I am SOOO over infertility. Adoption, here we come!!!!

September 16, 2013

So, today is an extraordinary day. We have officially chosen an adoption agency…. And we officially asked my parents for help financially. We could have easily gotten a loan on our own, but the interest rate would have been 8.9 percent….I hate borrowing money from my mom, but this is worth it. We can borrow off of her home equity for a much lower interest rate. I am so grateful for the wonderful support my parents offer. They are so excited for us to have kids…..I am pretty sure they would have cut off limbs for this. Same goes for DH’s parents. They have told us to forget about any money that we owe them….which was so sweet, but I would have nothing of it. I insisted that we pay them back….although when, is still TBD. We WILL pay them back though. I refuse to be in debt to anyone.

Anyway….we are officially on our way!!! We are over the fertility treatments. The end goal is not a pregnancy…the end goal is a family. We are finally on our way to that. J We have been accepted to the program that we wanted, we are going to send the official application and money, set up our profile, go through the totally invasive home study, and then wait to be chosen.

Here we go!!!!

FAIL!

Okay, so I never wrote during my "easing out" process. I am really bad at keeping up with this. The process was not to bad. The fresh squeezed orange juice was awful because they are not in season. It tasted like I was drinking orange rinds with lots of pulp. Because of this I cheated and had some bottled juice that I got at the store. I also cheated and ate soup before I was supposed to and solids...Next time I do the cleanse, I will make sure to do everything appropriately, but I just couldn't do it this time! I NEEDED to eat!

I also failed with the quitting smoking, but I have already gotten back on the wagon and I am giving it another go. I really, really want this to work. I just can not keep poisoning myself with expensive cancer sticks! Not to mention the fact that while my husband has been very patient about it, he hates smoking.  And since I am half way through my period now, the mood swings should not be so bad which will help in my efforts. I am doing this for myself, my husband, and our future family.

Next week is going to be a busy one. I need to get everything prepared for the big move. The movers come on Monday, August 27th and of our stuff will be on its way across the Atlantic. We have to get our apartment deep cleaned before we leave and I also need to get packed for my return to the USA on August 29th. Time is going to pass quickly. On the one hand, that is a good thing because I miss my sweet little dog so bad! On the other hand it stinks, because I am going to miss DH so bad and I won't see him until October. He will come for a vacation at that point. I hope we find something out pretty soon so we will have an idea of when he will be home for good. I do not like being apart from my man!

Well, that is about all at the moment. I hope things go smoothly in the next couple of weeks!

DAY 10! DAY 10! DAY 10!

Today is day 10! Yesterday I weighed in at 140 pounds and today I weighed in at 139.5. Amazing! I can not remember the last time I was in the 130's!

Since going without food for nine days, and dealing with PMS was not enough, yesterday I decided to stop smoking too. I have been wanting to for a while, but it is just so hard! I have quit so many times and gone back to it....but this time I have really made some other healthy changes in my life and I really want this to stick! So yesterday I did not smoke, and I have not smoked today either. So far, it has not been too bad. Usually the third day is the hardest for me though...so we will see.

Back to the cleanse though. Things are good. My mood is pretty good, and the little bit of irritation I feel is most certainly from the PMS and not from the cleanse.  I am super excited to begin the "easing out" process, and slowly work my way back to solid food (YEA! CHEWING!)

Kevin and I went to the grocery store last night for a quick trip. I needed to pick up some oranges for fresh squeezed orange juice, I needed lemons, another bottle of pure maple syrup, and some broth type "soup". I also picked up some actual food though. Now I have food sitting in the cupboard for myself!

My main goal coming up for the rest of this week and really from here on out, is to be active. I want to make sure I take  a daily walk...at least around the lake, some days longer, and maybe take some nice bike rides around town. I want to start to stretch on a regular basis on our living room floor, and I want to start doing some basic exercises that I can do without a gym. I want to get my metabolism burning well and keep this weight off as much as possible. After not eating for 10 days, my body has gone into starvation mode and it will probably want to hold on to every calorie and fat gram that I ingest at the beginning, so it is very important to get my metabolism revved up.

So that is about it. I will try to report about the "easing out" process and how my body reacts to eating solid food again.

Apparently every other day works better for me.

Once again I forgot to write yesterday. Not much has changed really, however when I weighed myself yesterday morning, I did manage to gain a half pound somehow. I was at 141.5. When I weighed myself this morning, I was back down and my current weight is 140.5. I do expect to gain some weight back once I begin eating again and I am very curious how much of it I will gain back. Hopefully not too much!

My intestines continue to do this weird gurgling thing in the evenings. All day I am fine, but the evening rolls around and I can feel my intestines moving all over the place. It is a really weird feeling.

I am continuing to be amazed by the amount of crap still coming out of me. I must have been harboring this shit for a very long time! It is good to get it all flushed out of me. Clearly I needed to do this cleanse.

My energy continues to be good and I have still not had any mood swings. I do feel them beginning to creep up on me, but I think that has more to do with PMS than the cleanse.

I am really beginning to miss food. Not because I am hungry, but more so because I miss chewing stuff! When I hear DH chomping on bagel chips, it is the crunchiness that I crave....not so much the food itself. I don't feel hungry during the day because I am religious on keeping up with my lemonade. I have to admit...a little different flavor would be nice too. I am not going to stop now though because this is day 8! I have almost completed this journey! Not to mention, I made a bet with a friend. He really did not think I would be able to do it, so he bet me a bottle of wine (at least 10 euros..no cheapy stuff). I am so happy to prove him wrong and I can already taste the Fumé Blanc!

So overall, things are good. Our anniversary dinner on August 14th is going to be the best pizza I have ever eaten! I am sure I will be smiling from ear to ear!

Oops, I did it again. (This is not a Brittany Spears post)

Well here I am at day 6 and I missed day 5! No biggie. I forgot to weigh myself yesterday anyway and by the time I remembered, I had just finished drinking a liter of salt water so my weight would not have been accurate. I just decided I would make sure to remember to weigh myself today, which I did. I weighed in at 141 pounds! Another pound and a half gone.

Overall I am feeling good. Yesterday I had some rumbling going on in my intestines...serious stuff. I could actually feel my intestines moving and twitching. It was weird, but so far, none of that today. My energy level is very good as long as I keep drinking my lemonade. Tonight we might go out with some friends, so I need to bring my ingredients with me. Because of this little fact of toting everything around with me, I have felt kind of house bound.  The one day that I went to the pool and waited to long to drink my lemonade and I ended up very hungry. It made it much more difficult to stick with it. I did it though. I just prefer to keep up on it and it basically eliminates the difficulty at this point.

I am actually really beginning to enjoy this (that is not to say that I do not miss eating real food). I am feeling empowered and healthier than I have in a long time. I have actually developed a taste for the saltwater and the lemonade. I was so nervous that the saltwater would make me want to gag and vomit, but I am actually enjoying it at this point. That is a very big surprise!

So I am officially past the half way mark. After today I will have only 4 days left and then the "ease out" portion. Good times!

Oops..I missed day three and now it is day four.

So yesterday when I woke up and weighed myself, I was down another 2 pounds putting me at 143.5 pounds. I was shocked. I simply can not believe how all of this weight is melting off of me so quick.

My day was pretty good. Every day gets easier to stay away from food. I went to the pool with a friend of mine and her daughter and we had a lovely afternoon, but I ended up waiting longer to have my "lemonade" then I would normally wait and I was starving. That made it difficult, as everyone around us seemed to be eating french fries from the restaurant at the pool and my friend's daughter was eating a bunch of fruit that looked so juicy and yummy. I know she was concerned about having food in front of me, but I told her not to worry. I can not expect everyone else to stop eating because I have chosen to do so. Besides, I have to watch DH eat every evening! Once I got home, I made myself a lemonade and got passed it.

This morning I woke up and I was down another pound. So I am currently at 142.5. I can't even remember the last time I weighed this little. It was at least 6 years ago. None of my clothes fit me! This was actually a problem before I started this cleanse, but now it is WAY worse. I won't complain about that though. My MIL takes me shopping for my birthday every year and then we go out to lunch, so I will get some new pants on September 4th! I think I might also bring some of my other pants to get altered so I don't have to waste a bunch of perfectly good pants. This is a good problem to have as far as I am concerned.

I am feeling pretty good at the moment and tomorrow I will be at the half way mark. I feel so good about this that I have decided that I might make this a yearly thing that I do....although I will do it sometime in March. Doing this during the summer kind of stinks, and besides, it won't hurt to shed some winter weight before bikini season starts!

Day 2 of The Master Cleanse

I made it through yesterday somehow. It was not easy. I did not feel hungry...the "lemonade" did a good job of keeping my hunger at bay...but I just wanted to eat because I couldn't. It did not help that I was watching the Olympics and since McDonalds is a sponsor, there were constant commercials for them. I only eat fast food once or twice a year, but those french fries just looked so good!

Today I started out by drinking a quart of warm water with two teaspoons of sea salt in it. It was not delicious, but it was doable. I just tried to think about salty fries while I was drinking it. Anyway, this is supposed to work as a natural laxative....and it definitely worked.  I was a bit explosive this morning.

Today was a little bit easier to not be so tempted by food. I was not so bothered by commercials for food. The problem seems to arise around 4:00pm. I do well all day, but as the dinner hour approaches, I want to eat. Yesterday DH cooked a stir fry for dinner and it smelled wonderful. He is really trying to be supportive of me during this time though, and he made more than enough so that he could just re-heat food for the next couple of days instead of cooking every night. Hopefully that helps.

My mood seems to be stable and does not seem to be affected yet. I am happy about that. I also weighed myself this morning and I am down a pound from yesterday morning. I am at 145.5 pounds. I can not believe it!