So I stayed home from work sick today. I wasn’t feeling well yesterday but I thought it was due to lack of sleep. Then yesterday afternoon I had trouble breathing (I have asthma… usually it is seasonal or sports related). As the evening when on I felt exhausted and eventually nauseous. I went to bed early, around 9pm. I slept straight through the night and got up around 7am feeling at least as bad if not worse than when I went to bed. Within half an hour I felt worse. I also had a mild fever both before bed and when I woke up. So I called in sick – which I felt bad about because my coworker who fills in for me when I’m sick was supposed to have the afternoon off today so he could go to a concert tonight in the states. I really hope he was still able to leave this afternoon. I’d feel just terrible if my sick-day interfered with his plans because I know he’s been looking forward to this day for months.
Anyway… so this afternoon I stepped outside for a minute and was surprised to see my greenhouse in disarray. This happens if we don’t close it up tightly before some strong winds. I don’t know what kind of weather we had last night but it really did a job on the greenhouse. It only takes 15 mins or so to reassemble with two people so don’t be too worried. I decided to just leave it as is until my husband gets home from work today as I wouldn’t want to strain myself trying to put the greenhouse together when I should be resting. Shortly after seeing the greenhouse that way a sudden storm rolled in. I guess there are two bright sides to this – 1) I don’t have to water the stuff in the greenhouse today 2) at least I didn’t reassemble the greenhouse then have it fall down again in the storm this afternoon! That would have made me really upset.

As this summer is nearing an end I am thinking about how my greenhouse will operate this summer. With living in southern Ontario, I need to consider how the greenhouse will say about freezing around the clock throughout the winter. I do not want to pay to heat it, though. I’m not interested in increasing my utility bills to heat my little backyard greenhouse. I also would love to heat it in a “green” way. I’ve been brainstorming lately about what I can do. I have a bunch of ideas but the idea I’m really thinking hard about is whether you can use a compost heap to heat a greenhouse. You can very realistically get a compost heap to maintain an internal temperature of well over 100F. If you turned the compost fairly regularly, and insulated the greenhouse somewhat, would you be able to keep the greenhouse above freezing around the clock? I am thinking of natural methods of insulation as well. I already use fallen leaves to insulate my flower beds, why not use them as insulation in the greenhouse? I am thinking of lining the bottom inside perimeter of the greenhouse with dried leaves. The outside perimeter would already be lined with concrete cylinder shaped blocks. These will have air spaces between the blocks but they should do a decent job of securing the bottom of the greenhouse plastic from too much wind blowing through. As it snows, I will try to have the snow build up on the north side of the greenhouse. The north side wouldn’t get much sunlight anyway so the snow would not block out light/heat on the north side, it would just insulate. Snow is a great insulator. However, a typical winter here does not provide much snow for any length of time so I can’t rely on this method, I can only use it as a bonus when available (of course if it isn’t available, it could mean that it is already above freezing outside and obviously that is helpful too!). So… those are just a few of my ideas.

I haven’t been very consistent with blogging in the last few months. It’s just been a weird time. This blog is primarily for TTCing and I haven’t been TTCing very hard. I haven’t gone back to the fertility specialist since he told me I was miscarrying. He said I could come back and talk to him before starting TTC again and that I could go back on the clomid as soon as I was up to it. I’m just not up to it though. I haven’t even had much “drive”, if you know what I mean, since the miscarriage. Hopefully that gets better.
I’ve been doing a lot of gardening related activities this summer. That has kept me entertained. I also have been doing a lot of youtube videos, vlogging our gardening efforts (http://www.youtube.com/GettingThereGreen).
DH has been going through a difficult time lately. He and his brother own a business and business has been very very stressful over the last little bit. It’s been really hard on DH. It’s making us have to take a look at our lives and where we are going or thought we were going with our lives. So we are in a place of uncertainty at the moment. That affects our TTC efforts as well. I don’t know how actually getting a BFP would feel for us right now.

Is there any reason why I can’t have some sort of plan in life? Nothing really works out the way I plan for it to. I thought I’d have kids before age 30 but that can’t happen now, my 30th birthday is getting close. I planned to have my student debt paid off in 2 years and be ready to buy a house in the country with some acreage. I planned to be able to stay home to raise my children and tend to our envisioned family farm. Lately all those little dream bubbles are bursting. Where will I be in 2 years? I don’t know. Where will I be in 6 months? I don’t know.

Yesterday I found out a few people who are pregnant or just gave birth. Some of the people I found out about aren’t even people I know, but are celebrities. One of the people I found out about is someone I taught in Sunday School just a few years ago!
Then last night I dreamed that pretty well everyone I know was pregnant. Even my own mother-in-law who absolutely could not become pregnant. In my dream, like EVERYONE was pregnant pretty well. What a terrible dream. Just me, surrounded in pregnant women.

So it is my 2 year anniversary of my first miscarriage. Today represents a life-changing moment. I am not the same person that I was before that day 2 years ago. At the moment I can’t really put it all into words. It would take a long time and more thought than I want to give to it at the moment. Perhaps in the next few days I will tell bits of how that day has changed my life.

my body has been weird for the last few weeks. around ovulation time I had really really strong ovulation symptoms so I figured it was a big one. then I was super moody and had major cravings leading up to aunt flo. when AF came, AF only stuck around for a day and a half. Normally AF sticks around like 6 days. So this was weird. So I did a pregnancy test tonight (which would be 18dpo, I guess) and it was negative. So whatever. Just been a wacked cycle I guess. I don’t get it.

The problems I’ve had with trying to get pregnant and multiple miscarriages has left me with enough inner pain that I have difficulty participating in and listening to pregnancy related discussions. When I hear about women being able to plan when they get pregnant or how quickly they became pregnant, it hurts me inside. I just feel this stab of pain in my heart. I think that many women who struggle with infertility eventually experience the same problem. I choose to leave a room rather than continue to listen to such discussion. I fight the temptation to spit out a sharp remark such as “it must be nice to create miraculous babies with such ease.” No one wants to hear those thoughts and it is possible that they wouldn’t be understood even if I said them.

I saw a woman tonight with this itty bitty body and she was so obviously pregnant. Probably near 9 months. She was tugging a toddler along with her. It was adorable but I wondered how she became pregnant so soon after the first child. And that twinge of jealousy. But I did enjoy watching her anyway. I wondered if she was walking the way she was because she was trying to bring on labour.

I am sure I’ve lost all my regular readings because I haven’t been a regular blogger in the last couple of months. I still feel like I’m just working through my feelings regarding the miscarriage. Every time I sit down to make a blog post, I just don’t know how to put anything into words. I’m still just doing the neither trying nor preventing thing. I’m having a harder time accepting other people’s pregnancies. I take it hard that other women can have healthy pregnancies but so far I have not been afforded such luxury. It’s the whole “this isn’t fair” thing I guess. My baby would have been due to be born in December. A Christmas baby (and I’m a Christmas fanatic). A coworker of mine got pregnant during the same cycle I did but her pregnancy is now into the second trimester and seems to be going well. Last week I learned that she is pregnant with twins. twins. I had a miscarriage and she gets twin Christmas babies. I try not to think like this about her – after all, she was trying to get pregnant longer than I have been and she also needed fertility treatments.
My closest friend is due to have her baby in September. It gets harder for me as the day approaches. I might have a few breakdowns when the baby is born. I feel like a horrible person when I think like this! It isn’t anyone else’s fault that I haven’t been able to carry a baby to term! It isn’t like anyone wished this on me. It isn’t like someone else having a baby is taking one away from me! There is no cap on babies or anything! Not like there is a quota!
So quite obviously, this has all affected me mentally. I don’t think I need counseling. I just think it’s one of those things that some women experience and each one has to work through it herself.

Ruth 4:13b “God gave her the ability to become pregnant.” God’s Word Version

So that was an interesting little find while reading the book of Ruth. God gave her the ability to become pregnant. I don’t know what I think about that. Of course it isn’t anything I didn’t already know. Obviously it is God who gives the ability to become pregnant. God chooses mothers. But it also brings forth a lot of questions. Mostly the “why me” kind of questions. And of course the “why HER” kind of questions. There are so many women who have babies every year who are terrible mothers. Drug addicts, for example. People who then leave their new born babies in dumpsters!