My Baby

I've led my bloggie friends to believe that we're trying for our first take-home baby, but that's not entirely true.  Meet our first, Baby Dog.  Her name has been changed to maintain anonymity.

"But I'm not cold."


She's actually not a baby anymore but is a full-grown, elderly doggie.  I've had her since she was one.  She didn't have any puppy energy left in her at age one and was already kinda lazy and crotchety.  She's always completely lacked in any athletic abilities and will only run if she thinks she is in imminent danger.  Or if she thinks she's going to be fed.  She thinks playing fetch is a complete waste of time.  She also has the most intense, loving gaze that looks right into your soul.

My husband entered the picture when Baby Dog was middle-aged.  She was pretty set in her ways by then but decided pretty quickly that he was ok.  One incident early on when we were dating convinced her that he was The One.  We had guests over and accidentally left some food out on the coffee table when we went to another room.  Suddenly realizing our mistake, I leaped up to find her licking the cutting board clean.  She'd eaten a pound of cheese.  Amazingly, she seemed to feel great afterward and suffered no ill effects. 

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My husband and I bought a new camera recently.  Our old one broke sometime after our honeymoon in 2007.  In the early days after it broke, I decreed that we couldn't buy a new camera until we had a baby.  You know, good old-fashioned bribery to get my husband on the trying to conceive train earlier.  Eventually our babyless state had zero to do with lack of trying and everything to do with legitimate medical problems, so I decided to stop punishing him with a cameraless existence.

Baby Dog has been the subject of more photos with our new camera than any other person or dog.  In a fit of unexploited maternal energy last weekend, I decided it would be hilarious to photograph her surrounded by hand-me-down baby paraphernalia that's collecting dust in our closets.  It was.

The worst part of the photo shoot for Baby Dog was when I tried to hold her.  She gets mad when her 2-foot bubble of personal space isn't respected.  She looks adorable in a baby hat but has very little tolerance for cuddling, being rocked to sleep, or being burped.



Burping



Sifting through the sadly unused baby clothes was the hardest part of the photo shoot on my end.  I did it for the sake of a few funny photos—you know, fine art.  When the clothes are sitting in our closets along with car seats and strollers, I can try to forget they're there.  Opening the vacuum-sealed bags and smelling their baby-ness (how do they retain that baby scent from years ago when my niece and nephew were little?) reminds me that my only baby smells like a dog and not baby shampoo.  For now, Baby Dog will have to be the sometimes unwilling recipient of all of my maternal impulses.

Looks like my letrozole cycle is getting moved up!  As you know, that never happens.  Cycles are always pushed back and never moved up.  Apparently muscle twitches are not a common side effect of taking estrogen, contrary to what Dr. Google told me, and my doctor instructed me to stop taking it and the progesterone right away.  She thinks I've been on the hormones long enough and can wait for a period, meaning I'll probably get to start letrozole a little earlier than initially planned.  Every little bit helps, right?