to doubt it all… But then I force myself to imagine that the insurance is a go, and we can start trying tomorrow, and I have this awesome excitement inside of me…cautious and scared excitement, but an excitement nevertheless. Like, OMG, we’re really doing it and how cool is it!!!!

So there we have it , friends. It’s the darn wait, since August, that has been freaking me out all along. The wait! Because when you put me right up to it, I am excited!

{oh and also I am reading countless pregnancy books… yes, already, i want to know what to expect and what to prepare for…. and they’re freaking me out with all the complications and such. Just yesterday i finished a chapter on stillbirth. Yikes!}

So now a few days after I’ve written this post, after talking to moms, getting their feedback ( THANK YOU!), i feel more confident about what to expect and that it is truly what I want.
{hubby also helped me out a bit. While he’s not a kid person and doesn’t display crazy excitement like most men don’t, when i was doubting it all, he was there to tell me that it’s what he wants too. Which is always nice}

{the baby in the pictures is my friend’s baby}

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Supposedly it’s going to get fixed.
I’m tlaking about the health insurance bull.
But I am not holding my breath.
With people like that, you never know …until the fat lady sings…or however it goes.
So about Monday I will be calling into Membership and Billing and verifying that my maternity Benefit is in fact starting March 1st…retroactive…
So there, bitches! (not you..the Blue Cross bitches)

In the meantime I am starting to doubt the whole baby thing again… haha. Has anyone experienced that? Those of you who planned pregnancy extensively ( as in before tossing birth control)? I’m like a yo-yo on the subject. I want a baby to play with but I don’t want the hassle… It’s really getting on my nerves.

And is it smart to just go ahead with it “hoping” that I am full of it? But on the other hand, will I ever WANT WANT a baby, with everything that I love doing and all the hobbies and work? I think maybe by 50 :)

So anyways, if anyone has some insight, it’d be highly appreciated.

And just so that we’re clear, this whole subject of “should I? Shouldn’t I?” or “Do i want? Don’t I?” is going to come up more… I am sure I won’t be done here and will need more of your bloggy moral support.

So consider yourseves warned!

On another note, I just took a few super pretty selfies, with trees and sun and light and flares. Can’t wait to post, but right now I am wasting time on the internet waiting for hubby to get out of the shitter and go work out with me. {heh! My hubby will get a kick out of this last sentence! NOT}

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You guys will NOT believe this SHIT!

So I am all pumped about my new health insurance policy with maternity option being issued effective March 1st, so that we can start trying in May (03.01 + 30 days before conception= April, which would put me at due date over New Year’s Eve, so May was the plan)….

I spend hours thinking about receiving policy documents in the mail so that I can review all the benefits and marvel at how good it is ( yeah I am weird that way)…

Today, I wake up early to get in some last minutes studying for my exam, drive to the exam site, take 25 minutes out of the allowed 1 hour 30 minutes to pass it, drive home singing The All American Rejects, and check the mail to see the package from Blue Cross and Blue Shield with my new policy documents…

I skip back to the house, tear the envelope open and dig in….

After about 10 minutes of looking through it, I am starting to get worried because I do not see the MATERNITY benefit ANYWHERE on there. I start to panic. I call BCBS membership services, who cheerfully inform me that I am IN FACT CORRECT and there IS NOT a maternity benefit on the policy.

I AM FURIOUS!!!!!! I am so angry the words can’t describe it!

I spent 6(!!!) MONTHS , literally 6 months working on this policy, following up, making corrections, dealing with my somewhat incompetent agent, signing, mailing, faxing, etc.

And now I am informed that it’s not freaking there!

I’ve spent the last 5 hours of what should have been a good day on the phone with BCBS trying to figure this out.
I get different answers from different people within different departments.

I am too tired at this point to be able to recap what I am being told by all these people and I doubt you’d care.

Tomorrow a supervisor is supposed to look into it even further, but for now I am bummed. Majorly Utterly Bummed.

I am tired of pushing this whole baby making business month by month…not because I can’t wait to have babies. To be honest  I just simply want to get it over with. Get pregnant and THEN deal with whether I think babies is a good idea. Because if I am forced to think about it too much longer, I might decide against it :) LOL {ok, for those really dumb ones on thebump.com- THAT WAS SARCASM)

And I simply don’t believe in unplanned pregnancies.  Turning off your brain and logic and just getting pregnant is not my cup of tea. There’s too many things that can be done better if they’re planned properly when it comes to pregnancy and babies. To simply ignore that is silly.

To read more about my extensive preparation for pregnancy, click here

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Do you guys LOVE getting mail?
Like going to the box and finding something there that is not junk?

Well, today I finally got an official acknowledgement from Blue Cross and Blue Shield that my new health insurance policy ( with maternity option) is going to start on March 1st!

That means that with my wisdom teeth gone and the insurance in force starting March 1, there is nothing holding us back from ditching birth control ( YIKES!) and doin’  THE NASTY!!!!

Well, except the 30 days waiting period before conception after the coverage starts ( but do we have to concentrate on that?). So the actual date WILL be April 1st like originally expected. But now it’s confirmed!

My thoughts on all this:

1. OMG Am I ready? I’m not ready! I don’t think I am ready! Shiiiiiit!!!!!  *breathe…*

2. Am I sure there isn’t something else I haven’t taken care of that I should prior to TTCing? (Vaccines-check! Pre-conception tests, blood work and physical- check! Can his boys swim?-YES! Dental work- check! A year of prenatals- check! Perfect eating habits- Check! Good fitness level- check! Maternity Coverage- (YAY!) MASSIVE CHECK! Ovulation schedule- Check! 3 pre-conception books and 5 pregnancy books read- CHECK! WOW I think I HAVE done it all! You can read about it here)

3.Do i want this? Is it time?  Am I sure? Shiiiiit!!! *breathe….*

4.  If we conceive in April (I know, long shot) according to my ovulation calendar, my due date would be around New Year’s. Not a good thing! Should we postpone it 1 month?

5. Man, we’ll get to have so much sex!!!!! I always want more sex than hubby. But I am not normal. I want to make this thing fun and not stress out about babies since all the planning is done and now it’s all about luck!

6.What am I thinking? I am not even recovered from my teeth surgery. Ay! It hurts…. :(

7.I still can’t believe that all the items on my Pre-conception to do list are done. It took a year of passive planning and 6 months of active planning to get fully ready for this, with the worst things being dental work and switching the health plan to the one with maternity coverage ( did I tell you BCBS health insurance sales people are morons and I had to literally research everything on my own and get answers from managers of managers? It was like pulling teeth)

And maybe soon, closer to the actuall start of TTCing I’ll tell you what we’re going to do to try and maximize our chances of having a girl.

Are you excited for us or what?

{self-portrait}

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So my final step in preparation for pregnancy has been completed.
Or will be when I stop looking like a chipmunk.
I’m still waiting on the maternity coverage to get issued, but it’s supposed to start March 1st as far as I know.

The thing that weighed heavily on me was the whole wisdom teeth ordeal. I knew I had to get them out before pregnancy, since they’re all impacted. The price was an issue. $2800 just to pull 4 of my teeth. Yikes!
I had finally found a dentist that accepts both my dental plans, so my out-of-pocket so far has been $585, which isn’t miserable.
The problem was I really didn’t like him that much. He was weird and treated me like I was ten, asking questions that you’d only ask a little kid to keep him entertained. He had no bedside manner ( is there such a thing as bedside manner when it comes to dentists?) and was just downright strange.
It’s like he didn’t listen to a word I was saying and was moving soooo slow, and  kept repeating:
-”We’ll get to that!” 
- “No! Answer my damn questions!”

So after the first visit I was seriously debating scrapping this whole wisdom tooth idea and if they get infected during pregnancy, then so be it. The alternative was to pay $2800, or to get them  out with this weirdo!
Later as I discussed it with my husband who had been present at the initial appointment, we had come to a conclusion that the doctor HAD to be Asperger’s. He was just not normal in the way he talked, was so focused on this one thing he knew and just didn’t make any sense or listen to us. Now, people with Asperger’s tend to be really good at the one thing that they do, so I figured the fact that he’s a weirdo doesn’t mean he isn’t a good oral surgeon. So after a few hours googling him and talking to his receptionist, I decided that what the hell, the guy had been in business for 21 years, and all he does is pull teeth!
Oh by the way, another thing that irked me about his office is {brace yourself}
THEY DON’T DO EMAIL! or anything digital for that matter!
They still do Xrays in FILM! I volunteered to email them my panoramic X-rays from the previous dentist, so that I wasn’t charged an additional $150. AGAIN!
And I couldn’t because they have no access to email or anywhere they can download it from. He was blown away that i showed him my panoramic Xrays on my iphone and could zoom in :)

That just blows my mind! I love technology and to think that some businesses don’t email…I’m sorry that’s just absurd.

Anyways, I’m getting sidetracked…

I decided that I really needed the damn teeth out, because otherwise I’m sure they’d drive me crazy in the future, especially when pregnant. I sucked it up and went for my scheduled appointment yesterday.

It wasn’t THAT bad. Or I just have sedative induced amnesia. It kind of felt like getting a root canal done or something similar. A few times he had to REALLY pull and that sucked, but I was kind of loopy so it didn’t bother me that much.
The first day the pain was manageable. I took half the Vicodin pill they gave me before bed, since it was starting to really hurt and I woke up towards the morning to go to the bathroom and suddenly felt really nauseous and  collapsed.
I felt like a huge wave of heat hit me and sucked ALL the energy from me and then I had broken in sweat and “fell” on the floor. Hubby was there by then, since he heard me almost throw up ( sorry for the details), and covered me with the blanket as I lay on the floor. I’m telling you I have never felt anything like this in my life. The absolute lack of strength and energy that made it impossible to stand…it was crazy.
Hubby told me that my blood pressure must have suddenly dropped because of the sedative and the Vicodin combined with the fact that I hadn’t eaten or drank a thing since 10 pm the night before my surgery.
That made me want not to take any more Vicodin even more, and I don’t like strong pain killers to begin with.

I’ve been on 800 mg of Ibuprofen every six hours since then and have felt quite a great deal of pain, but honestly I’d rather suffer than take Vicodin again.

So for those, who have not gotten their wisdom teeth out yet, it’s not as scary as it seems. The whole process is pretty painless, it’s the recovery afterwards that can be a bitch, but still manageable.
I had all 4 teeth out at the same time, so all four surfaces of my mouth hurt. I am running a low grade fever and look like a total chipmunk, but my doctor said it’s completely normal.
I have no numbness or any other complications that we are always warned about.

All things considered I am happy I got it done and the dentist turned out to be pretty good and responsive despite his lack of social skills.

Picture below: me looking like a chipmunk {photoshopped, but that’s pretty much what I look like right now}