Show and Tell 02/10/10

It’s been ages since I’ve done a show and tell but I’ll give it a go today. School is going well for me. It’s definitely an adjustment from being a stay at home mom. I’m enjoying learning again as well as the social aspect of it.

This week, however, when I showed up to school on Tuesday they were closed due to the death of the founder of the school. Today we are all home for a snow day. We will see what tomorrow brings. I have a feeling we are all going to be home again.

Rivky and I enjoyed the downtime. She went out and made a snowman and we stayed home and baked cookies. I didn’t have the opportunity to take pictures of her snowman yet but here is the view of all the snow from our back porch.

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Shake it baby

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted. I’ve decide to go back to school and have been very busy with making that happen. I will be starting on Tuesday and I’m both excited and nervous. It’s been 22 years since I’ve officially sat in class. I do attend Judaic lectures from time to time and I read a lot so my brain cells are not totally dead . We will see how it all goes.

In the news, I came across this interesting article on a new development regarding embryos during IVF treatment. Apparently shaking the developing embryos helps them to grow more cells than leaving them still in a petri dish. The method they developed more closely mimics what would happen to an embryo in a woman’s body. It has so far only been tested in mice but looks very promising.

First ‘Viagra baby’ turns 10 years old

Doctor Geoffrey Sher, from The Sher Institute, was the pioneer to use Viagra to help a woman conceive. Rene Danford had been trying to conceive for several years and had been through several unsuccessful IVF treatments at a fertility clinic that advised her that she would never be able to carry her own baby because her uterine lining was too thin to support implantation of an embryo.

Doctor Sher gave her Viagra suppositories to increase the blood flow in her uterus which would then thicken her lining. In conjunction with IVF, she was able to conceive this way and went on to have a successful pregnancy. She also had a second child 2 years later using this same method.

The baby maker

This article from the Guardian, UK talks about an acupuncturist in the UK making great strides in helping infertile couples. She’s having amazing success with older woman using their own eggs and they are conceiving naturally. Gives us all hope.

Mom gives birth after embryo mix-up

A woman, who underwent IVF treatment and had another woman’s embryo erroneously transferred to her in a lab mix-up, has given birth to a baby boy. I can only imagine how difficult the pregnancy must have been on her emotionally. It is very admirable that she was willing to carry the baby to term only to have to give him up to the biological mother.

First Acupuncture Visit

So I finally got brave enough to try acupuncture. All I can say was that it was amazing. I can’t get over how relaxed I feel. I really liked the acupuncturist. Believe it or not she is not Asian. She’s a Russian Jew. She informed me that lots of people practice acupuncture, not just Asians. She did go to study for a short while in China but that’s about all her association with the Asian culture.

I am trying acupuncture not just for fertility, although I hope it will help with that as well. I want to see if she can help me to lose weight and to feel more relaxed overall. So far for emotional well being I’ll give her a 10 out of 1-10. As far as losing weight, I hope it helps. I heard acupuncture can help with sugar cravings although oddly enough I was craving sugar the minute I left, hmm. Maybe just talking about sugar made me crave some. I can’t expect everything to be cured from one visit, although wouldn’t that have been nice .

The needles really didn’t hurt, aside from the ones in my ears (as my friend Malya warned me). Even those only hurt going in. My ears still feel a little funny now but nothing terrible. I did start crying a little while I was lying there and prayed a little too. When the session was over she said that that was very good. She quoted “Ying” and “Yang” a little too much, but she wasn’t too out there with new age stuff so that was fine.

The one thing that did bother me was all the baby pictures hanging on the walls – people thanking her for her help getting them pregnant. That always bothers me about fertility offices as well. It’s as if they are trying to sell you the candy. Look what I did for people. Of course you feel like a total failure if you don’t get the baby. Yeah.. Also, she had a painting of a mother nursing her baby in the room she put me in. I don’t know if that’s supposed to send you positive thoughts in that direction but I could have lived without it.

So have you tried acupuncture and what has your experience been like?

Show and Tell 09/16/09

It’s been a while since I’ve done a show and tell (or a post altogether for that matter). I just needed a little inspiration.

I made challah for the holidays today. Along with the usual round ones for Rosh Hashanah, this year I decided to get a little creative with a few of them. This cookbook has an interesting recipe called “Challah Napkin Rings”. Essentially the Challah serves as a napkin ring.

A relative of mine made them years ago and I decided to give it a go. It’s quite an arts and crafts project in itself but the results are beautiful.

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Move over Octomom, here comes some competition *Updated*

A teacher is pregnant with a record-breaking 12 babies. Whether she will be able to carry them to viability still remains to be seen… Amazing stuff none the less.

Update: According to Momlogic this women might just be a fraud who isn’t even pregnant at all. Hmm.

New Way to Track Ovulation

Our good friends over at the UK have come up with a new device to help track ovulation. They are promising 12 months and you are pregnant or your money back. The device is called DuoFertility, a state-of-the-art fertility monitor, that records a woman’s temperature up to 20,000 times a day. There is also a hot line to help you determine the readings. This device isn’t cheap though – 495 pounds. That’s close to $1,000!

I’m a little skeptical that this device will be such a cure all. Sure timing of intercourse is important, but if a woman doesn’t ovulate or eggs don’t reach maturity without the aid of drugs, she’s kind of out of luck. Of course this can also do nothing for male factor infertility.

In Memory… *Updated*

Tonight a little after midnight would have been my first child’s 11th birthday. She was a full term stillborn. You would think the mourning would get easier over the years but it doesn’t.

This year Aaron and I are doing a very good job in communicated our feelings about the baby. We started a little ceremony tonight that I hope we will continue each year to remember our daughter on this night. We read several verses of Psalms and lit a candle as well. We spent some time just sharing our feelings and thoughts about her. It was very healing for both of us.

Happy 11th birthday my dear daughter Nechama. I know that you are in a very happy place and can’t wait to meet you again after 120…

Aaron wrote a beautiful post on his new website. Thanks for sharing your feelings honey.

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