Infertility Sucks!

Infertility has always been my worst enemy, but when it also hits someone close to me, it really really really bugs me. I wrote a couple of blogs ago about my buttcheek who got pregnant via IVF and had a miscarriage last week at 7 weeks. When I saw her last week, I basically told her things to prepare her for the miscarriage, for example the cramps, the bleeding and the tissue that she will see coming out of her body. And yesterday she texted me saying that the tissue came out. I can imagine how depressed she seeing technically her baby coming out.

She said she broke down a couple of times yesterday. Sigh...I wish I could do more for her. I wish I could do more for infertiles everywhere. If I were a billionaire, I would hire the best fertility doctors to come up with a foolproof method to make a baby with medical assistance. But alas, I'm no billionaire and nobody can  guarantee that medically assisted conception is a foolproof method for a take home baby. It is all to Him.


Doesn't stop me from wishing though. At least for the billionaire bit...

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

So many things happened last weekend that I don't know where to start. So I thought of doing a "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly" kinda post. Here's a lowdown on what happened last weekend...

The Good


1. Took my parents out for a seafood lunch at Kang Guan Restaurant in Carey Island on Saturday. It's our amily's go to restaurant for good seafood. It took us 1 1/2 hours to get there, but the food is so good, distance be damned. The funny thing is we discovered that there was a highway from Kajang to Klang so we took the highway on our way back home, and it took us only half an hour! (banging head against the wall LOL) The total bill came up to RM129 (USD40) which is darn cheap considering we ordered five different dishes.

Clockwise from top left: Claypot tofu, stir fried sweet potato leaves, steamed garoupa and chili crab. We also had crayfish in dried chili but the photo mysteriously disappeared from my phone :( Everything was yum!!!

The mangrove trees lining the river bed

The view from our table

2. Finally sent my fabrics for my Eid baju kurung to the tailor. Lucky for us the tailor knows us quite well, so she accepted our last minute request. Yay!

3. Went hiking again.

4. Went to BookXcess and got a couple of books and three audiobooks for less than RM187.50 (USD27). Yay!

5. Made dinner last night and DH polished off everything.

6. Went to the wedding of an ex-colleague daughter. It was really good seeing old friends, catching up on the latest news and having a big laugh the entire time.

Wait. Could it be? I actually look thinner (that's me on the right by the way :P)

The Bad


1. Went hiking again. We only  managed to get to the first tier of the hill. 10 minutes into the hike, we were already huffing and puffing and ready to collapse LOL. I think what made us finish the entire trail last weekend was the fact that we didn't know where we going so no matter what happened, we had to get to the finish line.

2. Found out too late that there was a marathon going on in the city. I would have registered if I had known. Boo.

The Ugly.


1. Found out on Friday that my buttcheek's embryo stopped beating. She was 7 weeks pregnant.  I went over to her mom's house which is 10 minutes away from where I was staying. She cried and I cried with her. I was sad for her coz I know the pain of losing your baby. I feel bad for giving her the "What To Expect" book, but she told me not to. One thing I can say is that she is one strong woman. Sure she was devastated but she accepted that this was not meant to be and I really admire her for that.

So that's my weekend round up. What did you do last weekend? :P

Huff & Puff

This will be me at approximately 9.00 a.m. tomorrow LOL. God give me strength

Picture taken from Hello Giggles

Wordless Wednesday. Sort Of.

I was going to post this photo yesterday for Wordless Wednesday but was crazy busy. Anyway, how cool is this kid? :D I saw this on AirAsia's in flight magazine when DH and I were on our way for a vacation in Sabah last year :)

Of Green Ogre and Jason Mraz

So something that never ever happened to me actually happened last week. I won a contest! And not just any contest. It's the Shrek The Musical contest where the price was four tickets to the show in KL. Hip hip hooray! I remember DH and I were at a coffee shop one weekend for breakfast and I was flipping the newspaper and saw the article on Shrek The Musical, and at the bottom was a column on the contest. I answered all the questions (the answers were all in the article) and thought nothing about it and then last Thursday i got an e-mail saying that I won the tickets!

The show was on Tuesday and I brought DH, my mom and dad along. I was actually waiting for my internal client to give me Jason Mraz tickets for his show, also last night, but I didn't hear a peep from him so I figured why waste perfectly good tickets (worth RM390 each by the way).

Pretty decent seats seats too!

I was riveted during the entire show. The cast was great. The music was great. The acting was great. The script was great. My favourite character would probably have to be Lord Farquaad. He was hilarious! What surprised me was how similar the voices of the characters in the musical with the actors in the movie. Donkey really sounded like Eddie Murphy! All in all everything was great and we had a really good time.

The stage from where we were sitting

Mama enjoyed it too and I thought she would. But Baba really surprised me. He's not the kind of guy who watches animated movies and I highly doubt that he has Shrek at the movies but I could tell that he was really into the whole thing.

Me & Mama

The next day hitz.fm was all abuzz with updates from the Jason Mraz concert on Tuesday night. I must say that I was a wee bit disappointed that I didn't get to go. I was looking forward to going actually, since my colleague told me that she would try her hardest to get me a couple of tickets, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. Anyway, if you haven't checked out Jason Mraz's latest album "Love Is A Four Letter Word", please do. You can thank me later.

I also started reading A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I saw this book at my favourite bookstore and picked it up. I usually go for bestsellers but for some reason I was intrigued with this one. Apparently it's about a Harvard Professor who is actually a witch but does not want to have anything to do with sorcery. Oh and there's an "enigmatic" vampire thrown in there somewhere. Please don't make him sparkly. Shudder. I'm only up to page 15 and so far we have a good relationship, but we'll see how it pans out. Has anyone read this book? What do you think?

Much love,

Heigh-ho!

So on Saturday morning DH and I woke up early for Fajr and our morning walk. We decided to be adventurous and attempted to walk across Bukit Indah (where we stay) to Taman TAR, the next neighborhood which is 2.8 km away (according to Google Maps). I didn't enjoy the walk much because of the heavy traffic to get to Taman TAR from our house but as soon as we reached Taman TAR I began to have fun. I like that there are not many vehicles there, and it's much quieter than where we stay.

As we were walking DH saw a path that appears to be a hiking trail and we decided to check it out. Very brave decision considering we only started walking last weekend. Anyway, we followed the trail and found a small creek. Pretty cool eh?

How awesome is this?

We met a guy who told us that the trail could actually lead us back to our home. And DH like a kid was so excited to follow the trail that I didn't have the heart to tell him no. So we walked, and I almost died. We had to hike up the hill for goodness sake!

This is the trail that almost led me to my death (kidding!)

We got to the first tier on the hill and guess what we found? A lake!! I didn't know this place existed and I've been living in Ampang almost my entire life! The view was gorgeous although the lake with its greenish blue water kinda creeped me out a bit. Wonder if there are crocodiles in there. Or snakes. Yikes! There were a couple of people there as well. There was even a lady who tried to sell us insurance. What the???

The beautiful albeit creepy lake

Hello morning sun!

Since we were already halfway up the hill we decided to continue on, brave souls that we were. We met some interesting people up the hill, including a couple of guys who seemed to be a pro at this. They didn't even seem to break a sweat!! By this time I was thirsty as hell. Since we didn't plan on going hiking, we didn't bring any bottled water. Thank God there was a stream and I managed to get a couple of scoopfuls of water. We then continued on to the top of the hill before descending to the foot, which took us around 30 minutes. And the guys we met on the hill was right. We ended up practically behind our house! I was so happy to hear the sounds of vehicles that I wanted to jump off a cliff straight down to the foot of the hill. And then I remembered DH was standing next to me haha. The whole hiking expedition took us 2 1/2 hours to complete (gasp!). By far it was the craziest thing DH and I have ever done throughout or marriage (other than our two IVF cycles). DH was amazed that I didn't complain one bit during our hike. I once told him that my family and I used to go camping and hiking all the time when I was a kid and he didn't believe me. Now he does LOL. 

My tormentor

I'm still sore all over but I think I've lost some weight. Could be because of our walks or the post-natal pills that my mom insisted on me taking to get my body back in shape. So we decided to make this our weekly activity. We're going again this Saturday, and this time I'm bringing at least one litre of bottled water :P


In an unrelated news, one of my BBC friends gave birth this morning (local time). Hooray!! Congrats Kristy! And welcome to the world Adam Alastair and Nathaniel Desmond! :)


Much love,

Bittersweet

So last night me and DH (DH and I?) had dinner with my BFF and her family who would be performing their umrah in Mecca this morning. I always have a grand time with them, whom I consider my second family. There is no shortage of laughter when I'm around them. As I heard stories of their trip, it made me long to perform my own umrah with DH. DH and I have actually talked about this and we initially planned to go end of this year, but then I heard my BFF's sister's FIL (confusing much?) telling us that the Saudi govt will close off umrah for major renovation works from Hajj this year to Hajj next year.

Oh dear. One of the decisions that we had to make after the m/c was when do we start IVF #3, and we thought that if we could go for umrah end of this year then IVF #3 will start right after that. But now that we can't even go until end of next year, we're back to square one. Do we start IVF #3 first and then perform our umrah? What happens if I do get pregnant, then what do we do? Leave the baby? Granted we shouldn't be thinking that far ahead, knowing our history of "failed successful" IVFs. It looks like we have some thinking to do, although I'm leaning towards doing IVF #3 first. One year seems like such a long time to wait for our next cycle to start, don't you think?

Anyway, one of my buttcheeks who's pregnant via her first IVF is scheduled for her u/s today. I can't help but feel depressed although I'm also so happy for her. Can you be happy and depressed at the same time? I'm praying that the u/s will go smoothly for her and her DH, but at the same time I feel like a part of me is dying inside. Remember my post "Disconnected"? Now I feel disconnected more than ever. I want to reach out for her and tell her that I wish her all the luck in the world, but it's killing me softly. Great. Now I sound like Roberta Flack. I think I'm officially losing it.

I already feel guilty about being jealous of her pregnancy and I admitted it to her. I know that she understands how I feel and I know that it's not right. She is my buttcheek after all.

I sent her a present last week. I bought her the What To Expect When You're Expecting online and had it delivered to her home as a surprise. It's the least I can do to show her my support. As I'm writing this, I can already feel tears welling up (damn it!). My dearest friend, if you're reading this, know that I love you with all my heart. That will never ever change. I will always be your buttcheek and twinnie and although I may not always say it, I wish you all the luck in the world with your pregnancy. Nothing would make me happier than seeing you with a baby in your arms. I may not always be there for you physically, but I'm with you in spirit, praying for you from afar.

Great. Now I'm crying. Goodbye.