Exhausting.

Here follows mind!vomit about TTC. Read no further if you do not wish to indulge in my stupid venting.

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I’ve already told several of my girlfriends that when they decide to start having children, may they get pregnant 1) on the first try, or 2) without expecting it. Because the TTC process should be considered cruel and unusual torture.

I know I have no reason to be saying that, knowing there are so many other women and families out there who have struggled for months and years to get pregnant and here I am only trying for 4 months. But it still wears on you. It really does. You get to a certain point about halfway through the two week wait when you realize that the only thing you’ve been doing for an entire week, every waking moment, is think about the two week wait. And no matter how hard you try to NOT think about it, you think about it. If any women out there have strategies for not thinking about this period of time, I’d love to hear it. Because it is exhausting! I think trying not to think about it is more tiring than thinking about it. God. About halfway through you start getting those feelings of ‘I’m not feeling any symptoms, I bet it didn’t happen this time’ and then you start thinking about how long it’s going to be before you can try again and it just spirals out of control. It’s made even worse when you get advice from other women saying things to the effect of, “don’t think about it, it’ll just happen.” Yeah, not gonna happen. It’s especially hard when this comes from women who got pregnant on accident or had the wonderful luck to get pregnant on the first try or basically never had to experience the torture of the waiting.

I’m so tired. (Except that I’m not tired, and I wish I was, because then maybe that would be a symptom.) I just want it to be over and get two lines and not have to think about this anymore. I’m not even able to work on the book because by the time I get to my desk at night my brain is so tired from thinking about getting pregnant that there’s nothing left in it to work with. I find myself thinking about making plans for later this year and next year and how hard it is. How my brother-in-law is getting married in Hawaii next year and all I can think about is how we shouldn’t buy tickets yet because if we don’t get pregnant this calendar year then I could be way too pregnant to travel or might have just had a baby, all that jazz. Trying to start a family changes the way you think about the future.

All this being said, last night the hubby heated up some leftover dumplings from the Chinese place he had lunch at and it was the most offensive, overwhelming smell I’ve ever smelled. I usually love those things so I can’t help wonder. Of course. Wish I didn’t, but I do.

It’s On

It being a new Two Week Wait. Oh joy. I’m cautiously optimistic this month as I started temping and used an OPK and everything happened as it should have (My temp jumped .4 degrees this morning so I’m fairly confident something happened), so my fingers are crossed that we might have gotten our timing down this time. Now that I’ve been doing BBT and OPK (TTC is so full of abbreviations, isn’t it?) I can tell how off we had been the last couple months, aided none at all by a certain iPhone app that had my ovulation date at nearly a week off when it should have been. So, these next couple of weeks will be an exercise in not going too crazy and not getting too stressed either.

Thank goodness I finally have the book to concentrate on.

Womp.

Well….back to CD1. Bummer.

I’m trying to find that silver lining in the fact that when we were in Hawaii, my cycle was really messed up and came 6 days late. I am never that late. So I know there were a lot of things going on that means I might not have ovulated at all. Different environment, different food, different altitude, I wasn’t sleeping very well because of the hotel bed, we flew in a plane once a week for the entire three weeks we were there (which actually meant 4 trips), there were a lot of different stressors that could have contributed. I’m still on a 30 day cycle which is a little out of the norm, but at least it’s that and not a 35-day cycle. 30 days is not terribly weird.

In any case, we broke down and bought an OPK for this month because frankly I’m tired of dicking around and guessing. Better to just pin it down for sure. This was only our third cycle trying. I’m bummed but I’m trying exceptionally hard not to be worried yet.

In the end, at least I am working on the book now, and I have a little something to distract myself with because I’m actually DOING something. It helps even if it’s small. And, at least I can have a glass of wine tonight…