Monday, March 30, 2009

The Proud Owner Of...

Two very important things:

1.  Self-control.  That's right, ladies, I made it through book club without turning into a boundary-less freak who talks about nothing other than TTC.  How does one accomplish such a super-human feat?  I paced myself at one glass of wine per hour.  I must admit that this meant I spent 20 to 30 minutes of every hour eyeing the clock and waiting until the magical one-hour mark when I could pour myself another.  That part stunk, but ending the night with my dignity intact was glorious.

2.  A mom-mobile.  DH and I have been planning to buy a used SUV over the summer.  Yesterday's newspaper advertised humongous deals on brand new '08 Hyundai Vera Cruzes.  For about the same price we were planning to spend this summer on a used Toyota Highlander, we are getting a brand new Vera Cruz with a 5-yr/60,000 mile warranty.  It has a third row, which will be handy once we have kids.  The only downside is that it's clearly a mom car.  I called my dad to tell him about it and his immediate response was, "When are you due?"
Good things, good things.  In TTC news, there's not much to report.  I'm diligently choking down pineapple core smoothies and noticing every twinge.  I'm only 5 dpo though, so try as I might, there aren't even phantom symptoms to speak of.

Friday, March 27, 2009

A Preview of the Evening

Tonight is book club night.  I so look forward to this monthly ritual.  Me and 8 of my closest friend gather monthly with a pretense of providing careful critique and postmodern analysis of the chosen book.  In reality, we meet, discuss the book for up to 30 minutes, and imbibe such vast quantities of wine that the conversation flows freely, too freely.  It always turns to sex stuff.  And I know a LOT about these girls. Who's had anal, who's into golden showers, whose husband didn't understand doggy style, and on and on.  Being married to my high school sweetheart and never having had sex with anyone else, I don't have much to contribute.

Instead, I wait until I'm a few glasses of wine into the evening and end up spouting off about when I ovulated and what type of CM I had that morning.  Gross, right?  Before we even started trying, Brett bet me that I couldn't wait until my second trimester to tell my mom that I'm pregnant.  We are close, she's a busy-body, and I'm a bad liar.  That trifecta makes it unlikely that I'll keep my mouth shut very long once I am KU.

I decided it would help me if I just kept the whole thing under wraps.  That was before February's book club, when I got drunk and spouted off.  Tonight is another book club.  Being in the 2ww, I'm going to try to have no more than 3-4 glasses of wine, but I gotta say that's pussy stuff for my book club.  I also have very little self-control when it comes to wine.  So, wish me luck.  I'm steeling my resolve, but will likely end up blogging tomorrow about how I pulled up my FF chart to show the entire book club.  

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Stick Blenders Suck

Oh, if you could've seen my last night. I plopped half a frozen banana, a handful of frozen raspberries, a few chunks of frozen pineapple with core, and some apple juice into a cup. Since my blender's jar shattered a few weeks ago, I had to use the stick blender to whip up my pineapple core smoothie. Ugh. There was frothy pink stuff all over me and my counter. As long as I kept the blender submerged, it was fine.

My temp was up a bit today, so I'd bet that I ovulated on either Monday or Wednesday. I must say that adding OPKs to the mix makes my chart harder to interpret. Either way you cut it, I believe that I am now in the 2 ww. I'm anywhere from 1 to 6 dpo, depending on what kind of finagling I do with FF. The good news is that we have had a lot of sex over the past week, so we are pretty well covered either way.

The best news of all is that I'm actually ovulating. I really thought this cycle was a lost cause.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

O Yeah!

I think that I either recently did ovulate or am doing so as I type. I had positive OPKs on both Sunday and Monday, but my temp has yet to really "spike." If I remove the two positive OPKs, I get dotted crosshairs for Friday. My CM yesterday was very creamy, which is what happened right after I ovulated. I feel like my temps have been slightly off because my husband has turned on the ceiling fan the last three nights. Today I set FF's detection method to OPK. I'll probably play with it every morning to see if I get a different interpretation with the advanced detection method. In the short-term, I feel better since I can see a cross-hair on my chart. I also used the chart gallery to search for charts with timing like mine. 53% of them were pregnancy charts. Not too shabby.

Either way, I'm feeling very happy because I believe I likely ovulated. I must say that I was pretty leery of OPKs. I thought they seemed expensive and like they wouldn't give me much more warning than just watching my CM. This cycle taught me my lesson. It's dragged on and on and the only thing that alerted me to ovulating was my positive OPKs. If it weren't for those, I doubt we would've been having any sex within the fertile zone.

On a personal level, I'm finding my husband to be very cute lately. He emailed me yesterday to see what my temp was and today before I left work he asked about it too. I'm going to try to do pineapple core smoothies starting today, but there's a slight glitch. I started doing them earlier this cycle when I mistakenly thought I had O'd. When it became clear that I hadn't, I froze the pineapple. When I went to put our blender away, I dropped it, so we've had to order a replacement jar online. It should come pretty soon. If not, I'll struggle through using my stick blender to do a stand blender's job.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Sight for Sore Eyes

I've been taking OPKs every day for about a week now.  It was mostly because I was convinced this would be an anovulatory cycle and wanted a safety net in case ovulation came out of nowhere.  I'm glad I did because today I got a + opk.  I'm so thrilled that this may be an ovulatory cycle after all.  I appreciate that the opk gives us some warning so that we can get to it.  Our Friday morning romp may turn out to be within my fertile zone after all.  Now I'm just waiting for temps to confirm.  Yipppeee!!

Friday, March 20, 2009

No Posts Because I've Been Sad

But things are looking up. Last you heard from me I had a bad night's sleep, but thought my O confirmation was right around the corner. Boy, was I wrong. I'm now on CD37 and still no O. I've had quite a bit of fertile CM, but no O. It has been very frustrating to say the least. I've been on pins and needles trying to figure out if it was about to come, timing intercourse, etc.

I buckled down a few days ago and bought some OPKs. I don't know that I'll use them going forward, but at least for this long, crazy cycle they are proving useful to help me determine whether we need to have sex. Yeah, I know some of you are sex fiends and do it every other day for fun. I'm not. Don't get me wrong, I'm game for an occasional romp, but only on my own timeframe, not according to my temps and CM.

You may wonder how I'm maintaining any sanity in this fertility purgatory. I'm trying to stay solutions-based. I ordered some Vitex this morning and am pretty much letting this cycle go. I am going to try to drink no more than three alcoholic drinks in a sitting going forward. I noticed on my chart that my temp spikes at just a drink too many. I'm also toying with the idea of temping vaginally to get some less erratic readings. It kinda grosses me out though.

I even had sex this morning with my husband for pure and total fun. I did all kinds of baby-making no-nos like climbing on top, standing up right away, douching, etc. Ok, I lied about the douching but everything else is true.

There were a few moments over the past two weeks when I completely flipped out and started working that this wasn't just one bad cycle but a precursor of things to come. I was worrying about PCOS, having tons of anov cycles in a row, etc. All that worrying can't be good for me, so I'm doing my best to let it go.

I've also found that focusing so much on TTC has made me lose sight of what I'm working towards. I started feeling like my ultimate goal is a BFP, when in fact what I really want is a healthy baby of my own. It's been nice to remember what I'm really working toward.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Reason #5,125, 873

There are many, many reasons I absolutely adore my husband.  Tonight was just one more example of the fine man I married.  After getting up at 3:30 am and having lots to do at work, I was exhausted.  I got home around 5:30 and DH left to work out shortly after I got home.  I laid in bed to read and ended up falling asleep before he even came home.

I woke up a bit when he got home and was showering.  He came and checked on me and offered to heat me up some food, but I decided to keep sleeping instead.  When I got up at 8 pm, after about 2 hours of sleep, the laundry was done and folded and my pineapple core smoothie was waiting in the fridge.  It was very sweet of him and much-needed after my bad day.

Wine at 5:15 am?

This cycle has me all confused. To think I thought it would be easier once I had a cycle under my belt. So, here's my chart:


You'll notice a couple of things:

1. My BBT looks like a EKG print-out up until the point when I started having fertile CM. I didn't mind the erratic BBT because I was used to it and saw on my previous cycle that even with an erratic BBT, I had a clear thermal shift.

2. Once I started having fertile CM, my temp was so steady that I may as well have been using a broken thermometer. Trust me, this crossed my mind. I've been taking my temp at random times of the day to make sure that it can read out something besides 97.2. It can.

3. When I woke up Sunday, my temp was a whopping 98.06 and I breathed a huge sigh of relief that I had apparently ovulated and on the exact same day as last cycle. It's a little iff-y because I drank Saturday night.

4. Today was horrible. I woke up at 3:30 am because my dog was barking to be let out. I usually try to temp at 5:30 am, but since daylight savings I've been temping at 6:30 am. I know I should just keep temping at 5:30 am, but since daylight savings fell on the exact day I expected my thermal shift, I didn't want to have my temp off even by a little bit. I'll probably go back to temping at 5:30 am on the next cycle. Anyway, I was so sure that I'd let Champ out then fall back to sleep so I didn't temp before getting up at 3:30 am. I came back to bed and didn't fall back to sleep at all, not even a teeny tiny wink of sleep. To make matters worse, my neuroses got the best of me. I probably took my temp 5 to 10 times between 4:00 and 6:30 am, with my temp ranging from 96.5 to 97.6. I marked something on my chart, but it's not very reliable at all. I was so pissed I could hardly function this morning. I was asking Brett if he thought wine would be inappropriate before work. Apparently, that's frowned upon.

5. My CM is back to a non-fertile state, which is further evidence that I O'd. The only thing that has me in doubt is today's temp. Will someone please console me that I almost definitely did O and just need to wait for a few good temps to confirm?

6. If I did O, our timing looks pretty good. I've added green tea, B6, and pre-conceive into our routine. Also, I've been laying flat for at least 30 minutes after having sex. We switched to missionary position during fertile times. I'm going to try having pineapple core smoothies too.

So, here I am, busy at work, with very little sleep and a chart that leaves me feeling so unsure about what the hell is going on. I guess time will tell, but in the meantime, I'd love some words of wisdom/encouragement from you ladies.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Is this thing on?


I am completely confused this cycle.  After weeks and weeks of an erratic BBT, my temp has basically flat-lined the last five days.  My CM points to ovulation, as does the fact that this is the exact day that I O'd last month.  I'm so annoyed with these flat temps.  They have me worried that this might be an annovulatory cycle for me.  I hope not.

We've been having lots of sex, so if an egg decides to emerge there should be some eager sperm waiting for it.  

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Screaming Eagle


I went out with a few girlfriends this weekend for dinner. We polished off a few bottles of wine between the six of us and ended up talking about our bikini lines. Two of my friends shave themselves bald, or what they called "Bald Eagle." I've heard of going bare via waxing but never shaving.

Even for our honeymoon, I was too chicken to go bare. I just did a little landing strip and even that itched like hell once it started to grow back. I can distinctly remember walking around the resort's property and attempting to discreetly scratch my itching vag.

I went home with a half bottle of wine in me, stepped into the tub, busted out a new razor and did it. I must say that my husband likes it and I find sex more fun. Yesterday, I dubbed it the screaming eagle because it was itchy. I bought some Bikini Zone and that has kept it from itching too bad.

In TTC news, my husband is home and just in the nick of time. He came back Saturday and I started getting fertile CM Sunday. If this cycle is like the last, I still won't ovulate until Saturday. However, my cycles have been getting a few days shorter each month ever since I went off BCP. I'm hoping that I O before Saturday. Just in case, we'll be getting after it every night until those beautiful crosshairs show up.