The Cherry On Top

I'm so upset and irritated right now that I don't know if I want to scream or cry. I will probably do both before it's over. I'm so over Obamacare and "Affordable" health insurance. We have been paying $683 a month this year for coverage for our family. That's more than one of our truck payments. Insurance through my husband's job would be $1200 a month, which is more than one of his pay days. We've had to struggle just to survive and put food on the table and keep some sense of normalcy for our daughter. We are living in our camper, semi moved to another state for his job, rented out our house, cut every non essential bill we had. We did everything you are "supposed" to do and we still can't afford it! How did anyone back this plan? How does anyone think this is affordable? In all of Obamacare there is only two good points. 1. Kids can stay on their parents insurance until they are 26. (Personally I think this should only apply to students and if you are married, have kids and filing your own taxes then you should have your own insurance.) 2. Insurance can't turn you down for pre-existing conditions. The rest of it is crap. When they decide whether or not you get premium help, they only care if the employee can get affordable insurance through their job. They don't care at all if you can't afford the family plan so that your spouse and kids can have insurance. I guess they just want you to get that penalty at tax time.

As most of you know, we have been trying to get pregnant again for almost three years now. I had another miscarriage in August and now I have made an extremely heartbreaking decision. Since we can't afford this "affordable" health insurance, we are going to have to go without insurance next year. The penalty is a little more than what one month's premium would be, so obviously it's WAY cheaper to take the penalty. A little over $12,000 cheaper actually. Since short term insurance doesn't cover maternity and according to the state my husband makes too much money even on unemployment to get state health insurance, that means I can't get pregnant. There is no way we could afford prenatal care and labor and delivery costs out of pocket. We both want another child so bad and I really can't explain how mad it makes me that any chance I had (and my chances were already slim) is taken away from me by this stupid insurance law. It's not like we didn't already have everything going against us when it came to having a baby. It took five years, two miscarriages and so many doctor visits to have our daughter. It's already been almost three years and one miscarriage since we've been trying again. Then throw this on top of it. I wish so bad that I could put into words what I am feeling, but none of the words that I can think of seem to do what I'm feeling any justice. Just suffice it to say that I'm mad and a I'm mad as hell!

That's not even the best part. The job that my husband came back to in Ohio is more than likely only going to last about three more weeks. Then he will laid off again. For the third time this year. It will be about a week before my daughter's birthday and two weeks before Christmas. Being that it will be the end of the year and cold, most jobs won't be hiring. My stress level is going through the roof. I am losing my grasp on my hope. Family is supposed to be the foundation of everything and our country has made it so that it's easier to get help and get insurance if you are single rather than a family. There is NO help for a working family. What is happening?

This year has absolutely been the worst year for us. I hope and pray that next year is better. If it gets any worse I honestly don't know how we'll make it. We could really use some prayers, good thoughts or whatever you believe in coming our way.

Blessed

I'm sitting here at my table, looking out our sliding door, and do you know what I see? A drilling rig that recently went up across the road from us. Specifically, it's a drilling rig from the company my husband got laid off from back in January. Every single time I look outside or walk by my door it's there. Every time I go down the road, I have to drive right by it. It literally feels like a slap in the face every time my eyes land on it. I want to be mad about it and I was pretty irritated at first, but I am forcing myself to look on the bright side.

After my husband was laid off the company cut per diem and that was a really good chunk of the pay. I'm not sure we would be able to afford for him to work there with no per diem. Had he not been laid off, I may not have felt the push I needed to get my photography business off the ground. Things are by no means okay yet and we are still struggling, but we may be in a better position now than we would have been. I am trying to count my blessings and not stress so much about the things I can't control.

Even though we are far from home, we are still surrounded by family. We are lucky enough to have my sister in law and her husband on one side of us, my step-dad on the other side of us and the guys all work together. I know it may not last long, but for now it's enough. I am learning to take things one day at a time and one step at a time. I am a very impatient person and I am a planner. I feel the need to plan for everything and make lists all the time. When I don't have control of something it makes my anxiety go crazy. I have my days where I just want to sit down and have a good cry, but I will not lose hope.

If you are in a rough patch in your life, please take a step back. Take a deep breath and count your blessings. Trust me, I know you don't want to hear that sometimes. It used to make me mad when people would say it, but sometimes it's what you need to do. You will still have days that you want to scream and cry and throw things and that's okay. Do it. Release that tension. Just remember that you have good things in your life too. Don't let the stress, anger and anxiety keep you down. It will only make things worse. Keep your head up. You've got this.

Honoring My Angel Babies

This has been a hard year for us. My husband has been laid off twice and we've moved back and forth between two states trying to figure out what to do. Every time we think we are okay again, something else gets thrown at us. The stress of dealing with how we are going to pay our bills and be able to survive has been tremendous. This has led to discussions of dropping our health insurance. I'm not totally comfortable with that idea, but we honestly can't afford it anymore. To top it off, the paper I received today says that they are quadrupling our deductible, lowering what they pay and raising our premium almost two hundred and eighty dollars. We would be paying almost a thousand dollars a month if we kept this policy. Of course the Marketplace website is down, so at the moment I can't even look to see if there are any other plans we could switch to. I seriously doubt I will find a plan that is worth what we would be paying though. It looks like we would be better off taking the penalty at tax time.

The biggest reason I'm nervous about dropping insurance is my health problems. They are always lurking in the background. My daughter might get sick once a year, but even then she has only been sick enough to go to the doctor once and the medicine they gave her didn't even help. It just had to run it's course. I had another PAP come back positive for cervical changes again this summer. That makes the third one in about eleven or twelve years. The last one was just last year and the biopsy came back such low grade the doctor didn't even count it. This year I managed to get away without a biopsy, but she did do cervical curettage inside my cervix. That was more painful than I was expecting and worse because it takes longer than just snipping a piece off. Luckily, that came back negative for pre-cancer. I'm worried that my luck is running thin and feel that I need to eliminate a lot of my risk and have a hysterectomy. We've been trying to get pregnant again for almost three years now. I did finally get pregnant in July, but my levels quit doubling and I miscarried again in August. I think if I don't get pregnant in the next year that I will move forward with the hysterectomy. It's a scary and heartbreaking decision, but I'm tired. I'm tired of being terrified of every PAP. I'm tired of having horrible cramps. I'm tired of the pelvic pain that I have pretty much all the time. I'm tired of temping, tracking, waiting. I want my daughter to have a sibling. I think that is such an important bond. Someone to always have your back and someone you have when once the parents are gone. I don't want her to ever feel truly alone. She is growing up and the time truly goes way too fast. I don't want to spend any of her childhood stressing out about getting pregnant. I just want to enjoy it. She very well may be my only baby, so I need to soak it up that much more.

If you read my last post, then you know that I recently started a photography business. I really wanted to do something to honor my angel babies. It's not fair that I will never know who they would have been or get to have pictures of them. I made a picture that is very special to me. This picture has all of my babies in it. It's my precious daughter, my rainbow baby, surrounded by the siblings she'll never know. It isn't perfect, but I love it. I plan to do a few more and I really want one with me and my husband in it too. It will be the family picture we were robbed of. I have always wanted to be able to have some kind of reminder of my lost babies. I don't want it to be like they never existed and I don't other people to forget either. Some people get tattoos (and I plan on that too), some light a candle every October and there are other ways to remember them. I just needed something that made them more real, more tangible and for me this does it. What do you do remember your lost ones? Check out the picture below and I hope you all have a great day!

Shoot'N Burn Photography

Hi everyone! I know it's been a while since I've posted, but things have been really crazy. My husband was laid off again after my last post and I also had another miscarriage. We have moved from Ohio back to West Virginia and back to Ohio again. It's honestly been just a mess and so stressful. I do have some good news though!

I recently opened up a photography business. WHAT?! I know. I'm still in shock too, even though I've been thinking about it for a long time. I know the first question I'm going to get asked from many people will be "Can you just put my pictures on a disk?" and the answer is.....No. No I can't and I won't. This is known as Shoot'N Burn photography, because the photographer snaps the pictures, burns it on a disc and that's the end of it. I know what you're thinking, but getting the disc is so much easier than dealing with prints and most photographers make this a really cheap option. I used to be one of those people that shopped around until I found a photographer that was cheap and would just hand over the disc. I didn't realize until I got into photography how many problems there are with this model of doing business.

First I'll talk a little about why it's wrong for the photographer. This method mostly brings in people that are looking for cheap and easy. That's not the kind of customer a photographer wants to bring in. A photographer needs to bring in people that appreciate their work and will be repeat customers. That's how you make your money. Building relationships with people is so important in this kind of business. Customers that treat a photographer like the flavor of the month won't make the business thrive and those aren't the kind of customers I need to be bringing in.

Now, to those of you that get the disc and run away, what happens when you get home with that disc? I bet I know. You get home, upload some pictures online and then throw it in a drawer to never see the light of day again because you'll get to having them printed "later". Does later ever come? A lot of the time it doesn't. Then what happens when years down the road, your kids are all grown up and have no pictures to show their kids? You know within a few years cd drives may end up non existent, like the floppy drive. When was the last time you used a floppy drive? What if your family had kept your pictures on them and you now had no way to retrieve them? See what I'm getting at? Actual pictures in your hands are better to have. As long as you take care of them, they last for a very long time. Technology is forever changing and evolving. Devices will be compatible with something one day and not the next. Some computers don't even come with cd drives anymore and others won't read certain types of discs. Discs are fragile. We don't always treat them as such, but they are. Spill something on them, leave them in the sun, drop them, lightly scratch them and they're done for. Let's say you do decide to get that disc out and have some prints made, but it's been a year since the pictures were done. You get the disc out, pop it in the computer...and it won't play. Nothing happens or the disc can't be read for whatever reason. Then what do you do? Those pictures are lost, gone forever. Not only did you pay that money and now you don't have the pictures, but maybe those were the last pictures you had made with someone. Or maybe they were the happiest pictures and now they are gone.

Bottom line is that I strongly encourage my clients to purchase prints. Not because it's what is best for me, but because I feel it's really what is best for my clients. I do offer the option to purchase a USB flash drive, but my prices reflect my opinion on technology versus prints. I know I'm going to have some unhappy people here and there that just want the disc, but I'm prepared to deal with that. I can only hope that you can understand my reasons and respect that. So, the next time you are in the market for a photographer, please think about what I have said here. Preserve those memories. <3

Good To Bad To Worse

Today started out normal enough. I got up and fixed the little one some cereal, checked Facebook and emails, checked my business page...the usual. Then I started thinking about this summer and going to the beach. We didn't get to go last year, so we decided that we really wanted to try to go this year. We have some money saved up and I talked to my sister in law about going with us, so that we would have help keeping an eye on our rambunctious two year old. I had a few minutes before I needed to start fixing food so it would be ready when my hubby got up, so I pulled up the website of our favorite place to stay at the beach. Wouldn't you know it? I found the exact room we wanted for the exact dates we wanted (Mustang Week) for about three hundred dollars less than what it was the last time we checked. I saved the page and had a little extra pep in my step now that I could almost taste the salt air.

Fast forward an hour and we have eaten a pretty awesome meal of kielbasa with banana peppers, blueberry pancakes and eggs. I had told him about the reservation I found and he agreed that I could go ahead and book it. The cancellation policy got me some brownie points since we could cancel at least a week before we got there and only lose thirty four dollars of our deposit. There have been talks of a lay off at his company for months, but in the oilfield there is ALWAYS talks of a lay off. This new round of lay off talk had us in a discussion about whether or not we should take our camper home. My vote was that we should take it home because we would save a lot of money. He had changed his vote to leaving it so that we weren't pulling it as much and our daughter and I could still come to work with him. Well...my vote won, but not because he saw the light or anything like that. I happened to sit down at the table and see that he had gotten an email. I almost just trashed it because it didn't look like anything interesting, but opened it anyway and got a lovely surprise. It was an email from his company stating that sometime between March 1 and March 14 he would be laid off permanently.

Within just a couple of hours my day went from one extreme to the other. Now we are trying to think of what job he could possibly do. The only thing he knows and the only thing he is trained for is the mines and rigs. In case nobody noticed, the oilfield is crashing hard and coal is basically non-existent in southern West Virginia now. I know we will figure something out because we always do, but it's just so frustrating. The little town we live in is almost dead. It's so sad to see our whole county and many around us slowly dying. It affects everyone in every job. The people that lose their jobs are having to move out of state to find new jobs just to feed their families. Those people moving means there isn't anyone to spend money at the gas stations, grocery stores, hair dressers, etc. These families have been in these little towns for generations. Some of them, like my family, have been there since these towns were founded. It's more than just a home or just a place to live and they are being forced to leave. I really don't know what everyone is supposed to do and my heart breaks for them, for us and for my daughter.

By this time I should have already had the camper packed up and cleaned so we can head home tomorrow, but I've spent all evening job searching on the internet and talking to some people that may be of help. At this rate I'm going to be up all night trying to get everything situated to leave in the morning. It would be easier if we could take the camper with us tomorrow, but the snow still hasn't melted off from the blizzard. We will have to come back for it in a few days when the rest of it should be melted. If it's not moved by Monday we'll have to pay rent for the lot it's on again.

To top the day off, I just found out that a beloved family member passed away today too. Seems like everything gets you at once. I don't do this very often, but please keep my family in your thoughts. *Baby Dust*

Life After Infertility?

I don't know that I believe in such a thing as "life after infertility". There is no cure for infertility. It never goes away. It's always there, lurking in the background. Even if you make the decision to stop trying for a baby or if for whatever reason you have a hysterectomy or even if you have a baby, it doesn't make you any less of an infertile. It doesn't change everything that you've been through. No, it's not life after infertility. It's coping with life after infertility. It's that moment when you realize that this disease has taken over every aspect of your life and you have no idea where to go from there. Do you keep trying? Do you stop? Do you take more drastic measures? Do you sign up for that new trial? There are so many directions and so much information that it gets completely overwhelming and all you really want to do is get your life back to some kind of normal. Some people are better at coping than others. Some people never reach that point and they walk aimlessly through this journey completely lost.

I had my moment. My moment where I made the decision that this isn't going to control me anymore. I have always considered myself to be very strong, to make the tough calls when others wouldn't. I lost that part of myself with infertility and my other medical problems. I let them decide how I lived my life. It's time that changed. I'm taking my life back and living the way I want to. My moment came a couple weeks ago. It was pretty late and my hubby and daughter had already gone to bed. I went to the cabinet where I keep all of my meds from the last injectable cycle we were going to do. I laid everything out on the table and just stared for at them for a while. All of those meds and all of those needles and I just kept asking myself, "Am I ready to go back to all of this?". The answer is no, I'm not. Not right now anyway. At some point, if it comes to that, we will go back and try that all over again. Right now isn't that time and that's when it clicked. We get so tied up in timing when we are intimate and charting and temping and medications...every second of our life is carefully planned out. We become a slave. I'm not ready to go back to that. I want to live. I want to have some peace and not be constantly worried about every single little thing. Emotionally, the way we treat ourselves when we start that infertility journey is honestly probably not healthy. I think everyone needs to take a break from being a slave to infertility at some point. You need time to regroup, rekindle the romance in your relationship, let the stress go and just live.

To keep myself busy I have my daughter, my pets, my hubby and work. This little girl for sure keeps me on my toes at all times and is most definitely a full time job. A lot of the time that would normally be filled with thinking about my problems is now filled with her and I am so thankful for that. I know not all of you have that kind of distraction, so you need to find something that you are passionate about. Do you like to paint? Are you a writer? Have you always wanted to take a class? Love video games? Now is the time to put that to use. Fill your time with what you love to do. You will be amazed at how much weight is lifted when you actually go back to doing the things you love, instead of planning out every minute of your day.

I am very lucky to be a stay at home mom. My hubby works his butt off so that I can be the one to be home with our daughter. However, there are times when she visits other people or when she is asleep and those times let my mind start to wonder. The old worry starts to creep back. How do I cope with that? I became a work at home mom. I found a company and product that I am passionate about and that I love. I sell Pink Zebra. Working from home gives me a sense of purpose. I love staying home, but I have always felt that I needed to contribute to the finances in some way. PZ lets me do both, which eases my mind at a time when layoffs in the oilfield are at an all time high. We never know how long my hubby will have his job, but we now have plenty saved up if something does happen. I really love what I do, so I can also throw myself into my work whenever I need a distraction.

Do me a favor...find something that you are passionate about and start donating your free time to that activity as much as possible. Give yourself a break, you deserve it. Lots of baby dust to all of those ttc.

And The Cycle Continues...

Well, here we are a little over a year since my last post and not much has changed. My cycles are still even more irregular now than they were before I had our little girl. You would think I would have come up with some type of coping mechanism for dealing with the uncertainty every month, but I still haven't. I still allow myself to go buy pregnancy tests and be disappointed several times a month. I started back on the Pregnitude. It did such an amazing job of regulating my cycles before I got pregnant that I decided to give it another shot. I really hope it wasn't just some fluke and that it makes things even out again. I still get those really weird muscle twitches that feels like a baby kicking. After some research it seems that many people that have been pregnant still feel what I call phantom kicks, even years after giving birth. We still haven't had any luck getting pregnant. Our baby just turned two in December and I haven't been pregnant once. I am thankful that there haven't been anymore miscarriages, but disheartened that it seems my baby journey may have ended. When we were trying to get pregnant before I got pregnant at least every other year.

Every time I look at our little girl my heart breaks for her. Not knowing the joy of growing up with siblings. Not knowing what it's like to have someone that always has your back at the times when your parents can't. I hate the thought of her being alone if something happened to me and my husband. Sure, she has other family and I'm sure that they would keep in touch. It's just an entirely different kind of bond you have with a sibling and I feel like a failure for not being able to give that to her. Before we had her I felt like I was failing my husband and now that she is here, I feel like I am failing her. Don't get me wrong, I know it's not my fault. However, it is MY body that can't preform a basic natural function.

I suppose at some point we will go back to our reproductive endocrinologist. The time just doesn't feel right yet. I don't look forward to the feeling of being a lab rat. The poking, prodding, procedures and medication...I just don't think that I am emotionally ready for all of that again. A big piece of me wants to just throw in the towel, wave the white flag and get a hysterectomy. Just be done with all of it and all the emotional and physical trauma that goes along with it, but I can't. I'm not a quitter. I know I would regret it if I did that. As long as I have all the essential parts, there is hope. I just can't find it in myself to dash that little bit of hope away.

As for our little girl, she just celebrated her second birthday. She has my blue eyes and unruly curly blonde hair. She has her daddy's temper and because we are both stubborn, she can be hard to handle. I wouldn't have expected anything less coming from the two of us. She will be a fighter and she will be strong. I have no worries about the life that she will make for herself. She is laying in the floor at my feet sleeping as I type this, wore herself out throwing a temper tantrum.

At this point, my blog will become more of a journey through my everyday life and not only about my infertility. My life is so much more than that and I refuse to let infertility define me anymore.

For any of you reading this that are currently ttc, lots of Baby Dust!