Job Interview

I interviewed for a new job today at a medical device company.  I didn't get to meet the General Counsel (who would be my new boss if I got the job) because she canceled at the last minute due to illness, so that was disappointing.  But I met with 2 HR guys and the position seems quite promising.

Pros:  The company is about to become profitable and is growing rapidly.  I would be the #2 lawyer at the company and would be training to one day be a GC myself.  The product is genuinely helping a particular population of patients and the people at the company are very devoted to their work.  Face time isn't important and I'd be able to work from home 2 days a week.  I'd most likely have more regular hours and the days of working until midnight or even pulling all-nighters would end.  I wouldn't have to be at the company for a minimum period of time before qualifying for maternity leave benefits, which means that I won't have to delay any attempts at getting pregnant with #2 (although I'm still unclear about what the maternity leave benefits are).

Cons:  It's a 38 mile one-way commute (although doing it today in non-peak hours only took me 35 minutes and the company would most likely move closer to me in the next 1-2 years).  The building smells like an old oil furnace!  The HR guy promised me that they had the air quality tested and it was fine, but yuck!  I'm not sure how my sensitive nose would handle that, especially if I got pregnant!  The company's location is in a very non-desirable place.  Not much there besides liquor stores and auto body shops.  That's a big difference from being in downtown Boston.

The next step is for me to meet the GC, which will most likely happen at a breakfast meeting sometime in the next 1-2 weeks.  I know from experience that the interview process can take a really long time sometimes and so I'll just be patient and continue doing my current job as best I can.

Welcome ICLWers!

Welcome ICLWers! This is my second time participating in ICLW and I hope that I will be able to leave many more comments this time around. Here's the quick skinny on me:

My sister has a unicornuate uterus and after years and years of battling infertility, she was able to conceive her now 6 year old twin boys using donor eggs and a surrogate. Given my sister's history, my husband and I decided to get diagnostic tests run after failing to conceive within 3 months of trying the old-fashioned way. As it turns out, I was actually pretty okay (with one blocked fallopian tube and polycystic ovaries), but we were in for a shock when my husband was diagnosed with severe male factor infertility due to poor morphology). We were extraordinarily lucky and blessed to conceive our son Ian (almost 1 year old now!) in our first IVF attempt using a single embryo transfer. We have 3 frozen embryos from that IVF and I'm hoping to conceive our second child through a FET sometime this year. I have an appointment with our RE in 3 weeks to discuss the best ways to proceed and I'm nervous and anxious already! I enjoy following other blogs about infertility and giving support when I can. I only wish that everyone who has battled infertility can have the same success that I have had.

Ian's First Steps

Ian is just over 11 months old and he's been furniture cruising for many months now. Tonight, my husband and I decided to put his ability to walk to the test. He looks like he's getting the hang of it! I love his little giggles. Enjoy!

11 months old!

Ian is 11 months old today! Someone asked me if the time has flown by and my answer was that it hasn't. I'm aware of every single day that has passed since Ian was born and while it hasn't "flown by," I still can't believe that I'm the MOTHER of an 11 month old child! It's still quite unreal that I'm someone's mommy. But I like the title!

In other news, I didn't pump today! It was the first time that I didn't pump during the week day since Ian was 6 months old. I plan to nurse him in the morning and at night, but to use my frozen stash of milk to get him through the day while he's at daycare. I was worried that my breast would feel too full and hurt, but it was okay! I guess my body has finally calmed down and is ready to think about weaning my little one. I'm hoping that by dropping this one remaining pump, my body will realize that I'm ready for a second baby and I'll get my period again. :-)

Sippy Cup? We OWN you!

Ian, 11 months old, appears to have mastered the sippy cup. I can't help but laugh at the exaggerated effort he uses to tip the cup up and back so that he can drink. Awesome stuff.

Thoughts about Baby #2

I'm sorry if this is painful for anyone reading who doesn't yet have Baby #1, but I really want Baby #2. I'm the youngest of 3 children and I really want Ian to have a sibling (and I can only hope and pray that he and his sibling have a great relationship). I don't care whether that sibling is a boy or a girl as long as that little child is healthy. But I'm starting to get nervous. Ian will be 11 months old on the 16th, which means I really do have to start thinking seriously about Baby #2. And the anxiety has already set in. We have 3 little frozen embryos waiting for us and I'm desperately hoping that one of them will become Baby #2 so that I don't have to go through the misery of another IVF cycle. But Dr. Google isn't my friend and I learned some alarming statistics about how 30% of frozen embryos do not survive the thaw. That means that statistically, one of our little guys won't even make it to transfer, leaving us with only 2 embies. Two chances. I'm nervous. Our appointment with our RE is in roughly 3 weeks and since I know nothing about FETs, I'll have to get lots of information from her.

Oh, and by the way, I STILL don't have my period 11 months post-partum. Hrm. I'm still exclusively breastfeeding Ian, but now that he's eating lots (and lots!) of solid food, he's not drinking that much. He nurses at 5 am and at 7 pm and during daycare, he gets two three-ounce bottles of breastmilk. So I would have thought with this decrease in nursing/need for breastmilk, my period would have returned. Nope. As of next week, I'm going to stop pumping at all and we'll use my frozen stash of breastmilk for Ian's daycare needs. Hopefully, by dropping the pump, my period will return. Otherwise, I'll just need the RE to give me meds to start my period. And by that point, Ian will be just about 1 year old and we can start him drinking cow milk. I'll be very sad to stop my nursing relationship with him (extremely sad actually), but it really is time to get the show on the road for #2!

My Laughing Baby

This is Ian, almost 11 months old, laughing at the dinner table tonight. I think this might be the first time he laughed consistently at something without being tickled or tackled. I love that sound!!!

Things are Looking Up

My mom had surgery yesterday. She had a skin infection in her groin area and they needed to go in there and clean everything out. The doctors don't have a clue as to how she ended up with this misery. The infection appears to be at the site of her earlier surgical incision, but it makes no sense that she would get this infection 9 weeks after her bladder surgery. They usually see this type of thing very soon after surgery, if it's going to happen at all. The good news is that the infection was not in her vagina or bladder and so the prior surgery is still good and she won't need to start all over. I feel so bad for her though. She'll be stuck in the hospital until the end of this week and then will need home care to change the dressings on her wound. The doctor told her that recovery will be slow.

On the sleeping front, I'm not sure I've blogged about it, but Ian has been a HORRENDOUS sleeper lately. He wasn't drinking much during the day and so because I was nervous about dehydration, I started nursing him at night when he woke up. And then he got a fever for 3 days and so we let him nap on us. And then over vacation, in order to get more sleep, we brought him into our bed in the middle of the night when he woke up crying. To sum this all up, the baby started sleeping less and less well in his own crib and Sunday night was sheer misery for all of us. He was screaming for 15 minutes of every hour between midnight and 5 am and all of us were exhausted yesterday. But last night went much better. He slept from 7 pm to 2 am, cried for 10 minutes at 2 am and then went back to sleep until 5. I fed him at 5 and then he slept until 6:15 am. Hopefully, we can get him back on track by being strict with the "cry it out" method. No more night feedings and no more sleeping in mommy and daddy's bed!

Apology to my Mother

We flew back to Boston this afternoon and had another good flight experience. Ian, who was grossly overtired from a grossly shitty night, slept for the first 2 hours on his grossly exhausted mommy. We...are...not...fans...of...teething. Ian has 2 more top teeth and one more bottom tooth coming in fast and furious. I can only hope that tonight goes better because I am facing a long day of work tomorrow.

I owe my mother an apology. The last time I wrote about her, I mentioned that she pulled her groin muscle and was fat and out of shape and blah blah blah. I'm so sick of thinking about and talking about her weight issues. Well, as it turns out, my mother did not have a groin pull. She spent most of my vacation in immense pain and was almost in tears getting up and out of her reclining chair. Getting to the toilet actually made her cry. Well, last Thursday, she got out of her chair and left brown blood behind. I asked her where the blood came from and she said that she thinks it came from her vagina. Now this was puzzling because my mom had a hysterectomy years ago so if it came from her vagina, what could possibly have been bleeding? So I asked her if she thought that perhaps she had a UTI and that the blood came from her urinary tract? She didn't think so.

Anyway, because of this new symptom and her recent bladder surgery, my dad took her to the hospital where they promptly told her she did not, in fact, have a groin pull. It turns out that she has cellulitis in her vagina and down her left leg. For those of you who don't feel like googling "cellulitis" it is apparently a skin infection. God knows how she got this. They said they often see this type of thing after the bladder surgery she had, but not 9 weeks later! It's really odd. But she needed to be admitted in order to get IV antibiotics and the last we heard, she may not be able to go home until this coming Wednesday! I feel so bad for her. I mean, I felt bad for her before. I knew she was in a ton of pain and she was trying to be as stoic as possible about it. She's not a complainer. But now I feel even worse because I was blaming all of this on her weight. And I know she must feel just freakin' awful that this happened while we were on vacation. Sigh.

I hope she feels better soon. The antibiotics are slowly working. The redness in her leg isn't growing and her white cell count is decreasing. Tomorrow, they will put her under general anesthesia in order to take a look around, especially to make sure that the sling they put in her bladder isn't infected. If it is infected, they'll have to take it all out and mom will be starting from scratch again. I hope that this will not be the case.

In other news, my son is a food whore. Last night he ate cantaloupe (for the first time), grilled chicken, grilled steak (for the first time), and grilled red pepper. Unbelievable. He was just shoveling it in. Now if he could only sleep as well as he ate!!!

Ian at the Beach

We went to the beach with Ian yesterday and he had a blast! He wasn't scared of the waves (as he was when he was 4.5 months old) and even the high winds didn't bother him. He wasn't so thrilled when he ate a piece of seaweed (or when we picked it out of his mouth with our sandy fingers) but he was happier after we gave him a drink from a water bottle.

Florida Vacation

We're in Florida on vacation right now. It rained all day yesterday, but we're starting to get some good weather now. Hopefully, we'll get to go to the pool later today.

My mother who is grossly overweight and out of shape managed to pull her groin muscle right before we came down. How did she pull it? She was reaching for something in her pantry. How unbelievably pathetic. So now she's hopped up on pain pills and all she does is sleep in a chair all day and is totally cranky and snappy at my dad. She can't even get off the toilet herself and when she walks, she's using a walker. We probably would have canceled our vacation if we had any advance notice of this. I'm now on vacation but I have to cook dinner for myself and mom can't even babysit Ian while we go do things. And dad can't do fun activities with us because he has to stick around in case mom has to go to the bathroom or needs help.

Now, I know that I'm sounding very unsympathetic and well, I sort of am. I mean, I'm not happy that my mom is in a lot of pain. I hate seeing her like this. But she refuses to take care of her body. She has lost over 100 pounds more than once in her life and manages to gain it all back. She has a food addiction but refuses to seek counseling because only "crazy" people need therapy. She said that she had a gym trainer lined up to help her get into shape, but she refuses to go back to the gym until she's completely pain free. My sister tried to talk to her today about treating herself better and getting into better shape so that this type of crap doesn't happen, and my mom only had defensive answers. "People have injuries." Ayup (although generally while not reaching for a fucking box of pasta).

I long ago stopped trying to talk to my mom about getting healthy. I made more progress banging my head against a brick wall. It's very frustrating, but that's how it is. I have never had a meaningful discussion with my mom about her emotions or feelings. She's such a closed book. I wish things were different, but they aren't. I just have to love my mom for who she is as long as she's here with us. I just feel bad for my dad. He told me today that he's "gonna ditch" my mom and that he didn't sign up to be a nursemaid. I totally understand how he feels. This is the start of a long downhill road for my mother and my dad is vibrant, active and energetic. He plays tennis, exercises, stretches, watches what he eats and is all around healthy. My mom is basically a sloth. They are very mismatched but they have somehow made it this long together. But I'm not sure how long my dad can hang in there as my mom destroys her body with no intention of even attempting to change.