MOM

Hee hee...I bet my mother just got so excited thinking this post was about her. It's not. Instead, it's about the other MOM...Milk of Magnesia.

This stuff is AWESOME. Seriously. I've been stopped up for 4 days now. Not completely stopped up, but enough to make me uncomfortable and really want to have a good poop. I decided to try the MOM and see what happens. It claims to be cramp-free and will have you working in 1/2 to 6 hours. Worth a try, right?

So, I took a dose at 10:30 this morning. Choked it down because, honestly, it's not the tastiest stuff. And then I waited. And waited. And then at 2:30, a miracle happened. I spent the next 20 minutes expelling every last piece of poop left in my body. With no cramps at all! It was like the best diarrhea in the world. (I never thought I would ever write that sentence.) I feel 10 pounds lighter and so relieved. I love you, Phillips Milk of Magnesia. Your bright blue bottle will live in my heart forever.

This is NOT a sponsored post.

CONGRATULATIONS!!

I have a very close friend that just told me she's pregnant. I'm sure she was nervous about telling me because I've told her in the past that I feel like we're in a competition to see who gets pregnant, and then subsequently has a baby, first. I know it's illogical to think that way, but I knew I had to tell her how I felt. I'm not sure she understands what the past few months have been like for me, but I do know that when I told her a few weeks ago that I've turned a page and I'm ready to move on and be happy for her when it does happen, she was relieved.

She told me she and her husband were going to start trying again the day I found out I was miscarrying. Obviously, she didn't tell me that to hurt me. She didn't know about the miscarriage yet and felt awful when I told her. But I always link the two things, her trying again and my miscarriage. Life and Death. She has a child already and has never been unfortunate enough to lose a pregnancy, and I hope she never has. I love her dearly and truly hope the best for her, her husband, and this baby. I was truly elated when she just told me. It feels good to be happy for someone...

And the Winner Is....

Fertile Mertile for her suggestion of calling my blog Ranting Radish!! Congratulations, Girl!!

Sleep Apnea

I have a friend whose husband needed to be outfitted with a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine recently. Apparently his sleep apnea was so bad that it could kill him. Who knew?! The problem was that his insurance wouldn’t cover it so they had to pay for it out of pocket. How can insurance not cover something that can save your life??? So, they raised some money and were able to get him his machine. She’s sleeping better than ever. Oh, and so is her husband.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea is nothing to mess with. If you or the person you sleep with stops breathing in the middle of the night, or snores so terribly that your neighbors are banging on the wall, get them help. Fast! Not only can you die from not breathing (duh!) but it also contributes to problems resulting from lack of sleep such as depression, falling asleep while driving or in the middle of your big presentation at work. The number of undiagnosed people in this country is staggering. You’d think, with all the access to healthcare we have, that we’d be seeing these machines left and right. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

Contact your health practitioner immediately if you have this condition.

This has been a sponsored post.

I look like a junkie

I had some bloodwork done yesterday. I look like a heroin addict.

Contest!!

Since I seem to be getting more and more hits each day, I think it's time to change this blog from a "family and friends" blog, to a more "anonymous" one. Therefore, I'm having a contest to give me a new name for this blog. What do you win? Well...not much. Recognition in big, bold, capital letters, a great big thank you, and the knowledge that YOU were the one who named this blog. That's enough, right? Please put your entries in the comments section. Thank you!!

Woot!

After two nights in a row of very frustrating insomnia, I fell asleep at 8:15 last night and slept until 6:15 this morning. Woo hoo!! It probably helped that Chris was playing tennis so I could go to sleep super early without feeling like a weirdo. Oh, it was so nice!

Taking Charge of Your Fertility

I have to say, this book changed my life. I have never been so in tune with my cycles before. I had no idea about any of this stuff. I thought the Rhythm Method was something Catholics used and it never worked. Which, I guess is true, but the Rhythm Method doesn't take into account any fertility signs. It only says that you ovulate on Day 14 and you should avoid sex during that time. How about women like me who ovulate a week later? I'd have been knocked up sixteen times by now! Maybe more! But TCOYF says that you need to chart your temperatures, and notice your cervical mucus, and even check your cervical position to determine when you ovulate. And it probably won't be on Day 14.

Now, this article states that the author of TCOYF has written a book for teens, explaining to them how their bodies work and how they can avoid pregnancy naturally. Theoretically, great idea. However, I was once a teenager and I can tell you definitively that I did not have the discipline to take my temperature at the same time every morning and pay attention to my fertility signs. Back then, it was still called "discharge" and grossed me out. Not to mention the idea of checking my cervical position would have made me faint. Shove my fingers up what??!! I wouldn't even use an OB tampon because I got too close for comfort.

HOWEVER, this knowledge would have been great to know in my mid- to late-twenties. In my early twenties I was still partying and only responsible enough to take my Pill every night. Even that didn't happen like it should have. But once I met Chris and settled down a little, I would have loved to have this information. It probably wouldn't have made me go off the Pill, but it's great knowledge to have. Thankfully, I read this book in the early days of trying to conceive and have learned a lot about my body in the past six months.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I just don't think teenage girls will do anything with this information. Just like we didn't do anything about dental dams or the sponge or the female condom. It's weird and hinky and not for them. They like the old standbys: The Pill and The Condom. I think it's a useless battle to think otherwise.

3 a.m.

It's 3 a.m. and I'm wide awake. Ugh! If I don't get some sleep tonight, it's going to be one rough day tomorrow. Not fun.

Thank you!

Thank you everyone for your advice. I also got a lot of feedback from the ladies on the message boards I go to. It seems that the bottom line is, I should seek help if I feel I need it. I consider myself pretty in tune with my mental health, and I don't feel that I need to seek help at this time.

Sorry it took so long for the comments to show up. I forgot that I had selected "Moderate Comments" and Blogger doesn't email me to tell me there are pending comments. Whoops!

Do I need help?

Someone brought to my attention today that I may want to seek some psychological help. I don't believe I do, but thought I'd put this out there for the masses.

To all you women out there that have had a miscarriage:

Do I need help because I ask someone to stop asking me if I'm pregnant all the time? Do I need help because it's difficult for me to be around someone with the same due date I had and see their beautiful, big belly? Do I need help because I'm not over it completely yet?

When someone asks me if I'm pregnant, it puts pressure on me to get pregnant quickly so I can make them happy by saying yes. But I can't say yes, because I'm not pregnant yet, and that makes me feel like shit.

I thought what I was feeling/experiencing was normal, but maybe it's not. Comments?

Edited to add: I have deleted a comment or two that I felt were a little too harsh to post on here. I don't want this to be an attack on the person who said that to me. This isn't about that person.

Egads!

Congratulations to Lindsay who just gave birth to a 10 lb baby boy! My vajayjay bows down to your greatness. Best wishes to you and Bruiser!

My midwife doesn't think I'm ovulating and won't do anything about it for another three months.

Awesome.

I took Shana up on her advice and tried a different acupuncture doctor. This one was soooo much better! I talked to him for about 40 minutes, he asked to see my charts to see what my typical cycle looks like, and he looked at my tongue. Yep, my tongue. He looked at it closely and even took pictures of it. Very close up pictures. It was a little awkward, but he said that you can tell a lot from the health of the tongue. Who knew?? Apparently my tongue told him that my ovulation is "not good" and my liver and kidneys need some help. But he did use a lot of medical terminology and seemed to know his stuff. He had lots of pictures of babies and ultrasounds in his office, so that was a good sign.

After we chatted for a while, he took me into a room and had me strip down to my bra and underwear, put on a paper gown, and lay on my back. At this point I was feeling quite a bit of relief to realize he wouldn't be pinching my spine again like the other guy did. I felt the effects of that for three days!

He put needles in my ankles and feet, wrists and arms, one on the top of my head, and two in my right ear. The one on my head was a little uncomfortable. Not painful, but I was aware that it was there the whole time. None of the other ones hurt at all. I barely felt them even go in.

He left me in there for about 15 minutes. When he came back in I told him I was very aware of the one on my head and he adjusted it a little and that helped a bit. He flicked the rest of them, which was a strange feeling, and then left me alone again for another 20 minutes. This time I found myself dozing off and I kept waking myself up by either twitching or snoring. Snoring, because I'm still a little congested. Twitching because every time I moved, the paper sheet under me made lots of noise and it would wake me up. I had a nice nap, though.

When he came back in, he removed the needles (totally painless) and I got dressed and met him back in his office. He gave me a bottle of some herbs that are supposed to help my kidney and liver function more efficiently. I won't be taking them until I talk to my doctor and make sure they won't kill me. (Mom, please don't send me any links or websites or any other information you may find on this product. I can do it myself.)

Dr. Zhang has different treatments depending on where I am in my cycle. I like that. For instance, in the beginning he'll give a treatment to help relieve cramps and make sure everything gets expelled properly. Then he'll do a treatment as I'm gearing up to ovulate. Then one after ovulation to help the fertilized (hopefully) egg make its way to my uterus safely.

I'm really glad I went to this new guy. I have high hopes for him. :-)

PayPerPost News

I’ve just joined this company called PayPerPost. Basically, they pay you to blog about the things you love, and I love a lot of stuff. Plus, they can help you increase site traffic. Well, they just announced that they will be having a BIG announcement in the next few weeks. I wonder what it will be??? I’m hoping it’s more exposure so more companies join and I can blog about more things that I enjoy using. Maybe it’s a new CEO that they stole from some huge firm? Or a celebrity spokesperson?

A celebrity spokesperson would be cool. I hear Michael Jackson’s looking for work these days. They could have a commercial where he comes out singing I’m Bad and then segues into, “You know what’s NOT bad? Blogging about things you love and getting paid to do it! Join PayPerPost today” and then fade on a crotch-grab, wind blowing shot. Make it all old school. That would rock.

Hmm…I just read over that and I would never make it in the ad business. That’s a terrible idea…

How about my favorite blogger, Stephanie Klein? She’s beautiful and witty. She could do the talk show circuit and talk about PayPerBlog (even though I don’t think she’s a member). Although, she’s got two babies at home so that may not work either.

Who do you think would be a good spokesperson?

Acne Update

Well, I have no new acne showing up, which is a good thing. The Finacea seems to be giving me a chemical peel every night. Last night I used it and accidentally got some where my nose is rubbed raw. OMG, it hurt so bad! I had to rinse my whole face off. I thought I was being careful but I guess not careful enough. I think, as a whole, my face is getting better.

Chris is working today so I get the whole day to myself. I'll probably stay in my pj's all day long. That would be awesome. I'm feeling a little better today but had the same problem last night as the night before, except this time it was having to fit my thoughts and breaths into puzzle pieces. It was awful. I won't take the Sudafed tonight and see if it helps the situation. When I was trying to fall asleep, I was falling asleep fine but kept waking myself up with a snore because my nose is so clogged. Chris kept laughing every time but it was so frustrating because I was so tired. Maybe I'll go take a nap...

This is a sponsored post

Anyone who knows me knows that I love a good bargain. I'm a coupon clipper extraordinaire. I even use them at work! For instance, I go to Coupon Chief and search for Office Depot and it brings me to this page. From there, I have access to coupon codes that Office Depot doesn't necessarily advertise. I save my company hundreds of dollars a year by doing this. It's awesome!

Not only do I use it for Office Depot, but they have THOUSANDS of stores like Target, GAP, and Zappos. It's a frugal girl's dream! I'm pretty tempted to use their 25% off coupon for Weight Watchers to get some of this weight off of me. Then I can use all the other codes it has available to buy new clothes for spring!

This is a paid post.

I've had this head cold that started off pretty slowly in the beginning of the week and has turned into a snotty mess. My nose is chapped. Like, I need to put A&D on it so it doesn't hurt when I speak. So lovely.

Last night I finally succumbed to it and took a Sudafed. An hour or so later, I could breathe but five hours later, I was in a delirious state of mind. I closed my eyes at around 10:30 and by 1:00 when I finally looked at my watch, I felt like I hadn't slept yet. I was stuck in a neverending cycle of the same dream, but it wasn't really a dream. I don't know how to explain it but it was like each thought I had needed to be broken down to the molecular level and it got so frustrating because I kept having more thoughts and would get behind in my disection of them. So then I'd "wake up" and sit up and try to get out of the dream but I'd get right back in it when I laid back down. Finally I got up to use the bathroom at 1:00 and when I laid back down, it was only partially the dream. This time, my breathing was coordinated with thoughts. Like, I'd only be able to use one word with each breath. But I finally was able to sort of fall asleep. I never really reached a deep sleep at all last night. It sucked.

So today I'm sort of in a haze and just exhausted and my nose is running and snotty and my skin hurts from blowing my nose and my lips are all dry from breathing out of my mouth and I'm a mess.

That is all.

Acupuncture

Today, I tried acupuncture for the first time. It was definitely weird. But my friend had heard that there's a high success rate of women with fertility issues having successful pregnancies with accupuncture. Can't hurt, right?

We started off chatting about my health and my pregnancy and miscarriage history. I showed him my charts and he was very impressed that I keep such good records. He noticed that I seem to have longer cycles and asked what they were like before my m/c. Unfortunately, I have no idea. I was only off the pill for two months before I got pregnant. Before that I was on the pill for 15 years. I don't remember what my period was like when I was 15. I just know it was awful. Cramping, sweating, diarrhea, all the good stuff. At the time, I was so grateful that BCPs were able to fix that.

Once we were done talking, he had me take off my shoes and socks and lay on my stomach. My feet were very cold so he put a heat lamp by my feet to balance my temperature (my head was warm but feet cold; he didn't like that). He proceeded to do this horrible squeezing, pinching thing up and down my spine five times. It was REALLY painful in spots, but not so bad in others. None of it felt good though. He claims once my blockages are freed it won't hurt so bad. We'll see about that.

After that, I rolled onto my back and he placed two needles in each wrist/thumb area, one under my belly button, and two above each ankle area. The needles in my wrist were a little uncomfortable going in but they were fine once they were in. I barely even felt the other ones going in. He left me in the room for about 15 minutes, during which I dozed on and off. I don't know if it was because I was laying in a dark room with soothing music, or if it was the acupuncture, but I was way relaxed. My arms and legs felt like dead weight. It took concentration to move them but it wasn't scary like I was paralyzed or anything. Just relaxed. Very relaxed.

He came back in the room and took the needles out (only one of them hurt coming out; the rest I didn't even feel). He had me sit in a chair and used some sort of auricular acupuncture contraption on my ears. I don't know what this thing was called and I can't find a picture of it online. All I know is that he put it on three different parts of my ear and pushed. Hard. It hurt like hell. But he seemed confident in that part of the treatment and said I'd get the most value from it.

All in all, it was an okay experience. I'm definitely going to try it again and see if it gets better. Mark (my acupuncturist) says that a lot of people find it uncomfortable at first, but as their treatment progresses it hurts less. We'll see.

Oh, and also...the green tea is doing great things for my poop. Just thought I'd share that.

Amy

PS - He called them my Filipino Tubes. Or at least that's what it sounded like. Love it.

I had a dream...

...that someone close to me is pregnant. If you are, it's okay to tell me. I think I'm in a place where I can actually be happy for you. Amazing, isn't it??? :-)

On a more sour note, a friend of mine that's been trying to conceive for 14 months found out she was pregnant the other day. I was so excited and happy for her that I cried. Then, the next day the tears turned from happy to sad. I was devastated when she informed us that she was miscarrying. She's been through the ringer to conceive this baby and I really hope it happens again for her very soon. She deserves it.

Tidbits

1. Chris and I did Let's Dish again on Friday night. We made what sounded like some really good stuff. Asian Panko Salmon (which was delicious), Apricot Chicken, etc. I can't wait to test them all out. We had a good time but I made the mistake of scheduling it for 8:00 on a Friday night. We didn't get home until after 10:00 and we were both exhausted. It sort of took some of the fun out of it.

2. I've been on Finacea and Metrogel for my acne for the past few days and all seems to be going well. I've noticed that my skin's not dry and flaky like it was before. I used to have to use a washcloth and scrub to get the flakes to go away. It's like I'm getting a facial peel every day. The only downside (so far) is that the Finacea makes my skin itch. I keep slapping my face to get the itch to go away!

3. Ever since I was a kid, I had a lot of trouble swallowing pills. Not figuratively, literally. I had to take all pills larger than my birth control with applesauce or pudding to get it down. Now, with practice, I'm finally able to take my prenatal and folic acid with only water! It sounds crazy but I feel so proud of myself. It's the little things in life...

4. Thanks to everyone who's been clicking on my Google ads. It seems to be working so please keep at it. I really appreciate it!!

Amy

Proactiv and Pregnant Women

I spoke with my OB this morning about the possibility of using Proactiv. I faxed him the ingredient list for all three products and he said on face value it looks okay, but not enough testing has been done on some of the ingredients to make him comfortable saying it's okay to use. I'm going to take his advice and steer clear. I know a lot of acne medications (accutane, tetracycline, etc) have high incidences of birth defects and I wouldn't ever chance anything like that just to clear up my skin. I can live with it if I have to. So, if you're pregnant, or likely to become pregnant, please think twice about using Proactiv.

Acne

My dermatologist told me that my acne is absolutely hormonal (which I knew) and there's really not too much he can do for me since there's a possibility of pregnancy in our future. So, he gave me a few prescription ointments (man, I love that word; almost as much as salve) and said it could take 3 months to work. Three months! I'm checking with my OB about Proactiv but I'm not certain I'm going to be able to use it. We'll see. If none of that works, my friend's been using some stuff called Arbonne and it seems to be working for her.

Acne sucks. Between that and my weight gain, I feel so ugly the majority of the day. At least if I was pregnant, I could use that as a good excuse for my hideousness.

Three Things

1. I've sold out to The Man. If you look to your right, you will see a few Google ads. Supposedly, if enough of my visitors click on them, I can make some money. Would you mind giving that theory a try? Just for the next week, every time you visit this site, click on the ad that shows. Thanks!

2. I have my dermatologist appointment this afternoon. Hopefully he can give me something or tell me what to do to get this acne to go away.

3. I have a business idea. I'm not sure if anything will come of it but I need some help. Does anybody out there have any relationships with plastics manufacturers or doll makers? I don't want to say too much about my idea for fear of someone stealing it, but I definitely think it's something I would love to have, if only I could find someone to make it. If you can offer any help or advice, email me at amylisa.anderson@gmail.com or just post a comment. Thanks in advance for all your help. I'll keep you all posted as things work out.