Quick Takes (5)

It's still Friday my time, so I'm not too late to get this in!

1. AF is still no where in sight.  I'm starting to wonder....it's CD 39 and my cycles are usually 33-34 days, so this is definitely out of the norm.  I do take progesterone CD 21-30, and I think I did ovulate later than normal, so I'm only P+15 or 16, but I've had VL B for 6 days.  Definitely strange.  No telling what this means and definitely no CD 3 bloodwork before my next Napro appt.

2.Back here I talked about how I'm enrolled in the National Children's Study.  I had another interview yesterday for the study and will have a few more, but then basically I need to get and stay pregnant in order to proceed further. Oh the irony.

3. I'm 5 weeks info my forced diet (because of food intolerances) and am down 6 pounds!  I used to love to eat food and it brought so much pleasure- eating out with dh, trying new foods, etc..  Now I just eat because I have to, which isn't a bad thing, but I've definitely lost a lot of joy for food.  I guess that just gives me more energy to find joy elsewhere, right?

4. I'm becoming a "class" addict lately.  I signed up for a coupon class next week, a sewing class in September to make a baby quilt, and am going to my 3rd of 4 photo classes tomorrow.  I guess I love learning! My dh is even taking the photo classes with me, which is so sweet because he's not interested in photography at all, but is actually enjoying the learning I think.

5. After finishing Redeeming Love, I ordered another Francine Rivers book- A Lineage of Grace.  Not sure if I'm going to take it on our Russia trip or not, but am excited to read something else by her!

6. Dh had the day off today so we went to our favorite outlet mall a few hours away.  It was a beautiful day out and we had such a scenic drive through the mountains.  And the best part is we were able to buy quite a few items we needed for our trip!

7. Finally, we have a snake problem in our yard again.  Last year, dh killed over 20 grass snakes in our yard.  It was the first year we had that many.  We've had such a wet spring, I was hoping they would have all drowned, but low and behold...they are back.  I absolutely hate snakes!  I can deal with bugs and spiders just fine.  I was even ok with giant rats when I lived in Asia.  But snakes?  I cannot tolerate them at all.  There's a reason why Satan was depicted as a serpent in Genesis...I'm just saying. 

I'll spare you the closer up photo, but here's what one looked like.  They're not all that tiny, in my opinion, and I can't even go in our grass anymore. 

Last year we found them in our garage, and I accidentally touched 2 dead ones when we were cleaning the garage.  This year I nearly touched one as I was setting pots down in the grass and that was it.  I can't go in our grass anymore. I'm a prisoner in our own home.  What do I do?

Redeeming Love

This past weekend was a hard one.  It was really hard, and it probably didn't help that I was waiting for CD 1 to arrive, which meant my emotions and hormones were hyper sensitive.  I'm still waiting for CD 1, but lest you get your hopes up, I did take a HPT to try and bring AF on.  It hasn't worked even though I've been spotting B for 4 days now, and I'm fairly certain my body is just being difficult because I'm waiting for CD 3 bloodwork, and at this rate, I won't be able to complete the bloodwork and get the results before my next Napro appt.  Of course.  That's how it often seems to work.

Anyways, I'll post about Father's Day soon, but in the meantime, I had a surprising break as I devoured a 480 page novel the past 2 days!  I haven't read that big of a book in a long, long time, and it was so refreshing.  The book was called "Redeeming Love" by Francine Rivers.  Have any of you read it?  It was such a soothing read to my soul.  Even though it's a novel, it's based off of the story of Hosea, who God instructed to marry a prostitute.  Hosea remained faithful to his wife, even though she repeatedly left him and he always took her back.  If you aren't familiar with the story, check out Hosea 1-3 in the Bible.  It's such a great picture of God's love for the Israelites and His love for us.

And then once you've read the Biblical account, pick up "Redeeming Love" because it brings the story to life.  Keep in mind that it does deal with prostitution and gives itself a PG-13 book rating, but it does it in a way that is not graphic.

I have such a greater appreciation and understanding of God's unfailing love for me as a result of reading the book.  And I realize how much I've let IF get in the way of the many good things I do have in my life.  I focus on the one big struggle and fail to acknowledge all that is good in my life.

The book had me crying over so many things because of all the personal connections I could draw to the story- my broken relationship with my mother, the many times I have turned away from God or failed to love or acknowledge Him, the ways in which I've failed or hurt my husband, the emotional baggage I carry from IF, etc.  But it was such a good recognition because God (and my husband) continue to love me despite the brokenness.

If you've ever questioned God's love for you or struggled with baggage from your past, read this book!  You'll understand how I could finish it so quickly.

Quick Takes (4)

Today is Friday- yippee!  Here are my quick takes:

1. I'm done teaching summer classes! It's been a great round of classes, but I am so tired.  The students have to continue for a 2nd round of classes in order to finish out their term, but I'll officially be on summer vacation once I finish final grades.

2. Given the intensive nature of summer courses, I had pretty good students in both of the classes I taught.  They were quite a diverse group as well.  Here's the combined country count of where my students were from: Libya, Somalia, Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Morocco, and Jordan.  That's 13 different countries and I only had 24 students between the 2 classes.  I love my job!

3. Even though my official work is winding down, I have a ton of other work to do- namely Russia trip related items.  I have a stack of thank you notes to write to people supporting our trip, and I also have to plan the 3 sessions for women that I will be leading at the retreat.  I need to do this soon, so that I can get my handouts translated into Russian. My teaching work doesn't stop:-)

4. Our Russian visas finally arrived this week.  We sent our passports in in April, and were told it would take 15 business days to process.  I lost track of how many business days it's been, but it's way more than 15!

5. Flooding has been a major problem in our town and surrounding area.  A road near our home has been closed for almost 2 months now due to all the water on the road from a nearby river.  It doesn't look like there's an end in sight to the flooding since the mountains still have snow!

6. I'm thinking about going to a coupon class that is coming up.  I love saving money and do ok clipping coupons, but I'm always open to more tips.

7. We have an arts festival in town this week and I can't wait to go check out all the local paintings and photographs.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Saliva Results and DHEAS??

I picked up my camera yesterday!  It's beee-u-ti-ful!  I haven't had a chance to play with it or even assemble it though because work is busy.  3 more days and I'm free!  Yippee!

I have made time, however, to check my online results from recent saliva testing.  Us IF girls and test results, huh?  I ordered a ton of tests through Canary Club and am still waiting to do the blood spot ones (Vitamin D, FSH and LH, thyroid, thyroid antibodies, etc.)  I do have my saliva results back and need your help interpreting them!  I did the saliva on Day 21 for all these tests and I'm pretty sure I hadn't ovulated yet.  Here are my results and reference ranges.

Estradiol-  8.9 pg/ml     range: 1.3-3.3 Premenopausal (Luteal) or 12-100 for follicular    (High)
Progesterone-  42 pg/ml      range: 75-270 Premenopausal (Luteal)     (Low)
Ratio: Pg/E2- 5      range: Optimal: 100-500 when E2 1.3-3.3 pg/ml      (Low)
Testosterone- 39 pg/ml      range: 16-47 (for greater than 30 years old)
DHEAS- 39.9      range: ng/ml 3.9-11.4 (for ages 31-45) (High)
Cortisol Morning- 13.4 ng/ml      range: 3.7-9.5 (High)
Cortisol Noon- 3.8 ng/ml      range: 1.2-3.0 (High)
Cortisol Evening- 0.9 ng/ml      range: 0.6-1.9
Cortisol Night- 0.3 ng/ml      range: 0.4-1.0 (Low)

My diurnal Cortisol was actually not as off as I thought it would be.  Given all my fatigue and foggy thinking and my crashing in the afternoon, I thought it would be way off.  It actually follows the style of the range graph on the chart and is only slight off.   But I'm wondering if that's because I had a wee little bit of caffeine that day?  I had 1/2 cup of green tea after my 1st collection (but that was still 4 hours before my 2nd collection) and 1/2 cup of coffee after my 2nd collection (but 4 1/2 hours before my 3rd collection). 

I'm not surprised about the estrogen since I am estrogen-dominant due to PCOS.  That is evident by all of the white baby stickers on my Napro chart!

The one I'm confused about is the DHEAS.  I thought if the DHEAS was high then the testosterone or Cortisol would be too? I do have PCOS, so is that why it's high?  But I don't have insulin-resistance and am not overweight.  I'm a thin, non-insulin-resistant PCOSer according to my doctor.  I am on 1,000 mg of Metformin each day due to the PCOS and miscarriages.  Shouldn't this help lower the DHEAS?

Update- I just went back and looked at my files and saw I had this test done before in blood form and my DHEAS 3 years ago was 370 ug/dl with a range of 96-512.  It would seem that 370 ug/dl would equal 37 ng/ml, which is close to what the test results were this time with saliva.  My napro dr. wasn't concerned about it at that time, but it was also "in range."  The frustration is that after 3 years of Napro, I still haven't achieved a healthy hormone balance! 

What does this high DHEAS mean?  Anyone have any insight?  Google hasn't been too helpful and I don't meet with my dr. for another 2 weeks.  There's no way I can wait that long for answers:-)  Help me out girls, or at least give me more tests to ask for or questions to email my doctor!

Camera Shopping and My Inheritance

I'm still dying with work.  One more week of summer classes left....I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

On to cameras....I love taking pictures.  I won't say I'm very good at it, but I enjoy capturing memorable moments, scenery and landscapes, wildlife, flowers, etc.  I used to shoot with a film SLR and a telephoto lens, but really stopped doing that 5 (or more) years ago when digital photography became so much more prevalent and when I got tired of having to pay so much to develop a roll of film.

I got a cheap point and shoot digital camera that I still carry with me at all times, so I'm able to capture those random moments that come up, but I've never been overly satisfied with the quality.  At least, the point and shoot hasn't compared to the quality I would get with my film SLR, but I never wanted to jump into the digital SLR range until the quality was really good.  I remember seeing grainy/pixely pictures and just not wanting to pay for that.  The bad part of digital photography for me is I now have years worth of photos archived as digital files, but hardly any of them printed!  I've never taken the time to do much scrapbooking, but I would at least put my photos in an album once I had printed the rolls.

That brings me up to today. Knowing that I have this big trip to Russia planned for next month, I knew I had to have a better camera than just my point and shoot.  Therefore, I've been researching DSLRs for awhile now and had narrowed down my search.  I was pretty set on getting the Nikon D3100.  The ratings were pretty high for this entry-level DSLR and it was in my price range.  I was just watching prices and trying to decide what lens to buy in addition to the kit lens.

Then my grandmother decides that she's going to start giving me and my brothers our inheritance now while she's still alive because she wants to see us spend it, which is a little hard for me to emotionally process.  I guess I don't want to think about her time coming to an end as she is one in my family that I'm very close to (closer than I am with my mother...that's another blog for another time).  On a sidenote- My grandfather died in November and it's been really, really hard on my grandma.  They were married 62 years and she's still living in the house that they called home their entire marriage.  Pretty amazing and such a great example of love and commitment.  She's slowly been doing some cleaning as she realizes her time on earth is coming to an end (she's 88 and plagued with health problems).

Grandma tells me that she's sending me this large check that she and grandpa had set aside for me, and my thought was....this is enough to put a dent in laproscopy or adoption fees!  I didn't tell her that, but that was what I thought.  "Are one or both of those in my future, God?"  My husband and I talked about how to spend the money as we don't really need anything and we have all our debt except our mortgage paid off.  We decided the wisest thing to do was just save the money and make sure we contribute the maximum amount to our Roth IRAs these next few years since we only opened Roths 3 years ago and probably should have more saved for retirement given our ages.  Real exciting, huh?

But I kept thinking about wanting to do something that would remind me of my grandparents and yet still honor their money saving spirit.  And then I started thinking about how they have both supported my traveling and adventuresome spirit through the years.  I was the first one in my family to travel to live in another state, the first to travel to another country, the first to live abroad, etc. and while this drove my parents crazy, every time I would call home or visit, my grandparents would ask to hear stories and see pictures.  Grandpa traveled when he fought in WWII and Grandma never got to travel much outside of the US, but her mother always told her to travel when she was young and she would always tell me the same.

All of this caused me to look at the next step up in cameras and I fell in love with the Nikon D7000. It's a newer camera than the 3100, and is considered a mid-level SLR.  The reviews on it are fabulous and it rates higher than the 3100, but it's been really hard to find due to backorders and low stock from Japan. I went to our little, local camera shop this past week and they had just gotten one in stock that morning!  I looked at it and played around with it and then went home to think about it some more.

I decided to get that camera and spend double what I had originally saved up for, but decided that the step up was in honor of my grandparents. Every time I use that camera, which hopefully will be a lot, I will think of them and it almost makes me cry thinking about it now as I type.  I still miss my grandpa and worry grandma is not too far behind him.  I miss the missed opportunities with never being able to share our children with them.  Will I ever get to share our child with her?  I've lost that chance with grandpa and it still makes me sad. He would have been an excellent great-grandpa.

I had to order the camera body because I wanted to get a different lens then the one in stock, and it's supposed to arrive on Monday.  I might just tear up when I go to pick up the camera. I'm so excited though about the opportunity I have to remember both my grandpa and grandma. And the rest of the inheritance money?  It's going in savings for now and then our Roths...unless God decides to show us otherwise!

My Forced Diet Update

My "forced diet" is what I've been calling my food plan since I started going gluten-, dairy-, egg-, almond-, and sugar-free.  This forced diet was in response to my food sensitivity test results that showed moderate to high levels of intolerances to all those foods. 

I'm 2 weeks into this forced diet and I'm doing ok.  I crave a lot of things that I can't have, but I've not given in to those cravings and have stuck to the plan to eliminate all of those food categories.  I've eaten a lot more fresh fruit and vegetables each day, which is great for my health.  Lentils and beans have become my protein friend along with meat such as chicken, steak, pork, and fish.  Gluten-free breads are ok and coconut milk is a nice treat.  I'm still discovering what I can and can't have as I read labels, but so far so good.

It's hard to say overall if I'm feeling tons better, but I don't have any GI issues- not that I had a ton before, but I have very few now.  I've been working a lot, so I'm tired, but it will be interesting to see how I feel once I'm done working and sleeping a regular 8 hours a night.  I do feel like I have a little more energy and my mood is way improved.  My acne/skin issues have seemed to flare up though, so that's a little strange to me.

And the surprising part- two weeks in and I've already lost 3 pounds! And this is with my regular exercise being down.  I seriously can't believe it.  This is the best weight-loss plan I've ever been on, and I wasn't even trying to lose a whole lot of weight.  The last time I was at this weight was Sept. 2009, when we first got pregnant (coincidence or connected to my lower weight? hmmm...food for thought...ha, ha).  Before that, the last time my weight was this low was high school and that was 15+ years ago.  My body is obviously loving this no processed food thing and I'm loving it too.

And the other good news is that I finally heard back from my dr. regarding my blood work for celiac disease.  Given my high intolerances to wheat, gluten, rye, barley, and spelt, I was nervous that I might also have celiac disease, but I tested negative for the antibodies associated with the disease.  Praise the Lord!  One less health issue on my list.  While I still need to follow a wheat-, rye-, barley- and spelt-free diet for the time being, I'm hopeful that I will slowly be able to add some of them back into my diet in moderation at some point.

So the moral of this story is find out your food intolerances and eliminate them to feel better, or just make up your own elimination diet to lose weight.

June 2nd

I have so many posts swirling around in my head.  I just wish I had time to put them all down here. Work is so busy during the week I hardly have time to get anything else done and then the weekends have been when I do all my catching up with the house and life.  The good news is, however, that after this week I only have 2 weeks left.  Yippee!  I'm so ready for a break.

Despite the busy-ness, I'm popping in with a special post for a special day: June 2nd.  This is a day that will probably forever be etched in my mind for both sad and happy reasons.

The sad- this was a day that initially brought so much hope when we found out we were pregnant for the first time.  The roller coaster of emotions that lead up to that first pregnancy and then the roller coaster of emotions after that pregnancy ended.  I don't think I'll ever forget it.

It's been a year since that due date and I've watched a few people with similar due dates raise their children up and celebrate one-year birthdays now.  It's so strange to think how my life would be different if I had a one-year old.  I don't question God's timing as much with that miscarriage anymore because I see how much I've grown more compassionate and stronger over the past year and over the past year and nine months.  But that doesn't mean I've forgotten. 

One song I love that addresses miscarriage specifically is called "Glory Baby" by Watermark.  If you've lost a child, it's a must listen, but I warn you- it will make you cry.  I love it on so many levels.  Here's just a sample of some of the lyrics:
Heaven will hold you before we do....Heaven will keep you safe until we're home with you.

Let sweet Jesus hold you, until mom and dad can hold you, you'll just have heaven before we do.

Aren't those lyrics perfect?

I also love that the song addresses the emotions....that we miss the child, that we can't wait for the day when we see him/her, that the grief and hurt are there, yet there is hope in the knowledge that God works all things together for our good and He works His purposes.

You can listen to it here.  Have tissues ready.

And the happy- June 2nd is the birthday of our sponsor child.  I wrote more about that here.  We wanted to make something good of the date, so we sponsored a girl with that birthday.  Happy birthday to that special girl from Ethiopia. We pray for her each night, as we would for our own child (if God blesses us with such).

And so today...I look back and remember....and I look forward with hope.....