clair072

I successfully completed the first week of my first clinical rotation, and it was exhausting. I always forget how much energy it takes to learn new skills and knowledge. Plus, I felt extremely unprepared from my coursework so I had to hit the ground running. I am in a good situation though. There is another student with me, and we both really like our clinical instructor. Our instructor is kind, supportive, knowledgeable, and experienced. She began pushing us out of our comfort zone the first day, which is good for me because I can stand back, observe, and take notes for forever. What I really need to do is get in there and do the hands-on work with patients. I am working in a facility that has a lot of older adults in its patient population. There are a million different things we work on with the patients. One of the activities is pretty straight forward and simple. There is a beach ball with different questions written on each colored section of the ball. In a small group the patien...

Infertility stole so many things from me. Joy, energy, friendships, the desire to engage in activities I once liked. Recovering from infertility involves not only recovering from the trauma of losing your lifelong dream of children, but it also involves recovering from all of the other losses that infertility caused. I used to like to cook. I was never a gourmet chef or anything. I just cooked simple things that I liked to eat. Infertility killed that. I was so depressed and I had no energy or motivation. I barely even wanted to eat. I skipped breakfast. I skipped lunch. Then for dinner it would a sandwich or a bowl of cereal or going out to eat. Cooking didn't happen for many, many years. Then we moved to our rental house. Its kitchen was... less than ideal. The pipes were old, the water was gross, and the stove heated up the whole house (and it was already hot outside). Plus, I went back to school, which took every little bit of energy I had. So I continued to not cook. We contin...

Hellooo everyone! I have missed reading and writing. I look forward to getting caught up on everyone's blogs. But I am happy to share that I am settled in my new home. I am unpacked, organized, and, thanks to my mother who came to visit this week, all of my pictures are hung up on the walls and my new home is now decorated as well. I can't believe it: it's only been 3 weeks and I am already settled. My new home is the homiest home I've ever had. :) I am so grateful for my little rental house, where I lived for a little over 2 years. It was old and it was far from perfect, but it brought me a lot of healing. It gave me time between living in my children's house and living here in my new home. I did a lot of grieving and healing in that rental house. Before I started school, I spent a lot of days just sitting in my recliner reading. It was there that I stopped reading TTC posts entirely. I had already started reading infertility blogs, but I officially ended my quest ...

One of the things I still struggle with as a woman who always wanted kids but is not going to have them is pictures of other people's children. Pictures of newborns, Halloween costumes, the first and last days of school, etc. just kill me on the inside. It makes me sad for what I lost and for what I will never experience. A friend of mine just texted me pictures of his family vacation. He sent a picture of the scenery; a picture of him and his wife; and a picture of him, his wife, and their toddler. I don't know why he did that. He could have just sent me the picture of the scenery. Or the pictures of the scenery and the picture of him and his wife. He knows I wanted kids and that I'm still grieving. I guess he doesn't know how painful it is for me to see pictures of other people's family vacations with their children. But am I wrong? I hate to tell people to just "get over it." But do I need to get over it? People have kids. Especially at my age. I can...

(Note: This post has been edited from its original version. This version is more succint, less rambling.) I was all set to write one post and then my mother called. She asked how my unpacking is going. I have now lived here for a week and I am probably about halfway unpacked. I am functional. The bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom closet are unpacked. But I still have everything else like my books, office supplies, art supplies, and decorations in boxes. She expressed surprise that I wasn't unpacked yet. I said, "Well, I'm not going to just do nothing but unpack for five hours straight. I unpack a little and then I take a break." And she said, "Whenever we moved I always had everything unpacked within three days. But I had kids." "But I had kids." Dammit, that sentence annoyed the crap out of me. "But I had kids." What does that even mean? Her life was more important than mine is, that it was more important that she get completely unpacked im...