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2007-04-10 - 11.39pm��previous entry��next entry
New cycle and thoughts about TTC #3...
Thanks SO much for all the lovely supportive messages! I appreciated them all so much :)
I just wanted to update to say I'm okay, after last entry. I have just finished my period. I did not smash anything up on CD3! ;) The peak of my angry hormones seemed to be actually the day I GOT my period, and then after that I just felt weepy and sad and stuff. Cycle Day 4, it felt like a blanket had lifted off me (yay for settling hormones!) and I felt happy and normal again.
The weird thing has been the physical side of things. I got my period on Thursday, and then it was the long Easter weekend (Fri-Mon), so Neil was off work. Thank goodness he was, because - like I said last entry - I seemed to be physically completely out of it as a result of getting my period. I don't remember that from the other two chemical pregnancies, but then I don't remember it from any normal cycle either. Weird. I basically had to spend a lot of Friday and Saturday in bed, because I was just shaky/dizzy and exhausted. I haven't been anywhere to catch a virus, and as time has gone on, I can safely say that I didn't actually have anything wrong with me, but somehow the chemical pregnancy seems to have messed with me physically this time around.
I couldn't even lift Matthew without feeling shaky in my arms. I napped on and off, and if I was downstairs I didn't do much. On Sunday I did very little but napped less. Monday was the first day I did more normal stuff. I felt shaky in the morning if I exerted myself even a little, so I didn't do much at all. But I did feel better than the other days. By the evening I was feeling fairly back-to-normal-ish again, and today (Tuesday) I have been fine. I am tired out, but just because I'm tired out, not so much because something is "up" with my body.
Anyway. So much for the lovely long weekend with Neil home! He was a STAR and did so much with the little ones and some housework here and there too. I was worried about today since Neil is back at work and I didn't know if I would have the energy to look after the boys properly, but it's been fine. Meg came to visit today and was a big help with the boys! She even made lunch for us and brought it with her! We went to the park for a short while late in the afternoon and I think that was more than I should have done, but never mind. I am just so glad of Meg's help today, and that I am feeling better from how I was feeling over the weekend.
Things are back to 100% fine and happy between Neil and I :) He was so supportive with the help with the boys. We didn't really talk about the stuff that had been said, or the chemical pregnancy (at all) till Day 3 of my period. Up till then, I felt like he was avoiding the subject or just not asking me how I felt, which made me feel annoyed and sad. My "pregnant" vivid dreams continued for the first few days of my period, and on the night of Day 2 (well, early hours of Day 3) I had a dream about being pregnant, in my first trimester, and being at a doctor's appointment. Neil was with me, and everyone ignored me. It got craaaazy irrational in the end, and I was made to sit over by the wall and not get involved too much, and meanwhile Neil (who seemed to be ignoring me too) was given an anatomically impossible ultrasound (!!)whilst happily chatting with the enthusiastic staff, as they poured out alllll this attention and encouragement on him over the pregnancy, even though I was the one who was pregnant! It was the weirdest dream, and so vivid. I woke from it in the middle of the night, and felt sad and hurt straight away.
That day I talked to Neil about it. I still felt hurt and tense about it, so I just asked him rather bluntly if he minded that we had a chemical pregnancy. He said he minded more than he'd expected to, and I asked him why he hadn't talked to me about it. He said he didn't think I wanted to talk about it, and when I told him I'd been feeling sad about it, he said he had figured I was feeling fine about it. Where do men get these completely inaccurate vibes from?! I can't think how he came to those conclusions. But oh well. We talked, then. For the first time ever, the boys played together happily with cars and balls and bricks and endless little chase and hide games, without incident in the living room for like TWENTY minutes, while Neil and I ate a late lunch (!!) sitting at the kitchen table and talked! Wow. Such well-behaved tiny boys that afternoon! :)
We just chatted through all our feelings about everything, and explored WHY we thought we felt those things, when we hadn't really experienced those feelings the other two times. I think we both felt that it was a definite pregnancy from the start of my symptoms, especially with my chart agreeing and so on. We were never so convinced at the time, during the other two chemical pregnancies, and it was mostly in hindsight that we realised that's what they were. Especially the first one. This time, we KNEW I was pregnant, and even though we knew it might not pan out, we still had our eyes set on the possibility. We'd started to adjust to the scary thought of having another 1.5 year gap, and we were thinking ahead to mid-December, whereas I don't even know what my due dates would have been for the other chemical pregnancies. I guess that's what it was, anyway. We were really getting used to the idea.
Our talk helped SO much! Just over lunch, I felt immensely relieved and in a whooooole different mood for the rest of that day as a result. Any tension between us just evaporated. It was so nice to communicate about everything so openly, and we were even back to being fun and jokey with each other right after lunch! :)
We also talked about this cycle. Now, I KNOW myself. We have decided to wait till July before TTC again, but I already know I am going to be useless with the willpower come mid-cycle! I know it so well that I wanted to talk to Neil about it. I told him about the lack of willpower thing, and the hormones, etc, and warned him in advance! He said not to worry, and that we'd just use protection. I reminded him that that's probably not gonna happen when it comes to it! So, I guess we'll see. I know to some people it's going to sound crazy that we want to wait till July and yet are likely to be too crap with willpower to end up waiting that long! But we DO want more babies. And we don't want to wait much longer. It's not like we're desperate to prevent it! And when it comes to my hormones, mid-cycle.... the pull is kind of overwhelming, and I know I won't feel all that rational about it at the time, like I do now! And Neil is, well, he's a man, isn't he?! His sensible "Oh it's too early to try for another baby yet!" phrases tend to turn to "We've gotta be crazy, but what the heck!" (hehe!) when jumped upon by wife-in-hormonal-heat! And I - we now know that if I DO get pregnant as a result of such irrational behaviour (!), we CAN get used to the idea very quickly, and be happy and excited about it too. Gosh darnit, it will be HARD WORK. But not for always, and once we get past the hard hard hard early months, the rewards will come thick and fast, not just for us but for the boys too - just like what is happening with the boys already, for having had the two of them so close together.
That said, I am going to pray about it. I hope Neil and I will make/find time to sit down together and pray about it. Then we can safely leave it in God's hands. If he wants to bless us with another baby SOON, then it will happen. If not, then no matter what we do, I won't get pregnant till God says it's time. That will be a big relief, and a big reassurance further down the line when the going gets tough, that if God has brought us to it, he'll bring us through it!
Anyway. So now I am on Cycle Day 6 of my first cycle after a chemical pregnancy. I feel fine now. My hormones feel stable. On the night of Day 3 (early Day 4), I woke three times in a MASSIVE night sweat. Not from dreams as such. I don't know what that was about, but Day 4, I felt happy and normal, and like the hormonal yo-yoing had finally stopped. My temps were a bit weird for those first 3 days, and then for the last 3, they have all been the same temperature - 36.2. My other cycles after chemical pregnancies were eerily flat for temperatures. They were both such stable charts and I got pregnant with one of the boys both times. With Arthur, before I ovulated, my temperature was 36.2 or 36.1 every day till ovulation! That was completely WEIRD for me, at the time. I had never had a cycle like it. With Matthew it was very flat too, mostly 36.2 or 36.1. So I know I'm only a few days into it, but it's strangely satisfying to see those flat temps of 36.2 already :) I feel even MORE confident that this is a post-chemical-pregnancy cycle because of it. And I KNOW from experience that I will be ultra fertile this cycle. It's like an itch that wants to be scratched! What to doooo! Pray, that is what.
A pregnancy this cycle would bring us a mid-January baby. January and February are rather bleak months for birthdays (and giving birth, I suppose!) - Meg and I were just talking about this today! Neil, my mum, and my brother all have January birthdays, and my granny and I are February babies. So I would love to aim for that spring baby. But a baby at ANY time is just precious. I would be happy to be pregnant this cycle, in all honesty. I still don't mean that we'll TRY to get pregnant. I'm not sure what we'll do, actually. I guess we'll see. It is also beginning to feel like a natural (ish?!) cycle to me, and that is hard to go against! Every 19 months, starting in January 2004, I have a chemical pregnancy, whether we'd planned to conceive or not. And then every 19 months (one month on) I get pregnant. Now the cycle has come round again. Last cycle, where I had the chemical pregnancy, it was 19 months since my last chemical pregnancy, which was 19 months after the first one. THIS cycle is 19 months after I got pregnant with Matthew, which was 19 months after I got pregnant with Arthur. It's going to be HARD to resist that cyclical urge, hehe! And do we even try to resist it? Maybe there's nothing wrong with going with the flow! Ah, I don't know. All I know is that 19 months is a hard, but wonderful age-gap. TWO 19-month gaps will be a whole 'nother story, but still ultimately wonderful age-gaps for the children.
Anyway. I will stop with the waffle!
One thing I wanted to write here is that coming out of a chemical pregnancy has surprised me with how it has got me suddenly URGENTLY wanting to have another baby now. I mean, before I was broody on a cyclical basis (depending on the hormones!), and otherwise wistfully looking forward to "the right time" for another baby, further down the line. Now, that feeling has shifted gear very noticably, since the end of my chemical pregnancy cycle. I really want to have another baby. Like, now! I can't wait to be pregnant again, and feel baby kicks and stroke my belly and get all excited about growing into my lovely maternity clothes again! And I can't wait for wiggly beans on ultrasound screens, and finding out whether we're having a boy or a girl, and choosing names and planning. And giving birth - I can't wait to give birth again! And then of course, everything about the new little person when he/she arrives. THEN begins the gruelling hard work with the hormones that make life so hard for me. But we WILL get help to make it easier, and I will have my eyes on the finish line, where I know I will feel (and cope) way better once my period returns. It will feel like an eternity till that time, but actually it will only be such a short time till that day.
I just can't wait!!!! I AM still scared about it at the same time! But I can't wait! It's so exciting! Even though we're planning to wait till the summer, it's exciting already because the summer is NO time away. It will be here before I know it and then we'll be actively TTC, which is waaaay more thrilling than "trying to wait but having oopsies" ;) Even if we don't conceive right away, we'll be really and truly trying to make a baby and hoping and expecting, and all those fun things! I am so excited that it's nearly time again! :)
I will update here this cycle because I will probably be interested to read it back one day, probably to compare next time I'm wondering about my cycles returning to normal, etc! I'm curious to see if the flat temps persist, or if it's just a patch. And if we DO manage to contain ourselves (!), I wonder what my luteal phase will be like without a pregnancy to eke it out? It could go back to 6 days even. But I hope it won't. I have never had a chemical pregnancy with short luteal phase, without following it with a healthy pregnancy, so I don't know if non-pregnancy cycle would have had a shorter LP or if the chemical pregnancy might have somehow bumped it back to a normal length? I'm interested to see what happens this time.
And of course, if oopsies DO occur, then this will be the place to write about it, and do the watching and waiting thing all over again like last cycle! So I'll keep posting here this cycle. I will try to update more frequently at my normal diary though, as well! Thanks so much again for the support last cycle, it means such a lot :)
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