Dirty Bland Water

So I don't like tea.  I think of it as dirty, bland water.  I don't think it tastes good and I'm not sure why people drink it. But as I do more and more research about living with PCOS and changing my diet, this tea, red raspberry leaf tea, keeps popping up.

I see captions like this a lot! Via

It is purported to have a ton of great health benefits and it suggested for women who are trying to increase their uterine health, woman who are pregnant, and even for women (and men!) who are trying to increase fertility.  I have a friend with PCOS who tried it and she had mixed reviews.  She doesn't really think it helped her get pregnant, but it was good tea and it couldn't hurt, right?

So I am really tempted to try it.  I typically don't put much stock in alternative medicine, but there are a couple of things that I give more credence to, herbal remedies and essential oils.  These things have been around for ages, and they were the medicine around before Western medicine was a thing.  But I have never tried either of them.

But tea is just tea.  It is considered safe for pregnant women, and if it doesn't work, its just more liquids that I am drinking.  It would give me an alternative to water right? (I gave up soda a while ago, and I am trying to stay away from juices because I am reducing my sugar intake) So I am really considering it.

This brings me back to the problem of, I don't like tea. The only tea-ish thing I kind of like is the Peach Green Tea Lemonade from Starbucks, so it's all mixed up (plus green tea is fairly mild, right?Maybe? Or am I making that up?).  So I am looking for ways to make red raspberry leak tea for palatable without adding a ton of sugar to it.  I was thinking of trying to mix it with lemonade, but my friend acted kind of leery at the idea (she's tasted it, I haven't yet).  I am thinking I need a few possible ways of changing the taste without losing the benfits of the tea or adding too much sugar to it.  Any ideas?

Searching through Pinterest, these are what I have come up with so far:
> Adding lemonade (gotta find one that's not too sugary)
> Adding milk (English black tea style)
> Adding honey (might work in the short term, but honey didn't make tea that much more palatable for me before)

I am thinking about trying this recipe out:

Labor-aid Recipe Via

The recipe seems to be lemonade like, but not mixing in lemonade. It seems to be vaguely what I want? Maybe?  I am going to experiment, I'll let you know how it goes!

My Diagnosis, Part 2

(Continued from Part 1)

So, I go into the appointment, not sure what to expect.  I had only ever had one pap smear.  What could they even tell me? Was I going to be one of those “I didn’t know I was pregnant?” stories?

The nurse practitioner was a very nice, older lady.  She does a preganacy test (negative) and after we talk, she suggests getting a full blood panel to see if my blood could tell us what was happening. 

Fast forward, and we get the results.  She informs me that my testosterone levels are higher than they should be and she recommends I go and see an endocrinologist.  So I set up an appointment with the endocrinologist (who was absolutely fabulous!) and she orders more tests.

So two pelvic ultrasounds later, and I am back in her office with my husband (then boyfriend).  She informed us that the ultrasounds confirmed her suspicion, and that I had a small cyst on one of my ovaries.  I felt blank.  What did this mean?  Obviously something was wrong, but how broken was I?

She informed me that I had Polycystic Ovary Syndrome.  The endocrinologist was super upbeat though.  She made sure I knew that this would be a serious issue, but she didn’t let me wallow in worry.  She asked if we were trying to get pregnant to which my boyfriend and I looked at each other and kind of laughed.  With me still being in school and us not being married, children were not on our mind at that point. Plus I was 22, so there was still plenty of time for us to think about it. That’s when Dr. V smiled and said that when the time comes, there were things we could do to get pregnant, and she never made it seem like there was a doubt that I could get pregnant. 

She also said that there isn’t a cure for PCOS, but that losing weight would help me and that the treatment for PCOS is birth control pills to regulate my period, because I needed to have a period to maintain better uterine health (you need a period every three months at least to lower the risk for uterine cancer). So I went back on the Pill, with the idea of children sometime in the future.

I stayed on the pill, until a year after my husband and I got married, when we agreed we would start trying for a tiny human. J

Emotions can be Scary

So I was going to post up Part 2 of my diagnosis story, but I had to put up a post about my crazy morning.  I’m pretty sure I traumatized my husband, because you know emotions are scary (especially when unpredictable).

A bit of back-story first … my husband and I have had the same bed for a long time, and it had lived on a hand-me-down frame that was one of those adjustable types.  Before us it housed a king bed, and we adjusted it down for our full bed.  Well, this particular frame had a metal bar that stuck out a bit farther than the mattress that I (on many separate occasions) found with my shin.  I am a bit accident prone like than.

Well, recently we had upgraded our bed to a premium queen bed (which we got for cheap thanks to an amazing friend/coworker of my husband) which had been living on the floor because our current frame, while adjustable, wouldn’t work for the mattress (because of our lack of box spring).  So this past weekend, we picked up a new frame from IKEA.  After going back and forth on the pros and cons of each style, we settled on one that we thought would be awesome and work well for us and our kitties (we have a scaredy-kitty that likes to hide under the bed).

We then proceeded to put it together, testing our marriage (we jokingly call it “IKEA: the wrecker of relationships”), with only minor bickering and miscommunications. Viola!

Well, I don’t know if it was the new frame, general restlessness, or potentially hormones (maybe (hopefully!) I’m ovulating?) but I slept awfully last night with a ton of tossing and turning.  So this morning I was tired, grumpy because one of our kitty terrorists decided to regale us this morning for an hour before our alarms went off, and generally just ready to go back to bed and give up on the day. I managed to get dressed and started to get moving, when WHAM!

I struck my knee against the frame of our new bed. While normally I would let out a curse or two and walk it off, this morning it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  I hobbled out into the living room where my husband was waiting for me and when he asked what was going on, I promptly burst into tears.  While he stares at me completely confused, I sink into my chair still sobbing and I respond that I am just overreacting and to ignore me (although I suppose it is kind of hard to ignore the crazy crying lady in your living room).

As I am crying, I get a flash to the night before of my husband and myself, as we stand and survey our finished work, and I start to laugh, while still sobbing, mind you. The night before, my husband made the observation that the footboard of our bed sticks out farther than our mattress by a inch or so on each side, something we hadn’t thought about while shopping. “That might be a problem for you,” he told me (as he is well aware of my problems with our previous bed frame). Well, when this flash of memory struck me, I think “well, wasn’t he so right? I didn’t even last 24 hours!”

For whatever reason, in that moment to my overtired brain, it was the funniest thing in the world so I am hiccupping between laughing and crying, while my husband it probably thinking “What in the hell is wrong with you?” but instead asking “Are you okaaaaay?” Well, I managed to pull myself together and we left for work.

Can you tell exactly where my bed's footboard ends?
Right at the height of my knee.

 So the combination hormones and lack of sleep can definitely have some interesting results. I already look back and this morning and I can’t help but laugh at myself, so feel free to join in.  

My Diagnosis, Part 1

I’ve been on birth control since I was about 14 years old.  Well, sort of.  I started taking it at 14 to help with my acne, and I was fairly consistent with it up until my husband at I were ready to start trying for our family.  There were some jogs in that time frame, and that’s how I figured out I had PCOS (or you know, the doctors figured it out and I did my part by showing up for tests!).

How did we figure it out? Well it started with my husband’s (then boyfriend’s) grandmother passing away. Things got a bit chaotic and I got a bit distracted, and I slipped up with taking my birth control pills.  I missed one day, then two days, and before I even realized it I had gone a week or two without taking my pill … whoops. This is where being on the pill from such a young age shows,

I was told when I first was prescribed the pill to wait until I had my period, then start on the pills the following Sunday. Easy peasy.  Well, when you have years of experience taking the pill, doctors are under the impression that you know what you are doing (and I thought I knew what I was doing too) so when I didn’t get my period, I waited for it to come, figuring I would just start my next set of pills when it came. So I waited … and took numerous pregnancy tests … and waited.  I waited some more (and you know, took a bunch of pregnancy tests) and waited.  No period.  I wasn’t terribly concerned because the women in my family have a history of irregular periods, so as long as I got a negative pregnancy test, I figured I would just wait.

My boyfriend wasn’t so happy when 11 months passed and I still hadn’t had a period. I think he might have been tired of the monthly anxiety of testing to see if I was actually pregnant all along.  He told me I should probably go see a doctor.  At this point I might have been tired of the anxiety too, so I agreed.  I made an appointment with an OB-GYN (well, technically a nurse practitioner).

To be continued ... (My Diagnosis, Part 2) 

Finally!

I know I just wrote the Training Wheels post, but what has been a day or so for you, has been almost a week for me.

I called the doctor yesterday (three calls from the pharmacy, two faxes (also from the pharmacy), and two calls from me later) and left a message with the nurse.  Lo and behold(!) I got a call about an hour later from the pharmacy that my prescription was finally ready for pickup. Yay! Only six days without pills.

Now to see how this cycle plays out ...

Getting Ahead of Myself

In  my first post, I realize that I didn't get much context as to who I am and what I am about.  I'm going by Phoenix, and I have PCOS (or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome).  I was hoping to use this blog as my kind of journal or sounding board for my emotions and feelings.

I want to chronicle our (because my husband is most definitely a part of this) journey into growing our family.  We've been at it for just over six months, so we are still newbies to this.  I knew I had PCOS even before we started trying so it has shaped our path differently I feel.

When my husband and I decided to start trying, I went to the doctor first.  I wanted to know what we could do, in a minimal way at first, to help with the "trying-to-get-pregnant" process.  We didn't want to rush into fertility treatments, neither did my doctor for the record, because I am still young (25) and we wanted to give it a year before taking a more direct method.

So that's how I started with the Metformin.  I am not regular, and Metformin has been found to help regulate hormones, so my theory was that by being on these pills I would have a similar chance of getting pregnant as a woman who doesn't have the same issues as I do. More on that later ...

For now, thanks for coming!

Training Wheels

So the training wheels are off ... at least for this week.

I am not sure if I am anxious because my Metformin isn't in my system doing its job or if I am anxious because I am and not taking my Metformin and I'm not sure if this is going to set me (really, us) back in our journey to becoming pregnant.  Will my own hormones be able to pick up the slack without the pills there to guide them along, to help level them out?

I am feeling moodier lately, is that my hormones going farther out of whack?  Or is it because maybe (hopefully!) I am ovulating (or dare I dream, pregnant?)? Would it be too much to hope that my body can figure this out on its own for a bit? It's too soon to really know anything, so I am stuck in this swirl of worry and hoping.

Once I can finally help connect the dots between my doctor and the pharmacy and get my pills again (because its sooooo fun when the pharmacy can't refill your prescription because you have no refills left and neither the pharmacy or you can actually get a hold of your doctor so this issue can be resolved), I might be able to return to a sense of normalcy.

I can just hope that being a week or so without training wheels won't set me back too far.