Thursday, January 31, 2008

Let's Get This Party Started

For those of you who have been long-time readers of Fertility Lost, you may have noticed that I'm trying to update the look of the blog and add a few new elements. (Please take my survey in the side bar!)I totally screwed up my blogroll and still have to redo it, so please bare with me. I'll never have a fancy site. Knowing this, I realized I need to get off my butt and write or give this up all together. No one likes a stale blog, right?

So here it is, folks. My attempt to renew my blog. I hope I still have some readers left out there and I hope maybe I'll pick up some new ones. My focus: parenting twins after infertility, with a few diatribes about post-partum depression, post tramautic stress, HE.LLP syndrome, having an au pair, and other things that go bump in the night. Throw in a few photos of some deliciously adorable twin babies, a documentary about my efforts to get my much-needed abdominal surgery covered by insurance, and some bad in-law stories, and I think we'll have a blog worth visiting again.

So, what's new, you ask? Here it is in a nutshell:

My therpaist has pronounced me over my post traumatic stress syndrome and post-partum depression. Hooray! Life is good, no? Well, my big lesson in therapy is that life is still going to be pretty crappy sometimes and that's okay. What matters is how I handle it. And indeed, life is still crappy a lot of the time, as you will see in Exhibit B...

My battle with my health insurance rages on, as three separate doctors have written strongly worded letters expressing the medical necessity of my abdominoplasty. So far, these letters have done nothing but produce more denial letters from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois. That's right, I'm calling you out by name, BCBSIL! As I continue to walk around each day with my intestines and internal organs unprotected by any muscle tissue, I get angrier and angrier. Look soon for a You Tube video showing the world how I can watch my intestines moving right beneath my skin. I'm hoping some word of mouth about my condition will get me some much needed attention. My docs have suggested I take my story to the media. So blogger friends, I may be enlisting your help to spread my story and outrage over this lack of attention to what is a very serious medical condition. I'm awaiting word on my appeal right now. If it's unfavorable, I'm taking the next step to get some help.

My babies are fabulous. I am absolutely in love with them. They make the health insurance battle and the abdominal pain I'm experiencing bearable. Baby A pulls up now and has two teeth. Baby B has a passion for solid food and is crawling on his knees. They are truly the light of my life and have made this whole experience worth all the pain and misery. I couldn't have said that a few months ago. I'm finally seeing the light after a very difficult recovery. Much more on the babies in posts to come. I just don't know where to start.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Happy New Year!

I hope all my blog friends and readers out there have a wonderful 2008. I am optimistic that 2008 will be much better than 2007; of course, I had been optimistic that 2007 would be much, much better than 2006. And in many ways it was. And hey, I'm here to see 2008, with babies, so that's what really counts, right?

This year I've really learned about living in the present. During the pregnancy I focused on each and every day that the babies were growing inside me. Every day I got closer to having "term" twins was an accomplishment. I didn't look far ahead of myself. The same happened when I was in the hospital. Some days I really lived minute to minute. As I healed that became hour to hour, day to day. Now with all the challenges of raising two babies at once I'm still living in the moment, handling one thing at a time and not getting too far ahead of myself. Yeah, I sometimes google private school tuition rates and dream of a day when I won't need so much child care, but for the most part I'm taking it one day at a time and loving it.

This was the best Christmas ever, hands down, for me and H. The babies were so great, even though we had them around different groups of relatives and friends almost every day for two weeks. I finally feel whole, like my life is complete. No one is missing anymore. Now all I have to do is enjoy it. And I am. No New Year's resolutions this year. Just grateful to see each day and what it brings.