Back to Myself

On the 'lifestyle change' front (I won't call it a diet), I'm doing ok.  Lunch was tuna salad on a bed of lettuce with reduced everything red wine vinaigrette, and it was great.  I did cheat, and add some pickle juice and 3 baby midgies (small sweet pickles). I want to follow the eating plan perfectly, thanks to the obsessive side of me, but this is the best I can do. And it's ultimately all about making a lifestyle change.  I turned a corner last Friday, and the sore throat, utter exhaustion (so I wanted to sleep much more than usual) and headaches went away after 3 days of 'detoxing'.  I'm currently free of carbonated beverages, fast food and sugar.  Except for the pickles. Fruit comes back next week! But the exercise DVDs start in a week, too. Sigh. We'll see how that goes, but it's too far ahead to worry about. I've lost 5 pounds so far, but I expect that to slow to a trickle now. The exercise should get the weight loss back up, though. Hopefully.

My first day at a new pharmacy was yesterday. It went ok. The usual crazies, and I got pretty mad, but then again, it's just the way it is. Doesn't mean I like it, though. As you can probably tell, my truest desire is to quit my job and switch to the hardest, most rewarding job in the world - that of being a mom. My boss has been giving me fits lately, pressuring me to work more hours. I don't want to because I have a lot of stuff I'm dealing with, and working 8-12 hours a week is all we financially need (for now; no idea for the future). Thank you, Lord that You are holding me up and carrying me through! Please let it be over soon..... but I've been praying that for over 10 years now.

We have one of those digital photo picture frames. I've been praying to be able to put pictures of my kids in that thing for what seems like forever. For now though, it sits in our dining room, and we watch it cycle through while we eat. We have pics of trips we've gotten to take - to Yosemite, San Francisco, Disney and the beach, as well as family pics and pics DH is always taking. I always run a time line in my head of 'when was this? was it before the first miscarriage (in Dec. 2006), before my infertility diagnosis (April 2008), before we learned we apparently cannot have biological children?'

Of course, I've gotten 'older' - only ever so slightly ;) - but my face looks so much less tense, emotionally lighter and innocent, really, in these pictures. Here's a few:

This is DH and me after we moved to our current Alabama town, taken in 2005, so that makes it before any of this. At the time, I didn't know when we'd start a family, but I knew this was the place they'd come home to, since DH was finished with school and residency. After living in San Antonio, we were glad to be back in Alabama.

This is the whole fam, except DH's brother, taken in May 2005 at a surprise dinner we had for my mom to celebrate her 'retiring' from full-time teaching. This one is in our adoption photo book, to give the birth mother a chance to see all of us at once. I remember feeling really happy here because we had successfully planned a surprise. I had no idea that the feeling of failure would become a predominant part of my life a year and a half later.

Here I am, getting ready to go in for my embryo transfer during my second IVF cycle in July 2009. I am of course SO hoping it will work. DH gets to go in with me, so as usual he just has to be taking pictures. I remember the hope I had, that this time it WILL work, that we CAN have biological children, that we WILL have embryos left over to freeze and get a sibling. None of that happened (except the leftover embryos, which we did have, but our 2nd FET using them was a BFN).

Just for reference, here we are at the baby shower that DH's office staff threw for Isaac's adoption in November 2011. Of course, the adoption fell through, and though I was afraid it might at the time (not for any specific reason, only because domestic adoptions fail more than international ones), so much so that it was a bit difficult to enjoy the shower, we never imagined the adoption REALLY would fall through. I'm a little down on domestic adoption right now, understandably.

This is really more of a noticing on my part than anything else. And although all of you may not be able to tell anything (I hope you can't actually, since all I want to be is beautiful ;) ), it's amazing what we can see in a photograph sometimes when we are familiar with the background story, especially if we've LIVED it. More than anything, I know that God can create in me that which I cannot comprehend. And since He is full of lovingkindness Psalm 103:11, I know that what He creates will be better, truer and lovelier than anything I can devise. Until then, it hurts. A lot. And I just want to get back to myself, back to the real me. I'm changed forever now, and that's ok. But I wonder: how will happiness feel now? And when will it get here?