Hello everybody, welcome back to The Backup Plan

When I tell you that I’ve had technical issues this week! So I have an episode with Michael, fully recorded. Great conversation. We talked about everything from his family to ghost stories we’ve experienced to more poop jokes. I was editing it last night and my computer shut off. When I turned it back on, it wouldn’t recognize the external hard drive. I use the external hard drive that I store everything on for this podcast and tried plugging it into another computer. It still wouldn’t work. I’m currently running a disc utility program on it to restore all of the files, but I have about a terabytes worth of files on there because I save things as raw as I possibly can. It’s going to take another seven hours to rebuild all of that information. I said okay, all right, fine, I’m going to do an episode all by myself. I have some updates to share. Great! I recorded about 20 minutes of me being pretty vulnerable and sharing everything I’m feeling at the moment. When I went and listened back to it, it had recorded on my monitor’s microphone rather than the actual microphone. It sounded like shit.

Here we are again.

Updates. Here are the updates. I am currently menstruating how exciting for everybody to know, but that means I’m going to be ovulating next week. Yay, guess who bought tickets to go to Washington. That’s right, you can’t see it right now, but I’m pointing at myself. It’s me. I’m going to be flying up there next Monday and I’m going to be up there for a couple of days for prime ovulation time and we’re going Turkey Baster method again. This time we’re going to use the Mosey Baby Kit because they so graciously sent me one. If you’re interested in trying, the link is in the description. You can go ahead and click there. It supports me, which I truly appreciate.

Otherwise, it’s going to be pretty much the same procedure which I’ve outlined twice on this podcast. If you go back to the second episode and then my solo episode with Whitney, I went through that, go ahead and give it a listen if you really want to hear about what exactly the Turkey Baster method entails. It’s really funny about it is that there aren’t a lot of women doing that for themselves, or at least that are sharing it online. If it’s a single mother, like she’s typically doing donor sperm and going to a doctor to have it all done. A lot of what I learned from the Turkey-Baster method at DIYICI is from lesbians. So thank you, lesbians, for sharing so graciously your experience with syringes. There are a couple of different gals I found online who talked about that, so that’s the update.

I’m nervous. I’m nervous for a couple of different reasons. You know, it’s silly to worry about things that are not in your control. It’s silly to worry about things when everything might just be fine and might just work out, but I’m worrying nonetheless. I’m worried about all of the things that I need to get done in my life before I get pregnant.

My foot guys. It’s been driving me crazy for years and years and years. Genetically I am just predisposed to bad feet. It’s on my mom’s side, I think, that mostly get the bunions. I know my aunt Agnes, who’s my mom’s aunt. She’s my great aunt. I’ve had a lot of problems. The foundation wasn’t great there, and then as a kid I did Irish dance and figure skating, both of which are things that don’t contribute to healthy foot formation. So I had bunion surgery a year ago, which has been great. That fixed a lot of problems I was having, but it didn’t fix the neuroma in my foot, which is kind of like a nerve, a buildup of tissue around an inflamed nerve. That’s still there, so it feels like I’m walking on. If you took a bouncy ball and cut it in half and then stuck it to the ball of your foot, that’s what I feel like I’m walking on, not all the time. It gets worse sometimes, but I really wanted to get that fixed before I put any kind of pregnancy weight on it and I come to you unfixed. I’ve been going to my podiatrist about it. I’ve been taking me cortisone shots and I’ve been taking myloxacam, but myloxacam is an anti-inflammatory that you can’t take if you’re pregnant, so we’re off of that. We’ve been off of that for a while because I don’t want it in my system, and so I went to another doctor about cryo surgery and that is an option. I can do that while pregnant because it’s all localized. But even still, I just wanted to have it settled.

It’s the same feeling you get when you’re going on vacation and you want to clean the fridge out before you leave because you don’t want to come home to moldy food, or you want to make sure that your sheets are washed, so you come home to a clean bed. Sometimes you come home to a messy bed. It’s just the way it is and I am accepting that.

I really wanted to get microblading down on my eyebrows before I got pregnant, because it’s just something I really want. I’ve had it in the past and it’s been amazing. You shouldn’t get tattooed when you’re pregnant, you know, but the time has run out. I just can’t. I emailed the gal that I want to go to to see if they have any cancellations. We’ll see what happens.

You know, who knows, or maybe I don’t get pregnant. That’s. My other fear is that maybe this isn’t going to work. Maybe I’m gonna have to do this again, I’m gonna have to spend more money on a flight, or maybe I’m gonna freak out the same way that I did last time. That’s another big concern, but I can’t worry about it not happening. I just have to do the things that I know to do and keep calm, and in terms of freaking out, I’m on a steady stream of antidepressants at this point. We good, it’s fine, and it’s not the same environment I was in. Michael’s new apartment is much more my speed. It’s a high rise with windows out to the little city he’s living in, and there are places to walk and I’m excited about helping him unpack. It’s something that calms me down. So that’s fine. But then the other thing I worry about is like, if this does take, there are a lot of things I have coming up in my life that I have to make sure that this fits around and I’m starting to excel at work and is this gonna get in the way of me getting any further promotions or proving my worth even more? But I don’t have to do that because people actually like me at this job and believe in the work that I’m doing. So that’s less of a concern that it would have been, but it’s a concern nonetheless.

And then there are finances. You know I want to be a fabulously rich mommy who has the fanciest things, and you know I’m gonna have nice things and I’m gonna splurge on some things. And if I go into a little bit of debt, I go into a little bit of debt, it’s fine. There is no gold standard. Money isn’t real. We’ll get through it, it’ll be fine. But these are things that I gloss over in my everyday life. But when I am sitting in front of a computer with a microphone, I have the time to think about them and I have the time to ramble about them. You know these are just human concerns and the grand scheme of whatever spiritual journey we’re all on. There are different things that matter and I have taken the elevator from my head to my heart and I am doing the right thing.

There are a lot of things I’m worried about, but more than anything, this is something I want and during this whole wild season I’m living through, my niece was born and she was in the NICU for a much shorter time than we expected. She ended up coming home this week. Now that they’re home and she’s around all the time, I can call whenever and see her and she has the longest little fingers and she’s got that like newborn, like spindly quality. She lost a pound but grew an inch. So she’s just this like little bean with like toothpick arms and legs and she’s healthy, she’s great, but she’s so spindly and she has just little tiny tufts on her ears. You know some of that like newborn hair that kind of sticks around for a little bit. It’s really silly. She’s cute and she is able to make eye contact and is pretty alert and her big brother is like in love with her and he’s three now and I love him with all of my heart and now he’s at a point where we’re having full conversation and so if I say to him like, ooh, I’ve got a meeting I have to jump into, he’ll go, I’ll call you later, or he’s even told me I’ll text you later, which I can tell when I get a text from him, because it’s just letters and emojis.

I wanna contribute to that, like I want a little bean in the mix as well and I wanna see them all interact and that’s what I want to do. I’m prepared for it. And it’s just kind of come up really quick, like suddenly it’s October somehow, somehow it’s mid-October, what the fuck.

That’s about all I’ve got right now. I have links in my description for some affiliate links. As I mentioned, mosey Baby is down there. I’ve been tracking my ovulation with a keg fertility monitor. I really like it. It doesn’t track your hormones via urine test, it does it via cervical mucus. It looks a little like a sex toy. Don’t worry about it, it was based on a sex toy. From what I’ve heard, it’s been a great little device and it’s how I know. Hey, these are the most optimal days to be traveling to a little town in Washington.

And those two devices, unfortunately, there’s no discount on those, but I do have discounts on HelloBella diapers and Kindred Bravely maternity wear, which you know. I am in the market for some new sweatpants and I was checking them out on their website and so I don’t know, maybe I just jump in on the maternity wear early and have some cozies, you know. Whatever I think they have non-maternity sweatpants. Maybe I do that.

Now when I go out to Washington, I foresee lots of posting on social media with Michael, so make sure that you are following on Instagram or backup plan pod over there, check out all the shenanigans we get ourselves into and wish me luck. I you know, if you subscribe to a religion, go ahead and let the man men folks upstairs know that your pal is looking to get knocked up, and if you don’t, just you know thoughts, prayers, polo santo, whatever it is any help I can get. I’m just ready for a little baby. I’m going to tell you guys all about my pregnancy foibles and not me being concerned about fertility.

So I’m going to end it here. Short, brief, but this is where we’re at and this is what technology is allowing, so I’m going to go brew myself some fertility tea, edit this episode and get it up. So you’ve got it bright and early on Wednesday morning. Thank you, guys, so much for all of your support and see you next week.

The Backup Plan is created, produced and hosted by me. Meredith Kate. Julian Hagens is my co-producer. You can find us on social media at “backupplanpod”. The best place to get updates is to sign up for our newsletter at backupplanpod.com, where we also post all episodes, show notes and transcripts. Thank you for listening.