@Kirstie155 I'm so sorry to hear you are struggling so badly! Lots and lots of hugs to you!! I have a very close friend who went through a nearly identical situation. Please always know you can turn to us for support.

@SheilAnneSmith That sounds incredibly stressful! I hate working long days like and can't imagine doing it while pregnant. How was the comp night?

@VeryKatie We're glad to have you come back!

@aubyshortcake I'm sorry it sounds like this won't be your month and that you have a memorial service to go to.

@Alioth Thanks! I love how the nursery turned out. Leo was terrified that it was going to be a crazy, jumbled mess since he likes all things matching. But I think the combination of jungle animals with a few dinosaurs turned out well. And the yellow is gorgeous no matter what my husband says I'm pretty sure my pregnancy eating schedule was that of a hobbit. I ate 2-3 breakfasts daily (not full meals but bigger than snacks...usually), then lunch, snack(s), and maybe dinner and dessert if I wasn't asleep.

@RhiannonBecks I have used all the Ovia apps - tracking, pregnancy, and parenting. While each of them have a few minor things I don't like, I've been very happy with them overall. The community forum on all of their apps is also helpful, supportive, and extremely entertaining to me. As far as Mexico and drinking, do what you feel comfortable with. Some women don't drink at all while TTC. My Squish was conceived the night I drank a whole bottle of wine myself (never done that before). The doctor wasn't concerned and so far he has turned out fine. I will say though that my whole cycle was completely messed up at that point and I wasn't temping or tracking ovulation, etc. so I had no idea what was going on.

@RhiannonBecks Your response made me feel so relieved... thank you so much!

Like I said I've been a little paranoid about TTC after our trip because I'm ready to go NOW! I didn't want to be negligent but I feel so many people around me are slightly judgmental about the fact that I would knowingly TTC after having potentially been exposed to Zika and it's known risks. Similar to you, I exercised prevention as often as I could and bug sprayed up both myself and my partner while we were away.

I'm glad to hear I'm not alone in the choices I make as I was feeling somewhat guilty.... thank you for the reassurance! Have a wonderful trip and all the best

Yay! I finally got to the gym--1st time since October! It was uncomfortable, but I feel amazing afterwards. I just did light stretching and then 40 min on the stationary bike. Lower abs especially appreciated the loosening up, as they have been sore and tight from being stretched out more and more each day. I noticed today, that I have a lot of cellulite in my legs that I haven't seen for years. So that is going to be part of my February goals--to tone up my legs and reduce the wibble-wobble. Hubs was a good sport and went with me. He's gonna try to put a dent in his dad bod.

@puffbrat Haha, I hope Leo doesn't get too crazy once the toddler toys start to take over. Thanks, I feel less guilty about eating all day.

@WifiresGettingFit Yes'm! I plan to be careful. Sorry, this winter seems to be dragging on forever. I am so ready for spring.

@girlalmighty08 Well, you can also have things go wrong in pregnancy for perfectly mundane reasons right at home where it feels safe, many of which are completely out of your control. At least with Zika, the risk is very small, and you made efforts to protect yourself. So, I wouldn't worry about the judgers too much. If you're gonna get pregnant, people will judge you for everything from the clothes you wear to the hours you keep to the food you eat. What matters more, is how you feel about those things. Congrats on getting into your new place!! Have fun moving in and rennovating!

@RhiannonBecks Have fun getting ready for your trip. And hooray for bding! Baby dust! I know you're not leaving yet, but let us know how your trip goes.

Hi happy February everyone!
Gonna try to be here more this month and to use the spreadsheet.

Sorry I haven't been checking in much, the event I've been working on the last several weeks starts tomorrow. I think I'm about ready! I head back up to the resort I stayed at a couple weeks ago tonight. I was going to leave at 6am tomorrow to set-up but found out that my room wouldn't be ready until 4pm and decided moving boxes and setting up all morning and then not being able to change and clean-up anywhere but the lobby bathrooms didn't sound like a good idea. So, I was able to get an extra night stay approved. I also really wanted a place to kick my feet up if needed as long spans of being on my feet is starting to take a toll on my hips and back. All my help won't arrive until closer to 10am tomorrow and I want registration open at 11:30, so most of the set-up I'll be handling on my own. Hopefully my help will not party all night and actually be around come 7am Thursday when I need them for the next round of check-in! We'll see!

@WifiresGettingFit It's a long story--in summary, it sucked--big time and people suck. If you have time for the details here is the long, rant/vent version!

Well, I feel like the event totally kicked my *kitten* up one side and down the other--so glad to be home today and taking it easy. I think everyone who attended (which was record attendance) though it was the best one ever, so from that point of view it was very successful however from my side there was a lot of things that weren't super smooth or easy.

It kind of started the moment I got there Tuesday night and rather than having a nice, upgraded room as expected (because our previous rooming coordinator took care of the person who was the organizer) I had what felt like a Motel 6 room (complete with dirty vents and noisy fans) at a 4-star resort. So, that kind of just set the tone--it just gave the impression that all the red flags I had about if the guy doing our reservations were for good reason.....skipping ahead, they were. He screwed up every single reservation for our company staff, 25 rooms that were not charged to our master account as they should have been--but rather were being charged to their individual credit cards that they used at check-in for incidentals. I even thought something was wrong when I checked in on that front and specifically asked him to double check that it was right--he said it was--it wasn't. So we have 5-6 people who got their credit cards charged because they checked out before I did and caught it, including one of our speakers who not only had a room but an expensive hotel shuttle charged to them. There was poor communication from him the whole way through and then with everything else that happened it was safe to say when he poked his head out of the back office when I was trying to address the billing issue I wasn't real happy and let him know--I still have intentions of speaking with our sales manager and doing a debriefing on it next week. I flat out told him between poor communication, the number of problems and total crap room I got my impression was that: Hey, I don't know what I did, but this dude must totally hate me! So...that kind of was the cluster that started the moment I checked in and and continued at check-out.

I wish that was the only issues--but of course not. The first day started off pretty well, I had 1 of the 3 that were scheduled to help right off the bat, but the others arrived soon enough to handle the rush. I had things pretty laid out so my set-up was smooth and done efficiently. The day kind of fell apart for me mid-afternoon. I did not get to lunch until 2:30pm after eating at 6am. I was frustrated that no one offered to help run and grab anything--I finally did for the entire group at 2:30 or so when I had a very small window before 3:40 when I had to be back to help coordinate hand-outs for a speaker. On my way I got caught dropped with information that I needed to head-up and event at 4:30 that I only anticipated having to be present at--so I'm getting this dropped on my in a hectic fashion when I'm starving, exhausted, feel blood sugars getting low and just trying to rush to grab anything for lunch--it pushed me over the edge emotionally and set-off a struggle for the rest of the afternoon. It was basically a while lot of unnecessary meddling and interfering instead of folks just waiting for the hotel to show-up and set-up the bar and let things happen as they were planned adding a lot of extra stress at the worst possible time. Then when I'm on the bubble emotionally I need to be left alone and I can usually regain composure but instead one someone else popped in and stuck their nose in and wouldn't shut up and let me just have my moment to while impatiently waiting for food--before the food was even ready I had to leave for my room because I fell apart. I never really got composed, but scarfed some of the soggy fruit and cheese plate I had in the fridge to get blood sugars coming up and went and chased down my food at our registration table where the other person took it back to...as soon as I got to that spot I realized I just had to grab the food and disappear again because I was in no shape to be around other people. Then to top it off the food sucked as was not really what I ordered. But I ate in my room and got my crap together and arrived back down at 3:30 for when I thought I needed to there to get things done at 3:40 and found that they were ahead of schedule and I was absent when needed. I had everyone coached so I guess the job got done okay, but no one communicated with me that they were ahead of schedule. Just a lot of inexperience in having each other’s back and picking up where needed in a stressful event environment—in my previous job everyone just “got it” and helped take care of each other a bit better.

After a couple hours I had the chance to decompress a bit, food made me feel better and was looking better for the evening. I was exhausted and hurting but okay otherwise. My back was killing me, had some shooting round ligament pain when moving too fast but kept pushing forward and ended up having the support I needed for the sponsor event without having to be more than just present for the most part. I thought I was home free for the night except for maybe joining in on a nice dinner with some of the owners and speaker if there was an empty spot at the table but that wasn’t the case.

During the sponsor event I was waiting for a phone call from a speaker who was flying in that evening. He was invited to the social but flight did not get in until 4:15 and likely wouldn’t get to the hotel until about 5:15 at the earliest. I gave him my personal cell phone number and ask him to call me when he arrived and that I would break away from the engagement to meet him downstairs once he was checked in and introduce him to the owners/organizers. As the social broke up at 5:50 I had not yet heard from him so I went down to speak with the check-in desks to see if he had arrived. He had and then I was promptly informed that he was here but he was very upset and ticked off that no one met him at the door to greet him and that he had chewed out the gal checking him in for 10 minutes about how horrible we are and how *kitten* he was being treated. I’m going umm….WTF?!?! She called his room, he wasn’t there and he was let her know that he was going to the super nice restaurant upstairs for dinner if he wasn’t in is room. So, he didn’t answer in his room so I went off to track him down at dinner. Both the organizers/owners/faces of the event who would have been better to greet and meet with him were obligated at dinners elsewhere so I had to go without reinforcements…right into a buzz saw. I got my butt chewed for 20 minutes standing up there about how he’s never been treated so poorly, maybe he won’t even get his stuff finished for his keynote address the next morning, how I must be a *kitten* organizer because no one was there to meet him at the door, basically calling me a POS for not kissing *kitten*. Meanwhile I’m trying to somewhat defend our event and myself, without losing my cool. Trying to figure out how to convey to this 80 year old dude ripping me apart that there is only one of me who was alone handling all the details for 250 people and 25 speakers and that the owners and myself had scheduled obligations that we was aware of and invited to a week prior without telling him he was an unreasonable idiot like I would have really liked to because I was legitimately concerned he would refuse to show up in the morning and not make his presentation. It took 20 minutes or so to get him to at least tell me what he needed from us in the morning, including meeting him for breakfast at 6:30 then getting a copy of his presentation from him (when I really had to be getting other presentations gathered as well, not just him, and all the computers set-up in 5 rooms by 8am) I kept myself together while in front of him, but fell apart as soon as I walked away and started trying to get in touch with the owners because I was NOT going to deal with him alone in the morning. I got reinforcements for breakfast lined up and let all my help for check-in and registration know that I REALLY needed them present and available in the morning as I thought I may be totally unavailable to open registration at 7am because of the breakfast obligations. I heard back from one of them and the others did not reply to me. So, I could only hope I wouldn’t be left high and dry in the morning.

I skipped dinner, was in no shape to be in public anymore and tried to go to bed. I laid there unable to turn off my brain or relax until about 10:30. I finally fell asleep only to be woke up by knocking on my door at 1:15. I ignored it, hoping it was someone at the wrong door but they persisted and pretty sure I heard voices outside and realized it was my roommate who was sloshed and her room key would not work. So, I let her in and was nauseated by the smell of booze on her. I tried to fall asleep again but never could, even taking tums I couldn’t quell the nausea and tossed and turned until 3am—my alarm was set for 4 so that I could do all my work between 4:30-6:30 before the dreaded breakfast with the speaker. By 3 I figured what’s the point, I got up, showered and then left the facility to find a Denny’s for breakfast at 3:30am. So, now I’m off to a start for Thursday with less than 3 hours of sleep.

I was able to flake out on them for breakfast after making an appearance and passing the speaker off on the owner. The speaker was in a better mood and offered a bit of an apology, but I think it was more of putting up a face in the front of another male who he thought was way more important than myself anyways. I’ve never dealt with someone I considered a sexist jerk, but I’m quite sure that was a very big part of it all. He didn’t show that side when not able to attack me alone.

Thankfully, I was able to not be tied to the breakfast because only 1 of 3 people arrived at 7am to do registrations…so I felt let down by my help, but we got it done. I hoped to break away for a nap mid-afternoon but felt like I couldn’t—so made it until about 7pm and again skipped dinner because I was too worn out to eat with anyone and wasn’t hungry enough to justify a $20 burger, but at least had some appetizers at a social. I crashed at 8pm and got a decent chunk of sleep. Friday went pretty smooth and uneventful until finding the billing error at check-out.

It was rough, I feel so worn out and exhausted. I need to get outside and door chores this morning but haven’t found motivation yet. I quit trying to even track blood sugars at the event, between the stress and erratic eating I finally just had to take on an eat to survive mentality because I couldn’t pass up an opportunity just because it was too many carbs, I just had to eat to what I could find to get by. So, today is a day to relax, rest and try and get back to eating right.

Hi ladies, Happy Monday, 2nd full week of February already! @SheilAnneSmith what a hectic situation, hopefully you can get some downtime/relax/recover time! Sorry it was such a mess, but sounds like you handled it best you could.

@girlalmighty08 , I totally understand the stress of construction/lack of ability to cook etc. We refinished our kitchen 2 years ago and it was a nightmare; either went out to eat or brought stuff home basically every night. How long do you expect to be working on the project! Sending you all sorts of positive vibes. We are remodeling BOTH of our bathrooms right now and having some major communication issues with the contractor that essentially led me to crying in our (unfinished ) shower and eating way too many reeses "love bugs" than I should have; lol. Not funny, but looking back def could have handled that differently.

How is everyone else doing? The sun is shining here today which is much needed being that temps are mid/high teens today and we got blasted with at least a foot of snow this weekend.

Kevin hart was HILLARIOUS, I am so glad we had the opportunity to go Friday, I really needed the laughs.

I decided I am keeping my upcoming OV to discuss whats next as far as testing for fertility issues. At least if I go, and have to have tests done, etc, we will know what's going on (hopefully).

Have a great week ladies, look forward to hearing everyone check in!

Hugs!