TTC Post #2: Allow me to clarify (written 11/13)

Well, well, well. Haven’t we all had a little bit of poster’s remorse once we set free a garbled mess of our opinions onto the world? Yes, I have that right now.

Let me begin with this: instead of selfishly saying, “please try not to be offended” as a preface to my last post, I should have simply said, “I’m so sorry to those of you who are offended by my words!” So, my apologies to you. Honestly!

Now to clarify a little bit about the start of our TTC journey. In hindsight, I seemed to ride on a steady roller coaster that shifted about every 2 months or so.

Phase 1: Stop taking birth control! March of 2012. Not because we were ready to have a baby, but rather I was out of my prescription and hadn’t scheduled another annual in time, so I was stuck with a June appointment. Me being the planner, I made sure we were extra careful those few months in between to avoid any early pregnancies. IDIOT! Did you know you’re much more likely to get pregnant within the first 2 months of stopping birth control as a result of your hormone fluctuations? Yeah…if I’d known then what I know now. Spread the word to all of your baby-trying friends!

Phase 2: This will be easy! Julie and Ryan were trying for a baby at the same time (why not? Abby and Bridget are born two days apart and its perfect – our pregnancies lined up just right so neither of us had to go cold turkey on alcohol alone – let’s do the same for baby #2!), and they got pregnant within the hour. I swear this to you. Yeah! To be honest, in June of 2012, J and I were still pretty nervous about another baby so we were taking things slow, plus we wanted a summer baby and not a spring baby…let’s time this just right! A positive test in August-November would be perfect. I told Dr. T we were going to start that summer, so we waived the BC prescription. All was well. This will be easy!

Phase 3: Um…why am I still getting my period?! Y’all. By mid-late August I was just sure this was happening. I’d started being more sensitive to any and every “strange” feeling, assuming it meant a tiny baby was inside here. I’d even told my friend at school that I should have an aisle seat for quick exits during bouts of morning sickness. I’d looked up potential due dates on the babycenter.com calculators. I was so naïve! Thankfully, we still had an open window. Unfortunately, I was starting to get stressed, which is NOT helpful in the bedroom. At all. Jonathan’s story is all his own, and I won’t go into that, but man did I learn a lot about how to deal with a man’s feelings on this whole TTC matter…

Phase 4: The window is closing. It was so sad and defeating. No summer baby. Jonathan started to think we should slow down on trying because we didn’t want another poorly-timed delivery (can you say an early September baby in a teacher family?! Not ideal!). I, however, was worried something was wrong. As we bumped up against our 6 month mark of TTC, I decided to call Dr. T for an appointment just to see what she would say. I’ll never forget this:

“I am so glad you didn’t wait until 1 year to come see me about this. Most people do and by that time they’ve wasted a good 1/2 year trying for a baby without ever knowing something is wrong.”

I’m telling all my friends this line from now on. Just go ask! It never hurts! Thankfully for us, after a one-day test for Jonathan and two tests for me, we were both given a clean bill of health on the reproduction scale. High hopes returned to us once again and we were ready to get started. Keep in mind the bedroom stress I was emitting was still not helpful…but guys, it ain’t easy to just turn that switch off, ya know?

Phase 5: I’m over a week late! This is it! Oh wait, screw it all. Yep. The first week of February put me at over a week late (by this point, I was pretty good at knowing my mostly-regular cycle…23-25 days). I’m talking like 33 day cycle here. I finally got the nerve up to take a test. Negative. “What?! No way?! I’ll retake again tonight.” No need. I’d gotten my period about 2 hours after taking the morning test. This is where I started to get dark on things.

Phase 6: Ok. Let’s keep “trying” except I’m totally OVER being stressed about it. This actually helped a lot! My marriage wasn’t as stressed over it (don’t get me wrong – still a TON of stress), and I had settled quite well into my monthly depression for 1 day, followed by forced joy (I can still drink! I can still lose weight!).

That brings us pretty much up to the post I wrote and posted earlier this week. We started an OTC hormone supplement called Pregnitude (yes, that’s its name! Horrid!) that May, but I didn’t notice a huge difference. Hello…we still didn’t get pregnant. More to come on my review of that stuff.

Again…apologies for being selfish! Apologies for being offensive. Hugs to all . And I’m not taking the time to proof read this. It is what it is. Til next post!