Update and Cute Kid Pictures

Okay, I'm feeling much better today. I saw the doctor and she is running some tests to see if we can find a cause for these miscarriages. Yesterday, I gave what felt like half my blood to be tested for a variety of disorders, imbalances, and defects. Hopefully we'll find something minor and treatable so this won't happen again. The doctor did warn me that sometimes they run all the tests and still don't find anything conclusive, so we'll just have to wait and see. For now, I'm no longer in the "angry phase", so there won't be any ranting in this post. ;-) And since we all made it through my venting in the previous post, I think we've earned some cute kid pictures!

Yesterday, we took Claire to a Halloween Kids Night Out. She got to wear her costume, decorate cookies, and go trick-or-treating. She had a blast!

Of course, that was a lot of activity for a two year old and she was up well past her usual bedtime. She was so exhausted that she apparently didn't even have the energy to climb all the way into her bed before falling asleep.

Even after a good night's sleep, she's still been a little zombie-like all morning. She did, however, have the presence of mind to add a cute sweater dress over her pajamas - always the fashionista!

Miscarriage #3

We've been in a sort of pregnancy limbo the last two weeks - getting good test results then not so good ones, feeling pregnant sometimes and not pregnant other times. We were waiting for more test results today after a discouraging ultrasound yesterday. But this morning, I woke up and told Josh, "I don't I feel like today's headline is going to be We're Having Another Miscarriage." I was wrong.

I've had way too much practice telling people this, but we're having (another) miscarriage. I was six weeks along, and just got the news that it's another blighted ovum.

Really?!? Another one?!? It almost doesn't seem real right now. I never thought we would be the couple with fertility problems. We're young, we have a reasonably healthy lifestyle, and no family history of serious genetic disorders. How is this happening? I am heartbroken and so scared of what this third loss means.

Will we be able to have another child on our own? A blighted ovum usually means there is genetic material missing. Maybe all my remaining eggs are missing the genetic material necessary for a healthy pregnancy. Can't cure that. Or what if I have some serious medical problem that's causing me to lose these pregnancies. I just heard about some famous woman who was having infertility issues and it turned out she has cancer. Is that going to be me?

Logically, I know that those are worst-case scenarios and it's far more likely that there is a treatable issue here or possibly no issue at all, just bad luck. I know I shouldn't let myself think the worst right now. I'm trying to be positive, but the statistics aren't very encouraging. I was just reading about recurrent miscarriage. One prior miscarriage gives you about a 20% risk of another miscarriage (pretty much the same as a woman with no history of miscarriage). Two prior miscarriages gives you about a 28% risk of another miscarriage, which is a little higher. But three miscarriages? That raises your risk of another miscarriage to 43%. So, my odds of a successful pregnancy next time around are now only a little better than 50/50. Great. Flip a coin and predict whether or not I'll have a baby next time.

I know I probably sound a little angry right now (it's one of the stages of grief, right?), but I am trying to stay mostly positive. I'm trying to think of all the fun things I can do while we wait to try again - eat a medium rare steak, drink a gingerbread latte, dye my hair, wear skinny jeans. Those things are all fun, but my heart knows I would rather be pregnant right now than have any of that.

Truthfully, I know I am blessed because we have already been given a beautiful little girl. I am so thankful for her. She is such a smart, healthy, and happy toddler. And I'm certainly hugging her a little bit tighter these days.

The thing is, I really don't want her to be an only child for too long. I was an only child for 12 years and I always wished for a sibling growing up. When I finally got a baby brother (Jonathan, you rock), I was so happy. But we were so far apart in age that I was leaving for college when he started kindergarten. So I feel like we missed out on a lot of the sibling experience you get when you grow up together, close in age. I always wished we had more time together before I left home, and I really want Claire to have that time with her siblings.

I'm going to talk to the doctor tomorrow. She wants to run some tests and I'm hoping we find something minor and treatable. I used to think the miscarriages were a fluke. I don't want to find out that the real fluke was my ever having a healthy pregnancy.

Please pray for us. I know God's here. I know I have to trust Him. We just need prayers.

Potty Training, Revisited

A few months ago, we attempted potty training with Claire (you can read about it here), but it was interrupted by a stomach bug that left Claire and my floor in an unfortunate mess. I've been meaning to pick up the potty training ever since, but something always comes up. We were going out of town, then I got sick, then Claire was in a rebellious phase, then I had a miscarriage, then we went out of town again, then Claire started preschool. There was always a reason to wait. After preschool started, I decided I wanted to get serious about potty training again.
To get (re)started, I read "Stress Free Potty Training" by Sara Au, which helps you determine your child's personality type and offers potty training solutions that target each personality. It was great. I determined that Claire's personality is impulsive with a side of goal-oriented, which basically meant that she would be excited about potty training, but would be easily distracted after the first few days of training. Hmmm... I wonder where that personality came from? Who else dedicated herself to potty training for a few days, then got distracted and took months to pick it back up? Oh yeah, me.

So, since it had been so long since our last try, I decided to start fresh at step one. Two weeks ago I started giving Claire "naked time" every day so that she could see the mechanics of how pee and poop come out. We only did it a few hours a day, so we weren't on house arrest the whole time, which was nice. I brought a small potty into the living room because impulsive kids tend to have a hard time holding it all the way to the bathroom at first. Plus, seeing the potty helped remind her (and me) that she needed to use it regularly. And, it really hasn't been a big deal to clean it. Within a few days, she was using the potty consistently during naked time with no accidents, but she still used her diaper when she wasn't naked.

When the weekend came, we gave her two full days of naked time and she used the potty like a pro. So we decided to try big girl panties. Claire was so excited to put them on! Unfortunately, she treated them like diapers. When she was naked, there were no accidents. When she wore panties, I had to clean the floor constantly. I was getting frustrated, but then it occurred to me that I never actually explained to her that even though panties feel a little like diapers, they don't work the same. I told her to use the potty and to try to keep her panties clean, but I didn't really explain why. So, the next morning, I explained how panties worked and told her they wouldn't hold her pee and poop the way her diapers did. That was all she needed to know and she immediately started making an effort to use the potty instead of her panties.

She still needed reminders to sit on the potty and "try", but she was doing pretty well on her own, only one or two accidents a day. She wore her panties to preschool and to Kid's Night at the gym. She was accident-free every time we picked her up. At home, though, she was still having an accident at least once a day. That's when I realized that her impulsive mom (that's me) wasn't doing my part. I had been slacking on the potty reminders after meals. So I re-dedicated myself to potty reminders and.... we have been accident free for two days!!!! Yay!!!!!

I know we're not potty professionals yet, but this is a huge milestone and I am so proud of our little Claire Bear.

The Great Cake Caper

My grandfather (Claire's great grandfather) just celebrated his 75th birthday. Happy Birthday, Grandy! To celebrate, we all gathered at my grandparents house for food, fun, and some great family time. Claire was excited to find out that we were going to be celebrating a birthday because she is well aware that birthday means cake. She was on the look out for a tasty treat from the moment we arrived.

After dinner, my grandmother and aunt set out the cake with candles and began arranging the cake table with supplies. While they were still getting everything ready, someone spotted Claire tasting the cake. It started out innocently enough. She used the tip of her finger to rub off a little icing from the bottom corner. Some onlookers (I was not in the room at the time) thought it was cute so they didn't stop her. As she realized no one intended to punish her for her crime, she did what most small-time thieves do... she escalated.

The tip of her finger soon turned into a pincer grasp as she tore small chunks of icing and cake from the side. When she discovered that her behavior had drawn smiling photographers instead of corrections, she grew bolder still. She reached into the cake with her entire hand and enjoyed a rather large chunk of birthday cake bliss for her efforts. At this point, someone told me to come see what Claire was doing.

Everyone, including the birthday boy, was laughing and taking pictures while Claire continued to enjoy increasingly generous helpings of my grandfather's birthday cake. Then, she looked straight into my eyes and... requested a spoon.

So what did we do? Tell her to stop digging into someone else's 75th birthday cake? Explain that the cake was for everyone and taste test time was over? No, not at my grandparents house. There was only one thing to do...

Claire's First Day of Preschool

Before I jump into the preschool thing, I have to mention one of the sweetest moments we have experienced as parents so far. Every night, I check on Claire before I go to bed. Last night, she was sleeping in a really cute position, so I called Josh to come look. She stirred a little, then looked up at me in her sleepy haze and said, "Love you, Mom" in the sweetest little sleepy voice I've ever heard. Then she saw Josh standing next to me, looked at him, and said, "Love you, Dad." It was so precious that even my husband's eyes watered a little! She was so out of it that she was back asleep within 5 seconds, but it felt like she just wanted to make sure we knew she loved us. So sweet!

Okay, now on to preschool...

Claire started preschool today! She's been asking to go ever since we took our first preschool tour over the summer, so she was thrilled when we told her today was the big day. She carried her own little backpack and was so excited to be at school that she was pulling me toward her classroom as fast her little legs could carry her. There were no tears. In fact, I could barely even get her attention to say good-bye.

We decided to put her in preschool for a several reasons. First, we're hoping to add to the family sometime in the next year and I wanted to make sure I had reliable care for Claire when I have doctor's appointments. Secondly, Claire just seemed ready. She's such an active and social little girl, so I had no doubt that she would LOVE preschool (and she does). Third, I'll admit that I am a little excited about going to get my oil changed  (or grocery shopping, or mopping the floors) without wrangling a toddler. And I think Claire will be happy to miss those times as well. Now she'll spend two mornings a week at preschool while I do all my boring grown-up stuff. Everybody wins!

Claire Changed Her Own Diaper

I've been pleasantly surprised at how easily Claire transitioned to a big girl bed. In the last two days, she's had no problem going to sleep at night or during nap time. She would lay down and stay in bed the whole time. That changed today.

When I put her down for her nap, I heard her get up almost immediately. I went into her room, put her back to bed, and told her it was nap time and she should lay down in her bed and rest. It was quiet after that, so I went to take a shower. When I got out, everything was still quiet. Crisis averted, I thought. 

Then, I heard her knocking on her door from inside her room. She wasn't fussing or calling out, so I decided to just listen on the monitor for a few minutes. I heard some rustling and moving around. She was definitely awake and getting into things. It hadn't been that long since I put her down, so I knew she hadn't had time to take a nap and wake up already. I had two choices. I could go in and try to get her back in bed (which I thought would be difficult since she had been in her room for more than a few minutes - she would probably just insist that nap time was over.) My other option was to wait it out a few more minutes. She might play a little, but maybe she would start to feel tired and decide to go to sleep. I waited, and after a little more commotion, she was quiet. Nap time success!

When she woke up a while later, I walked into her room to discover what I had been hearing over the monitor. Claire had changed her own diaper. She had climbed onto her changing table, removed the dirty diaper (spilling some of it's contents onto the changing table), put it in the trash, used some wet wipes to clean herself up, and attempted to throw those in the trash (but missed, so they were on the floor). Then, she apparently got a clean diaper out of the diaper stacker, which looked disheveled from her rummaging through it, and put it on. For the finishing touch, she decided to change clothes. So she took off the clothes she had on and shoved them into one of her dresser drawers. She then searched through all the other drawers in her dresser until she found an outfit she wanted to wear and put it on. So, I walked in to find a very messy room, but a toddler with a clean diaper and a new outfit, grinning and ready to play. I took a mental picture of her proud, smiling face. (I had to clean up the poop, so there wasn't time to grab a real camera). That's my kid!

The Visitor

Josh & I had a visitor this morning. It actually started sometime in the middle of the night, when Claire suddenly yelled out for me. I went to check in on her, but by the time I put on my glasses and walked to the door, she was quiet again. Since it sounded like she was already back asleep, I decided to do the same. A few hours later, Claire woke up to start her day. I heard her start talking to her toys and singing songs over the monitor. Then, I heard a door, followed by someone rattling our bedroom door. For a moment, I thought it was Josh leaving the room, but I looked over and saw him still lying next to me, obviously confused by the noises we just heard. "What was that noise?" I asked. "That's a good question," he said as he headed for the door. I found my glasses and started to walk toward him. There was our Claire, standing at our door. Apparently, she had climbed out of her crib, opened her bedroom door, and was coming to greet us with her sweet toddler smile.

So, it's time for a big girl bed. Claire's crib doesn't have a toddler rail, so we went to the store to find her a toddler bed. Josh set up her new bed this evening and Claire loved it!

I really thought she would be a little nervous about her first night in the new bed, but she could not have been more excited. She was rushing us through her bedtime routine and asking us to turn out the light before we even brushed her teeth. When it was finally time for her to get in bed, she practically sprinted to it. She had a huge grin on her face when we tucked her in. We haven't heard a peep from her room, so I think (fingers crossed) that she might actually stay in her new bed. We'll see how nap time goes tomorrow, but so far, Claire loves her big girl bed. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. She loves all things "big girl".