New Years Goals

I have a few goals this year. Those of you that read my blog or know me in person, will know that I've been trying for a baby for over 5 years now...All of my goals for this year I've centered around my dream to become a mother.

1) Quit smoking
2) Lose weight
3) Keep pestering the doctor for fertility treatments
4) Save more money
5) Randomly act out of kindness wherever possible
6) Take some photography classes

So, I do have the beginnings of a plan in place to put all of these into place.

Quitting Smoking:

Many of you will know that I did a stint of not smoking for 6 or 7 months back in 2006/2007. I started smoking once again after my mum, sister and dad were all hospitalized within a period of 2 months.

I also started my newest quit plan on December 1st, although I've had a few stresses that have made the goal hard to acheive. I know it's just making excuses...Next year WILL be different.

I have a supply of nicotine patches from when I went to the smoking clinic at the beginning of the month, and also some nicotine losenges. They'll be handy when I quit from January 1st.

Losing Weight:

My weight has never bothered me too much. I've never had any type of illness from being overweight, I don't have issues with blood pressure or heartbeat, I can exercise and walk for extended periods of time without falling down from exhaustion and I've always been comfortable in my own skin. However, I know that this could be one of the factors preventing me from conceiving.

I was thinking to myself that if I wanted my dream to come true so much, then I would do whatever it takes. If losing weight may help, even just the slightest bit, it's worth doing. And besides, it would possibly mean that any pregnancy would be healthier anyway, so that's a good way to look at it in my opinion.

At the MoA forum, a group of regular posters are going to lose the weight together and help each other out. Jane has had an idea which I am going to steal from her...Her goal is to walk to Magic Kingdom by the date her daughter, Freja's, isolation period is finished.

I don't know where I want to 'walk' to in terms of distance, but I think it's a good way to do things, and something that will personally motivate me! I'll be going shopping for a pedometer at some point this week!

Pestering my GP for a fertility clinic referral/fertility treatment:

This is not going to be an easy feat. My GP has told me that he wouldn't be looking to refer me to a fertility clinic till I'm 30. I've decided that if he doesn't want to refer me, then I will wave goodbye and try to find a different GP who is willing to help me.

My personal opinion on this whole age thing, is that if a patient is mature enough, stable enough emotionally and financially, willing to go to any kind of length to have a child etc, then they should not be telling them to wait 8 years to get help. That is ridiculous. He wouldn't even offer me treatment for the PCOS, other than going on the birth control pill to regulate my cycle and make it lighter.

We'll try wholeheartedly for a baby over the next 12 months, and if we can get a referral to a fertility clinic, great, if not and we've tried different GP's, private healthcare etc, then we'll consider our other options. First on the list would be paying way over the odds to go to the private hospital and getting a consultation for IUI/IVF/whatever they recommend, secondly we'd look at the possibility of surrogacy and adoption. I'm not sure how those options would work for us, but we will cross that bridge if and when we come to it.

Save more money:

Pretty easy one, but something we need to work into our lower budget. It may take a couple of months to get some steady savings going, but I want to have £1,000 saved by the end of 2009.

Randomly act out of kindness wherever possible:

I've seen this kind of thing on TV and online, where people will go to the McDonalds drive thru, for example, and pay for the person behind them to eat...Or go to a coffee shop and pay for the next persons coffee etc.

I like to think that I do sort of do random acts of kindness already by taking my neice/nephew out for no particular reason, or helping someone in the family. Heck, even offering to pick my friends up from town after a boozy night or whatever. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I want to branch out a little...Act kindly towards a stranger...We'll see how that works out as I don't really have a clear cut way of how I'm going to do this!

Take some photography classes:

For the past 6 years, since I've left school and worked full-time, my weekends have been taken up with working. Every other Saturday I work between 1pm and 9pm...and I HATE IT! Finally, I'm doing a 'normal' 9am - 5pm shift, and after January I won't be working weekends anymore, so I have two days in a row off work every week!

I planned to do some online classes for photography with the Open University in May, however, the money I put aside for it had to be spent on house stuff, so I never took the classes afterall. Next month I'm going to have a look at some local colleges that offer weekend classes, and I will be looking to sign up on Saturday mornings. I'd like to learn the ins and outs of my camera, learn about photoshop and also about studio set ups and lighting. That should keep me busy for a while, and if I get good at photography, I might even be able to earn some extra cash on a Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning!

So, those are my goals. And I'm really willing to change my entire lifestyle to accomplish them!

On a slightly unrelated note...My sister-in-law messaged me on Facebook and asked if I could e-mail her some of the photographs I took of the kids this year...I sent about 200 edited shots to her of Emily, Thomas, Ethan and Euan, and she put them on memory cards for everyone in the family both on her side and her husbands side.

I went to my other sister-in-laws Christmas/New Year/Anniversary/Birthday/House warming party yesterday, and she was displaying all of the pics on her HUGE digital photo frame and they were getting lots of really nice comments...That made me feel so good!

I'm going to offer my 3rd sister-in-law my not-yet-so-great services and put together a maternity/baby scrapbook or photobook if she decides she'd like me to do it. I'm not really that close to her, but she's 20+ weeks pregnant with her first baby and since I do this for my sister-in-law, Zoe, all the time, I think it would be nice to offer to do the same for her, too!