A Personal Update

This weekend’s election news brought me to tears thinking about how I would bring my daughter into a world with a new, hopeful administration and a VP like Kamala Harris.

After years of infertility treatments and pregnancy loss, I’m hopeful about finding myself just over halfway through a pregnancy.

When you are pregnant, people go out of their way to offer their well wishes, advice, and baby supplies -I am so appreciative of these things. When I was going through infertility treatments and pregnancy loss, I never felt so alone.

My body felt so tired, the grief overwhelming, holidays impossibly triggering. Most people don’t understand what it’s like to go through IVF treatments and, to be fair, how could they. The people who went out of their way to check-in and express care, I will always be grateful for. I guess what I really want to say is that if you have a friend or loved one going through this, check-ins and some understanding goes a long ways.

Why two egg retrievals never resulted in a single, healthy embryo, I will never know. We never received any “why’s” or clarity. Just a welcome surprise this summer during the strangest year of our life.

I kindly ask you don’t use people like me as an example of someone who experienced a spontaneous pregnancy after IVF when talking to someone experiencing infertility. It’s not helpful and invalidates their struggle.  

Knowing I have friends who are grieving pregnancy loss and experiencing infertility, I want to navigate this as gracefully and kindly as possible. Never forgetting what we’ve been through or how we felt along the way. Much love and encouragement to you as always. I still hear you.

What I’m Eating
Morning sickness is a bitch that women rarely talk about. For some, it doesn’t go away. I’m grateful it let up after a few months of feeling sick all but 22 hours a day. I didn’t eat a vegetable for months. Just touching a vegetable made me gag. I gave away my CSA boxes to a family member each week.

My food aversions are mostly gone, except for meat and strong garlicky things. Here are foods I’m really into.

  • Lemon Loaf cake from Starbucks
  • Peppermint Mocha flavored drinks
  • Dunkin’ Doughnuts – everything.
  • Hummus, baba ganoush and falafel sandwiches from Shish.
  • Thai green curry (most recently enjoyed from Thai Pepper in West. St. Paul (they have a drive-thru!) and Coconut Thai on Grand in St. Paul.
  • Vegetarian soups from SIMPLS soup subscription.
  • Indian food – most recently from Himalayan on Lake Street and Indian Masala in Maplewood (read about them in My Annoying Opinions. I appreciate their utmost care to pandemic precautions. They do not allow customers inside).
  • Plain potato chips and Top The Tater.
  • Sour cream and foods that I can add copious of sour cream into.
  • Popcorn. So much popcorn.
  • Apples and apple cider.
  • Caesar salad.
  • Prunes and prune juice. Don’t get me started.

5 Comments

  1. Sarah Feist

    Very happy for you, Jeni! Sending you good vibes & your post was very kind.

  2. Val - Corn, Beans, Pigs & Kids

    This is wonderful news!!! I’m so happy for you and Jake!

  3. Cathy

    Congratulations! I miss following you on Facebook.

  4. katie

    I am so happy for you, and chuckled a bit at your list of foods, because I find myself eating lots of those things, and I have no reason for such a “symptom”. Love to you.

  5. Nancy

    Have followed your blog for years and could feel the pain at times about what you weren’t saying about pregnancy. So happy for you

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