Same same

To be honest there really isn't much to talk about at the moment. Our Christmas tree is up, presents are all wrapped underneath - for 2 people, we sure buy a lot of presents for people!

Am looking forward to Christmas, although every month that progresses, I have this awful knowing feeling that my sister-in-law will make an announcement. They have been married for just over a year and have wanted to start for a while but I think they were waiting for us to fall pregnant first. I think they have given up on that idea and have started trying. Considering they have been pregnant before (6 weeks after they got together- miscarriage at 11 weeks), we are pretty sure it wont take them long to fall. I just pray that they don't announce it at a public gathering because I will leave. I am trying to mentally prepare for it in advance, but in the end it is still going to hurt.

I know it is awful, but I don't want them to get pregnant before us. No I dont wish them infertility, I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but I just want us to have our baby. I know it's not a competition, and our children will be loved equally etc etc but this was something special for us. I don't know, I know I can't justify my feelings and that I shouldn't try, I realise it is irrational, but we have been on this path for nearly four years. God damn it - I want to have the first grandchild and great-grandchild in the family - at least give me that!

I've been going to church each week for around a year now, and I am going to join in with singing Christmas Carols as part of the music team on stage on Christmas Eve. I'm not a great (or good) singer -just average, but it something I love so much and wanted to be a part of.

First week of work went well - a slight hiccup about my boss - he had a go at me over something when I did nothing wrong AT ALL, just him being hypersensitive about me setting meetings up with him - something about "He's the boss and will tell me when he wants to speak with him" - very strange! Other than that he seems okay, the group is very different to how I had imagined, but that's what you get when you leave head office I guess!

Anyway, I am off to see my beloved Perth Wildcats play tonight - fingers crossed we get the win. On top of the ladder at the moment! Go Cats!

Good work

First day on the job is over and it went great! I already feel pretty comfortable in the new location, however I don't think I quite realised how many tasks I will actually be doing in my job! But I am taking it easy and will slowly work my way into it.

I have already put my annual leave in for Christmas, am taking two weeks off from Dec 23 to Jan 6 which will be nice to unwind a bit.

Not much else to update right now, just trying to get through the week and learn as much as possible!

New job tomorrow

I'm so nervous but very excited to be starting my new job tomorrow! I'm looking forward to meeting new people and learning about all the stuff I'm going to be doing. Oh and not worrying about having to find parking and $11 of change for the parking meter each morning!

On a slightly more sedate note, it looks like we are going to get a personal loan to consolidate all of our credit card debt. We tend to live beyond our means, especially with the pressures of IVF, and we have decided to really knuckle down for the next six months to try and get our finances back in some kind of order. Realistically it's a three year plan to get back to scratch but we are okay with that. Having a baby is incredibly important to us, and I'm not getting to let something as silly as money stop us from achieving our dreams.

In saying that, I am loving the freedom of not cycling right now. I had to go onto my FF today to work out where I was in my cycle because I had completely forgotten! (CD 21 for those playing at home).

Some shoutouts to my beautiful bloggy friends who have kept me sane this last six months of hellishness
Sarah is incredible -the best advice - thank you for sticking by me in the tough stuff. One Who Understands is an awesome friend, and going through a lot of the similar stuff, trying to decide between diui and that elusive 'one more try'. Sending you my love honey.  Beautiful Mess is doing fab at school - you go girl! Jen is just awesome. Not much more I can say than that! Not long until Nichole comes off of her 'not trying break', Wishing I could do thanksgiving with you guys.Suzanne's little bubbas are 2 months old already - I can't believe it! Birds & Squirrels is 35 weeks and I am so happy for her. I am secretly disappointed in Ally for revealing she is a closet Twilight fan but I will forgive her because she is so damn cool :-)

And I know I have missed people but its quarter to twelve already and if you hadn't noticed - I have a new job tomorrow! So off to bed I will go :-)

A good day

I'm really starting to pull myself together. I think the main reason is that I have this awesome new job which I am starting on Monday. It's been so long since I have been excited about going to work (I have loved the last three months in Recruitment but it's not the same as having your own permanent role). I can't wait to be working every day doing something that is all mine!

Murray and I have been talking more and more about DI and its implications. I think we are both starting to get more comfortable with the idea. We haven't approached S yet, and I'm not sure if we will follow that path, but we know it is there which is enough.

We are booked in on 14 January for our assessment seminar for local adoption. I guess we will learn everything about how the assessment process works there - a bit nerve wracking but exciting at the same time!

I need a blog makeover

Anyone have a recommendation for someone who can make over my little blog?!

Happy Anniversary to us

This day four years ago I was getting ready for my wedding day. Today marks four years that Murray & I have been married and six years that we have been together. Life has thrown us some curveballs but soulmates get through that kind of stuff, and we have.

Happy Anniversary baby.

Sick

Am at home today, I've had the flu since Thursday but today I could't get out of bed, my head was pounding and I couldn't stop coughing. So here I am. I'm trying to motivate myself in between naps to get up and do a little bit of cleaning, so that we aren't living in such a dump. We haven't exactly been in the mood to keep a tidy house over the last two weeks, and as naturally messy people, well the house is not visitor-friendly right now. So my aim for the day is in between coughing fits, to get at least all of my clothes washing done and put away. Just small little goals to help get us through. Anyone know of a good cleaner in Perth?!

Murray came to me last night and asked me if I would be okay with him asking someone to be our sperm donor. He wants to ask a good friend of ours S, he was a groomsmen at our wedding and is a genuine lovely guy. He is adopted himself so understands our situiation. He is engaged and his fiance is pregnant with their child so it is a big decision for him. He knows all about what we have been through, and Murray and him have talked about the sperm donor issue and whats involved etc, but we have never asked him to do it for us. Murray has arranged to meet up with him for drinks later this week, as it is definitely a face-to-face conversation that is needed. I'm definitely comfortable with the idea of S being the donor, I guess my only concern is a selfish one, that we would then have to wait an additional 6 month waiting period, whereas with donor bank sperm we could start straight away next year.

(Im going to call him S, even though I usually always use names, because I don't feel it's right for me to invade his privacy on such a sensitive issue - so S it is until he says otherwise)

I would prefer a known donor though. One thing I have learnt through all of this adoption workshops is that a persons origins are very important and especially during the teenage years, people that dont know absolutely everything they need to know (extended family, do I act like my Dad, does my Dad like the same things I like), it can make a big difference to them. So having someone they can actually ask those questions to, can only be a good thing. Whether or not they want to do this though, is completely up to them, and I 100% understand if he declines.

My new job

OK, finally five minutes to sit down before I head off to church this morning.

I have worked in Occ Safety & Health the last four years but our branch was restructured, and lucky me, my job was one of the positions that was restructured out. Luckily my manager found me a three month acting role in Recruitment which has given me the opportunity to get some HR experience behind me. It has been great fun working in Recruitment, a lovely group of people who are all very genuine - a nice change from some of the people I have worked with previously!

Two positions came up which I applied for, one was in HR, the same level that I was on already, and it was for an eight month contract. The other one was a level higher (payrise), permanent (yay - have been on contract for over four years!) and located at a different site (free parking!)

I was offered the HR position first but they hadn't processed the applications for the other role by then, so I had to hold off accepting. Luckily enough I got an interview which was held on Wednesday, and was offered the job Thursday afternoon!

I am so excited about this role, it is the Systems Support Coordinator for the Perth Region, which means looking after all the corporate systems for our area, still doing a fair bit of OSH, some environment and auditing work, and business management systems - procedures, policies, work instructions and the like. I start in two weeks!!! Instead of being based in Leederville, I will be working in the Canning Vale office which is about 15 minutes from my house in the opposite direction. Free parking is going to be awesome considering we pay $11 a day to park at the moment, and they are refurbishing the offices I am going to so we will have a nice space to work in as well!

I do feel a bit nervous about it all - in theory I know I can do all of these things, and I have done them all before, but this is a different environment - what if I have overstated my abilities and can't do the job as well as I think I can? All that self-doubt has started to come out, but I am trying to remain strong.

So something has finally gone right for us - I guess it had to at some point! Unfortunately Murray still hasn't found a job for next year which is quite scary. He has had two interviews so far, one of them we were positive he would get but unfortunately he didn't. Praying very hard that we find something for him very soon.

Can my family get even crazier

Looks like my brother has knocked up another girl. Not Alicia but a different one, the girl who he was with when they broke up for six weeks. He says it's not his, the timing doesn't match, but he has a history of this... Of course I found out through facebook...

Not even allowing it to get into my head right now.

I went and visited my nieces and nephew today - I have missed them so much but for my own health I have had to keep my distance for fear of hurting myself further. It was Lulu & Jordans birthday last month so we had a mini party at the park with party hats and biscuits. I can't believe how much they have all grown up!

 

 

Big news

Something finally went right - I have a new job! Have to dash to work now but will update tonight.
Thank you Lord!

Adoption workshop 2 - Attachment & Seperation

I realise I didn't really debrief from our adoption workshop last Saturday. It was a lot to take in again, heaps of theory and information about seperation and attachment, but it also had a lot of practical suggestions for how to establish an attachment with an adopted child. There are so many challenges with creating this attachment, it is really quite overwhelming.

We have been given plenty of reading material which has been great, but also very challenging personally. I know that I can be a good adoptive parent, but my concern with adoption is about the child, and how they will respond when they are old enough to understand the concepts. If we go down this path, we would absolutely tell the child from the moment they are born that they are adopted, in an age appropriate way, so I don't intend on hiding anything from them. But everyone responds differently. What happens when they become teenagers and like all kids that age, tries to establish their identity. They will have gaps and not know everything they want to know about where they came from, who they get their characteristics from etc. We don't know how deeply this will affect the child. I can only hope and pray that they get out of it relatively unscathed.

We have decided at this point to only pursue local adoption, which is adoption just in Western Australia. There is very little local adoption (anywhere between 3 and 10 children adopted locally each year) and much more intercountry adoption in WA. ICA (intercountry adoption) is significantly more expensive and with having spent as much as we have on ivf, we dont have any more spare money to pursue it. Even if we did, everything we have learnt about attachment is that children who have spent time in orphanages (which is where most of these children come from), suffer great emotional stress which they can sometimes never recover from. In Australia, the children are always in foster care, not an orphanage which gives much better care and allows the child to form bonds with their caregiver.

I submitted our forms yesterday to the Department of Child Protection who faciliate adoption in WA. The forms were pretty basic - ticking that we had attended all of the compulsory workshops, what age child we wanted, date of birth etc info and a photo of the two of us. I forgot to bring a photo to work so had to take a holiday snap out of my frame at work to include - I hope that doesn't matter too much! So now we wait and see. The next stage is another seminar - this time on the assessment process and all the things we need to do there. I don't think there are any spots left in that until January so we will have some time with no ivf and no adoption over Christmas which will be good.

Love & Support needed for C

I'm devastated. C has a brain tumour. I've been following this blog for the last year or so and was thrilled when RM and K got pregnant and had their precious baby. And now something is wrong. Does it ever stop? Please send your love and prayers to the family right now. To triumph over infertility and then go through this... it's unimaginable.