#פערסאנאל

[shainachantake2]

Super nachas. Usually Z (7 in under a month) says shema at bedtime and S (19 months) sits on her bed and watches, on the odd occasion she'll put her hand in front of her eyes and giggles. After shema, we launch into the "torah tzivah" chant. Usually, Z lifts her arm in the air and shouts "torah!" and I pretend to have S repeat after her. Today, as Z finished shema, S suddenly raised up her arm and said "dodah!" and after we all said "Torah" she did it again with her rendition of "tzivah" and "lanu". 🥰

[shainachantake2]

I finished my antibiotics on Friday morning and over shabbos my throat got worse and worse. Pretty sure I have a fever now. My husband is also coughing much worse than before, and I've heard baby S coughing too. 😢 Wtf is this horrible illness.

Edit: well BH my fever went down with paracetamol, and none of the others have fevers. 👍 Just really hope we're all healthy soon because this is so tiring.

[shainachantake2]

Okay what?? After my husband sent his latest message to BO, it was quiet for a week, and suddenly they're approving our funding for a FET? 😱😱😱 Idk why it's suddenly become so much more real...

[shainachantake2]

Was it cancer?

Hi anon,

I debated answering this as it is such a raw topic for me but I also understand the desire to understand and make sense of things. My bff a"h was born with a genetic defect that they didn't discover (for some stupid reason, because her symptoms up till then were textbook) until she was in her 20s, when it was too late to manage. Her symptoms at the end were extreme and confusing, and hard to manage because of her body rebelling against every treatment measure.

She suffered a lot and I'm glad she is no longer in pain. I miss her a lot and wish it had been otherwise.

[shainachantake2]

My friend's sister just had a baby boy after 24 years of TTC, and I felt like spreading the mazal to all of you ❤️ may we all achieve and get what we've been trying to, in good health and with happy hearts.

[shainachantake2]

Struggling so much with my 6yo. She's such a brat. She's very anti authority and just super chutzpahdik, has always been from age 1. Like we ended up in A&E one time because she was so angry at me removing her from the tablecloth she was pulling on that she bruised deep muscles in her arm by sucking on it out of anger. Baby S is never like this. Ever. She does things she's not allowed but she's much more chill if I remove her. It's interesting to see because all this time I've sort of blamed myself, thinking all kids must be like this. Nope.

So anyway, ever since baby S was born she started struggling with day wetting. We've tried everything. We went to the GP for it, we spoke to the incontinence health visitor team, we tried rewards, we tried to have her walk more, we tried consequences... This girl just refuses to get it. She's wound up so tight that she can't relax to use the toilet at will, even though we try to talk to her about that, I don't have time even on a regular day to really follow through with this. It's her responsibility to learn this anyway, we can only give pointers. But the worst thing is that ever since we started rewarding with a sticker chart, she's now started lying about it.

This morning I asked her if she had davened yet, and she said oh no, let me do that now. I guess at this point I should have told her to go to the toilet first. Regretfully I didn't, busy with laundry. She starts davening and for whatever reason my brain gave a "warning: has Z been to the toilet?". I asked her, she said oh let me go now, and so I asked if she had already weed herself. She said "no". Then locked the toilet door. Uhhuh. I asked her again and turns out she did wee herself a bit, but "I was too busy davening". There's just so much ugh. Yesterday she also weed herself twice (first time was outside in the cold playing jumping rope, which imo is more reasonable, second time was during dinner with the same "I was too busy" excuse, and she lied about it and tried to hide the dirty soaking underwear under her clothes on the carpet).

It does not matter how many effing times we tell her "you are never too busy to go to the toilet!" And literally all possible iterations of that. Nothing helps!! It drives me absolutely insane! We have 2 toilets in our house and only 3 people using them, 2 of whom are adults who rarely go. We have special comfy seats for her and step stools and they're always in place for her. The toilet paper is soft and easy for her to reach. I do not get it!!!

[shainachantake2]

On a much lighter note, Z came to us holding a Playmobil cup, and said it was mouldy. I was like, no way!! But my husband asked to see it and then she said, see this bubble here?? And my husband realised she meant "mould defect".

Life as the daughter of a mechanical engineer, I guess?

[shainachantake2]

I just found out about child tax credit. I feel like such an idiot. We missed out on $3200 from 2021 and 2022. I didn't understand what it was 😬 Now I have to shlep the whole family to London (again lol) to get the kids SSNs and register their births, so that I can claim their tax credit on the 2023 taxes at least...

To be fair to myself, I wouldn't have gone through the hassle in 2022 for what I thought was a one time payment. So it's only last year's that we missed.

Now I have to remember to put all our income on the foreign tax credit form instead of the foreign earned income exclusion form. 😂

[shainachantake2]

So it's now the 28th day of the Omer. That means that since I had a very tough talk with Z, she has not leaked or wet herself at all in over 4 weeks. An unheard of record! (Tbh, since S was born. Because before S was born, she was always dry, for about 2 years.)

The basic problem appeared to be that Z just didn't see it as a problem. She was like, it's no big deal, we can wash the underwear in the washing machine, and that her friend also leaks. I told her very sternly that it is a big deal if she keeps weeing herself, and told her that I was going to buy her nappies if it kept going. That it would be impossible to hide and embarrassing. She obviously had not considered that. She was not embarrassed by the leaking because I guess nobody could tell. But the threat of nappies got the message across. She's now completely relaxed about using the toilet and she's enjoying her independence - I no longer have to remind her all the time to go to the toilet, I trust her to take care of herself, and she's very proud of herself. She's gotten a number of prizes for it as well.

As a disclaimer, this was literally the last resort. I've done everything else, making sure it wasn't a physical problem, doing exercises, seeing the doctor, called the incontinence health visitor team, more liquids, less liquids, prizes, charts, reminders to go every hour, no reminders, being completely blasé about it, being stern... The issue was that she just didn't have the right peer pressure I guess. Not enough bullying in school 😂😂😂 j/k

[shainachantake2]

I'm going to vent about our ongoing infertility situation.

S is now 16 months old, so it's still early in the game, but I've had my cycle back for 7 months now. It's sometimes weird and unpredictable, but so far I've ovulated every cycle.

I still ovulate around day 16 or 17, my luteal phase just varies based on if S has nursed extra. For example, 2 cycles ago I ovulated on day 16 and my LP was 12 days. Last cycle was a crazy one with ovulation on day 17 and an LP of 9 days. Tbh I need to wean her soon... It's driving me crazy to not be able to calm her because she always wants the breast.

Anyway. A charity is working with us and they've changed their operations completely. Previously they partnered with a Jewish doctor at the fertility clinic, and took his advice on things while we worked with him face to face. After 4 years of trying for S, and all blood work and all that coming back great, the charity said it was time to do IVF. We did and it resulted in 7 frozen embryos and baby S, BH.

Now, they've got their own medical team who we cannot see face to face. For whatever reason even though they asked for medical records and history twice and we gave it twice, they still don't know anything about us. They want us to do everything all over again because they want us to get pregnant naturally. Uh yeah so do I, obviously, but we've done all this already??? They are not considering a FET right now and want to tweak me first to see if natural is possible and maybe go for IUI...

Worst thing is that now that I did my blood work again, my FSH came back slightly high at 10.1, and my thyroid is at 3.4, while they normally want 2.5 or lower. These are problems I didn't have previously, so seeing them as some sort of solution to our problem would be wrong. Of course I do need to check the thyroid thing because my mum has Hashimotos, but it's not the cause of our fertility issues.

Honestly, I think if we want to have another child in a reasonable time frame (I'm not again going to try for 4 years ugh, I'm 36!), we may have to do this on our own. 😐

[shainachantake2]

Since my mother appears to prefer performative bs, I decided to congratulate everyone at once publicly: "Happy mother's day to everyone, mothers-to-be and mothers of critters included!" in our family's WhatsApp group chat (it consists of our family of 4 and my father's brother's family of 4). This would include my mother, my aunt, my sister, and my 2 cousins. As a reminder, it was the last day of the family reunion yesterday, so they were all together over there while I'm at home in a different country.

My mother's response? "Thanks, @shainachantake2, some of us have already left."

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What does that even mean?

I hate mother's day. We're also forced to call the MIL and step MIL to wish them happy mother's day, and if we don't then they get upset and offended. None of them ever wish me happy mother's day of course, it's all about them - and don't get me wrong, I don't want that, it's the one-sidedness of the relationship that bothers me. They do the same with my FIL and step MIL's wedding anniversary (their wedding happened after my husband, the youngest child, moved out). We HAVE to congratulate them on it, we forgot one year because of some major life event, and they were upset!! Meanwhile they never remember ours. And once again I do not want them in our anniversary but the stupid boomer style narcissism is driving me insane.

[shainachantake2]

Not sure what kind of message hashem is trying to send but after our boiler had an issue a few weeks ago that was fixed (?) by putting in a new expansion vessel (?), it developed a new issue that the pump is broken. It literally boils the water in there and doesn't pump any out. 😭 Why so many expenses hashem...

[shainachantake2]

So much nachas BH

1. Z said mah nishtanah in the proper chant in Yiddish and Hebrew, she stayed up for the seders and was involved in most of it

2. S took her first 2 steps in shul first day yom tov, and then at bubbe C's house walked back and forth multiple times, so cute!!!

[shainachantake2]

Wish I had the confidence of a queer non/antizionist Jewish convert who makes their own version of "Judaism" tbh.

[shainachantake2]

My dearest best friend in the world has passed away. She's finally finished suffering and I'm 100% sure that with all her amazing midos she's already in gan eden. But I will miss her so much.

Trying to curtail my bursting into tears right now, still need to get through the day.

I feel like there's a huge hole in my being. A gaping emptiness where the knowledge of her being just a WhatsApp text away used to be.

[shainachantake2]

I am sick. Fever, cough, the whole works. 😮‍💨