Pho Soup

Last night we had Vietnamese Pho soup for dinner. It was delicious! I came up with the recipe so that I would be able to eat it with my dietary restrictions. This is what you will need :

1 box Pho Soup Starter base(I used Pacific Brand the chicken one) make sure it is gluten free
2 cu. chicken stock
2-3 cups fresh chopped spinach or frozen whatever you have( if you do use frozen add it before you add noodles to soup for about 3min.)
1/2 of a red bell pepper diced
2 small zucchinis diced
1/4 cups chopped green onions(both green and white parts)
1 pound boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 package rice noodles (or if you want to be crazy healthy you can use Kelp noodles) I didn't use the whole package because there was a lot
1 teaspoon rosemary
1-2 cups Asian salad dressing *
A few lime wedges (optional)
Salt and Pepper to taste

Marinate the chicken in the Asian salad dressing and rosemary for a few hours. Then when it comes time to prepare dinner fry your chicken in 1-2 tablespoons olive oil. As chicken is frying chop up your veggies. Start the stock/soup starter in a pot to gently boil along with zucchini and bell pepper. When chicken is done chop into 1/2 inch chunks, set aside. When soup is at a gentle boil add rice noodles(they take about 2-3 minutes to cook)** Then add your chicken, spinach and green onion. Cook altogether for about 5min. Add S&P to taste and garnish bowl with lime wedges.

*Asian salad dressing recipe. This was modified from another blogger so that it is gluten free and does not have cane sugar. Combine ingredients and whisk in bowl or shake up in a glass jar. It can last about a week but it usually gets eaten in our house before the weeks is up.

1/4 cup Unfiltered Apple Cider Vinegar ( I use Braggs) I sometimes put slightly less because cider vinegar is very strong and I am not using as much sweetener as the original recipe calls for.
1/2 cup grape seed or olive oil (olive oil gives a different taste, grape seed oil is more mild)
1 tablespoon Braggs amino acids (or gluten free soy sauce)
2 tablespoons Raw Agave Nectar

** When opening rice noodle package be careful not to cut yourself with the scissors, like I did.

Enjoy! I hope to add more recipes in the future. Since I am on such a restricted diet I try to find the things and tastes that I like and modify them so that I can eat it. Healthy does not have to be tasteless :)

Baby Showers and Mother's Day

Every IF gal has to figure out how they are going to deal with baby showers and Mother's day festivities that you will be invited to. To go or not to go? That is the question and if I do go What kind of gift do I bring?...How long do I stay?...Will there be liquor and chocolate available? Is it co-ed or just gals? If you are Catholic and pro-life and most of your friends are then baby showers are pretty much inevitable. If you are a fertile gal reading this you probably are thinking what's wrong witha baby shower or Mother's Day. Well nothing is wrong with them originally butsince struggling with IF it has been more painful than celebratory at times.

This past Mother's day I did not want to celebrate my mom(sorry mom), I wanted to be as far away from Mother's day celebrations as possible. We went to Tridentine Latin Mass which we love but also for the reason that they don't do the whole all the mother's stand up and we pray for them and clap then give them a flower as they process out. I don'tlike this for the obvious reason of what about those trying to become a mother and I think it's disruptive to the Mass. After Mass we went to go eat and watch a movie with one of our friends. When we got that text from our friend that he was gonna go out on mother's day it was a perfect excuse for JJ and I to ditch mother's day stuff, again sorry moms. It was what I needed because I was still physically and emotionally a wreck from the miscarriage. I would cry at mother's day advertisements and my hypoglycemia was out of control so I wanted to just chill. I did get a couple of texts from dear friends who knew about the miscarriage and wished me a happy mother's day, that made me feel special. It turned out to be a great day.

Why is mother's day so hard? Well it is a reminder of what you are not as an IF gal or if you've suffered a miscarriage it reminds you that you don't get to hold the child that you once carried. So when people try and make you feel bad for not celebrating mother's day it makes it more painful because they don't understand or are not even trying.

Baby showers are a whole different animal altogether. I haven't gone to a baby shower in years because it has been confusing and painful. I was suppose to go to the baby shower of a blogger/friend this year but it was too close to when we lost Cecilia that JJand I could not bring ourselves to go. We got two baby shower invitations that week and our new niece was born around that same time so I just lost it, one invite was in the shape of a onsie. Do we regret not going to baby showers? Yes and no. I do want to celebrate new life and am happy when people are pregnant but the ceremony of a baby shower is torture to me. The whole event is about the fact that the woman is "going" to be a mom. Hello she already is a mom! She is pregnant! I don't regret not going because I knew at that time, I would not be able to be there and not ball my eyes out. I also did not want to take the attention away from the celebration of the life waiting to be born.

I feel like I am at a place now to be able to go to baby showers or try going to a baby shower. I don't know how it will be but I am willing to try. Hopefully the next one will be co-ed so JJ can go too. I don't want my fertile family and friends to be afraid to invite me to stuff, I think that would hurt even more. I at least want the option to decide whether or not I want to go. There was one time where I was not directly invited to a baby shower because my mom was suppose to tell me about it. Well at the time my PMS was still really bad and I was going to have my surgery soon so my abdominal pain was very evident. So my response to the situation was something like, News flash people: I am married and don't live at my mom's house anymore! That really hurt, I felt like just because I did not have kids I was not fit to send an invite to. You can guess I did not attend that shower.

It eventually all worked out, I was able totalk to my mom about why I was so upset, she did not understand at the time. I was able to open up and dialogue with my mom about the struggle of IF, which she may not understand but she is willing to listen. Also the baby in question of that baby shower became my goddaughter! Now I get to share with her why nina was not at her baby shower, when she is old enough to understand of course. I also get to pray for her in a special way and I pray she never experiences IF or miscarriage.

Going through IF has made me wonder if I would even want a baby shower if we are so blessed to be pregnant again. I think I would much rather have an after birth celebration combined with baptism. Also what if we get to adopt first, then it would be an adoption day celebration with baptism. There seems to be a running theme here Baptism! I am curious as to how other gals going through fertility issues deal with baby showers or mother's day? Or gals now on the other side of IF did you have a baby shower?

Advent...waiting

So I was going to partake in Conversion Diary's quick-takes this week but I have been so busy and lazy to post anything. My life with Creighton as a practitioner intern has been busy this week and next week promises to be even crazier. I was suppose to take Dec. off from doing intro. sessions so I can focus on the paper work aspect and prepare for my supervisor visit hopefully in Jan. but a couple called me this week and I couldn't resist. So I am doing an individual intro. for them this week and I have follow-ups every night this week plus a wedding on Saturday of a dear friend who was in my wedding. Saturday I had Creighton stuff all day. We had an appt. with our practitioner(yes I go see my practitioner still I had been having issues in my chart), then I had clients of my own Saturday afternoon, and in the evening I gave a talk at a Young Adult Group here in L.A. about NFP and Creighton/NaPro. So a few things on Saturday got me thinking and reflecting today.

The first thing is that we have been doing NaPro and using Creighton for about two years now, prior to using Creighton we used the sympto-thermal method for two years. We loved the sympto-thermal method for the time we used it but we needed medical intervention hence Creighton. Our practitioner M pointed out to us how far we've come since we started our journey with NaPro. When we first started all we wanted was a baby and to have healthier cycles. We were so focused on our will and having biological children, we did not want to be labeled infertile or subfertile at all. When we took our first SPICE index (this is a diagnostic tool in Creighton for the spouses to communicate) we thought we were NFP rock stars and that we would get such a high score. Well we soon realized that we had a lot to work on in our marriage.

Our focus shifted from wanting to get pregnant to wanting to get my body healthy. We had long conversations with our practitioner during our sessions about being open to God's will and that it was something we struggled with to know that we might never have a biological child. Every step of the way from the hormone profile to my surgery to our miscarriage I know our practitioner M has been praying for us. Through NaPro our charts as well as our hearts have changed. My last cycle looked almost normal with no intermenstrual bleeding, only one day of TEBB at the end of Aunt Flow, I had no heavy days of bleeding with clotting which I usually have at least 2-3 days of, I had no signs of PMS at all and no cramping where I needed to take medication! My body has come a long way since two years ago.

Our hearts have been changed in that we are more open to God's will and where He has us at each moment. Even though I knew that I would never do IVF, for reasons I will get into later, I still thought of children as my right. I might not have said it out loud but in my heart I struggled with this, telling God that he called me to marriage so He needs to make me pregnant and give me children now. Wow the audacity I had toward my Lord, thank God for reconciliation and the sacraments! We are more open to pursuing adoption earlier rather than later, which in the beginning we wanted to have biological children before we pursued adoption. Now we are going with the flow of where God takes us. It isn't always easy, like this past week JJ held me as I cried and sobbed that I don't get to be in the mommy club and make play dates with friends and their children. I don't get to talk about breast feeding, cloth diapering, or those funny stories of baby farts.

The second thing I was reflecting on was why we chose to use NFP and NaPro to try and conceive rather than ART( Artificial Reproductive Technology) and IVF. Besides the fact that most ART are unethical they are also not healthy for the mother and child. IVF is founded on the principle to create life to destroy it so that one might survive. If you believe that life begins at conception why would you want your child conceived in anywhere other than where nature intended, the Fallopian tubes. Furthermore for every successful IVF cycle approximately 6 embryos(children) are sacrificed in the attempt and what about all those embryos who are frozen and just waiting to be implanted or sacrificed.

I am not judging people for decisions that they have made with respect to ART I am just stating facts of the process. Also, if people have feelings of guilt for decisions they make it is not a bad thing, guilt helps to guide our consciences and moral compass. It also goes back to the fact that we think we have a right to children, we don't. I know this may be hard to hear for some, it was hard for me to hear and digest but it's true. Children are a gift from God not a right or commodity. I know the longing of wanting children and thinking I would do anything to have them, but there are just certain things I will not do. Let's also mention the ridiculous cost of IVF as opposed to NaPro or adoption. A lot of NaPro treatments should be covered under your insurance, if you are blessed enough to have it, because NaPro seeks to repair the body not just get a woman pregnant. There are also adoption tax credits that you can get as well as possible reimbursements you can get from your employer.

Here is the BIG reason why we will not do ART: we are NOT willing to separate the sexual act from procreation! For the same reason that contraception is wrong so is ART. We keep the marital embrace(sex) between us as a couple and don't want a technician making conception happen for us. If it be God's will we want Him to make conception happen by our obedience and yes to our vows by the renewal of the covenant we made on our wedding day.

I know this is a hard topic to read about and it is not easy to write about. I understand that we all come from different backgrounds and values so not everyone agrees with the point of view that I have laid out here. This is a public forum so if you comment please be kind and respectful :) As we begin this season of waiting in advent may we be patient as we wait for a child, a spouse, a job, or whatever you may be waiting for.