Shelton & Brandi

Hello! We're Brandi & Shelton Koskie. Since 2006 we’ve been one of the many couples on the In Vitro Fertilization journey. We were the first IVF fundraiser blog, and thanks to the generous help of many, in we had our first successful IVF attempt. Nine months later, we had a beautiful girl, Paisley. You’re invited to follow along on our journey from infertility to parenthood.  Learn more

Mama Cocktail and Pregnancy Sangria

Hello… my name is Brandi and I’m a raging alcoholic. Not entirely. I like the occasional drink. Occasions tend to find me a few nights each week. That is when I’m not growing a human.

When we were doing our fertility drugs, our nurse (M) told me it was fine to drink a little, but that I likely wouldn’t feel like it. She was right. However, a few days before the egg retrieval I knew that my drinking days were over for quite some time. This was in August, when cold beers are as essential as stew in the winter. I was going to have to finish the summer sober. Oh the horror!

One Friday after work, Shelton escorted me to my favorite bar downtown, The Pumphouse. I ordered a Blue Moon and I drank about half… because M was right, with all the drugs and hormones in my system, it just didn’t sit right. But I let those first few sips linger on my tongue as I soaked under that hot August sun, and told myself that one day we’d meet again.

I’ve had several people remind me that “some doctors say it’s totally fine to have a glass of wine now and then while you’re pregnant.” Well, I would never go to that doctor. I might eat ham sandwiches while I’m pregnant, but I’m definitely not knocking back bottles of cab at dinner. I’ve already written a $20,000 check… a $10 bottle of cabernet just doesn’t really sound worth it. Can you imagine the guilt you’d feel if even one thing were wrong with the baby, all because that steak dinner paired so well with that one little glass of wine? ACK!

I have no problem giving up drinking for these ten months (or more…). In fact, if I can’t go this long without a drink, then clearly I have bigger issues!

But it doesn’t mean I don’t find myself in social situations or at the end of a long day when a little fun-having drink wouldn’t lift my spirits. I don’t drink coffee. I don’t drink soda. So eliminating alcohol leaves me with water. Yum! It’s the only thing I ever drink anyway, but when so many alternatives are eliminated, it gets a little old.

Enter, The Mama Cocktail.

Shelton and I were on the plane headed to Florida for our babymoon. This is a situation where I would normally take a beer from the flight attendant (because have you HAD airplane wine?! Ack!). Instead, I asked for a club soda and cranberry. Oh it was so good. SO GOOD I tell you! Sweet and fizzy, super low-cal, no caffeine and no alcohol! I thought, this is brilliant. I can drink these and give myself a break from the water. So it’s become my go-to drink when we’re out to dinner with friends or I’m winding down after work. I just do a 50-50 split of club soda and cranberry-pomegranate juice (100%!!!), and a teensy splash of lime. It’s amazing!

Then, before Christmas dinner, I realized that my wine-loving cousin and I would be dining together. She’s also pregnant. And for the first Christmas since I was probably 18 or 19 I wouldn’t have a glass of wine in front of me. Nor would she. Bummer. So I concocted Pregnancy Sangria. It was divine and the two of us drank it down like… wine. When I cook or create a recipe, I don’t measure things. So the recipe I’m providing you here is a rough outline and you can mix it to taste.

Pregnancy Sangria
about a cup/cup-and-half of OJ (I like Simply Orange with a little pulp)
32 oz cran-pomegranate or cran-raspberry juice
32 oz club soda
slice limes, oranges, apples thin (strawberries, blueberries, whatever)
stir it all up in a pitcher and pour over ice when serving

I hope my fellow preggos can seek alcoholic refuge in one of these little cocktails and that it helps them take the edge off, have a good time, or just enjoy something other than water!

Pregnancy Week 23 and OB Visit Week 23

Oh what a week! Not as bad as the past few have been, yet still not the starfish kisses that everyone promised second trimester would be. I liked week 23.

I had my monthly visit with my OB. And as much as I like going every four weeks and having him reassure me that there is in fact still a baby inside of my uterus, I’m going to be perfectly honest… these appointments are pointless. I’m learning that short of having a foot hanging out of my vagina, no one is going to react to anything. NO ONE WILL REACT! Which is disappointing for a person like me who, well, likes it when people react to things I say and do. He measured my belly and that was the only “test” he did. Apparently it was fine. I at least took a long list of questions with me to make it worth my while for going down there.

Whether I’m more sensitive to it or it’s just trending, I’ve been hearing a lot about pre-term deliveries lately. This completely freaks me out. And Dr. W was reassuring in telling me that they have no idea what actually causes pre-term and he can’t tell what to do or not to do to avoid it. Awesome.

I asked about the bloody noses that I wake up with every morning. He told me I’m pregnant. Awesome.

I asked about the heartburn I have that would make a dragon cry and “radiates in my knee caps,” according to Juno. Ah ha! A solution. Prevacid or Pepcid.

We spent the weekend of Christmas in Oklahoma City with Shelton’s family. We got to catch-up with friends over a very long lunch and it was as if the past two years hadn’t lapsed at all. It was one of those four-hour lunches where we left with cheeks hurting from laughing so hard. They cooed over my belly and I soaked it up! There was confusion over our baby name and they thought it was Petunia. It is definitely NOT Petunia! We also got to spend two whole days with our nieces and nephew. I absolutely am in love with those babies. My nephew, Stone, is one of these boys who charges you when he wants to hug. It’s adorable, and I’ve indulged this behavior for nearly four years, scooping him in to my arms with each charge. We both had to learn that pregnant people can’t pick-up charging 3.5-year-olds… and 3.5-year-old boys can’t charge pregnant aunts.

One of the highlights of the week was, of course, continuing to feel the baby moving. I will seriously sit here and laugh out loud (that’s normal English for “LOL”) when she gets on a roll. Each week her kicks and punches get stronger and the sessions last longer. This past week, they got so strong that I didn’t even have to touch my belly to feel her, my stomach just moved. It’s insane! Feeling her moving, rolling, punching and kicking is absolutely the highlight of my pregnancy and I think it is this that I will miss most when she’s resting in my arms.

We did two road trips this past week – one to OKC and one to Topeka to celebrate the new year. I swore off planes a few weeks ago and I’m not too far off from swearing off car trips longer than 20 minutes. We have to stop all the time for me to pee, eat something or get up and walk. There is absolutely not one comfortable position in those seats. Driving helps some, but I hate driving and Shelton hates when I drive.

Our New Year’s Eve celebration was fantastic. It not only marks the start of a new year (clearly!) but also the anniversary of when Shelton and I started dating. At midnight of 01/01/01 we kissed and we’ve been doing so every new year since. Maybe one or two other times during the year. 01/01/10 marked nine years… which means we’ve actually known each other for more than ten, and that’s astonishing to me. We spend each Eve with some of our best friends in Topeka for a stay-at-home party that is always themed. This year I was fat and when someone suggested PJ Party I said yes! So we all sported jammies and had a comfy, cozy celebration. I actually made it all the way to 12:45am… even though around 8:30pm my eyes were doing that rapid-blink thing struggling to stay open. I also had a martini glass filled with “pregnancy sangria” all night long, and while I jealously watched everyone sip bubbly at midnight, at least it wasn’t water.

As if my cousin’s long-john style PJs with the butt flap weren’t entertainment enough, my pregnant boobs took center-stage and were the topic of conversation throughout the night. Apparently I’m supposed to change the name of the site to Baby AND Bust. I’ve known they’ve gotten bigger. I mean come on, I’d have to be blind and paralyzed from the neck down not to realize the expansion project taking place in the middle of my chest. But it’s one of those things that you don’t quite realize just how big they’ve gotten until someone points it out. And people pointed, literally. It was all in good humor and I’m glad that I was able to provide such robust entertainment for the evening.

Finally, we finished the week by registering. Yay!!! I’ve been waiting to get through the holidays to do so. The next few weeks are pretty insane for us and my first shower is the end of February, so I thought we should just get it done. Shelton was really stressed about it. He thought we needed a plan or a strategy. And I was like, we’re going to scan baby wipes, what kind of strategy do we need? We went to Babies R Us and quickly realized that ALL OF THE PREGNANT PEOPLE IN WICHITA go there to register on Saturday afternoons. The BRU staff has clearly done this before and they got us set-up with a gun and on our way in a matter of minutes. It helped that I had registered online so we didn’t have to go through all of that in the store. I started crying when they handed me the gun. Just another one of those moments that I thought would never be ours. So many times I’ve walked in to BRU to buy gifts for friends and walked out of their crying each and every time. And here I was crying inside the store because I finally got to be there for us, and it felt so good! I think we did pretty well, considering we have no idea what we’re doing. When faced with 400 different varieties of baby bottles, strollers, diapers and other ESSENTIAL baby items, we typically opted for the brands we commonly see friends or family using. That was our on-the-spot research method. We were actually pretty reasonable about the whole thing, so we think, only scanning items we really needed and straying from the over-hyped plethora of YOUR BABY WILL NEVER LEARN TO WALK WITHOUT THIS SUPER TRENDY VERY EXPENSIVE HOUSEHOLD CLEANER WITH A PICTURE OF A BABY ON THE FRONT type items. Then we went to Target where my back and feet finally gave out and we spent one more hour scanning a few items. We’re just that much closer to getting her here!!!

Found my womb!

While making the rounds of good-night kisses last night, my three-year-old cousin sat in my lap to give me a hug. She then reached out her tiny little hand, placed it on my breast, and then looked at me to ask…

“Is this where your baby is?”

I knew they had gotten big, but mistaking them for a baby bump?!

I told her that the baby was in there somewhere.

The entire table had a tear-filled laugh!

Farewell 2009

I don’t do Christmas letters, but I do like to wrap up my year all nice and tidy on my blog. Web site. Whatever we’re calling it. Before I had a blog I would always go back to the front of my calendar and relive the events of the past 12 months. But now I can do it so much flashier!

2009 will go down as one of the best years I’ve yet lived. It wasn’t too fast, it wasn’t too slow, it feels like it was exactly the pace a year is supposed to be. We’ve enjoyed four actual seasons, distinguishable from one another with generous tap lapses between one climate/weather and the next. You know, because I’m such a crier, I get a little misty thinking about bidding this year farewell and I wonder if 2010 can live up to the bar that has been set so high.

Here’s a look at some of the highlights from our year. First in pictures, surrounded by the people, places and even things that fill our lives with such immeasurable joy.

And now, the list. The things I’ll most remember 2009 for.

1. Ringing in the new year with some of our dearest family/friends, at a nerd-themed party.

1b. (because I’m not renumbering this list!) Watching Obama being sworn in as president.

2. Eating oysters for the first time in Dallas with the Woolards. And not dying.

3. Spending an entire week with the Koskies in OKC, while dodging Flu Armageddon ‘09

4. Attending my sister’s sonogram to learn she was having a little girl!

5. Buying a Snuggie. And wearing it in public.

6. Attending SXSW in Austin (my first trip) with some of best guys I know. Not to mention eating lobster tacos and sipping mojitos on a roof-top under the sun.

7. Going vegetarian for an entire week. Not one piece of meat. And trying tofu.

8. We moved (and will likely do so again this spring). Sigh.

9. The Brooks wedding.

10. The Morehead/Bauer wedding.

11. Witnessed the founding of Snikl.com.

12. Invited to have dinner with Jillian Michaels. Had to try sushi for the first time. Didn’t die.

13. Start taking birth control pills, officially begin the IVF process.

14. Shelton got a fantastic new job, ending seven months of unemployment!!

15. Spent a weekend in Baltimore and Annapolis visiting Koskies, being woke up each morning by my nephew.

16. Attended my 10 year high school reunion and loved it!

17. Skipped Shelton’s 10 year high school reunion because he said we wouldn’t love it.

18. Welcomed miss Charlie Jane Morehead! My 18th cousin or something.

19. Spent 4th of July in Omaha/Cedar Creek with the Moreheads and made the best of the dreariest July EVER!

20. Shelton’s MESA surgery.

21. Started Lupron and thus began 68 consecutive days of fertility drug shots.

22. Said goodbye to Anna Cesario, who never hesitated to tell cancer where it could go!

23. Welcomed my niece Eleanor “Ellie” Sue Marie Felker!

24. Did our egg retrieval, and got 17 eggs.

25. Waited “patiently” for four days and then transferred are only two viable embryos.

26. Waited “even more patiently” for 11 days and then took a pregnancy test and found out that we were finally, FINALLY pregnant!!!

27. Waited “really super patiently” for two more weeks, then did a sonogram to learn that one little baby was occupying my womb!!!

28. Released from our amazing fertility clinic to join the ranks of normal OB/pregnancy treatment. But, we know we’re not normal!

29. The best camping trip in a very long time! Morning sickness and all. Thank God someone brought BBQ potato chips.

30. Rocked the best Halloween costumes EVER as the Twitter bird and Fail Whale .. with the Moreheads.

31. Felt the baby moved… and she has yet to let up!

32. Took our Babymoon to Boca Raton. Swam in the Atlantic for the first time. Sailed on a catamaran. Spent an entire day on the beach doing nothing.

33. Found out she’s a she baby!

34. Celebrated our little’s 13th birthday with Hibachi!

35. At midnight we’ll celebrate nine years together.

Pregnancy Week 22

What a doozy of a week this was… again! I think I have pregnancy bi-polar disorder. PBPD, or Pib-Pid. It’s a self diagnosis. I had days this past week where I was so downright nasty and bitchy I didn’t want to be around myself. One day the dog wouldn’t even come in to my office. I threw pill bottles. Yelled at not one, but two, Walgreen’s clerks.

In one breath I could go from laughing and smiling and carrying on about how much I love ponies to crying and hissing and screaming. Do your hormones come in like the milk does? Do they just arrive? Whether they do or not, they did.

Fortunately, Christmas Eve rolled around and the Christmas spirit found me and my mood has been A-OK ever since. I don’t tend to get Christmas fever until Christmas Eve. Never have. I am most certainly not one of these people who decorates the house and has a tree lit by mid-November. No, I like to take on one holiday at a time. Get past Thanksgiving and then we’ll talk. Then I think the hub-bub of Christmas for weeks and weeks leaves me disinterested. But Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are certainly two of my favorite days of the year.

This year felt like an especially memorable one. In one way it was fun to have “baby on board” for our first pregnant Christmas. On the other we were saying farewell to Christmases with just the two of us. I was just bubbling over the fact that this time next year I get to play Santa. How cool will that be?!

The baby is definitely a mover and getting to be more so with each passing day. We have a bit of a schedule, early morning, noon and night. And then several encore presentations throughout the day. I absolutely love it. Can’t get enough. I think it’s the most fantastic thing I’ve ever experienced and I would do IVF over again if it meant feeling that little kick or roll just once. It makes this all the more real. I love that I can actually feel this little person growing inside of me. She will kick so hard sometimes that I can see my stomach moving. I feel really bad for Shelton though. She’ll be on a kicking rampage and I’ll say “Quick! Come feel.” The second he touches my stomach she stops cold and won’t move again.

My back pain has reached the threshold of hell. Nothing relieves the pain, believe me I’ve tried it. Mondays and Tuesdays I hurt the least because I do yoga on Monday. So I really need to get a DVD or something and continue doing yoga throughout the week.

I have lots of crazy pregnancy dreams. For instance, two nights ago, I dreamed that William Shatner was the father of my child. If only that came with a sizable Star Trek trust fund!