Los Porchs

Shaking my head as i take in the $1500 I now owe for my required testing in order to proceed with an FET. And I'm the lucky one... I have insurance... I have embryos that we can use... I have the ability to figure out how to pay that balance (I think...) I'm lucky and in this moment, I will be thankful.  And then imma go ahead and let myself feel the feelings about this whole damn saga. If you need me, I'll be drowning my sorrows in chocolate and Disney movies. Xo Mama Porch

Our family grew by 1 small life this past week.  Charlotte is proud to introduce her new Betta, Buddha.  Yep.  She got naming rights and somehow ended up choosing Buddha.  Because when you let a 2-year-old name something, nothing is off-limits.  To be fair, the 3-year-olds named their fish Nemo so if anything, I'm pretty proud she used her imagination a little. She had been admiring the fish at school and asked where her fish was... A trip to PetSmart took her to visit the other animals as well. The birds were VERY excited to see Charlotte. I don't know how to explain refraction to a little, so she was convinced there were 2 turtles in this tank. Had to stop at Portillo's on the way home!!! So, we're clearly going to be teaching this kid about the circle of life... thankfully Betta fish are pretty resilient.  We need that kind of spirit in this house.  Now we just have to remember to feed him. Fertility u

Today was the best kind of Sunday; it was super low-key and obligation-free.  We woke up and went to breakfast (though the service was kinda 'eh' and we ended up taking our food to go as we prefer not to subject Charlotte to exceedingly long wait times that result in a shit show) and then went through the drive-through at Dunkin' Donuts on our way home to reward ourselves for having patience.  ;)  We played and then decided a rest was called for but my dear Charlie just could not rest her body so we decided to take a car ride over to Half Price Books so I could purchase books for the classroom we're opening tomorrow at school.  It was fun & I feel like the room will have a solid start, literacy wise.  Quality books are important to me; it hurts my heart when early childhood classrooms have books that are in shambles.  I get it, kids eat books, and they should.  But when books are beyond repair, let them go. We got about an hour of nap from Charlie and gave her som

Was greeted by a beautiful bill on this gloomy Saturday for roughly $1000 for the first procedure I had done this month.  That means I can expect another just like it, possibly more as the 2nd was a legit procedure.  Deep breaths after spending the morning with a colleague setting up our newest classroom and I opened that envelope... have babies they said... it will be worth it they said... DAMN IT. They were right and I will continue to chip away at that deductible and then some, all in the name of tiny humans. xo Mama Porch

I've been so consumed with my own ish lately that I feel like a terrible friend. I need to work on connecting with my people on a deeper level... I'm sorry if I've neglected you. 😯 This winter weather needs to let go and move on. I need spring! I did appreciate that it was still light out at 5:30 tonight, that was kinda sweet. Charlie and I got to play in the snow & shovel the driveway with Daddy!

Great news, y'all!  It was all just a figment of the good Dr's imagination!  The hysteroscopy revealed that there's nothing to worry about and no surgery will be required.  It wasn't the most comfortable experience, but I'll be honest, it was better than the HSN.  When I went for the HSN, there was a med student that did some of the work and wasn't the most... gentle.  Aside from the residual bleeding, yesterday's procedure was more comfortable.  The worst part was watching the doctor's face to try to figure out what he was seeing. Upgraded to a "procedure room" rather than the typical exam room. Cue the panic ;) Our next steps are to get a blood draw on Day 3 (for insurance purposes only) and to get our consent forms notarized so that Dr. TK's office will release the embabies for transport. Then I get 3 weeks of birth control and 3 weeks of estrogen and then it's game on. Or at least this is our baseline plan. We're no s

"No honey, you can't have a cookie for breakfast.  A cookie is mostly sugar and won't give you the energy you need for your morning.  Let's go eat your cereal." I diligently said to my two-year-old before realizing that her Lucky Charms are probably just as sugar-laden as the damn Girl Scout cookie. Feeling like I had somehow lost a few points towards Mom of the Year (MOTY), I pondered out loud if she might like a popsicle.  Because HA!  Those popsicles are action-packed with healthy stuff.  For real.  She eats them like a sugar snack but here's what she's really eating: spinach strawberries bananas chia seed flax seed skim milk Boom.  And just like that, I'm back in the running for MOTY.  Just kidding, she's now scavenging the marshmallows from her Lucky Charms and her face is a weird shade of blue.  Totes organic. Xo Mama Porch

I won't lie, friends. Today was one of those days during which I carefully remind myself that the work day ends at 630. Got a call from our doctor letting me know that to move forward with our insurance, we are required to do a hormone check on day 3 of my next cycle and Porch will need to do another semen analysis. Never mind that we're doing a frozen embryo transfer. This is a stupid requirement and it ends up costing everyone money. I'm going to submit his results from our first IVF round and I'll just have to wait for another mf cycle. I thought we had our poop in a group and could move forward just a little sooner but yet again, I am being reminded that good things take time and hot DAMN do we make good kids. I will try to be patient. This of course does not account for my required hysteroscopy that's scheduled for tomorrow morning. Dr found what could be scar tissue on my uterus. Taking a closer look tomorrow to determine if it's scar tissue or if

I recently realized I can now post directly to Bloglovin from my phone and this makes photo inclusion far easier; the past few times I've tried to use Blogger to post pictures from my phone, the app has crashed and left me contemplating throwing my phone into the river.  You can read the post  here  and follow me there.  I will continue to post here because of our history with the labels and I appreciate all of you who are reading these posts.  :) This past week has been kind of crazy and I'm ready for some sense of calm. xo Mama Porch