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2003-08-16 - 9.38am��previous entry��next entry
On to cycle 3, more sane (!!) and the new plan...
Hello, hello! Fear not, my almost normal-self has returned!! Thank you so much to everyone who has emailed me or left me messages saying such nice things right when I needed to hear it the most. You guys are so lovely! :)
Well I am on cycle day 2 of my third cycle trying to conceive. I feel kind of proud that we're showing signs of having to work for it (ie, by not being on cycle 1 or 2 anymore), and that means we will appreciate getting pregnant all the more when it does happen. Every month we fail to conceive is another notch up on the excitement and exhilaration chart for when it finally happens!
I got my period in the wee small hours of Friday morning, and that's okay, because I was expecting it. It has been painful, but again I sort of like to feel my period these days, just to be reminded that my womb is actually there and functioning properly! :) I have been sleeping better these last couple of nights than for the whole cycle so far, but I usually do get this sleepy by the time my period arrives. Progesterone I think. I am always like I took a sleeping pill by a couple of days before my period arrives, and it takes a few days to wear off. So I'll be a sleeeepy pregnant woman I guess, since pregnancy progesterone laughs in the face of menstrual progesterone!! :)
Okay I am going to camp the day after tomorrow (Monday), and I'll be back on Saturday. Neil and I WILL be sharing a room together because I have stomped my foot and been insistant, so yay we are not being split up! I should be coming into my fertile phase from the weekend we get back, but you know what? I am not going to think about that.
I have this wonderful friend called Nicola who I found through this diary, and she gave me some great advice. So after thinking about her advice, I am going to stop writing in my fluffy journal (good thing because there's only tomorrow left in it!), and stop taking my temperature, and stop charting, and stop taking OPK's to see when I'll ovulate, and all that stuff. I'm not gonna post on TTC boards either. I may write here but perhaps not as frequently this cycle because I may not have much to report. But I'll probably write some updates all the same. See, the thing is, I know I have been obsessing waaaay too much about my fertile signs and I've been getting too stressed about getting everything right and when it's all right I am so stressed again because I don't know what went wrong if we did everything right. I think that stress ALONE could be the reason we are not conceiving.
Soooo, I didn't think I could stop temping, I mean I've been doing that every morning when I wake since December 22nd!!!! Except for those couple of weeks in May that I missed. And the temping is the thing I'm most obsessy about. But I did not write yesterday's temp down anywhere, and although it's still in my head, I am not going to write it down so it's gonna get forgotten, haha! And today I woke up and DID NOT TAKE MY TEMPERATURE!!!! Yay! It was so nice actually, to have nothing to wake up and get the adrenaline going and start the day on baby-alert. So nice to just roll over and go back to sleep, and not worry about how many hours I've slept or about not getting up till I've taken my temperature! So I already like not taking my temperature. I've posted messages on my TTC boards to say what I'm gonna do, and to say I probably won't be posting for a while. But I still want to check back now and then to see who got pregnant out of my buddy groups.
But I want to try avoiding charting and thinking about TTC (if that's possible!!) for one or two cycles, probably two. We discussed it and we both are happy with this. We are going to just have sex every other day from when my period stops each cycle, and I'm going to ignore my fertile signs, because what's the relevance when you're having sex regularly enough anyway? The difficult one is going to be fertile cervical fluid, because you can't miss that very well when you go to the loo (too much information, sorry, but hang on I'm nearly done!). So I might even go to the loo with my eyes closed (haha!) during the middle of my cycle!! I just don't want to be thinking about whether I'm "ready" to make a baby at all. I just want to be close to my husband all cycle long and see if we made a baby by the end of it. I won't know when my period's due or when I should test or anything, which I guess is more normal and the way things used to be, etc, which I actually like. If we still haven't conceived after a couple of cycles, I think we will go back to charting and get Neil's boys tested (!!), just to set our minds at rest (hopefully).
The only possible problems might be if we have trouble maintaining the sex that frequently, so to speak!! Otherwise our bases won't be covered and we could miss a fertile window, which is what I want to cover to make sure I don't have to think about it during my cycle. This could happen if we have problems there personally, or if other things happen - like camp (although we'll see about that) and my mother-in-law visiting for several days during the week when we get back! So we'll see.
Of course I say all this NOW, on calm-and-easy Day 2 of my cycle, but the test will be whether we're able to stick to it further down the line when we know we are standing a good chance of making a baby over a certain few days, even if we're trying not to think about it or ignoring fertile signs!
But there you have it. The pregnancy plan for the next two cycles.
I feel much better about things now. I had a couple of weepy and sad days, and I had the most wonderful support from my Fertility Friend TTC group, well, other groups too, but the FF group was just amazing, so lovely. Plus all you guys! So I am doing better. It's funny how it does happen that way, by the time you are a day into your period, the previous cycle is a thing of the past and you're already looking ahead and hoping for the next cycle. Even if you were crying your heart out the day before, it's amazing how it all goes away the next day. My mum said she thinks hormones don't help just as you're getting your period. They can make me weepy at the best of times anyway!
So off I go, all happy about trying again, even glad a bit that I'm not pregnant because of camp - now I have no distractions at all in my mind because I'm not pregnant or even planning to become so during camp, and all my focus can be on the kids and on God and it's all good. I would not have liked to be searching for new pregnancy symptoms during camp, or whilst taking a dozen kids on the train to and from London, nope I wouldn't. And I am one month further removed from a couple of pregnant friends, which I wrote about a while back because I felt I didn't want to trail anyone else's pregnancies and be at the stage they were at only a few weeks before. But now there is a whole trimester between us if I conceive this cycle and that feels better to me somehow. I still feel odd about pregnant friends. It's maybe less powerful of a feeling now that I'm not in that horrible stage of waiting to test.
Last night I had a nice big glass of red wine with dinner, and that was so nice! Plus if I wanted, I could paint the house, except we don't have time with camp, but I COULD if I wanted to! I am finishing up my spray deoderant now that I don't have to worry about a little one getting the effect of those fumes. And guess what? I'm gonna have wine with dinner again tonight! :)
The last obsessive thing I'm gonna do (mmm-hmm?!) is say that if I conceive this cycle I will have a due date of May 20th. That seems nice to me as well. I like June better for a birthday though, but less for the huge-in-hot-weather thing. Hmmm. And that's all! I will try hard not to obsess this cycle, but I will not be all down on myself if I end up giving in, if it's too hard not to be. I just need to try and remember that I need to stay relaxed and non-stressy in order to conceive. Apparantly this has a huge impact on whether a person is able to conceive or not. Interesting. So I'll try it and see! Watch this space! :)
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