I started charting my cycles again – I even dropped $1.99 on the oh-so-handy iPeriod app for my phone – and I started taking my temperature every morning. Doing that helped me get pregnant with Catie, so why not try it again?

Side note: I lost my basal body temp thermometer sometime during our last two moves. I searched everywhere and couldn’t find it, so I finally bought a new one at Target. Dave saw the package and misread “basal” as “anal” – he wasn’t wearing his glasses, obviously – and he said, “WOW. That’s ONE way to wake up in the morning!” I laughed, but uh… no. (Can you imagine? If I had to do that in order to get pregnant, I’d probably decide that one kid is PLENTY. Jeez.)

Anyway, since I’m charting, I had a pretty good idea of exactly when I ovulated. And I knew our timing was off. I shrugged it off and thought, oh well, no big deal, at least now I sort of have an idea of how to predict it so maybe we’ll get it right next time.

But then, on Sunday, I woke up with a bad headache and really horrible nausea. I mentioned on Twitter and Facebook that I didn’t feel well and immediately got a bunch of “OMG do you think you’re pregnant???” And I thought, well, if I am, surely it’s way too early for symptoms, but… maybe?

By Sunday night, I noticed that the nausea was at its worst when my stomach was empty. As soon as I ate something, I was ok. Which is pretty much exactly what I felt like when I was first pregnant with Catie. I also noticed that my boobs were sore, which is not a typical PMS symptom for me.

Monday was more of the same: more nausea (which was at its worst when I was hungry) and more sore boobs. And I was really weepy about the strangest things. Normally when I’m PMSing, I get irritable, not sad. Huh.

I bought a pregnancy test and took it as soon as I got home. It was negative. But, I thought, it’s still early and I didn’t use my first morning pee like you’re supposed to, so… I guess it’s still remotely possible? I decided I’d wait a few days before I tested again.

This morning, when I took my temperature, I noticed that it had dropped. I knew that wasn’t a good sign.

I started my period a little while ago. Which, you know… it sucks, but I knew, I knew this was coming, right? I knew two weeks ago that the timing was off. So I don’t quite know why I’m so sad about it. But I am. There you have it.

And? I’m still having nausea issues, which at this point, feels like just rubbing salt in the damn wound. Like, ok stomach, I get the point, you win. I’m so sorry for whatever I ate FOUR DAYS AGO that you’re still upset about. You can ease up now.

On the bright side: this means that I don’t have to lie to anyone at BlogHer next week. Dave’s very superstitious about saying anything during the first trimester, and I respect that, but I didn’t know how that would work when I’m surrounded by a bunch of my friends who all know that we’re trying. It’s easy to hide this kind of stuff online; you only talk about what you choose to talk about. In person, things get more complicated. I imagined it going like this:

Bartender: Drink?
Me: No thanks, just water.
*record scratch, stunned silence*
All 2,000 BlogHer attendees: OMG you are totally pregnant!
Me: *blushing and hiding my face because I am a terrible liar*

So, you know, I don’t have to lie about anything. And I’m free to have as many fruity girly cocktails as my drink tickets allow. I guess that’s good.

Silver linings, people. I’ll take ‘em where I can get ‘em.

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My attitude for the longest time has been, “We’ll have another kid if we’re supposed to have another kid. And if we don’t, then I guess we’re lucky that the one we have is pretty freaking awesome.”

Then something changed. I don’t know exactly what. It could be that I’m barreling down on 35 (“advanced maternal age,” oh no!), or because I realized that Catie will be at least 4 years old by the time we have another baby, or because I suddenly know so. many. people. who are having babies. (Seriously, those are just 3 examples. There’s also at least 2 girls I know from high school who are pregnant right now, and a few other people I know who have had babies in the past 6 months.)

Suddenly, I was hearing about all of these friends of mine being pregnant, and I felt… jealous?

So, for the past couple of months, I’ve been focusing more attention on trying to get pregnant. I’m even considering charting my cycle, since that worked last time. (Funny: I just went looking through my blog archives to see if I could find a post where I talked about charting my cycle, and all I could find was whiny “this isn’t working & I don’t think I’m even ovulating and I’ll never get pregnant, boo hoo!” stuff. Spoiler: I got pregnant the next month.)

And that sort of relates to my recent exercise obsession. See, for those of you who don’t already know this, the last time I was pregnant? Was bad. I got really, really sick during my 3rd trimester, and no one could figure out what was wrong with me. But I lost all of my pregnancy weight while I was still pregnant – which, for the record, is not the ideal weight-loss solution. I mostly lost muscle, not fat. By the time Catie was born, I was so weak that I could barely hold her. It took a long, long time for me to feel “normal” again, energy-wise.

So, this crazy need to work out every day and build my endurance as quickly as possible? A large part of it is because I want to make sure that if/when I get pregnant, I’m starting at a healthier baseline than last time. So if I get sick again, it hopefully won’t have quite such detrimental effects on my health.

We’ll see how it goes. And in the meantime, if any of y’all want to throw out a little “get Cindy knocked up” prayer or thought, I sure wouldn’t mind.

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I don’t have any words. I just want to encourage everyone to head over to Heather and Mike’s blogs to give them some love today. I can’t imagine how hard this day is for them.

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I’ve been thinking for the past few days about what I would write in this post, and I sort of had an idea in my head. Then I woke up this morning and read what your mom and dad wrote for you, and I realized that I’ve got nothing.

So I’ll just say that Maddie, we all miss you, and love you very much. The world is a better place because you were here, even though it wasn’t long enough. Not nearly long enough.

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The thing that upset me? My weight.

I knew I’d have to step on the scale at the doctor’s office. You always do, right? I hate the scale. I avoid the scale at home. I’m almost never happy with whatever the number may be. But I thought I was mentally prepared. I had done a little calculation in my head on the way there – sure, most of my clothes are feeling a little tighter lately, but I can still button my size 12 jeans, so it’s not that bad, right? I had an idea of what the number on the scale would probably be.

Wrong.

I’m not brave enough to type the number here, but let’s just say that I have a mental block around a certain number – a weight that I haven’t been since my gastric bypass surgery. It’s a number that for the past 7 years, I have refused to ever see on the scale again. And now I’m dangerously close to that number. Like, I’m less than 10 pounds away from it. I can smell that number from where I am. And I don’t like it one bit.

And I know – I KNOW! – that it’s just a number and it’s all about how you feel and how your clothes fit and blah-blah-blah, but the thing is? I feel like crap most of the time. I feel comfortable in very few of the clothes that I own. So it’s not good, and I need to do something about it. I started a diet back in January, but I think it was too radical – I cut out ALL refined sugar and white flour, which is insanely hard to stick with when you have a 2 year-old in the house. But I did it faithfully for a month and lost a whopping zero pounds. That’s when I got frustrated and quit.

Since January, I’ve gained about 10 pounds, and I think I know why: I snack too much at night. I have always “grazed” in the evenings, but lately it’s gotten out of control. I would estimate that probably half of my day’s calories are consumed between 8 p.m. and midnight. Pretty much the worst possible time to eat, right? So that’s the biggest change I’m going to work on for now. I’m definitely going to be adding in healthier food choices and snacks during the day (plus drinking more water & less Diet Coke), but I also know that it’s pretty likely that I won’t be able to stay away from the occasional cookie. So for now, the main thing I’m going to do is stop eating at night.

I started last night. After I put Catie to bed, I had a cup of chamomile tea – because hot liquids trick your tummy into feeling full, plus it helped me start to feel sleepy. And you know? I didn’t die. In fact, it was fine.

I also need to work on getting in shape. I couldn’t do the 30-Day Shred because it hurt my knees too much, and I love the Wii Fit, but it’s more for fun & doesn’t feel like it’s giving me a really solid workout. So I’m thinking about trying Cool Running’s Couch-to-5K program. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to jog/run a 5K; I have wonky knees, and I doubt they’ll hold up for something like that. But I can try. The program only takes up 3 days a week, which seems do-able. Throw in one or two yoga/pilates workouts too, and I should be doing fine in no time.

Wish me luck. I’m going to need it.

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The other problem we’re having right now is that she was so distressed by the potty-training process and the sensation of pee running down her legs, that she’s now trying to hold her pee as long as possible. Which I suppose is a good thing, since it means that she’s learning how to go a long time in between trips to the bathroom. But she’s not going to the bathroom, we’ve let her go back to wearing diapers, and it seems like she’s afraid to use them. She holds it until she’s in pain, and again we start up with the screaming and the “Mommy help! Poop!” (It’s not poop, but the pressure in her tummy probably feels like it.) It’s awful because I hate seeing my little girl in pain, and there isn’t really anything I can do about it. She just needs to pee, and she’s scared to. So that sucks.

Seriously, who could stand to see that face go all sad and miserable?

I think that the one good thing about this failed attempt at potty-training is that it’s at least introduced the idea of using the potty into her mind. Catie has never been the type of child to adapt to something new really quickly. She was on the late side of the normal range when it came to crawling, walking, talking, laughing, and a whole bunch of other things. She is not the kid who’s going to jump into the deep end of the pool on her first try, and that’s totally and completely FINE with me. So we’ve let her know that this is something she needs to do; we often talk about all the big kids she knows who use the potty. She even goes through the list of all the neighborhood kids to check on their potty-usage status. (“Kenzie go potty?” “Yes, sweetie, McKenzie uses the potty.” “Jakey go potty?” “Yes, Jacob uses the potty too.” And so on.) It’s definitely on her mind a lot, but now I’m going to back off and give her some time to mull it over and decide when it’s time to try again. She’s a smart kid, she’ll let me know when she’s ready.

Other than that, the visit from my parents has been good. We went to the Life & Science Museum in Durham, which is so much fun. Catie loves the farm animals and the butterfly house, and although she was most excited to ride on the choo-choo train, she got freaked out when we went through the tunnel and all the kids screamed (at the train conductor’s instruction). But she had a lot of fun overall. We really should get a membership there, it’s such a cool place.

Oh, and my sister gets here tonight, so yay! Dave leaves for his trip to Seattle tomorrow morning – and yes, I am completely jealous that he’s going to Seattle without me, but I get to have my whole family here this weekend, so I guess that’s an ok trade-off.

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Last night we used one of those BabyLax things (liquid glycerine suppositories), which did essentially nothing. (She pooped out the liquid, but nothing else.) This morning I had to give her an enema, which is something I hope to never ever do again for the rest of my damn life.

So far, I have no idea if the enema worked, because she screamed so much before and during the process that by the time it was all over, she promptly fell asleep on the couch. Which is where she is now. I guess I’ll find out when she wakes up. I wish she could poop in her sleep, but somehow I doubt it.

Oh, and I have a migraine from the stress of dealing with a thoroughly miserable little girl. Happy times for us. I think my parents are starting to wish they’d stayed in Mississippi. And my dad is so upset from seeing his precious grandbaby in so much pain that he has promised to never say another word about Catie getting potty trained. Direct quote: “If she’s still in diapers when she’s 18, I’m not going to say another word about it.” I’m planning to hold him to that.

I’ve promised her that as soon as she poops, we’re going to take her to the Life & Science Museum, so she can see all the animals and we can ride on the choo-choo train. I fully intend to follow through on that promise too, I just hope she can come through on her side of the bargain.

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