Author Archives: Kaitlyn
Lazy Elimination Communication – a shorter read
Here’re the Coles notes (Kait’s notes?) for my post about early potty learning. The full details of how I implemented this plan and what success at each stage looked like are there. It’s a long read though, so here’s my elevator pitch:
A Case for Early Potty Learning
Or, “Lazy” Elimination Communication Or, how my infant poop-trained himself I’m here to make a case for letting your infant learn how to use the potty very, very early, and separate from “potty training” as in wanting them to be dry between potty trips. This post just ballooned and ballooned like crazy; I’ve written a coles notes version. Why on earth would I need my baby to use a potty? Are you immediately skeptical of spending time putting a straight-up […]
A Little Bit Pregnant — A Primer
So you’ve peed on a stick and seen two lines or a + or a dubiously-scientific “2-3 weeks pregnant” note on an insane piece of instant electronic waste (whyyyyyyy did we manufacture and dispose of a battery for this). Are you pregnant? Trigger warning.
Mourning Sickness
Concerning Weeks 4-7 of first successful pregnancy I learned early on a hard lesson about denial and how much one is in control of one’s own experience in pregnancy. I found myself more pregnant than I’d ever been and without any signs out of the ordinary. Totally textbook: no bleeding, nice and bright positive home tests, fine labs. Enough that we told our immediate family right away. (Who were well trained, by the way — “We’re pregnant.” “For real?”) But […]
A Week of Positives
10 days post IUI: “Fucking trigger!” After blogging that, I couldn’t help but laugh at how TROLL my body is. “OH YOU WANT A NEGATIVE HOME TEST? HAHAHAHAHAHA HERE’S A POSITIVE ONE! I THOUGHT YOU ALWAYS WANTED POSITIVE ONES!” 12 days post IUI: “Um, that line is not any fainter than the last one.” Around this time Facebook offered to post the most recent photos from my phone when I used the app, to hilarious effect. “No thanks Facebook, I […]
IUIs 6, 7, and… 8?
Super-Secret Post Concerning cycles 51, 52, and 53 (November and December 2015 and January 2016) Faced with trying IVF again after only producing a single transferable embryo over two rounds — costing immense amounts of money, time, and pain — I wanted to make sure we had exhausted less-invasive and less-expensive treatment first. After all, we had been pregnant twice on IUIs and zero times on IVF so it seemed to make sense to focus there. We purchased a three-pack […]
Gravida 4, Para 1 – An Announcement
This post is stickied. If you would like to see new posts be sure to scroll down. I’m currently more than a year behind the blog. The next post I have planned, if I can get it posted on time, will catch me up to a year behind, and then the posts are going to be more general instead of cycle by cycle. The reason is: we finally had success with IUI#7 and our son was born October 2016. If […]
The Pain Olympics
Let me present to you two different couples and what got them pregnant: Woman A takes a pill prescribed by her gynecologist, uses a home ovulation test, has timed intercourse, and lands pregnant first month of the prescription. They don’t even meet with a specialist. Woman B does a long IVF cycle with genetic testing, necessitating freezing all embryos. So, one cycle for birth control, one for stimulation and egg retrieval, one for recovery and waiting for results, one to […]
IVF #2 Post Mortem
Super-secret post Originally composed Cycle 50 (early November, 2015) We were able to see our doctor fairly quickly to get a debrief on the new info gained from a second failed IVF on a completely different medication protocol. Basically, the doctor was stumped. She had no idea why I wasn’t making embryos with IVF.
Environmental factors and things “it doesn’t hurt to try”
It’s indisputable that there are certain lifestyle/environmental factors which can affect fertility. Street drug use is a big one with pot use usually having a negative effect on sperm quality/count at least in the short term. But what about everything else? And since dose makes the toxin, how much of those things? How much coffee? How much alcohol? How much weight loss is enough and how much vigorous exercise is too much? Do you need to switch to boxers three […]