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2003-06-28 - 2.41pm��previous entry��next entry
Day 7 of the TTC cycle....
Thank you Mandy and Lizzy for your guestbook entries!! :)
Well I don't have too much to report really. I am on day 7 of my TTC cycle, it's weekend again ALREADY, and in the week I will be fertile and the time will finally be here to try for a baby. I don't know whether to be confident or not really. I am generally confident about conceiving this cycle, although if we don't then I feel pretty good about July or August too, so it's all good.
Here's something I found really exciting - I've been using Babycentre's online ovulation calculator all year, where you type in the first day of your last period and then your normal cycle length, and it gives you a six month chart of fertile times and resulting due dates if you conceive on any of those occasions. Well anyway, when I first tried to use it, June and July weren't even within the six month chart yet! I use it every month incase my cycle lengths change and alter my fertile times. Not that I need to be that hung up on fertile times, but anyway. It's been something fun to do to keep me occupied while I've waited. ANYWAY, what is exciting for me is that I now type in the first day of my last period and June/July is the FIRST one on the six month chart!!!! Yay! We're here at last!! Even more exciting is the pregnancy calculator, which I discovered last week. It's cheating to use it, since I'm not pregnant yet, but if I type in the first day of my last period, it says, "Congratulations, you are one week pregnant!" Hehe, that is so much fun, even if it's silly :) If I do conceive this cycle I will be into my second week of pregnancy tomorrow. How silly is that?!! Hehe!
Babycentre gives me a due date of March 29th if I conceive this cycle. UKparents puts it at March 27th. The end of March, basically. I hope we conceive. But I'm a lot less hung up on the whole thing - not that you can really tell when you read my diary! But I am. I feel so much more relaxed. Sex is good for just sex, not just making a baby, and that's a lot more healthier of a mindset than before. Somehow this cycle doesn't feel like the be-all and end-all anymore. Although I can't say I'm not hoping a lot! Before now we have had this whole plan about when to time the sex when I'm fertile, etc. Now we've chucked that out pretty much. Someone anonymous signed my other diary guestbook and said I should relax about it all and just have lots of unprotected sex!!! So yeah, hmmm, don't really want to spell it out but following that advice is probably helping me feel more relaxed about the whole thing! It no longer feels like we'll be "trying for a baby" next week. The, erm, activity won't change, it's just that I'm not fertile right now and I will be in the week. That seems more healthy and relaxed somehow. My original idea of when I'd be fertile has changed because of my late period. Babycentre says from Tuesday 1st to Saturday 6th (time allowed for either a 27 or a 28 day cycle), so not a June conception at all like we'd thought!! I won't ovulate till the Friday or Saturday probably, so although it feels like a dream to be making a baby in the week, there still won't be any baby starting until the weekend because I won't ovulate till then. Anyway, I am probably too fascinated by all the tiny details but I don't care, it's all so so so so amazing and miraculous. I don't want to miss out on any of the tiny details.
This weekend (apart from Neil away today playing cricket as normal) we are doing DIY in preparation for me being pregnant soon. Today Neil drilled the latch and doorknobs into the last door, and I varnished the last bits of it just before I came up to write here. I have to buy some wood for finishing the door-frame, and when it's attached I have to paint the remaining woodwork in the lounge and stairwell. Neil's going to finish the walls soon too, but there's hardly anything left to do of that. Just the stairwell and landing. We are getting paintwork out of the way before I'm pregnant. We are also using up our spray deoderants and switching to roll-ons in the next week or two. No reason other than I just don't want to breathe it in. What else are we doing to prepare? I'm sure there's something else but I can't remember. I am still taking my prenatal vitamins, but that's just normal. I am forgetting what it's like NOT to take them every day, hehe! Been taking those since last year. Neil is taking them too. Extra zinc helps his little guys (and girls!) be more healthy and plentiful. And caffeine helps them swim faster, isn't that weird?! Not that he drinks much caffeine though.
I've been keeping a pre-conception handwritten journal since December. It's in a purple fluffy ringbound notebook with a girl on the front jumping joyfully, and the word "Yippee!" embroidered underneath. I thought that was soooo perfect for this! Anyway, it's a big book. I use one page per day. I made it up myself - I write how much fluid I drank, my diet and how much of each food group I ate, prenatal vitamins, etc. Then there's space for exercise and activities - I write everything I do each day - and sleep. Then my mood and physical complaints or good energy levels, etc, and any medication I've taken. Then I have a section for my IBS and stuff, because that has been bad so I thought I might as well keep track of that too while I was at it. Then the menstrual section, cervical mucus and temperature reading. I charted my temps on a graph when I started it, but I don't do that anymore. It's easy enough just to look at the daily pages. Anyway, the book is big - there were enough pages to have a daily entry from December 22nd to August 18th!!! I haven't missed a day so far, and it's getting really full. I don't know why I keep it. At first my diet was so poor and my menstrual symptoms were changing so I didn't know what was normal for me anymore. So a record seemed a good idea. Plus I was going crazy waiting six months to get to the TTC part!! I think it worked because now it seems unnecessary to keep it - I am so aware of my fertile patterns and normal menstrual cycle and symptoms now. And also I eat healthier and am well aware of when I drink enough and when I don't. At first I used to be shocked to see that I only drank a litre of water, because I would just presume that I drank at least 2 litres or something! But now I am used to charting how much I drink, I can really tell without charting it whether I am drinking enough or not. I think the journal has helped me to become very self-aware and that is helpful. I am just continuing it now because it's something I do, it's become a routine. Plus it will be a nice little book when it's filled up with pre-conception stuff. Nice little keepsake of this time in my life. And maybe helpful for next time round? Also I am quite interested in charting how I feel and what I eat and stuff in the early weeks of pregnancy, so hopefully there will be enough pages left to finish it with that. Anyway, that's my little book. It's exciting to see there's only a thin wadge of pages left in it!!! I remember looking at the thickness of the unwritten pages in January and thinking it would NEVER be summer!! And now we're here!!!!!!! :)
I haven't been swimming for a while and now it's going to be more difficult because the car insurance ran out on the "spare" car, which was all we were using it for. Now it needs taking away, and we are a one-car "family" from yesterday. Neil needs it for work, although he says he'll buy a bike when I have the baby, so I can have easy transport. So anyway, going swimming is more annoying and I'm less motivated when I have to use public transport and all that. But I will still try to go. Some days Neil might leave me the car. Otherwise he's gonna be doing all the supermarket shopping, hehe! In the mean time I dug out my gentle aerobics video again, which I haven't done for several months. It's in six sections for different body regions. I am particularly desperate to tone my back and abdominal muscles, so I started with that one, and then I went straight on and did the upper body and lower body workouts, and the great news is - I found it really easy!!!! This is greatly encouraging because I used to struggle with it earlier this year, so I must have gained quite a lot of fitness in the last few months if I am finding a 40 minute workout easy. It is gentle but even so, it is great progress for me and I'm really pleased! However, there is the message on the tape that warns you about that kind of exercise when pregnant, so Neil said I should look to buy an antenatal exercise video. So last night I found one at Amazon. It's a really good one by the looks of it, except for the extremely dated 80's leotards and music!!! Good thing I love the 80's then isn't it. I got it second-hand for �3.50. It has different tailored workouts for each trimester. I also got some more Sears Parenting books - "The Pregnancy Book" and "The Birth Book", and also "The Baby Book". Those were basics that I wanted to buy before, but I was already buying so many last time that it would have been too much to buy all at once. Their breastfeeding book is awesome, and I'm reading that at the moment. They have eight children. Eight. That just blows me away! I like that idea :) I'm sure it won't last though!
I got my Wilkinet baby carrier in the post and it's good. I am a bit daunted by the METRES of straps hanging of it though!! Apparantly they all wrap around and everything works well, so I will just put it away for now and trust that it'll be easy enough! There are instructions, so that's good. I did buy those denim maternity dungarees. I hope they'll be what I want. If not I think I will sell them on. They were �12 so that's pretty good for dungarees anyway.
Amazingly, I haven't actually made any nappies lately!! That's despite having gorgeous new flannels and things from the States, and some soft denim - I'm going to make a denim nappy :) Soft microfleece on the inside though, of course. It's gonna be too cute.
Well I think that's all for now. I will write more soon, but honestly there's not much to say at the moment, it's a bit of a wait-and-see time. Not as much as the wait for my period will be, but it's waiting all the same. Plus you all know where I'm at and what we'll be doing next week - not sure I like that fact! - so there's nothing much I can tell you other than that!!
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