Hello to all my blog
readers! It has been entirely too long
since I've written anything for this space.
Time (as usual) has been flying and we've been so busy this summer! My last post was all about sleep training
which went really well for the first 3-4 weeks and then unfortunately fell
apart and has not gotten much better. We
fight and struggle A LOT about bed still and it's very frustrating. I feel like I've followed the plan provided
by our consultant and been consistent (my life thrives on routine too) with
everything and we have made very little progress back to where we were. We've done it all; weighted blanket, earlier
bed time, later bed time, bed rails, bath time before bed, a full belly,
diffused oils, white noise, black out blinds, black out curtains, melatonin,
CIO, gentle CIO, no CIO… you name it we have tried it. If anyone has any other tips I'd appreciate it. I've been really focusing on the plan that we
did in the beginning which worked really well—it was basically dinner, bath,
brush teeth, book, bed. However, now
Georgia has also developed a hate for bath time too. SEND HELP!
Since my last post we have
done quite a bit this summer so far! Joe
and I got on the bike and took a ride out of town for Memorial Day. It’s the first time I've been on the bike
since right before I got pregnant with Georgia.
It was a great time and the weather was beautiful! A couple weekends later we celebrated my 33rd
birthday. We have a TON of June
birthday's in the family and we had some out of town family home so we had a
big party at our house and celebrated.
Two of my best friends also added new babies to our list of June
birthdays so I've been soaking up all the newborn snuggles I can as has
Georgia. She loves the babies too. It's been fun to watch her interact with
them.
We also took a trip to the
Dells at the end of June, we celebrated Joe's birthday while we were there and
had a great time with some friends of ours and their kids. We stayed at the Wilderness on the Lake
(we've stayed there twice now) in a 2 bedroom condo which is perfect for
families. It has 2 bedrooms, 2
bathrooms, a kitchenette, a living room, and a lanai with a TV, fireplace, and
hot tub. This is our second time going
with our friends, they have 2 boys and it works out really well. My MIL came both times and stayed over on
Friday night and watched the kids for us so we could do dinner and get some adult
time too.
This year we only saw
fireworks once but it's one of Georgia's new favorite words. She loved them. We've been doing a ton of swimming now that
it's finally warmed up, we seriously did not get warm summer weather until July
and it came in HOTTT. We also got
Georgia a wood play set back in the spring and Joe got that put together for
her and she's been loving it. We are
also working on our back patio, it's been a very slow work in progress, in part
due to the terrible weather we had for most of the beginning of summer, I
cannot wait til it's done. It's going to
be perfect for drinking a glass of wine on while watching G play.
Speaking of G, she has been
growing like a weed. She is about 34lbs
and lost most of her baby fat and is now a skinnier toddler. We recently switched her car seat to forward facing! She talks CONSTANTLY, like the girl never
shuts up. She knows sooo many words and
it's truly amazing to listen to her. She
will go on and on with some words she knows and some you have no idea what the
hell she's saying but it's so fun to listen to her. Her favorites are "ice cream truck",
"garbage truck", "bike", "swimming",
"quacky", "baby shark", "ice cream cone",
"ketchup", "water tower" (don’t ask lol), oh and
"mommy" of course. We had to
take her for her first blood draw last week for a lead screening she was
supposed to have done when she was between 12-18 mos. (doctors office dropped
the ball) and it was pretty horrific since the phlebotomist accidentally pulled
the butterfly out of Georgia's arm before she was done drawing for both
vials. She had to restick her in the
other arm and it was awful. A couple
days later Georgia got bit in the face by a dog. She stepped on the dogs tail accidentally and
the dog nipped her and cut her cheek and bridge of her nose. They are both fine. It was a dog that we love and trust and the
dog felt terrible and was scared after it happened. Georgia was fine and over it in about 5
minutes but it was a stressful week that is for sure!
Our drywall business has been
doing well. It's been stressful at times
but overall we are figuring things out as we go. I had a post drafted about our decision to
start the business but I never hit publish on it. If you didn't know, last year right after our
miscarriage in November Joe decided to finally quit his job and start his own
drywall business. He had done drywall
for several years in the past with both his dad and his uncle before getting
into the laborers union where he did field tiling for close to 10 years. He had tossed around the idea for about a
year to start his own business doing drywall and he finally bit the bullet and
went for it. Owning a business is a ton
of work and a ton of commitment and money, but overall it gives him some
freedoms he hasn't had in a long time and it's going well so far!
As far as expanding our
family, we are still on hold for that at this point. It's been on my heart a lot lately but there
are two new babies in our tribe that have probably just put me in my feelings
about another baby for us. I really want
to have the ERA done but my clinic in Georgia doesn't do them. I've been talking a lot with an RE that I connected
with on Instagram who is located in Chicago and she says that based on my
history I'm the perfect candidate for the procedure. The ERA is endometrial receptivity assay and
you basically go through a mock cycle and they do a biopsy of your endometrium
to determine if you're getting the right amount of progesterone at the right
time for implantation to occur. The cost
is about $2000. We have 3 frozen embryos
left in Georgia. I've even looked into
possibly relocating them back to Chicago which would cost about $750 to get
them moved but we would have less travel costs for future transfers. The hardest part of all of that is that we
wouldn't get to see our donor nearly as often.
Having our embryos in Georgia allows us all time to get together and
visit with each other and allows Georgia an opportunity to be with her genetic
siblings and family. I’m not quite ready
to make any decisions about it yet, I still want to get through the summer and
through a few other big financial things (property taxes) before we make any
decisions.
Taking a break from treatments has been hard but necessary. Honestly I thought by now we'd definitely have another transfer under our belts. Hell, I thought I'd have another baby in my arms too but that just isn't the case. The thought of the finances alone frustrates me so much, I am so bitter about losing our infertility treatment insurance coverage last year. But when I think about how much fun we have had this summer and how challenging some of the days have been with Georgia I know we made the right decision in waiting. She is such a free-spirited, free-thinking, independent little person. Her emotions are BIG right now and she is extremely defiant. She marches to the beat of her own drum and in the long run I know this quality will be really important to who she becomes in the future but right now it is exhausting and frustrating some days. Constant no's from her, sass, not listening, and fighting me on so many things. I've got a wild child that's all I can say.
I hope everyone who reads this
is doing well. I have to continue to turn off commenting because I get an influx of spam comments and I don't know how to stop them. If you have any ideas or have a comment or question for me please feel free to email me at babyridleybump@gmail.com
