Since we decided to find out the gender we have chosen to wait to reveal the name until he is born. *(well, that is the plan but we might just cave before then! )

I am scheduled to go back to see my perinatologist  on August 19th for my 20 week scan. I will go there instead of my regular OB so that they can take more 3&4-D images of my uterus in addition to the baby. This will help inform them about my bicornuate uterus and help them to know if my risk is increasing or staying the same. Ben & I are also hoping to find out the gender of the baby at that appointment. We have two really great names put together, and are pretty excited to put a name to this little human being.

although we are very excited I have been struggling emotionally with the high risk of this pregnancy. I want to be buying all kinds of things, starting my registry, nesting and imagining our life as a family of three. Instead I am afraid to do most of these things for fear of losing this baby. Most people will jump to think/accuse me of worrying too much, but I am really just stuck in the reality of my risks & the statistics that go along with them. Miscarriage into second trimester & preterm labor are scary risks. Especially when mine are much higher for both of those complications compared to a “normal, healthy” pregnancy.

I am not religious so I do not pray. I have always been a pessimist so I can be overly realistic to my own detriment. I have awesome doctors who are very honest so I am informed in the odds of this whole endeavor. I would love to just “hope for the best” or pray or just believe, but instead I resort to just being prepared for the “worst” or the reality that could be my life.

I hope it doesn’t sound too emo, and no I’m not clinically depressed. I’m cautious and sometimes it comes off as not being excited about pregnancy.

So basically I tell people I’ll be excited when I have a living baby in my arms and Ben beaming at our new family of 3.

Ben & I got VERY lucky that our very first round of fertility meds were successful. We meticulously charted things & were lucky to see a smiley face on the ovulation monitor on April 20th. From there, as they say, the rest is history. Since everything was charted and detailed it was pretty easy to guess when to buy our first early pregnancy test and it came out positive! So Monday May 2nd I made an appointment to see my doctor to confirm things on a more official level. It was such a happy day, and great to see my doctor so happy for us after the struggle she knew we went through.

Pregnancy has been good so far. I never had any nausea at all. I only had (and still have) some pretty strong food aversions. I have been exhausted for sure, but have been much more energetic the last two weeks. I was also very fortunate to be referred to a really awesome perinatologist who helped me weigh all of the risks/benefits of staying on my anxiety meds. He felt very confident that I could have a healthy pregnancy, healthy baby, and even be able to breast feed on my meds. This came from him having plenty of experience with other patients who stayed on the exact same med I’m on and even some who took much higher doses (I’m on the lowest dose).

I was lucky to have been sent there at 6 weeks. They always do a thorough 2-D and 3-D ultrasound before your consultation just to confirm viability. During the ultrasound they discovered that I have a bicornuate uterus. The risk with this problem becomes more of an issue later in pregnancy so we will have to monitor things more closely with regular visits to the perinatologist in late second & third trimester.

So, despite being high risk in two categories (PCOS & bicornuate uterus) I have had a rather uneventful & super healthy pregnancy. We had our 12 week appointment on Friday & Ben was home and able to come with me! During the appointment the nurse tried to find a heartbeat with the doppler & was unsuccessful. Then my doctor made another unsuccessful attempt. Since my doctor is well aware of my anxiety issues she quickly pulled in the ultrasound machine to ease our fears & wipe the scared expressions off our face. We were able to discern that the doppler was never going to find a heartbeat due to the fact that our little bean was kicking and twisting and moving around so much! It was the first time we were able to see the little bean that was growing inside me. The look of wonder on Ben’s face is something I’ll never forget. The bean measured 4 days ahead of schedule in size & had a heartrate right on target. My doctor also said that all of the movement was a really good sign of how healthy little bean is! So, I’ll leave you with the images of little Trujillo-Bressler due 1/9/12.

profile

reminiscent of the famous painting "The Scream" or "happy arms" as Ben named this one

I have taken 10 days worth of Provera which is the med that was supposed to cause a period-and it did! YAY! I started the second med-Femara on day 3 of my cycle & I will take 2 pills a day cycle days 3-7. The Femara is supposed to induce ovulation. I am then supposed to be able to chart ovulation as if I were having a “normal” 28 day cycle. I finished my Femara this morning. I am supposed to start using an ovulation kit to see if it works around cycle day 10-11. So, I’ve got a couple more days until I know if the meds worked this first time around. If they don’t, my OB/GYN has given me two more chances (refills) with the meds. After that I will need to go back in to see her & find out what other options we have. By then I will have been through 3 more blood panels, including glucose tests & cholesterol screens.

fingers crossed I will see a smiley face on the ovulation test a couple days from now…

I don’t have a very good reason for the blog hiatus. I’ll chalk it up to life happening. And also to spending way too much time typing on the work computer, and not enough on the trusty macbook at home.

I don’t even know if I can remember far back enough to give a full & proper update, so I’ll skip the hours it would take to dig out the details of the last year and a half and stick to the big stuff.

• Ben & I got married on 10.30.10 (FINALLY!) after seven and a half years together. The day was perfect! Almost all of our favorite people were in attendance. We were also so lucky to get our dream wedding photographers: Heather & Jon of One Love Photo! If you click on the ‘portfolio’ tab then click ‘desert’ you can see our wedding as one of their features!! We were so excited to be featured!! Here are a couple of our favorite images from the wedding…

the ink

across the tracks

with "the pickle" our favorite wedding present

hearts...

ceremony

inside BeDillon's

with our boys the "ons" (Faizon & Daevon)

LOVE our venue!

you can also find more wedding photos in this set on flickr & the hilarious photobooth images in this set on flickr!

• I also started my second year of advising the yearbook at VGHS. This year I have a staff of 16 students which includes an exchange student from Finland! Over the summer I took 3 students to camp @ SDSU & they created such an amazing yearbook theme/concept package they won our first award! We got 6th place out of 70 schools from around the southwest! So we are just 3 weeks away from the day 400 copies of our printed & bound 2011 Chrysalis yearbook arrive. I absolutely cannot wait. My staff & I will be jumping up & down with excitement to finally have it in our hands and see all of our hard work in print!
• I traveled to Salt Lake City for two days & fell in love. In ym wildest dreams I would move to a cute little condo I found while traipsing around downtown, and never look back! Ben had to go to the Western River Expeditions annual guide meeting in SLC & we decided I should take 2 days off work & make a road trip of it. We got to drive through beautiful northern Arizona and the valleys of Southern Utah. We spent our first full day just outside of Provo at Sundance Resort. Several of Ben’s river guide friends & colleagues work at Sundance every winter. His plan was to head up there unannounced & give his friends a good surprise! It turned out that we were in for a surprise. His friend who runs the ski school hooked us up with some snow gear & lift tickets and before we knew it we were riding the lift all the way to the top of the mountain to enjoy the view and bask in the beauty of Sundance.

the view from atop Sundance

We stayed at the Hilton in downtown SLC on the 16th floor which had an awesome view.

view from the 16th floor

I spent day 2 on my own while Ben was in the meeting. I took off that morning with my Nikon digital & my iphone. This might sound terrible, but I prefer the images from my iphone! I am in love lately with the Instagram app & used it & camera+ to edit all of my square images you will see here. I decided the two main places I wanted to visit were Temple Square & the SLC library. Both of them happened to appeal to me for architectural reasons. below you can see some of my favorite images from my expedition that day…

details @ Temple Square

view from the top of the SLC library

lunch @ blue lemon

these were blooming on the top of the SLC library-crocus

signs of spring- iris

@ Temple Square

@ Temple Square

view from hotel window

• The most recent news is that we decided to try for a baby! Three months ago I went off of birth control after taking it for 13 years. I promptly found out that I was having some infertility issues. I knew something was wrong when I never actually had a period the first month off the pill. I know that many women have odd cycles for a few moths before things work like clockwork again, but somehow I just knew something wasn’t right… I made an appointment to see my doctor and had two sets of blood-work done. The second one came back 2 weeks ago indicating that my hormone levels were way off. My doctor said that they were normally supposed to be at a 2:1 ratio. Mine were 1:16 in the opposite direction! Basically I was definitely not even ovulating. I was officially diagnosed with PCOS. Supposedly we caught the cyst formation super early since I was only off the pill for 3 months. However, it explained my confusing steady weight gain of the past few years (despite 5 days a week at the gym) and the accelerated weight gain I experienced for those non-pill 3 months! I am now on two new meds: one which forces a period and another that forces ovulation. I have 3 chances with the ovulation pills before we go back to the doctor to see if even more invasive measures are needed to create the tiny little family we are so desperate for. I am crossing my fingers that one of these first three chances will work out for us…

Well, I’m not sure who is still reading this–if anyone, so please leave me a comment to let me know you’re out there!

<3 Heather

• My yearbook kids not only made their first deadline, but submitted the first section a whole 7 days before our deadline!! Only four students cranked out 17 pages in less than a month, and ALL of them are brand new to yearbook.
• Our Gold Canyon Candle sale made us about $1500 dollars that helped us get closer to paying the $7500 deposit. We were still short and only sent $5000.
• We have custom screen printed Nalgene water bottles and custom engraved VGHS carabiner keychains on sale which are pretty sweet if I do say so myself. I’ll work on getting pics uploaded of those.

So, basically yearbook has consumed my work and home life, but it has already been super amazing to watch the kids turn into rockstar photographers and design gurus overnight. Can’t wait until the actual book comes out, and YBK camp in San Diego again next summer!

I also got three–read that–THREE fundraisers squared away. Yearbook will need extra money since it’s hard to sell yearbooks in a bad economy in a low socioeconomic area! We are selling custom screen printed Nalgene water bottles with our school logos and mascot on them! Also we are doing order form sales of See’s candy and Gold Canyon Candles! YAY for a tiring but successful day! Now I need to find someone to take me out to dinner to celebrate!

• October: DC was Great! Four days was not even close to enough. Photos are on flickr. Ben and I decided we will go back for sure.
• October/November: Got back from break and started focusing hardcore on where I was going with my career. I either had to pass my interview w/ Hamilton and make it to the new H.S. in town, or decide what job I would have instead. I had already made the decision that I was definitely NOT going to stay @ CGUHS knowing who the admin. team was going to be.
• November :my grandma got really ill and I had to drive out to Murietta, CA with Mom to help. Grandma was in 3 different hospitals and went through several procedures. Docs said she had only months to live. We left a week later and finally came home.
• December :we flew to Wyoming for a couple days to visit Ben’s family. It was cold and snowy and super awesome for it to feel like winter/Christmas season.
• January: Grandma got worse again and ended up in a skilled nursing facility because she couldn’t live by herself. She passed away and mom had to go back to make arrangements. I couldn’t go with her, so my Uncle Roger went out there and helped her pack up Grandma’s apartment and haul a bunch of stuff back to AZ.
• February: found out I was hired by Hamilton to go to Vista Grande H.S. One of the best days of my life. Not allowed to tell anyone for like a whole month while he finished the interviewing process. For the rest if the school year much jealousy and rudeness came spewing forth from many of my coworkers. On the other hand, many who I am still in contact with were very happy for me because they knew how much it meant! Torturous last few months.
• March: nothing really astounding happened…
• April: On the 29th Ben and I celebrated 6 years. Still can’t believe I was lucky enough to find someone so perfect for me!
• May: School ended the last week and I packed up 4 years worth of teaching accoutrement. It sucked. Mostly because Ben was already doing river trips and mom was my only help. Not so much because I was sad to leave. Forced to be totally gone and bare-roomed by last day of school or I would not get ny last check. Found out later that was an illegal move, but too late to do anything about it… Again, the ill treatment by colleagues…not cool.
• June 7th:Finally went on another River Trip in the Grand Canyon with Ben. Theis time it was a seven day and a three day. It was amazing as always. I would live down there if I could. Great people on the trip, some of whom i still keep in contact with through Facebook! Pics of this trip are on flickr.
• June 22nd: Started moving all my school stuff from the garage at home to my brand new classroom!!! So exciting, but confusing…how do you now where to put everything when you’ve never done it there before. *I’m still getting used to where everything is a whole month into school!*
• June 26th: Ribbon cutting ceremony at Vista Grande High School. Ben and I helped set up and Jason Peters from Skydive Arizona did a demo in with the American flag. super cool. My photo of Jason swooping the flag made it into the Casa Grande Dispatch as the background photo in the thank you ad from VGHS!
• July: @ end of June we left to Laramie, WY for our annual summer trip to visit Ben’s fam. It was beautiful weather and a good time as always.
• July 23rd: Left for San Diego with Kaitlyn my Editor in Chief to yearbook Camp @SDSU. Camp was great but while I was there I had what I later found out was my first panic attack. Despite the 9 hours overnight in the hospital, camp was super informative and Kaitlyn and I left chanting”yearbook is my life” and plotting our amazing book the whole way home!
• August: First week was spent in school meetings and finalizing my room/plans, etc. Teaching Freshman English, Beginning Yearbook, and Photography Academy this year. Very excited, but also admittedly nervous about teaching in a block schedule this year. Turns out block schedule is no big deal. I actually like it a lot better from the perspective of an English teacher. The night of the first day of school I had my second panic attack and ended up in the ER again. I took the next day off from work and went to see my regular doctor who put me on a steady dose of Klonopin and gave me some Atavan for emergencies. I have been diagnosed as having an anxiety spectrum disorder. To get a more specific diagnosis I would need to see a Psychiatrist, but almost all of the non-whack job ones in AZ are booked solid for like 5 months. I’m doing fine on my current meds and am waiting to decide if I will pursue further diagnosis. Being yearbook adviser has already been TONS of fun. One of may favorite students from last year got his schedule changed to be in YBK and has turned out to be an amazing photographer. I am soooo inspired by my YBK students that seem to have a natural gift for photography. It has been great watching them get so excited about being behind the lens. I guarantee the first ever Vista Grand High School Chrysalis will be absolutely amazing!

PHEW! Well that’s it in a nutshell… Not sure if anyone was reading this anyway…but here’s your update if you were waiting for one!