The Pains of Infertility

When my husband and I discovered that our insurance covers fertility testing, we immediately went to a fertility center in order to have his little swimmers studied. We discovered that his little men were dead. We don't know if it is because of the medication he is taking or his weight or what, but all we know is right now it would take something akin to a miraculous act for me to get pregnant at this stage, which is actually cool right now since we are newly married and do not need any children at this point in our relationship. However, a few years down the road, this is going to really hurt. Right now, I am hurting. I see all these girls at work who are pregnant, having babies, bringing their babies in to visit. Usually, I am satisfied with holding a baby or babysitting a toddler once in a blue moon at the moment, but what about later in life I wonder.

 The husband says we can adopt, and I totally plan on doing that. We are going to become foster parents so we can figure out what age we want and how old we want to go. Plus, it is easier to adopt the child once you have had them in your home to foster them. That might be a good thing, but at the same time I want to have my own child ya know? The husband and I rather not spend thousands of dollars on fertility treatments that I may or may not be able to carry to full term. It would be better for us just to spend the money on adopting a child. What pisses me off about this the most is how some of my co-workers reacted when I told them about my husband's condition. I think the exact words were "Why did you saddle yourself with a man who can't give you children? Don't you want your own mini-me?" that someone had the audacity to say to me. I kept my cool long enough to walk away to do my round. I shut myself in the room with someone that wasn't really all there, but I cried and put my head on her shoulder while she hugged me and comforted me, even though she had no idea who I was or where she was, because I was one of her "grandbabies" and I was crying. It really hurts that someone would say that to me about a man I love and care for with all my heart and soul. I married him because I love him, for better or worse. It does not mean something like this would matter.

Someone also told me that you do not love an adopted child as much as you would love a child that came from your own body and union. Why not? How can you know how you would feel about a child if you never had your own? I know plenty of people who adopted after only having one child or two and love the child as if they are their own kid. One of my girlfriends and I were sitting at a park on day and she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said "I never knew our family wasn't complete until we brought him home."

Yet with all this certainty over adopting, and how I will love this child as much as I could possibly love my own, I know that years down the road, I will look at my husband and my children, and wonder if I ever made some sort of mistake choosing not to spend the money on fertility treatments. Would my life be any different if I had my own child or would it be the same? Would my husband and I be any better off? Would we be able to function without having children? One of my husband's dreams is to come home to me having the house taken care of with all the children settled and ready for him to tell him what they did that day. My dream is to be that mother to the teenage boy that has a large group of guy around, ready to do anything I need to get things done and take care of things that I may or may not be capable of doing. You know those moms. You have seen them. The one where all the boys call her mom and respect her and stuff. Yea. Want that. Bad. '

We can wait. I know we can. My husband needs to finish with his school, our debts need to get paid down enough so we do not have to worry about making it pay check to pay check, and possibly a bigger house so I can use all of my kitchen gadgets without having to put everything away to use one crock pot. All I need to do is give it time.

Pom-Pom Problems

I am absolutely frustrated beyond measure. This has been one of the most awful things I have ever tried to do. I took it upon myself to make a Jayne Cobb hat. It is something that I have been wanting to do since I have watched the TV show and people have been making requests for me to make them. I thought it would be easy, so I looked up the pattern and proceeded to try to follow the directions to try to make one. The first one was absolutely dreadful from trying to wrap it around my fingers and doing what they told me to do. I could not keep it from unwinding and I could not figure out how to make it go POOF and not limp on the top of the hat. So, off to youtube I went. There were so many that DID NOT help me at all what so ever. I tried. I really tried. I was literally almost in tears about the time I got through watching four videos and found out they part I had been missing. Finally, I get through the part I need to get through, start some cutting...and it was not long enough. I started spewing forth British profanity slang and threw all of it down, so it looked like this in the end.

I am waiting for my mother on this one or till I go to my local yarn group to make one. I will also be buying a actual plastic pom pom maker for myself before then as well. I hate when I get like this. I suppose I shall get back to making more little hats for things and for get the pom poms till another day.

A pleasent surprise.

I would like to thank this woman for making my life a little bright and more motivated lately. As my previous post said, I decided to make owl hats. I took them to some of the girls at work who I know had children and gave them away while showing them off to others. This set off the requests to have me make them some, and they would PAY me for them. I was actually in shock, but I was up to the task. I made four and three different ones on order. I have been tweeking with the pattern that I picked up from her and making a couple more things which I will be posting pictures of eventually. The fact that someone loves my work enough to want to purchase let alone have one of their loved ones has made me cry more than once. I have been making things like mad as well as getting the house clean and in order for the holidays. So, I will be purchasing her other pattern she has up when I get paid in the next couple of days, as well as posting my creations with a link to her when I finally get enough made that I can put a lot more of them on etsy.

A Family of Owls

At some point last week, I stumbled across this while surfing Ravelry.com. I have never done a hat before ever in my life, so I decided to at least attempt it. The only issue I had was no one I knew had a newborn. They were all older kids, toddlers, or almost a year old. So I decided to modify it a little bit. Now, keep in mind I am a newlywed, and my husband told me when I moved in that I cannot buy any yarn till I used most of what I had in the house. He is indulgent when I start a blanket and then don't finish it or when I show him a craft book I want he usually just smiles at me and nods before asking if I can wait till I finish what I start first. I am looking for various projects to use up the large amounts of dark colors that seemed to have bred while in boxes these past couple of years while I was working way too much. Now, since I do not have any newborns, I figured I would just add two HDCs and make it 14 instead of 12. This made it so the counts were in multiples of 7 instead of 6. It seemed to actually work out okay. I don't exactly know what size head it will fit, but I followed the pattern the rest of the way till ended up with this little owl.

At the point I finished this one, my husband had arrived home from work. He was curious and I set out all the pieces to show him what it would look like once I sewed it all together. He was really impressed, though I don't know if it was about me finishing something or the fact I was doing something crafty. Once I was done with that one I made these lovely little creatures.

The last two I started with 16 HDCs and in multiples of 8 and adding a couple of rows which fit a 10 year old boy's head just fine. There was only one issue that I had and that is putting all the eyes and ears on. I ended up making it look something like this when I put the bigger ones together

However, I tried something different on the last two and now you can see they look much cleaner.

I am actually quite proud of myself. I might make more of these with Christmas coming up and I can even make other animals if I want once I get the pattern for a cat or dog or maybe even a frog figured out! I know I can maybe look online for those, but I think it is more fun making up your own. Now I shall figure out who to give my family of owls too while I try to make more.

Crochet mood

There are days like today I want to tear up some yarn and make a really beautiful piece of art. I look through patterns and I create all of these wonderful schemes with my graph paper, but I cannot seem to get them to work. For example, I have all these squares I have done, but I cannot get them to join together properly. I have sat down with them and tried to join them like I was told that I need to do. I got so frustrated I just threw them to the side and started one of my large granny squares till I can manage to get to someone who will help me get this done. I have also been looking up some interesting patterns for hats. I had someone at work who said that her daughter is wanting some cute hats to put on small children for her to take pictures. I might make an attempt to do some of those. I don't know how to sew the pieces together, but by the time that I get all the pieces how I want them I could get to someone.