So, yeah

Time is ticking away, only a few more days until I either find out for sure that this month sucked once again or ... I get to keep wondering. I LOVE that, how you either know for sure that you’re not pg, or you know nothing. If you are pg, I guess it’s sort of a gradual awakening of hope, not too quickly, lest it be premature.

I always had these images of how your period works like clockwork (and really, it always seemed like it did, because one or two day variations didn't mean anything before ttc), and two hours past when it was due, you should take a HPT because obviously, the changes are extremely good that you're pg. I mean, that's the way Hollywood portrays it. So it must be true. Right?

So, yeah. Anyway. Between trying not to drive myself crazy but yet also keep myself informed, I read blogs. For some reason, I tend to prefer IF bloggers after they’ve gotten through at least one pregnancy b/c 1) they’re easier to find, and 2) they have happy endings. And I like to believe that despite whatever’s coming my way, I’ll have a happy ending eventually (even though I actually expected it right around now).

I started reading Redbook Magazine’s infertility blog, which incidentally has a new blogger right around my point in the IF battle. I guess she was actually labeled IF, which I have not been, yet, because it hasn’t been that requisite arbitrary year, but nonetheless, our situations have been surprisingly similar.

She just tried one IUI. And she got pregnant. And she’s annoying the hell out of me, even though I should be happy, and hey! If it happened for her, it can happened for me! And also, things can still go wrong, and I shouldn’t envy her the happiness that she can’t be sure she’ll keep.

So, yeah. That’s where I’m at. Mixed feelings, super busy with all this Thanksgiving stuff still, super busy at work, possibly making an offer on a house with my dear husband, and just waiting and wondering, in the back of my mind.

I don’t want to jinx it, or feel stupid later, but sometimes I do have the feeling that it worked this time. And then other times I don’t have that feeling, and I wonder if I imagined it. It’s hard to tell. Well, I’ll find out soon.

Not sure if I’ll post for the next few days. Friday for sure, I hope.

Getting nervous

I'm totally stressed right now, and I’m trying really hard not to stress because stress is bad. I’m really busy, which is super nice. But it’s also super stressful.

Only two more days of work and then Thanksgiving. And Thursday or Friday, I’m expecting AF, so one week from now I will know for sure what happened this cycle. Only one week.

What sucks more, the two weeks before or the two weeks after?

The two weeks before O are so nice because hey! You’re not worried, or wondering, or anxious, or impatient (well, yeah, you’re probably still impatient). Nothing has happened yet, the big opportunity for another try is still in the future, you don’t even know when, and until that opportunity comes along there is absolutely 0% chance you are pregnant. So there’s really nothing to be uncertain about. That’s awfully nice.

On the other hand, the two weeks before, by definition, start with getting your period. That sucks in so many ways that I can’t list it all, but namely, that after a 2ww, you again discover things didn’t work, you have cramps, you’re bleeding 24 hours a day and you have to deal with it, etc. So the first week sucks. The second week sucks because you start having to pee on sticks all the time, which means planning your day around when you drink and when you pee and when you can use a bathroom for at least 10 minutes without it being a hassle. And you try to make plans and guess the best days to try because even with the OPK, from all the obsessive reading you’ve done, you know you’re better off trying before you get the positive OPK. So you plan to have sex based on when you think you’ll O, which doesn’t always work out right when you think it will anyway. And the preplanned sex isn’t much fun for me, unfortunately. I’d like to go back to the random, spontaneous sex, thank you very much.

And then there’s the two weeks after O, the 2ww. This can definitely be summed up by the words “what if?” (or maybe “should I?”)

What if I am pregnant? Should I be drinking? Should I be exercising? Should I be eating sushi or cheese or whatever? Should I be hopeful, because hey, that would be awesome? Should I be not hopeful so I don’t get my hopes up too high? Should I look up the possible due date, or would that be jinxing things?

What if I am not pregnant? Is it time to really start worrying? Should I look up fertility clinics? Should I start making plans for doctor’s appointments? Should I start seriously considering what our infertility problems might be? Should I allow myself to get a little depressed?

It’s a bit like having multiple personality disorder. Do I act like I’m pregnant, or like I’m not? Because acting like I don’t know has no real definition, besides just acting like my normal self, like me. And I don’t feel like being me right now.

Brief note: Only a week until I expect AF (maybe even less).

I'm already wondering ...

OMG, how will I do it? I could barely drag myself out of bed this morning. And that was with 7.5 hours of (mostly) uninterrupted sleep. It makes me wonder how I'll cope when I'll be getting much, much less than that. It's a dreadful thought.

Things are so busy right now, I don't have time to be cranky or obsess (too much). Actually, I'm trying not to obsess about a house that we are considering buying. Which is taking my mind, a little bit, off of obsessing about my 2ww.

Also, Thanksgiving is coming up, which means serious preparations on my part. Even though we're having it at my mom's house, I'm still cooking the turkey as well as several other dishes, and most of the invited guests are my husband’s employees, so I feel like a co-host in many ways.

To make matters even more complicated, we’re probably going to be laying new carpet on Wednesday night or Thursday morning. What in the world are we thinking?

As much as I’d like to complain about all of this, I’m thrilled. The more complicated and stressful our plans for the next week and a half, the less time I’ll have to think about, well, you know. AND the time will pass more quickly, which is a bonus, too.

It’s too bad work is too slow and boring, and I have SO MUCH to do outside of work. I have Christmas gifts to make, baby shower gifts to make/buy, and other stuff to prepare for Christmas and Thanksgiving. I wish I could take a day off (a personal day!). Hmmmmmm … maybe I should.

Nothing much to report

Just hanging in there, and posting for the sake of posting.

In other news, the mood swings seem to have calmed down, at least a bit.

The irritability is still around, though.

Emotional roller coaster

I'm on a serious emotional roller coaster these days, I can’t believe how many moods I went through over the weekend. Any tiny little thing L does wrong makes me enraged, any criticism he offers makes me almost cry. I HATE being this way, especially when there’s no explanation for it (like PMS).

Anyway. I’m feeling halfway normal today, so that helps. I majorly cleaned the house this weekend, although I’m sure my husband would say it’s still a mess. I try the hardest I can with what I have. For someone who works full time, raises their own vegetables, bakes their own bread, and is basically ALSO a full-time housewife, I think I do a pretty good job. He apparently feels otherwise. Well, screw him.

Speaking of which. I got pretty dark lines on my pee tests on Saturday and Sunday, although not clear positives, which I DID get on Friday. I’m hoping that taking care of things on Saturday morning really took care of them. I’m a little nervous and worried. Trying my hardest not to stress, but man that’s hard.

So yeah. It’s 11 days until I can even start wondering if we were successful this month. Probably 14 days until I would dare think of taking a HPT. 14 days seems like such a long time right now. Luckily Thanksgiving is in there to distract me a bit.

Not sure if I’ll write or not along the way.

Finally

Positive OPK yesterday (Friday), both at lunch and before dinner. Almost positive Thursday night, so we took care of things on Thursday. Hopefully we'll be trying again as soon as the boy wakes up. And that will take care of this cycle.

AF expected the day after Thanksgiving.

Man, I hate waiting.

No sign of a line

Today is the day I was expecting a positive on my OPK, and I guess it’s still too early to tell. Last night, the line was so faint that I would have thought I was imagining it. Today at lunch, it was ever so slightly darker, but still nowhere near positive. Hm. Not sure what that really means. If it’s still not positive tomorrow, I might actually be a little concerned.

In going back and looking at all my past months of OPKs, and honestly, I just started in August, so I think that’s only 4 previous cycles, it looks like I always got a positive on a Wednesday. Which is maybe why I was so sure it would be today, subconsciously.

I’m sick of all this waiting, wondering, and worrying. Why can’t this just happen already?

Waiting for the second line

Waiting waiting waiting.
That’s all I’m doing, waiting
Waiting waiting waiting
Pink line!

(to the tune of Rawhide)

Anyway. Where was I? Right! Waiting.

I’ve never had much patience for waiting. In general, I’d rather try to forget what I’m waiting for, only to be surprised when the day actually arrives. Like getting my grades in college – it was pure agony to wonder how well I did, hoping that my final exam went better than I thought or that my professor liked my term paper more than I did. So I would completely put it out of my mind and focus on other things. I didn’t want to spend my life being anxious and nervous and worrying about something that would not be at all affected by my constant obsession. And mostly, I was successful.

The problem with the waiting now is that I get a daily (or twice-daily) reminder, when I go pee on my sticks. Sure, maybe I can forget for a few hours until lunchtime, and then a few hours more until dinnertime, but those constant reminders draw me back into that never-ending circle of thoughts and worries.

Especially because we’re down to the wire now, almost a year of trying. Each month has brought us closer to that invisible divide between fertile and infertile, and therefore each month has weighed heavier and heavier on my mind.

And despite my efforts to relax and de-stress, we’re down to the wire in another sense, in that according to my calculations, I expect my two matching pink lines to appear this week. It somehow seems like a test, like one of those final exams or term papers, where I know I have one last chance to get things right before I get a big fat F. And that somehow makes this cycle seem so much more important, so much more critical.

Because so much is riding on this week. It's not just the outcome of this cycle, this month, that matters … the outcome of this whole year is riding on what happens this week. This is the culmination of something big, no matter how much I might want it to be small.

I got to spend time with my niece and nephew this weekend. My niece is two weeks old. If L and I had conceived soon after starting trying, we’d have a two-week-old baby right now. It’s just amazing to me every time I think of that. Every time I think that in 9 months, my brother and his wife created a child, an entire miniature human being(!), and we have nothing. The stark difference between our situations is so harshly defined, so clearly laid out in black and white before me. It’s so tactile, so obvious, so real. There definitely nothing subtle about it.

I just know that one of these days, this blog will seem so whiny, so impatient, so silly. Is that too much to ask?


P.S. Pee stick update for the weekend - I was really bad about remembering to read the stupid things, so I ended up mostly leaving them way too long. But it was all no line at all, with one having a very faint line (whenI waited over an hour to read it). I'll update after lunch today.

Update: Extremely faint line - could have imagined it. Too early still.

Rollin' rollin' rollin'

TGIF!!!!!!!

Still way too early to worry about anything.

I sort of decided to stop drinking. But then we decided to go to a nice dinner tonight. Ok, no problem, I really don't need wine with dinner. Then we got invited to my friend's husband's 40th birthday. Again no problem. I'll start with a glass of wine and drink slowly. Or bring some soda (but I don't want my friends to think I'm pregnant - mostly they don't even know we're trying argh).

THEN we got an invitation to one of our favorite local restaurants, they're having a slow-food-style dinner with a wine matched to each course. Sigh. I can't pass it up. It's even a decent price. It's probably just tiny tastes of wine, anyway.

It's hard to give this stuff up without yet having a solid reason to.

Pee stick update: No lines at lunchtime today.

Three cheers for pee sticks

I'm a bit tired of peeing on sticks. Besides the occasional annoyance with peeing on my hand, there's also the annoyance of sitting around in the bathroom at work for 5 minutes while I wait for a result. Five minutes is a long time to sit around in a public bathroom stall with nothing to do. It brings up a lot of questions (well, it does for me).

First, there are the easy questions. Do I stay seated on the toilet for 5 minutes? That feels a bit weird, with my pants down, usually down pretty far so I can get my pee sample. But the only other option I can think of is standing up for five minutes, which isn’t super comfortable either. Do I bring a book? Will people wonder what I’m doing with a book in the bathroom at work? Even with a book, 5 minutes is still a long, awkward time in the public bathroom.

I guess there aren’t actually any hard questions. Unless you thought those questions were hard.

Technically, it’s still to early to start testing. I’ve been using kits that have 20 pee sticks, so you can use one each day starting right after your period ends. I did this for a few months, and now I have a general idea of when I think I should O.

So this month, I tracked when I think it will happen, plus or minus a day or two, based on the slightly variable length of my cycles, and the fact that due to the annoying spotting I’ve been having at the beginning of AF, I don’t actually know when I should start counting the first day of my cycle.

Then I expanded that set of days to get ten days with my target about in the middle. So now I’m going to test twice a day, around noon and around 7 or so. Basically, right before lunch and right before dinner. That way, I can drink liquids with my meals without worrying about these stupid tests.

Also, I’ll be a lot better about not gradually inching my lunchtime forward so that I’m eating at 11:45, then 11:30, then 11:15, until I find myself eating lunch at 9:30 so I am hungry again at … lunchtime.

Anyway, that’s the plan, stan. It’s not off to the best start considering we’re having a potluck today at 11:30. So I’m testing at 11:20 today. But I’m not expecting anything today anyway.

As far as L really knows (since I’m not involving him too much in technical details right now), we’re just going to try to have a lot of sex this month. Which I think is ok with him.

Except I’m not drinking wine. Booo.

Here we go again

Ready to start another month of craziness, waiting, wondering, trying, hoping, worrying, stressing, trying to relax, and obsessing?

Yeah, me neither. Sigh.