Wow, sorry for my absence the last few days! My computer has not been friendly, and I have been extremely busy.
Let's see...what's been going on?? Well, Friday I had an ultrasound done to check my follicles...and I had two wonderful 20mm follies ready to go! So, the nurse gave me a trigger shot (OUCH, this particular nurse I swear just likes to stab people) to stimulate ovulation, and the next day I went to Seattle to had an IUI (intrauterine insemination) done.
I won't go into too much detail about the IUI because J would probably kill me, but it definitely wasn't my favorite experience. Basically in the morning, J went in and did his thing, and then 90 minutes later I went and had my part done. Essentially, it's like doing a pap smear with the speculum and everything, then they insert a tiny catheter through your cervix into your uterus and inject the sperm directly in. It didn't really hurt so to speak, but it was definitely not comfortable. That's pretty much it. I probably worked myself up over it for nothing. So hopefully, especially with two good follicles and an IUI this time, we'll have some better chances!
On a sadder note, today was my first day back to work after a week long vacation. Fortunately, it was only a half day (I work this Saturday, so I was compensating for it) and I had an acupuncture appointment this afternoon. It was a slow day, I didn't have to help too many people and surprisingly didn't have much to catch up on since I worked on all of it before I left. Acupuncture was really good and really relaxing today. It was a light treatment, but again, really good.
We've spent a lot of time with Kelly and Ken the past couple of days, and it hasn't been too bad. We had dinner last night, and Kelly and I worked on a couple crafty things in my new happy room. :) It was nice and relaxing...We did see them tonight at my mother in law's house since J was getting his hair cut by Ken (and for some reason they had to do it at their mom's??), and I kind of felt like it was time to take some time away from them again. Haha. I guess I'm just not one of those people that can spend a ton of time with the same people over and over again. Here are a few things I've realized about myself the last few weeks:
- I'm a much better friend on a one-on-one level, I can't really be myself in large social settings
- I love my in-laws, but have realized that I'm very different than them
- I think I am most like my mother-in-law, but she has to play roles that inhibit her from being who she really is, so I'm not really sure
- I love love love tea
- I love the fall because it makes me love tea more
- I have 2 things in my life that many people don't have: A best friend that TRULY knows everything about me and doesn't judge me, and a husband that TRULY wants me to be happy and loves me for who I am. These sound simple, but they're very rare.
- I would be a really good mom.
- If I were to become a mom, I would be a fun mom.
- I need to find a different career path but don't know how to get there.
- I love to relax
- My side of the family is very sane ;)
- I can live with simple things
- I don't have to prove anything to anyone anymore
Anyway, I'm going to go relax now and possibly have a cup of tea with my husband. Oh, and possibly catch up on Dexter! Goodnight.
Love, Melonhead
Showing posts with label acupuncture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label acupuncture. Show all posts
Monday, October 17, 2011
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Vacations, Red Clover & Gyne Chord
Praise the good Lord, I am off this entire week! J and I are planning to relax, get a few things done around the house, and have a pizza day. Doesn't that sound blissful? I think that's just what we need! I am definitely on the path towards happy. Now...if I can keep it up after I get back from vacation.... :)
Yesterday, we both had a massage and saw the chiropractor to get adjusted. Then I went and had a great workout afterwards, and came home where we both proceeded to take a nice afternoon nap. Remember how I said it was too much energy to ignore everyone? Well, Kelly called during my nap and asked if we had plans for dinner. I said no, and her and Ken ended up coming over for some of my yummy chicken adobo. While I was dreading it at first, it actually ended up being a nice, relaxing evening with them. We watched New Girl, played cards, and ate some apple crumble pie. Yum! Like I've said before, my relationship with Kelly has always been easy. Things just get awkward and complicated when Jenn comes around, so I try to stay away whenever she's in the picture!
I had my 2nd acupuncture appointment today, and it went great! She said I looked a lot better (not sure if that was a compliment or not) and I told her that I think I'm feeling more relaxed. At the beginning of each appointment, she checks my pulse and looks at my tongue. I didn't really want to ask why the 1st time, but this time I did, and she explained that in ancient Chinese medicine, those were the vital ways they could tell how somebody was feeling. The Chinese had to be really observant, so for women for example, the tongue is the only "internal" organ you could see from the outside. Now I know the tongue isn't technically an interal organ, but I guess it kind of makes sense. If the tongue looks bad, it is probably a good indication that something else is wrong. Through the pulse, she can feel the energy in your body and how it's reacting to certain things. So for the actual procedure itself, she put needles in the same spots as before, but put a few on my belly as well...I'm assuming to help with fertility. I laid there for 30 minutes on my back, and it was really relaxing to just practice my breathing exercises and listen to the rain outside. I almost fell asleep! :) When she came back in, she "tested" a few homeopathic remedies on me....meaning she took small vials of them, laid them on my arm, and I guess she could tell which ones my body wanted to take. I ended up going home with some red clover (to make as a tea) to help with blood flow and Gyne-Chord, which is supposed to help with detoxification of the reproductive organs. I figure it can't really hurt, right? :)
So far, two days down, not so shabby. Why does time have to go by so fast during vacation? Ugh!
mmmmm tea.......and the mantra that I wish existed in my life everyday....
Love,
Melonhead
Yesterday, we both had a massage and saw the chiropractor to get adjusted. Then I went and had a great workout afterwards, and came home where we both proceeded to take a nice afternoon nap. Remember how I said it was too much energy to ignore everyone? Well, Kelly called during my nap and asked if we had plans for dinner. I said no, and her and Ken ended up coming over for some of my yummy chicken adobo. While I was dreading it at first, it actually ended up being a nice, relaxing evening with them. We watched New Girl, played cards, and ate some apple crumble pie. Yum! Like I've said before, my relationship with Kelly has always been easy. Things just get awkward and complicated when Jenn comes around, so I try to stay away whenever she's in the picture!
I had my 2nd acupuncture appointment today, and it went great! She said I looked a lot better (not sure if that was a compliment or not) and I told her that I think I'm feeling more relaxed. At the beginning of each appointment, she checks my pulse and looks at my tongue. I didn't really want to ask why the 1st time, but this time I did, and she explained that in ancient Chinese medicine, those were the vital ways they could tell how somebody was feeling. The Chinese had to be really observant, so for women for example, the tongue is the only "internal" organ you could see from the outside. Now I know the tongue isn't technically an interal organ, but I guess it kind of makes sense. If the tongue looks bad, it is probably a good indication that something else is wrong. Through the pulse, she can feel the energy in your body and how it's reacting to certain things. So for the actual procedure itself, she put needles in the same spots as before, but put a few on my belly as well...I'm assuming to help with fertility. I laid there for 30 minutes on my back, and it was really relaxing to just practice my breathing exercises and listen to the rain outside. I almost fell asleep! :) When she came back in, she "tested" a few homeopathic remedies on me....meaning she took small vials of them, laid them on my arm, and I guess she could tell which ones my body wanted to take. I ended up going home with some red clover (to make as a tea) to help with blood flow and Gyne-Chord, which is supposed to help with detoxification of the reproductive organs. I figure it can't really hurt, right? :)
So far, two days down, not so shabby. Why does time have to go by so fast during vacation? Ugh!
mmmmm tea.......and the mantra that I wish existed in my life everyday....
Love,
Melonhead
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Acupuncture and learning to relax
I had my first acupuncture appointment today and thought it was an interesting experience. Good, but an interesting good. I walked in there with no expectations really, but walked out feeling decent overall. First, she went over my history, what I was struggling with (stress, fertility), and what I wanted to accomplish. She was really easy to be open and honest with, and it helped that I felt like she's worked with people like me before. And she has, I just didn't know this right away. We talked about the types of things that stress me out, mainly work. The nature of my job makes me a competitive person, and we both agreed that that carries into all sectors of my life causing irritability, tension, and for the most part anger. She explained from her experience, women like me have lots of yang (meaning fast, focus, aggressive, go-go-go) but don't have enough yin (down-time, rest, sleep, me-time). In order for eggs to develop into nice, rich eggs, they essentially need a good rhythm to help them grow correctly - a good balance of yin and yang. With rich and healthy developed eggs comes good and strong progesterone levels which in turn help carry pregnancies to full term. Her thought process is if we can get my body into a good rhythm to help develop my eggs correctly, I should hopefully get everything I need to have a healthy pregnancy and hopefully become less stressed. The whole regimen will include acupuncture treatments (to help keep the energy flowing because I guess it's pretty stagnant right now), no caffeine (yikes!!), exercise (lots of yang), breathing exercises, yoga, and more sleep.
The acupuncture treatment itself was not painful at all, just a little warm and tingly at the beginning. She left me in the room with 4 needles in my head, 4 in my ears, 4 on my hands, and 4 on my feet for about half an hour, then came back and said I had a lot of energy escaping from my head. Now, it's my first appointment so I'm naturally a little skeptical. She asked if my head felt more clear, and I said yes because it actually did, but I'm not sure if that's because of the needles or because I was in that quiet room surrounded by ethereal music by myself and couldn't help but clear my thoughts....so I guess I'll have to see next time. ;) I enjoyed the appointment overall because at the end, we had a plan to overcome my battle with stress and infertility. I could tell she that she wasn't really into western medicine, but she absolutely understands why women like me choose to go to a fertility specialist. She seemed glad that I came to her and told me that she would do her best to be extra support on top of whatever my doctors are recommending. I thought she was very sweet and knowledgeable, but a little quirky. But again, maybe that's just me being skeptical of chinese medicine. However, I'm really beginning to think that the Chinese have had this medicine stuff down from the very beginning. They are so healthy and they seem so stress-free in comparison to those of us in America. America is so full of hustle and bustle and we never put our physical and mental health first. It's so much more about money and status vs. health, balance, and peace of mind. Maybe we could really learn something from them, eh?
Other than my acupuncture appointment, there was nothing else too exciting about my day. I went to work this morning, had a meeting with my team and a private banker, sifted through emails, and helped a few clients. I did get a little peeved with one of my business partners as they seem to think that branch managers are their little bitches and should do all the work for them. To explain, I have a business client who is threatening to leave the bank because another bank is quoting them less fees. This business client uses a LOT of our complicated services including direct deposit, ach, treasury management, etc. All of these cost money, and that's why we have a certain program that they can be a part of to lump all the fees together, which they are a part of. I asked my business banker to help me review their account to see if we could save them any money, and then meet with the client so she could explain the new program to them. My business banker proceeded to work up some quotes, sent me an email with lots of business banker mumbo jumbo that I don't understand or really care to understand, then told me I needed to explain it to the client and let her know what they decide. Uh...NO, I'm not the BUSINESS banker, you are, and you can explain all this CRAP that I was not trained to explain to the BUSINESS client. My job is to get you business and once the client is a BUSINESS client, you as the BUSINESS banker handle all their banking needs and questions. The annoying thing is - all of our partners do this. Our mortgage advisors, our financial advisors, our business bankers - They all expect us to refer them people and deals, but once they get the people and the deals, they expect the branch managers to do all the shit-work once they're clients. Branch managers have to play so many hats including fire-putter-outter, fee-reverser, seller, loan officer, financial advisor, THERAPIST and at the end of the day, we have the highest goals and we get paid the least for what we do. It's just BS.
Okay, now that I've extracted that from my brain, I wanted to list some things I was thankful for today and remind myself to LIVE SIMPLY:
- J
- My animals
- Co-workers I can vent to
- My bff Sola who entertains me throughout the day with funny texts
- The hot cup of peach tea in front of me in a polka dot mug
- Acupuncture
- Hot baths
- Fall and coziness
Love,
Melonhead
The acupuncture treatment itself was not painful at all, just a little warm and tingly at the beginning. She left me in the room with 4 needles in my head, 4 in my ears, 4 on my hands, and 4 on my feet for about half an hour, then came back and said I had a lot of energy escaping from my head. Now, it's my first appointment so I'm naturally a little skeptical. She asked if my head felt more clear, and I said yes because it actually did, but I'm not sure if that's because of the needles or because I was in that quiet room surrounded by ethereal music by myself and couldn't help but clear my thoughts....so I guess I'll have to see next time. ;) I enjoyed the appointment overall because at the end, we had a plan to overcome my battle with stress and infertility. I could tell she that she wasn't really into western medicine, but she absolutely understands why women like me choose to go to a fertility specialist. She seemed glad that I came to her and told me that she would do her best to be extra support on top of whatever my doctors are recommending. I thought she was very sweet and knowledgeable, but a little quirky. But again, maybe that's just me being skeptical of chinese medicine. However, I'm really beginning to think that the Chinese have had this medicine stuff down from the very beginning. They are so healthy and they seem so stress-free in comparison to those of us in America. America is so full of hustle and bustle and we never put our physical and mental health first. It's so much more about money and status vs. health, balance, and peace of mind. Maybe we could really learn something from them, eh?
Other than my acupuncture appointment, there was nothing else too exciting about my day. I went to work this morning, had a meeting with my team and a private banker, sifted through emails, and helped a few clients. I did get a little peeved with one of my business partners as they seem to think that branch managers are their little bitches and should do all the work for them. To explain, I have a business client who is threatening to leave the bank because another bank is quoting them less fees. This business client uses a LOT of our complicated services including direct deposit, ach, treasury management, etc. All of these cost money, and that's why we have a certain program that they can be a part of to lump all the fees together, which they are a part of. I asked my business banker to help me review their account to see if we could save them any money, and then meet with the client so she could explain the new program to them. My business banker proceeded to work up some quotes, sent me an email with lots of business banker mumbo jumbo that I don't understand or really care to understand, then told me I needed to explain it to the client and let her know what they decide. Uh...NO, I'm not the BUSINESS banker, you are, and you can explain all this CRAP that I was not trained to explain to the BUSINESS client. My job is to get you business and once the client is a BUSINESS client, you as the BUSINESS banker handle all their banking needs and questions. The annoying thing is - all of our partners do this. Our mortgage advisors, our financial advisors, our business bankers - They all expect us to refer them people and deals, but once they get the people and the deals, they expect the branch managers to do all the shit-work once they're clients. Branch managers have to play so many hats including fire-putter-outter, fee-reverser, seller, loan officer, financial advisor, THERAPIST and at the end of the day, we have the highest goals and we get paid the least for what we do. It's just BS.
Okay, now that I've extracted that from my brain, I wanted to list some things I was thankful for today and remind myself to LIVE SIMPLY:
- J
- My animals
- Co-workers I can vent to
- My bff Sola who entertains me throughout the day with funny texts
- The hot cup of peach tea in front of me in a polka dot mug
- Acupuncture
- Hot baths
- Fall and coziness
Love,
Melonhead
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Pilot
If my life were a movie, I wouldn't even know how to classify it. A chick flick? Comedy? Drama? Hmm...yes, probably all of the above. But if you took an x-ray to my brain and could see all the stupid trivial things I stress about, one would probably call it a full drawn-out horror/suspense film. It's insane how much time I spend playing scenarios over and over in my head until I've beat them to death. I really need to learn to let the stupid things go. The problem is - I can't decide which things are stupid. And also, to be blunt, my hubby (we'll call him J for anonymity for now) and I are trying to have babies. We've been seeing a fertility specialist for about 1 1/2 years, and have had 3 early miscarriages since. As you can imagine, the whole situation is very stressful. Everyone says "Just free yourself of the stress! Just let it go." How do you do that when you have to chart your temperatures, take medicine everyday, get ultrasounds, get hormone shots, take progesterone, and then take a pregnancy test every cycle? Most women don't even know when they ovulate!
After getting a negative pregnancy test this last cycle, I decided that I need to be more proactive with de-stressing my life. So, I started this anonymous blog not only for myself, but for any other women that want to share their trials and tribulations in eliminating stress from their lives. I need a place to extract and organize my thoughts so they don't sit in my brain all day long and make me crazy. Along with my new blog, I made an appointment to see an acupuncurist on Tuesday. I'm pretty excited about it, but I'm not really sure what to expect. The lady I'm seeing has had some good results from what I hear, and I figure it can't hurt. Maybe she can help me find some good energy and re-align my "qi." :)
To close, I'm making a list of things that make me happy. That's what this whole thing is about - the path to happy and a stress-free life.
- Hubby J
- My animals (two cats and a golden retriever pup)
- Photography
- Hot tea
- Arts & crafts
- Reading
- Music
- Cuddling
- Good movies
- Hiking/long walks
- My friends
- Shopping (when I have $$!)
- Sleeping in
- Fresh flowers
- Good food
- Dazzling conversations :)
After getting a negative pregnancy test this last cycle, I decided that I need to be more proactive with de-stressing my life. So, I started this anonymous blog not only for myself, but for any other women that want to share their trials and tribulations in eliminating stress from their lives. I need a place to extract and organize my thoughts so they don't sit in my brain all day long and make me crazy. Along with my new blog, I made an appointment to see an acupuncurist on Tuesday. I'm pretty excited about it, but I'm not really sure what to expect. The lady I'm seeing has had some good results from what I hear, and I figure it can't hurt. Maybe she can help me find some good energy and re-align my "qi." :)
To close, I'm making a list of things that make me happy. That's what this whole thing is about - the path to happy and a stress-free life.
- Hubby J
- My animals (two cats and a golden retriever pup)
- Photography
- Hot tea
- Arts & crafts
- Reading
- Music
- Cuddling
- Good movies
- Hiking/long walks
- My friends
- Shopping (when I have $$!)
- Sleeping in
- Fresh flowers
- Good food
- Dazzling conversations :)
My pup
kitties
yummy food
meow
Fall is here!
fresh flowers
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