Finance Gets Personal

After a year (on and off) of trying and two cycles of charting, I am finally pregnant!

I personally think that taking 50 mg of vitamin B6 to lengthen my luteal phase is what pushed things over the edge for us, but I can’t say for certain. Either way, I am 4 weeks and 5 days pregnant (you get two weeks “extra credit” for the time between your last period and ovulation). My due date is April 10.

While we’re ecstatic and relieved that things occurred naturally, I didn’t realize that my fears about being unable to conceive were about to be replaced by a bigger fear: fear of miscarriage.

Approximately 25% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage, which is most common in the first trimester (especially the first part of the first trimester). Knowing this, we haven’t told anyone except my stepson about the pregnancy, and I’m regretting doing even that.

I’m feeling a little bit better these past few days though because I asked my regular doctor to give me a blood workup to check my progesterone levels (low progesterone is often a cause of short luteal phases, and can result in miscarriage if you don’t get progesterone supplements early in pregnancy). Luckily, all my levels are good so far. We go in for my first prenatal appointment next Thursday, and hopefully we will be able to see the heartbeat on an early ultrasound. If so, I’ll feel more comfortable telling our families at that point (plus, I can’t expect a 10-year-old to keep a secret very long!).

I also need to wrestle with the decision of whether to continue taking my antidepressant during pregnancy, and am already working hard on kicking my caffeine habit.

My symptoms so far include extreme fatigue (which could also be related to sudden lack of caffeine), tender and larger breasts, increased sense of smell, more frequent urination and backache. I haven’t had any food aversions or nausea, but those symptoms become more common in week 6.

For those of you who have been pregnant before, how did you keep yourself from becoming anxious about miscarrying (or were you able to)? And, random question, if I am 4 weeks and 5 days pregnant, am I already considered 5 weeks (because I’m in the fifth week), or am I considered 5 weeks at the end of the fifth week?

Here is my chart from the successful cycle. You’ll notice there is a temperature drop today, which is freaking me out a little - I might have to stop temping at some point, just to avoid the anxiety

Tags: Infertility, Insurance, Luteal Phase, Miscarriage, Pregnancy

Obsessive list-making is a hobby of mine, so I often start the summer with a list of things I want to do over the next three months. Fun things. Summer things.

Eat bomb pops on the lawn. Visit the water park. Take my stepson and one of his friends to play mini golf. Finally take the dog to the leash-free park. Go on a photo-taking road trip. Attend a summer concert. Have friends over on the 4th of July to witness the amazing views of local fireworks displays. Take a picnic to the local Shakespeare festival.

Amazingly, 90% of these things never happen.

I can sense it happening again this summer, as the circulars begin promoting back to school sales and the local Hobby Lobby begins decorating its Christmas trees.

Where are the kids chasing fireflies and parents listening to baseball games on the radio? Where is my green chlorinated hair and dark tan?

Please, fall, it’s too early…

We’ve still got to get our basement finished before college football season starts.

Photo Credit: slip’n’slide by superboma, used under Creative Commons licensing.

Tags: Basement, Summer

Well, we tried our hardest, but there was no BFP (big fat positive) pregnancy test to be had at the end of my first cycle of charting.

I did learn some interesting things about my body through recording my basal body temperature and other fertility signs though. For instance, I ovulated on day 16 of my cycle - slightly later than the day 14 average. And, more importantly, my luteal phase between ovulation and menstruation was only 9 days, for a total cycle length of 25 days. That is bad news, girlies (and boys who haven’t already clicked the “back” button)!

The average luteal phase is between 12-16 days, and 9 days is not long enough for an embryo to implant in the utereus before the lining starts to shed. A short luteal phase can be a sign of low progesterone, the hormone that takes over once you ovulate. Low progesterone can also lead to early miscarriages in those who do achieve pregnancy.

Luckily, this problem is usually easily treated - I just need to go see my OB/GYN and have some tests run.

But wouldn’t you know it, there’s a small problem: My insurance doesn’t cover infertility treatment!!!!!!

Now, I’m not (quite) freaking out yet, because I want to see what my cycle does this month. Although your luteal phase doesn’t usually change from month to month, I want to make sure the first time wasn’t an anomaly. Meanwhile, I’m taking 50 mg of vitamin B6, which is supposed to be a natural way of lengthening your luteal phase.

But the lack of insurance coverage ticks me off, and I’m also ticked at myself for not thinking about it sooner. You see, I only use my employer’s health insurance plan because it’s about $100 less per year than being added to my husband’s insurance, which does cover infertility, and also has a slightly lower co-pay. I can switch to my husband’s insurance plan, but without a major life event (like, ahem, having a baby) I won’t be able to do so until January 1. And since we’ve already used all of our health care flex savings for the year, I’m not very flush with medical money at the moment.

So, my current plan is to take my vitamins, have well-timed sex and try not to think too much about it until that bitchy old hag makes her next visit.

Tags: BBT, Charting, Infertility, Insurance, TTC

Just when I’ve finally gotten down all the couponing and online deal-finding acronyms (BOGO, YMMV, B&M, etc.), it turns out there’s a whole new set of acronyms to learn when it comes to getting pregnant (officially: Trying to Conceive, or TTC).

Yes, that’s right. My husband and I are trying to make a baby (Ew! - I know).

Well, technically, we’ve been “trying” on and off for a year with no success, but with not much of a methodology either. So this month I’m turning myself into a human science experiment with charting, basal body temperatures, cervical fluid and the like.

Little did a know there would be a special vocabulary for this.

Browse some iVillage and The Bump message boards, and you’ll come across posts like this:

This 2WW is killing me! I think I might cave and POAS in the morning. I know it’s early, but I’m driving myself crazy. Just wanted to share!

Translation: This two week wait between ovulating and finding out if I’m pregnant is killing me! I think I might cave and pee on a stick (take a pregnancy test) in the morning. I know it’s too early, but I’m driving myself crazy. Just wanted to share!

I’ve also learned that AF (Aunt Flo) is commonly referred to as an “old hag,” women with a BFP (big fat positive) pregnancy test will sprinkle those still trying with “baby dust” and there are BD (baby dancing - having sex to try to get pregnant) Olympians (twice a day?). O-kay.

I’m hoping this won’t take too long now that I’m being all scientific about it. I’m giving it four months before I start freaking out that I’m infertile. Sprinkle me with some baby dust or something.

Tags: Acronyms, Getting Pregnant, The Bump, Trying to Conceive, TTC

Unfortunately, my 8-Week Home Cure has quickly turned into the 3-Month Basement Cure.

For a while, I was able to work on cleaning and organizing the upstairs while my husband worked on the basement. But now he’s needing my help more and more, and the Cure has fallen to the wayside.

Maybe the reason I haven’t been blogging lately is that I feel like a hypocrite. Every time I set some lofty goal, I end up abandoning it halfway through. I think the only goal that I’m actually making continuous progress on is getting out of debt. But even with that, it’s hard to feel like I’m making a lot of headway…

I guess it’s hard to stay motivated when your only debts are a pair of mortgages. I’m still making my minimum extra debt payment of $1,974 a month. But what ever happened to snowflaking every extra dollar toward debt? Instead, I’ve become sidetracked with home renovations, vacations, weight loss, trying to get pregnant, etc. Which I guess is to be expected. But I’m feeling a bit like a Jesus Freak that’s fallen off the wagon. Am I headed toward the dark side, or just human?

Maybe money became such an obsession that it’s just ingrained in me now. I’ve learned most everything I can learn (roll eyes here), and know what I should be doing. Now it’s just a matter of whether I want to.

If you’re feeling this way too, check out this post from Get Rich Slowly: Should Repaying Debt Be an Obsession?. My answer is, I’m not sure. Am I a J.D. Roth, who paid off $35,000 over the course of three years, or a Money Saving Mom, who is quickly saving up to buy a house outright?

Maybe I’m somewhere in between.

Photo Credit: Thomson’s gazelle by [PS], used under Creative Commons licensing.

Tags: Apartment Therapy, Dave Ramsey, Debt-Repayment, Gazelle Intensity, Home Cure

Our garage sale was last weekend, and while I was hoping to make $500 for our home theater system, we ended up slightly short of that goal with a profit of $380.

That’s an improvement from last year’s $240, but with all the new drugstore items I was selling, I thought I could do better. However, I did end up making another $50 on eBay by selling some of my rare Hard Rock Cafe shot glasses, and still have a keyboard and amp that didn’t sell that I need to re-list on Craigslist.

The weather was cold in the morning (I had on my fall coat and sat inside the garage), which kept most shoppers away until noon. While we might have ended up with the same number of visitors as last year, it felt like a lot less because they came throughout the day, instead of just nonstop from 7:30-1:00.

We had a lot of help from family members this year, which was nice! By including their items in our sale as well, we probably had one of the largest garage sales in the subdivision. Having two to three people at the “checkout” made it easy to keep track of whose items had sold (I asked them to put initials on their price stickers).

Besides being cold, it was also extremely windy! We had a lot of clothes for sale, but they we hardly even touched because the wind kept blowing them off the tables and we weren’t able to keep them very organized because of it. We also had some small item casualties and an incident involving a box of Pokemon cards being chased down the street.

While the whole ordeal was a pain, I really do think it was easier the second time around. This time, I made sure to order pizza the day before and schedule delivery for noon the day of the garage sale. I also called the local battered women’s shelter to arrange a pickup for all the leftover items the following Monday morning, which kept all that leftover stuff from sitting in the garage for months.

While I’m glad it’s all over, we’re still planning on having another sale during the next neighborhood event in August. Because I’ll definitely have more stuff to sell as I finish up The Cure!

Photo Credit: Garage Sale by lantzilla, used under Creative Commons licensing

Tags: Donations, Garage Sale, Home Cure

for a Garage Sale!

As you might have guessed by the lack of posts this week, I have not worked on the office for Week 5 of The Cure. Instead, I’ve been busy getting ready for our garage sale on Saturday.

Last year we made about $240 in our garage sale, and this time (with the help of my CVS/Walgreens stockpile) I’m hoping to crack $500, which will go toward this home theatre system for the basement.

I cleaned out what was left of my old bedroom at my parents’ house, and also have a bunch of stuff to sell that was moved out of the basement when my husband started finishing it. Now I just need to finish labeling a couple boxes of stuff, make signs, find my banker’s bag, ice up some drinks and set everything up in the garage so it’s ready to go Saturday morning! Oh, and hope that it doesn’t rain…

Note to Self: In the future, it would be much easier to put things in a big “garage sale” bin as you clean the house and price them right then and there.

Since my house is now once again a disaster (I’ve really been trying to keep the rooms I’ve done so far clean, though) I’m eager to get back to the cure after this weekend is over.

Tags: Apartment Therapy, Basement, Garage Sale, Home Cure

I’m currently working on Apartment Therapy’s Eight-Step Spring Cure, which is an eight week process for making your home more organized, beautiful and healthy. I’ve been apprehensive about how much “curing” is going to cost, so I’m sharing my progress on trying to cure on a budget.

I am sweating my butt off thanks to extensive vacuuming combined with our refusal to turn on the A/C until it reaches 80 degrees outside. But, the living room is clean!

These are the assignments for Week 4:

• Clean up living room and related closets
• Repairs are being taken care of this week
• Declutter all books and media
• Cancel 75 percent of catalogs you receive
• Empty Outbox this week
• Confirm what you need to increase or decrease color in each room
• Identify what you need to increase or decrease softness in each room
• Cook three meals at home this week
• Send out your invitations

Somehow, our living room is the dirtiest room in the house. I suppose it’s because we spend the most time there, my husband eats his lunch on the couch when he works from home and because the doggie door leads into that room. It took a long time, but I washed the walls, cleaned the baseboards, vacuumed the couches, cleaned the fan blades and even fixed the massive tangle of cords behind the TV. I bought the following: Cord organizer ties (3 packages at $3.19 each at Target), a bamboo box to store PS3 games ($12.99 at Target) and a fabric-covered box to store PS3 cords and controllers (on clearance for $11.94 at Target).

I honestly haven’t made much progress on the repairs this week. Theoretically, I would be having someone “take care” of them this week and next week, but I can’t afford it without using some of my extra debt payment. I did replace another light bulb though

Decluttering books and media is a daunting task. I like the idea of getting rid of my CD collection and keeping them all on my hard drive/iPod, but my electronic organization system is chaos right now (for example, I’ve never even backed up this blog, nor do I really know how). My iPod is set up for a Mac, but I use a PC now (the Mac with all the music saved on it is in my stepson’s room). Once my husband gets his new computer, I plan on consolidating all my files there. As far as DVDs go, I am not allowed to get rid of any. My books are already heavily pared down from last year’s garage sale, and I don’t tend to be much of a book collector anyway. I do plan on going through these three categories for obvious “duds” sometime before our garage sale on the 16th.

Canceling 75% of catalogs you receive is something I may do in the future, but don’t have time for right now. In fact, I’ve done little besides clean the living room this week since I’ve been helping my husband plan the details of the basement layout (he took off work this week to do the framing). Trust me though, I’d rather be cleaning and organizing than drawing a bathroom and its fixtures to scale.

I’ll be emptying the outbox next weekend at my garage sale. I’m going to start pricing and organizing my items for the garage sale this week, and list some of the more expensive items on craigslist and eBay.

I’ve thought a little about color, but I haven’t spent any money in this category. Most of my rooms need a little more color.

“Softness” is added to rooms through things like curtains, rugs and pillows. My rooms are currently too “hard” since I don’t have any area rugs or drapes (most of our windows just have cheap white vinyl blinds - yuck!).

Of course, cooking at home was the easiest part of the week. I even did one myself! If sloppy joes count as a meal, that is…

I have no invitations to mail since I haven’t really planned a party. I think when I get finished I’ll start planning the cheesy board game night. I’ve just got way too much on my plate right now.

While some of my enthusiasm has waned, I’m halfway done, and things are looking great! This week I spent a total of $40.

On to Week 5, which focuses on the office. My main goal is to organize all the paperwork I have flying about the room, without much concern for aesthetics since we’ll be moving the office to the basement this fall (and getting real furniture instead of card tables and folding chairs - yay!).

Photo Credit: Kelley+Interior+Design,+rose+living+room by sarahleeab, used under Creative Commons Licensing.

Tags: Apartment Therapy, Cleaning, Home Cure, Living Room, Organization

I’m currently working on Apartment Therapy’s Eight-Step Spring Cure, which is an eight week process for making your home more organized, beautiful and healthy. I’ve been apprehensive about how much “curing” is going to cost, so I’m sharing my progress on trying to cure on a budget.

Well, I’m a few days late in finishing up week 3, but this one was much less intense than the kitchen last week! And in case you’re wondering why I’m three weeks behind the Apartment Therapy Spring Cure group, I didn’t discover it until after this session had already started (I’m not that slow, thank you very much!)

These are the assignments for Week 3:

• Vacuum, dust and mop (wet or dry) throughout your home
• Clean your entrance and any related closets
• Arrange to have all repairs taken care of in the next three weeks
• Declutter your entrance
• Move all old mail, catalogs and magazines to the outbox
• Look into what you would need to create a landing strip
• Cancel any unused subscriptions
• Identify cool rooms and warm rooms
• Apply the 80/20 color rule
• Cook two meals at home this week
• Design an invitation for your housewarming

Vacuuming and mopping again so soon? Argh. It really needed it though. I wonder how often I typically vacuum - once a month? Whenever company is coming over?

Because my entrance opens up into the formal living room, I cleaned that and the little walkway to the side of it. Pretty easy, considering the only things in the room are a piano, couch, chair and mirror.

As far as “arranging” to have all repairs taken care of in the next three weeks, I’m pretty much ignoring that assignment. I’ll be doing what I can, when I can - myself.

Decluttering was also simple, with most of my “clutter” coming from the entry closet. However, this is the one closet I actually organized when we moved in, so there wasn’t a lot of random stuff in there. While organizing the closet, instead of buying more containers from Target, I decided to wrap some of my shoe boxes in pretty wrapping paper to hold things like cleaning supplies, dog brushes/shampoo and lightbulbs/flashlights. It worked out well, and I didn’t spend any money!

I don’t really have a problem with old mail and magazines (I go through the mail immediately when I get home, and recycle old magazines as soon as the new one arrives), so I didn’t have any mail to move to the outbox.

I bought a new doormat at Target for $19.99, but I challenged myself to create a landing strip using only items I already own. My landing strip is now a little silver serving table with a blue beaded bowl on it, a magazine holder on the floor and a coat closet. I hang my purse on the closet knob. What really made a difference in my little living room was rearranging the furniture! My couch and recliner are really too big for the small space now that a baby grand piano has been added to the mix, but rearranging the furniture has really improved things. It’s kind of odd because now you see the back of the couch as you enter, but it closes the space off just enough to make it feel like its own room (that hopefully we’ll actually use now!).

I also have a pile of subscriptions to cancel, identified my warm and cool rooms, learned about the 80/20 rule for color (80% neutral, 20% strong colors) and cooked two meals at home (OK, so my husband cooked two meals at home). I haven’t designed an invitation for my cheesy board game night yet… I’m not sure if I want to have such a formally organized event so soon after hosting the Oscar party. But the party will still happen - just don’t expect a Scrabble-esque invitation in the mail…

And that concludes week 3. I only spent $20!!!! (Well, I guess I also spent $5 on flowers)

On to Week 4, which focuses on the living room and editing book/CD/DVD collections (uh oh).

Photo Credit: The Entryway (Landing Strip) by foreverfrida, used under Creative Commons licensing.

Tags: Apartment Therapy, Home Cure, Landing Strip, Spring Cure 2009, Week 3