Sometimes I wish someone would just make me dinner...

I had a little bit of a breakdown the other night.
Maybe it was the fact that I've been sick for a week...sick and pregnant is not fun.
Maybe it was the hormones.

But I find myself frustrated again.  I love my husband soooo much.  He is amazing.  But we don't have sex.  We're not there yet.  We had a great summer in 2012...but 2013 was a rough year.  We had some good success - some even pain free.  And I love that the pain free times gave me my baby girl.  But then it was the spotting.  1st trimester was basically sex free...and its hard to get back into it.  We've had a sex maybe 3 times in the past 6 months...and I can't really say its been pain free. Sure, its better than it was a couple years ago when we couldn't even get him inside.

But this isn't the way its supposed to be. Maybe I shouldn't watch TV when I'm sick.  All the sex...the biggest complaint being time, or stress or whatever.  But I would love to have that be my biggest obstacle.  I just want to make love to my husband.  Really, truly, make love - with all the fireworks and passion of our first kiss.  I don't want it to be clinically or technical - it takes so much focus just to relax "enough". 

No one knows what my life is like.  No one knows how hard it is to have the most beautiful husband in the world - my childhood sweetheart, my best friend - and yet not be able to fully make love.  I know I'm not dying.  I know there are so many worse things out there we could suffer through.  I don't want sympathy but then I do...I don't want to be a victim, but then I wish I didn't have to pretend to be stronger than I feel.  Maybe it would be easier, if people knew what we go through.  Maybe the encouragement from others - the way they'd encourage someone recovering from an injury - would help. 

You know when someone has surgery, people from the community get together and make the family dinner.  Because they know that "recovering" is a job in and of itself.  What if once a week, I didn't have to worry about life stuff - I had someone's help so that my husband and I could focus on recovering.  What if it was OK to say..."I can't work, go to school and recover.  I need help."
My husband can't be the one who helps me - he needs to recover with me.  I need him to be my doctor, my physical therapist.

Why is this so different from every other medical condition?

Am I being weak? I want to ask for help....but then again, do I really want to share this?

Step 1: Relax

Its been quite a while since I've checked back in. And a lot has happened. I'll list a few things below (leaving out school and work for now).

1) My grandfather passed away.  The weeks leading up to it, the funeral preparations, and now the grieving period have been extremely exhausting.  I miss him terribly and I don't quite feel like myself without him.

2) I haven't been able to have sex since getting pregnant.  There's a two week waiting period every time I got spotting in first trimester. And every time the two weeks were up...I'd get spotting again.

3) I'm officially 2nd Trimester!!!!! 16 weeks, baby!
- And almost to the two week date since my last spotting. So....getting ready to get back in the saddle.

Which brings me to my current thoughts....
They say second trimester is a good time for libido so now I just have to make sure nothing else is getting in the way. 

We've been cuddling a lot lately. May I suggest to the ladies out there struggling with the distance vaginismus can create in marriage to find something special (intimacy wise) to do for your hubby.  Its not that its only our responsibility to make intimacy happen.  Its just that sometimes we are so busy dealing with our own struggles, and empowering ourselves, that we forget to check back in with our hubbies.  I won't explain my methods here - but seriously...find something that works for you guys. It can be very simple.

The thing I'm trying to tackle now, in preparation for sex, is getting all these extra stressors out of the way - the school, work, life, family, etc. stressors which affect even my vaginal muscles.  I can't get back into things wound as tightly as I am now. So I need to find some ways to relax.  Right now, I don't have any sexual desire. But that doesn't mean I can't work on eliminating mental stress which is causing constant physical tension. 

So on to step 1: Relax.

Ahoy! Feeling a little sea sick these days...

Well the queasiness has hit. ...and boy, does it suck!

Compared to some, I probably have it pretty mild.  But its like a constant, queasy, just the thought of food makes me want to gag that's getting old really fast. 

There's a part of me that's somewhat grateful - I read in some statistics that women who experience morning sickness are less likely to have a miscarriage by like 70% or some other giant number.  So in that case...knock on wood...I'm grateful.  But its still sucks.

I finally stopped spotting, which means I should be able to get back into the sex thing soon.  However, I think we are going to wait till after my appointment a week from Monday, just to be sure. 

So right now it just feel like a giant waiting game.  Waiting to see the doctor.  Waiting to have sex.  Waiting for the nausea to go away.  But at least these are all healthy, normal signs. 

I guess the vaginismus has prepared me for this in a way - all the patience I've learned in waiting to be able to have pain-free sex.  And then the patience I've been trying to have (not sure if its been all that successful) in waiting for the sex to be AWESOME.  I guess I'm kind of used to waiting. 

And this is definitely something worth waiting for.

I'm having a baby!

I'm having a hard time believing its real.  But I've taken a pregnancy test each morning for the past few days. I even bought the digital ones that specifically say "pregnant" in the screen.

I'm having a baby!

I emailed my doctor on Thursday morning right after I took the first test. Her nurse scheduled my appointment for the first week of August.  I think I'll be a couple days past 7 weeks at that point.  From what I've read online, that's pretty normal.

However, I've had a little bit of brown spotting for about a week now, and even though I read that as long as its not painful and brown, its not anything to worry about...I still find myself very anxious.

Plus I'm alone all weekend because the hubby had to go out of town (planned before we got the news).

I'm planning on emailing my doctor tonight in hopes that she gets the message first thing in the morning tomorrow.  Maybe she'll want to check on me sooner.

I'm just trying to stay very calm and relaxed.  Drinking lots of water and trying not to worry.  I'll feel sooo much better once I hear my little one's heartbeat.  I don't want summer to go too fast...but that little heartbeat will be the perfect way to end the summer. 

Still doesn't feel real...

Not sure what to think these days

So this is either the weirdest PMS I've ever had, or we are going to have the next 9 months to practice sex with no period interruptions (can't complain about that).

No spotting today. I did end up getting a little yesterday, but all old blood. Nothing like a period.
My boobs/nipples are still SUPER sore and I've actually had to wear a bigger bra the past few days. Luckily I still have my old C-cup bras from years ago when I was on birth control and had bigger boobs. The C bras are a tiny bit big, but my normal B-cups kill me with pain and are way too small (kind of a bummer since I just bought the cutest new black bra to help me feel sexy again). My veins are starting to show a little and the bumps around my nipples are a little more pronounced.

I decided to give into my baby-on-the-brain and watched Father of the Bride 2. I started crying from the very beginning when Steve Martin says "9 months ago to be exact". I was weepy the whole film. I've been weepy for a day or two now. My husband has been laughing at me (out of love) - he thinks its super cute.

I think I may give in to temptation and take a dollar store pregnancy test tonight. I can always get more for a dollar and I hear they work pretty well. I was going to wait till Friday (the hubby is going to be out of town this weekend so I don't want to test while he's gone). If I don't have any more bleeding today, I'll take a test.

Oh and I don't know if this is a symptom but I've been SUPER SUPER horny. 2 nights ago I woke up at 3:30 in the morning and almost just tried to have sex then and there. But at the same time, I'm sooooo tired at times and the sleep won over the desire to have sex. Its kind of a bummer I'm having spotting because I really want to try having sex when I actually "crave" it. I can feel attraction, but its rare that I actually feel 100% turned-on and unfortunately, its never lined up with a time when we could actually have sex. Maybe I should have picked sex over sleep the other night...that might have been my chance to start feeling pleasure. O well...maybe next time.

It is actually the real thing this time??

Over the past year, I've had plenty of "am I pregnant?" moments.  Although the likelihood was usually pretty low (since we had only had sex a couple times), I wondered over every symptom.  With my crazy periods and anxiety issues, I had plenty of symptoms. 

And despite my resistance, I am at it again. 

I'm trying to ignore the nausea and the dizziness - that could be caused by the anxiety.
Even the extreme exhaustion could be caused by all the things on my plate. 

But the SORE boobs...now that is unusual.  According to my Fertility Friend chart, my most fertile days were about  10 days ago.  That lines up exactly with when we started having lots of pain-free sex.  Since about 7 days ago, my boobs have been killing me.  Especially my nipples which are REALLY really sore. 

Although the sore nipples are very unusual for me (I don't know if I've ever experienced this before), I sometimes get sore boobs before my period. It is possible that I am going to have an early period.  A couple days ago I had a tiny bit of very faintly pink discharge.  Yesterday I had a little bit of spotting.  Its either my period starting a good week or so early, or I just experienced implantation bleeding.  The current update...no further spotting.

Its weird thinking that this might actually be the cycle.  I've had plenty of false alarms this year, so I tend to think its not going to happen...but there really is no reason to think that it couldn't.

This is going to be an interesting couple of days....

Independence Day

Happy 4th of July folks!

It's always a beautiful thing to celebrate, regardless on individual opinions on the politics of our country and our future, I truly believe that by celebrating this day we all take a moment to conscientiously think about what it is that we value and what we are thankful for.  That act alone is critical for our future.  By thinking of these things we not only improve our future as a country but also the future of our individual lives.

So today I am declaring my independence from Vaginismus.

Today, I refuse to live a life limited by this issue.  I have the RIGHT to the pursuit of happiness.  And that happiness includes pleasure.  In all it's forms.

Now, where's that hubby of mine? It's time to take this battle to the bedroom.  Fighting for my rights with my baby by my side...or beneath me...or on top... :-)