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.

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.  

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.

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.

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!!

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.

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.