Yum!

I just made these chocolate chip cookies using this recipe from Erin Cooks, except I substituted orange-flavored dried cranberries for the dried raspberries and omitted the lemon zest. They are so good, if I say so myself! The recipe is great because it makes a manageable amount of cookies - not three dozen like most of them... It says it makes 15 cookies, but I got 20 good size ones out of it.

If you are looking for an interesting travel blog, follow my friend Amy on her blog Nothing Ventured, Nothing Have as she settles in Phenom Penh, Cambodia, where she recently took a maternal & child health job. She is one of the most hilarious people I know, and her entries so far have had me snorting with laughter.

Happy Birthday To Me...Splat

That's the sound of this cycle failing...

As a super special birthday present, my period started today. I'm not really that surprised, but it is still disappointing. We've decided to take a small break while we get K's swimmers tested, and I check back in with the doc about the luteal phase spotting I had... no sense in taking the femara cycle after cycle, making the endo worse, if it is doomed to fail.

We've also decided to look more closely at domestic infant adoption... We'd also be open to fostering, but you have to have a separate bedroom for each child when you are fostering, so our current house is too small. We've requested an info packet from one of the local adoption agencies - from what we can tell online, we like their focus on openness and non-coercive birthmother counseling. I know the birth/first mother's pain would never go away and that open adoption can't make up for the loss, but at least we'd be trying to go into this with a wider view of family that would, hopefully, include the birth/first mother. I couldn't live with myself if I thought she was coerced and then was experiencing that pain.

***

In other news, I had an awesome time with my sister and her 2.5 year old son and baby daughter this weekend. The cousins got to play together, including going to a bounce place and the local science museum, and I got to snack on some roly-poly, super-smiley, drooly 5 month old! I can't wait to see them again in May when I head to Georgia for an STD conference (my career just gets more and more glamorous - I was also asked to come to an invite-only gonorrhea meeting! Let the jokes begin...)

Also, despite the cycle stuff, I have had a generally nice birthday - My husband gave me an IPod Touch, my daughter sang the whole "Happy Birthday" song to me this morning unprompted, my mom gave me an Elsa Perretti heart from Tiffany's and an autographed copy of the Red Leather Diary, my co-workers brought in cake from Whole Foods, and I've had lots of well-wishes from family and friends... It doesn't get better than that!

Funny Stuff and Update

My kid is freaking hilarious... Yesterday, the three of us are getting in the car and we notice this terrible smell. K and I are both like, "What IS that?! Did something die in here?" and M pipes up from the backseat in this very adult, authoritative voice:

"Guys! It was me. I need to go poop. I have gas!"

K and I were rolling... tears streaming... Good thing we weren't driving yet.

Farts will always be funny.

*** I'll give you time to collect yourself ***

So, I took the femara on cds 5-9... It wasn't too bad. I got migraines from the lowered estrogen, but tiny amounts of supplemental estrogen took care of them and shouldn't have disrupted anything. I got an LH surge right on schedule on cd 13, and should have ovulated somewhere between cd 14-15. I think I may have ovulated (or attempted to ovulate) twice, but that doesn't really mean anything in terms of pregnancy.

My endometriomas are definitely back. Fred, the large one on my right ovary that disappeared after my L&D with M, is back up to 4cm big. I also have (bonus!) two 1-1.5cm endometriomas on my left ovary. Fred is pretty much eating my right ovary, but there is some normal ovarian tissue on the left one. This is the first time anyone has said to me that the right ovary is rendered non-functional by Fred. I kind of already knew that, but it was a bit of a blow to hear it, anyway. The femara didn't make my pelvic pain too much worse, though I definitely had more during ovulation and I'm having pain off and on. Hopefully, the bounce-back from the femara isn't making the endo grow too much.

I'm currently on cd 21, 7 days post ovulation... I have low expectations for the femara actually working (low-ered ex-pec-TA-tions - anyone else hear that SNL bit in their heads when they hear that phrase? Anyone? Oh, just me then. ahem. proceed.), but at least the side effects aren't too bad. If it doesn't work this cycle, then I think we'll wait until June to try with femara again... No point going to extreme measures to have a baby born in Jan/Feb, during the height of RSV season.

So, that's all I know... If I know something in the next week or so, you'll know something.