Feeling rather flat

All of a sudden I'm having one of those nights. I feel miserable. I don't even know where it's come from, but I hate it. I actually went out for a couple of our close friends birthday tonight, had a rather nice night. Now I feel like I've been hit by a ton of bricks.

I think a nice, long walk is in order tomorrow. My exercise has gone out the window in the last week, and that's not good. The scales have gone back to not moving. I feel like quitting and burying my head in the sand.
Stupid body, why do you have to be so stupid? Stupid ovaries.
Fuck PCOS!

My sense of humor

You may have noticed, especially if you know me in person, that I tend to laugh a lot, and make a joke of most things. I very rarely take things seriously, and often have trouble taking things seriously that I really should. My nickname was Lawlz a long time before I had a WoW character of the same name.

My PCOS is no exception. I make jokes about it. Rei and I talk about Ellie being an only child and growing up thinking she's a rabbit. I talk openly about my failboat ovaries like they're a living, evil entity that are plotting my demise. In my head they actually look a bit like Darth Sidious.

That's not to say I don't cry, or get upset about things. Ohhh Lord, do I cry. My poor, long suffering husband gets to see this very pretty side of me. I am the ugliest crier on the planet. And probably most other planets. Some people look okay when they cry, but I don't. At all.
In a way I think that my sense of humor has become a bit of a coping mechanism in all walks of my life. I was a very serious kid, I didn't know how to take a joke, or handle fun being poked at me. I took things rather personally, and generally felt I was a bit of a loser. In my early 20's I took a deep breath and decided that it was time to stop being such an uptight douchebag, and I let go. I let myself laugh at myself, I taught myself to be more forgiving of myself, and I started to smile more. I stopped taking life so seriously. And it was beautiful. It was like being free of something that held me back for a long time.

These days I find it much easier to laugh than to cry. It's easier to look for some humor in any situation than it is to look at the bad stuff. 

Sometimes it's actually a bad thing, because at times I find that it actually prevents me from feeling things to their full extent. And eventually, when all the emotion catches up with me, I become a puddle of sad on the floor.

To take what is happening with my body at the moment as a bit of a bad joke actually helps me to get by and keeps the smile on my face. Not to mention all the wonderful people in my life that help me to laugh every single day. I've been very blessed in that respect.

A very sincere thank you

Yesterday I made this blog known on my Facebook for the first time. To be honest I was a little apprehensive about it, not really sure how others might react. I like to be the good friend, the unwhiney, uncomplicated friend.
I was honestly blown away by all of your comments on Facebook and all the messages of support, advice and the rousing cry of "FUCK PCOS" that went through the masses. I never expected such a huge reaction. I am flattered, really flattered. Thank you all so much. I'll never be able to tell you what it means to know that so many of you have been here, are still here, or are just so supportive of my journey through this. I love you all.

One of my favourite responses actually came from one of my best friends, Buzz. He and I have been friends for around 10 years now, although we have never actually met in person. We met via Yahoo Chat (remember when that was cool, kids?) back in the day, and have been talking ever since.
He did his bi-yearly gush about how much he loves Rei, Ellie (Purtader) and I, and how he hopes things happen for us soon.. So at that point I had eyes full of tears at the sweetness of it all. Then he said this:

 I won't lie though. Your blog had me freaked out for a bit. I became convinced I had it too. I had all the symptoms. Anxiety, depression. Baldness and overweight. triple check on the Hirsutism part, I'm glad to know there's a name for what I had (I just had been referring to it as excess manliness). My periods are wildly irregular.

Yup. That's a loving friendship. Thank you Buzz. Although you are a giant douchebag, we do love you too.

I hope that you all do continue to enjoy reading what I have to say. I'd love to continue to hear your stories too, so please, keep the responses coming.
To those of you who have inboxed me and haven't recieved a response yet, I am getting around to it. I promise I have read everything, I just have a house that looks like a bomb has hit it, and a 1 year old, who is the bomb that hit my house.
Thank you all again, and much love to each and every one of you!

EDIT: I just had a thought as I was merrily vacuuming the living room (shhh, pretending I enjoy housework sometimes helps). To my pregnant friends: PLEASE don't think that talking about your pregnancies is upsetting to me. I am so happy for you guys! I may honestly have moments where I feel a little twinge of jealousy, but I am able to swallow that down easily as you guys deserve every bit of happiness, and I truly am happy for you.

Support, lack of sleep and 4kgs down.

I was talking to a friend yesterday about my support networks. Without going into too much detail, my Mother has a lot on her plate at the moment, so I'm feeling a little out in the cold from that aspect. But then again, my Mother isn't exactly the squishy, loving type anyway. I am lucky to have an amazing husband (who is very supportive, even when I'm talking about cervical mucous and LH surges), some friends and one family member in particular that are great to talk to about my issues, no matter if it's about this, or anything else that's going on in my life. I also made friends with a wonderful bunch of women via the Huggies website while I was pregnant and we've since moved our conversations to a group on Facebook. 
I tend to withdraw when things get me down. I don't like to burden anyone with things that are bothering me. This has actually cost me a few friendships in the past, because frankly I'm not really sure HOW to talk about things that are upsetting me, and I really hate getting upset in front of people. I find it hard to talk to my best friend about things. I really need to start working on that side of me.

I also really need to start sleeping at a decent hour. Last night I was feeling really sick after too many coffees, so had planned to go to bed really early and wake up feeling nice and refreshed. But in true Lauren style, I was still sitting on the computer at 11pm (buying tickets for Kate and I to go see Magic Mike on a Mum's night out, among other things). The problem is that when we get Ellie into bed I tend to get a bit excited about "me time", although "me time usually includes laundry, house tidying and animal wrangling. One day I'd just like to sit in my house, alone, with it all clean and nothing to do. Haha, fat chance of that in the next 20 years!

My weight loss is also still falling, which is wonderful, especially considering my exercise has been less than admirable in the the passed week. I'm currently 4kgs down and very excited about that. Only a million more to go! What? I'm not prone to exaggeration at all!

"No periods? PCOS is the best condition ever!" and other myths

So I've had some fun comments about my PCOS during my six months since diagnosis. I'm sure anyone who has it has probably had the same, or similar comments made to them.

"You get your period every 80 days? That must be awesome! I wish I had PCOS!"
Okay, let me be the first to say FUCK YOU. I understand that perhaps you were dropped on your head as a child, but you're being an insensitive idiot with that comment.
Yes, my period is erratic, and sometimes I don't get it for almost three months. But then sometimes I get it for a whole month, tell me where the fun is in that. Especially try doing that when the month long bleeding is happening, I dare you.
I can also say that when you are trying to get pregnant, and irregular cycle sucks. Big time. 

"Just lose some weight and your symptoms will go away and getting pregnant will be easy!"
Thanks for that, Einstein. While what you have just told me is actually true, "just losing weight" isn't always that easy when your hormones are psychopathic. 
I eat very well. Lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, good healthy meals, very little takeout.
I exercise. I walk 90 minutes five times a week. I go to at least one aqua aerobics class a week. I do weights when time allows, which is usually two times a week. And I spend my days taking care of a house and an active one year old. My bloods are extremely healthy, my body just doesn't particularly mirror that.
In saying all that, since cutting processed carbs (bread, pasta, rice) out of my diet, I have actually noticed a change in myself for the first time in a year, which is exciting. There are ways, ladies, just finding it can be difficult. Especially when everyone else makes it look easy by comparison.

"Are you pregnant yet? You've been trying long enough!"
This one is usually asked weekly by well meaning friends.
While I understand the comment is a well meaning one, it doesn't make things very easy. To put things in perspective, during my last three month long cycle, I did seven pregnancy tests. Seven. And each one was a knife in the heart.
When I am pregnant. I'll tell you. I love you all for being concerned, I really do.

"I've never heard of this PCOS thing. Are you making things up?"
No. Don't be a dick. Do you really have hours set aside to sit down and listen to me explain a condition that is really just a bunch of symptoms and not a lot of explanation behind them? No? Yeah, I figured that. It's confusing enough to have, let alone to explain.

"You already have a baby. You should be grateful!"
Me wanting to get pregnant again is not me being ungrateful for my daughter. Ellie is absolutely the light of my husband and I's life and I am thankful for her every single day. The fact is that we would like more children. Now if that can't happen for us then we will face that when we come to it, but for now we are trying to extend our family. Honestly, if we could afford to have five babies and be able to give them everything they need then I'd absolutely do it. For now we'll just settle for one more though ;)


I'm sure this post will be added to from time to time.

Who I am and why I'm invading your internet

So most blogs start out having a point, a general reason as to why someone started using it. My story is this:

I'm Lauren, I'm a 29 year old Mama of one beautiful girl, happily married to a wonderful man and living in Melbourne Australia.

Us with our Ellie Jade on her 1st birthday

My aim in creating this blog is partly for my own outlet, and partly to try to make the readers more aware of PCOS and how it can affect lives, and also to hopefully meet some others in my position that need support and someone to chat to about their issues too. I also want to share my journey in trying to get pregnant with PCOS. While I realise that it's early days for us yet, being only six months in, it can also be very lonely. I get met with a lot of "You have to give it some time" and "Don't be so dramatic about this!", when sometimes I just need to hear a "That sucks! Fuck PCOS!". Ideally followed by offers of wine and Chocolate.
Selfishly, it's hard seeing other people fall pregnant at the drop of a hat, and seemingly not appreciating how lucky they are. While it isn't my place to judge some situations, or as horrible as it may be for me to be jealous, I just sometimes am. And sometimes I get bitter. Yup.
As far as other vents go; I have struggled with the symptoms of PCOS even before I knew I had it, most specifically with my weight and body image. It's hard to get your head around eating right, exercising and getting nowhere with weight loss. I can't actually remember a time I looked in the mirror and was happy with what I saw. But then again that seems to be another disease that most women have, so I guess I'm not alone on that one!

More about me:

Currently I'm a stay at home Mum. Before my daughter I worked as an Animal Attendant at a vet clinic. I love animals and I'm very passionate about animal welfare issues. I'm particularly fond of rabbits, and we share our house with three completely litter trained house rabbits, as well as two cats, a Newfoundland and some fish.

I am rather geeky. I love video games, science and math humor and reading, although I rarely get the time for any of the above these days. I'm also weirdly fond of all things zombie.

I come equipped with a pretty broad sense of humor and I'm very fluent in sarcasm. I'm grateful for my sense of humor, it gets me by a lot of the time. 

As much as I may complain here, I do have a wonderful support network in my awesome husband and a very loved group of friends and family, who I would do anything for. I'm not a gushy sort of person, but I do try to let them know how loved and appreciated they are as often as I feel comfortable doing so. I guess I can be a bit reserved in that way.

The rest of me is a pretty open book though, as I'm sure you will find out if you follow this blog. I swear entirely too much, I love to bake, I'm generally weird, I laugh a lot.

And I think that's about it.

I do hope you enjoy reading my ramblings.

What is PCOS

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. It's one of those fun multifaceted conditions with a whole bunch of symptoms, no explanation as to what REALLY causes them, and no real treatment. It's one of the most common hormonal disorders in women, and around 5-10% of women of reproductive age have symptoms.
Some of those fun symptoms include:

• Infertility (not able to get pregnant) because of not ovulating. In fact, PCOS is the most common cause of female infertility.

• Infrequent, absent, and/or irregular menstrual periods
• Hirsutism (HER-suh-tiz-um) — increased hair growth on the face, chest, stomach, back, thumbs, or toes
• Cysts on the ovaries
• Acne, oily skin, or dandruff
• Weight gain or obesity, usually with extra weight around the waist
• Male-pattern baldness or thinning hair
• Patches of skin on the neck, arms, breasts, or thighs that are thick and dark brown or black
• Skin tags — excess flaps of skin in the armpits or neck area
• Pelvic pain
• Anxiety or depression
• Sleep apnea — when breathing stops for short periods of time while asleep

Yep. Great stuff.

So what does PCOS mean for me personally? 

To be honest, I have had symptoms for a very long time, generally overweight, a little hairy, dry scalp, anxious. Probably going back to when I first hit puberty. My period was generally regular as far as I can remember, but I was on the pill from 17 onward. 
As many of you know I already have a wonderful daughter, Ellie, who has recently turned 1. While pregnant with her they discovered a large cyst on my right ovary, which was of no concern at the time, but they wanted me to come back and be checked after she was born. I did that in February, which is when they discovered that I had tiny cysts all over both my ovaries, around 30 in total. I was then sent back to my doctor to have blood tests and all other wonderful proddy, pokey examinations. My bloods came back fantastic in general, but yes, my androgen's were up. And I still had most of the other symptoms, the extra weight that is impossible to shift, especially considering I eat healthily and exercise regularly. Oh, and the fact that I was going around 80 days between periods. 

What am I doing to help me in my quest to give our daughter a sibling?

In my case, it seems pregnancy has made my PCOS worse and now I'm experiencing what is known as secondary infertility. We started actively trying for a baby in February when we got the results that pointed to PCOS, knowing that it could take us awhile. In May my doctor prescribed me with Metformin. Which is actually a drug that is used to treat people with diabetes and it's use is somewhat experimental in treating PCOS, but a lot of people have fantastic results with it. It helps to lower insulin levels in the blood, which can benefit all the aspects of the condition. I'm also currently taking Evening Primrose, a pre-natal and pregnancy multi-vitamin, CoQ10 and Milk Thistle, and very recently have cut carbs such as bread, pasta, rice (which is hard when you have a Chinese husband) and potatoes out of my diet. I'm actually feeling a lot better since starting the low carb diet, so I think I'm on the right track.


Some links, should you wish to learn more:
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Association of Australia
Soul Cysters