Check This Out Ladies…

Very funny….

http://oneofhismoms.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/two-week-wait-advent-calendar-week-one

Smiley Face for this Giant Panda

Okay, so this is for those of you playing along at home.  I wasn’t feeling good yesterday so I left work early.  I work in a small office and despite the fact that I am holed up in my own, separate office with a door, if one of us gets sick, there is a chance that all of us will get it.  Generally, if someone says, “I’m not feeling well,” the answer is, “please go the hell home…”  So I did.  Billable hours be damned.

I went home and took a nap.  I got up around the designated “pee stick” time (because God knows, if you don’t pee on the ovulation stick at the same time, in the same way, in the same bathroom with the lights on or off depending on how you did it the first time, the thing won’t work…again, I am certain that it’s easier to ascertain the fertility of a Giant Panda than a human).  Now this was my last pee stick and up to this point, I had not seen the holy grail of pee sticks – the smiley face (I use the digital ones – see posted titled “OPK Craziness” for reasons why).  I will be honest, I was a little happy to not have seen the little jackass because neither hubby nor I have been up to BDing.  Back story is that I wasn’t sure when the smiley faced jackass was supposed to show up so we starting BDing about a week ago “just in case…”  Not smart.  I love my hubby and he loves me but we are sick of the sex.  Plus we are both just plain sick.

Of course, that means when I return to the bathroom precisely three minutes after performing a golden shower with said pee stick, that smiling happy little jackass is staring up at me.  Sidebar: I will never look at a Jack in the Box commercial the same again.  Anywho, I walk into the living room where my half dead hubby is sprawled on the couch and say, “good news, we have a smiley face” in my most cheerful albeit raspy, wheezy voice….He groans, looks at me and says in his own equally raspy and wheezy voice, “okay, go take your clothes off, I will be there in a minute…” 

Did y’all every see that episode of “Friends” where Monica is sick and she’s trying to get Chandler to have sex with her and she’s all snotty and gross?  That was us.  We were both Monica.  But we did it – to quote my friend Brian in reference to his wife, Deb, learning to hang-glide at our wedding – “like a fucking champ.”

I am really hoping not to need these pee stick demons next month….Giant Panda out.

Slave to the OPK

It’s that time of the month again.  No, not that time of the month, the OTHER time of the month.  That time when I pee on little sticks to see if my cycle has returned to normal and thereby creating an opportunity for hubby and I to have another baby.  It’s only been 2 months since we started “trying” for another baby (I hate “trying” but I don’t know what else to say – I am open to suggestions) and I didn’t expect it to happen right away.  I know my cycle is screwy and hormone levels are wonky but there is that overwhelming wanting to have a baby.  I was ready to have a baby before when I lost the boys and now, I am ready again.

My mind keeps flash back to when I found out I was pregnant with the boys.  I was so happy.  It was like the flowers were brighter, the sun was warmer and the grass was greener.  Everything was good.  I was so excited and August seemed so far off to get to meet them.  I want that back.  I want to get to finish the journey that I started way back in November.

And then there are the holidays.  I cannot face hubby’s family if I am not pregnant.  I can’t do it.  Christmas at his family’s house will be agony.  His sister is what I call a “serial birther.”  She cannot handle anyone else being pregnant and having any sort of attention so she gets pregnant.  As soon as she found out we were pregnant, she and her husband starting trying for a THIRD.  The day before I had the the surgery and lost Baby A, she said to me, “we have been trying for 2 months now and I just don’t know why I am not pregnant.”  I thought that was a little insensitive since she has two children already and I was getting ready to have a surgery which would end the life of one of my children.  Her third is due in November.  I can’t do Christmas if I am not visibly pregnant and luckily, hubby has said that I don’t have to.

So if I get pregnant this month, I would be due in May.  It seems like an eternity from now.  But I have learned from experience that the whole process goes so fast.  It’s just the process of getting to be pregnant that is killing me (and it’s supposed to be so much fun, right?).  I want this so bad that I am making myself crazy when I really need to remind myself that it will happen when it happens.  It happened before and it will happen again.  If not this month, then next month.  Until then, I am peeing on little sticks and molesting my hubby like crazy…

Hey, this is actually kind of fun….

Just a Quicky…Oh Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter!

Soooo….if you have been reading along campers, you know that hubby and I are making another baby and that the doctor has recommended that we use an ovulation test to achieve our goal.  Okay, so I have to start peeing on the little stick today and I can’t empty my bladder for 4 hours before I pee on the little stick.  4 hours people.  That is some serious bladder control (not to mention no peeing for 4 hours = UTI but I will suffer through 100% cranberry juice for a baby). That means if I want to pee on the stick when I get home, I had to stop peeing at 1:45.  Since that time, I have had 2 glasses of water (well-hydrated = good cervical mucus, right?) and the rest of my iced decaf coffee (happy me = better baby-making, right?).  I just sent hubby the following email:

“When I pull into the driveway, I would suggest that you go into the bathroom, unwrap the pee stick, insert said pee stick into digital thingy and get the hell out of my way because I am going to need to pee like nobody’s business….can you handle that?”

This whole TTC thing is making me really bossy….

BDing 4 A BFP….WTF?

This is off my normal topic of working through my grief but it’s also something that I am dealing with.  I don’t have fertility issues (that I know of) as we got pregnant on the first go around but the doctor suggested that we use ovulation prediction kit to see when I am ovulating since my cycle might be screwy after the pregnancy.  This is my foray into the world of conception on the Internet….

Okay, seriously, have any of you been on a trying to conceive or “TTC” forum?  OMG!  The sheer volume of abbreviations for words and phrases is just amazing to me.  I fear for the English language as we know it(Side Bar: I recently read an article about high school students not being able to spell many common words correctly like “their” or “Thursday” or “misspell” and how one English teacher wants to just have commonly accepted incorrectly spelled forms of those words.  Way to excel at your job, jackass).

I recently ventured into this world with its’ whole other written language.  I asked a question about ovulation tests or OPK’s (ovulation prediction kits – remember my previous post about the tests making me crazy, this question was related to that).  The response I received had so many letters in it that I thought I had fallen into a bowl of Alpha Bits cereal:

“M, as long as U and DH BD 4 2dbo it prolly doesn’t matter what the OPK said.  Happy BFP!  Babydust 2 U!”

Huh?

Apparently, translated, that means that as long as hubby and I had sex (BD) both of the 2 days before ovulation (2dbo), it doesn’t matter that the ovulation prediction kit (OPK) said that I was ovulating way earlier than I thought.  Happy Big Fat Positive [pregnancy test] (BFP) and apparently, “babydust” is good luck wishes….

There is also “TWW” or “two week wait” – the maddening time between ovulation and being able to take a pregnancy test.  “BFN” or “Big Fat Negative [pregnancy test]” – familiar with this beast this month. And also, “dpo” or “days past ovulation,” “AF” or “aunt flo” (which I have seen in medical related articles instead of the archaic term “menstruation”) and so on.*  Now if you are taking fertility drugs, there is a whole OTHER set of symbols and letters that means things about shots and cycles and procedures and I have not even tried to understand that…hopefully, I never have to….and not to mention taking temps and charting, OMG!  It’s a wonder that mankind even reproduces…

This is more confusing than the 2 lines on the OPK….Wish me Babydust because for now, I am staying off the forums….

*Check out this website, there is a whole glossary!  http://www.fertilinet.com/trying_to_conceive_glossary.htm

OPK Craziness….

So if you are trying to conceive (or TTC – but I will save my annoyance with abbreviations for another post), more than likely you have peed on your fair share of ovulation predication kits (OPKs).  I recently joined that little sorority and was floored by how difficult it is to use these tests.

Now, my husband and I do not have fertility issues.  We got pregnant with the twins on the first go around and they were spontaneous twins (thus contributing to Baby A’s problems).  No drugs used.  A couple of beers but no drugs.  My heart BLEEDS for people with fertility issues because I have spent the last 3 months LONGING for a baby.  I couldn’t even look in the direction of the baby department at Target with crying.  I actually changed tables in a restaurant recently because a woman and her newborn boy (it’s boys that bother me the most, obviously) sat down in eye view.  I may not know the length and depth of your pain but I have tasted a bit of it and it sucks.  I am so sorry.

Anywho, because I lost the twins a mere 3 and 4 months ago and DH and I are wanting more babies sooner rather than later, my cycle is a little unpredictable and while I am cleared medically for “baby-making,” it’s a little hard to tell when I am going to ovulate.  I enjoy sex as much as the next married woman but to accomplish the “end goal” (ie baby) without determining when I am about to ovulate would require sex every other day for 28 days until I got a positive test or my period.  That’s a lot of sex.  Seriously.

The doctor recommended a plan of sex every other day starting around Day 10 and then at Day 14 start using the predication tests.  Okay, so Monday I pee on the test stick.  One dark line and one darker line.  Now I read that a positive (meaning ovulation will occur within 12-36 hours) is the first line is as dark or darker than the second line.  Ummm, little subjective but okay, well it’s not as dark but parts of it are.  We did just in case.  The next day, the same thing but we didn’t “do it..”  The next day, the first line is faint and the second line is dark.  “Oh crap,” I think, “I’ve missed it – I ovulated WAY earlier than I was supposed to and I have missed it because I can’t read these dang tests.”  I am in a panic.  I am a classic overachiever and I don’t fail things.

So I call the company.  Apparently, unlike a pregnancy test, you are not supposed to pee on the stick first thing in the morning.  Now the directions do not say this.  More than likely, the representative tells me, the previous readings were false positives and I need to retest in the evenings.  I need to “trust the test to work,” she says.  Ummm, okay.  But I can’t let it go.  I am obsessing.  I am not rational.  I can’t stop thinking, “we missed it, we missed it.”  And then I look at the calendar, “okay, we did it here and here and here so that may be okay, we might be okay.”  DH looks at me and says, “get in the car, we are going to get something more easy to read because this is crazy, you are being crazy and you are making me crazy.”

Anyway, I will keep you posted.