Spoiler: I got my period today, so I’m not pregnant. That did not, however, stop me from thinking I was pregnant every day for the last roughly two weeks. I should really have written a post about the “real” insemination, where I got the true positive on the ovulation kit, bullied and shoved my way into the doctor’s office for an insemination even though everyone was on vacation because it was the week they all take off to clean the IVF lab, and was told that the timing was basically perfect. But, I didn’t have time, what with my cousin’s wedding out of state, getting trapped in said state due to a freak thunderstorm, and traveling for work. Don’t worry, though, I did not miss writing a post about the moment our baby was conceived, because our baby was not conceived this month.
The thing is. The timing can be perfect. You can do everything right, and drink an insane amount of club soda and cranberry juice, which it turns out is a nice substitute for a cocktail at your cousin’s wedding, and have a SUPER sensitive sense of smell (what was going on in that cab that made me want to retch?) and still not be pregnant. Sometimes I don’t understand how that can happen. How can the human race reproduce at all when a totally healthy person can get the timing just so perfect and be so careful, and it still doesn’t work? And DAMN YOU UNPLANNED PREGNANCY PEOPLE. I know you are out there, staring in horror at your positive pregnancy tests even now, head spinning, wondering what you are going to do. And I hate you a little.
Now that that’s out of the way, I will say this. I had, when we totally blew the timing of our first insemination, gotten my head around the fact that we would probably not be getting pregnant the first month. Okay, fine. There was a minuscule chance of that anyway. And when we went in to start the process at our doctor’s office, they told us that we would probably be pregnant by the end of the year. So that is really a more realistic timeframe. Nonetheless, I had my hopes up. I mean, someone has to get pregnant the first month, right? So I was really secretly hopeful. Maybe it could be us, maybe we would be the lucky ones. Also, a little smug. Don’t tell anyone, but I was totally convinced that I could WILL MYSELF PREGNANT.
One of my friends is going through a similar process, only she is about a month ahead of me. She said she spent her first two week wait googling “early pregnancy symptoms” and such. I thought to myself at the time that lots of people don’t get symptoms, and really the only important symptom is a late period, so I would just keep really busy and try to avoid making myself crazy over it. WRONG. Within days, I was googling “early pregnancy symptoms” myself and sort of ritualistically punching myself in the boob every time I went to the bathroom to see if they were sore. Hint: if you punch yourself in the boob repeatedly, eventually they become sore.
Then, yesterday, when I started spotting (LIKE I DO EVERY MONTH ON THE DAY BEFORE I GET MY PERIOD) I googled whether this could be implantation bleeding, even though I totally knew that if it was, it was far too late for me to hold the pregnancy anyway, and since I was due for my period today, we all really knew what it was. Nonetheless, there I was, taking a stupid online quiz full of information I already knew from previous obsessive searches.
The internet is evil, people. For every person with some kind of symptom, there are three more with different symptoms, or different bleeding, or no symptoms at all. CLOSE THE BROWSER. STEP AWAY FROM THE IPHONE. It is the only way to stay sane. Also, do not use a possible pregnancy as an excuse to stop working out. All that does is make you bloated, which you can tell yourself is another sign you are pregnant, when it’s not. It’s because you haven’t gone running in 11 days.
So. Here are the things I am going to do differently this month, for our second try:
1. I am going to take 50 mg of B6. I have a short-ish luteal phase and all the websites say B6 is good for that. Plus it makes me feel like I am doing something proactive, which I like. Note: If your drugstore only sells the 100mg tablets, trying to cut them in half with your letter opener at work just makes it look like you have cocaine all over your desk.
2. I am going to try VERY HARD not to spend so much time at the office. I’ve had a wonky work schedule the last month (I was here until 1 am last night!) and it does nothing for bloating. Also the sleep-deprivation is not so great for trying to conceive. And the longer I sit in front of a computer, the more tempted I am to google things I should not be googling. Really, the only time I was not obsessed with whether or not I was pregnant was the time I was out there doing things – hanging with the kids, or celebrating one year and two weeks of marriage with my lovely wife (hey, when you have kids, you take these things when you can get them), or laughing my ass off with my sister when we read her middle school journal.
3. Exercise. It felt really good to let it go and go for that run yesterday. Maybe I could even get back on track with my Fully Fertile thing, which I abandoned a scant three weeks in, and do some yoga.
GAYBY MAKES SIX 