In Which Our heroine remembers she has a blog

Hello again, dear readers,

And no, there is no baby on the way as of writing.  Life is just busy.  Good, old-fashioned, real life.  And I'm okay with that.  I think we are supposed to be out there, living real life.

So, you might ask, what is going on in that real life?  A is now sixteen months and counting -- I can't believe it!  She's truly a toddler.  I think the real transition happened while were in Israel, just around her fifteen-month "birthday."  She started walking just before her birthday but by the time we were in Israel she was really running everywhere, and just everything about her went from baby to toddler.  She started protesting naps (and anything else) she didn't want to do with a vengeance.  She doesn't want to sit still, so restaurants were shift-work.

I miss babyhood, but honestly?  This doesn't frustrate me too much other than the obvious nostalgia.  Toddlers are learning independence and trying to understand how to convey their needs.  And A can't speak many words yet, so she's frustrated that she can't communicate.  Throw in the understandably short toddler attention span...

And there is so much sweetness, dear readers!  My little baby (she will always be my baby) has learned to push her babydoll in a toy pram and now she calls herself "mama" and gives her dolly kisses.  She is also learning to play ball, and she is so curious to explore everything.  And she is identifying animals in her storybooks, and at the zoo.  She knows some body parts.  And she is just a silly, adorable, sweetheart.  Every night I tell her she is our daughter and we waited a long time for her, and she makes us the happiest people alive, and that she is the answer to our prayers and the light of our lives.

This would be a lovely way to end this post, except it would be incomplete.  No, there is no baby on the way -- but that is not for lack of trying.  We have had two failed FETs, one in February and one in April.  I struggled to decide on a next step.  But eventually we agreed to do one more full IVF cycle, using the same lovely surrogate but a fresh donor.  (We're out of embryos anyway).  We just chose the donor, so hopefully I will be able to update you with some good news sometime soon.  Our plan is to do a day 5 transfer w PGD to ensure we transfer chromosomally-normal embryos.

On the professional front...the professional front seems to mean so much less to me.  But anyway.  I'm on research right now, working with vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium and the interactions between cathelicidin exposure and daptomycin susceptibility (fancy language meaning I play with resistant bacteria and try to find out if our immune system reacts to them in a way that makes the antibiotic resistance worse).  My co-fellows are a great group.  Learning to work in a lab is definitely a learning curve!

And now?  I have a microbiology practical exam in two days, so it's study time.

Goodnight, everyone, and Shabbat Shalom!