When you're trying to conceive, there are two different waits.
There's the well known two week wait, which occurs between ovulation and your period (or lack there of if that's what you're hoping for). Then there is the lesser talked about wait that occurs between your period and ovulation.
If you use ovulation predictor kits (OPKs) like me, then you spend quite a bit of time each month itching to pee on a stick. After my period, I get excited to pee on an OPK stick so I can see a positive result indicating I'm about to ovulate. Then I get anxious to pee on an early pregnancy test (EPT) to see whether or not I'm pregnant.
I got to pee on lots of sticks this month. I've been charting my temperature since my miscarriage, and with the help of Fertility Friend, I found that I ovulate on day 15 of my cycle.
Woo hoo! I thought this month. I have been charting long enough to actually know when I could start peeing on OPKs (which is several days before my anticipated ovulation day). That will save me a few tests. The less I have to pee on, the more I'll have left for next month if I need them.
On cycle day 12 (a Sunday) I started peeing on sticks. To my dismay, the tests were negative. I didn't get a result that looked remotely positive until the afternoon of day 15 (Wednesday). Maybe I was having a short surge this month? I made sure Jake and I did The Deed that evening.
But then I started thinking that maybe my surge was just beginning. The previous month I got positives three days in a row. I was peeing on a new brand of OPKs, but I didn't think that six of them would be giving me a false negative.
So the next morning (Thursday) I peed on another stick. It looked just like it did the night before - pretty positive, but was still hard to tell for sure. I peed on one when I got home from work that afternoon. Pretty positive again.
I determined that I hadn't actually ovulated.
The morning after that (Friday) I decided to pee on an OPK one more time. It took about three seconds for the result line to turn darker than the control line -- a definite positive. Nope, I hadn't ovulated yet. When I got the same result after testing again that afternoon, I knew we needed to do the Baby Dance that night if we were going to give ourselves a good chance of catching that egg.
I wasn't exactly excited about telling Jake that we needed to try one more time. We were going at it about every day to day-and-a-half for the past week. Trying had lost its fun for the month. But I couldn't not try. One more month of getting upset when I found out someone else was pregnant and not me? The thought alone made me cry (as with everything else that week).
So we tried again.
I was reading on message boards that to really give yourself a good chance of conceiving, you need to have sex the day before, day of, and the day or two after ovulation. I just couldn't do it. I was done. If we didn't catch the egg with this last try then I'd try that theory next month.
Several days later Fertility Friend confirmed that I had ovulated on the Friday. At least I could say that Jake and I tried on the day I thought I would ovulate and the day I should have ovulated. Considering I got pregnant the last time by having sex the day I ovulated, I was feeling pretty good about our chances this time.
And thus began my next two week wait. Only the wait to pee on a pregnancy test is more agonizing. At least in the wait between my period and ovulation I felt like I could have a drink or do Bikram Yoga. I could have coffee and not feel guilty.
But I wanted to make sure that I didn't do anything that could screw up my chances of giving birth to a healthy baby in nine months. I know most people will tell you that what you do in the first month shouldn't have much of an affect on the embryo; heck, the baby is only about a week old by the time you find out you are pregnant. But I didn't want to do anything to risk the emotional turmoil and heart break I've experienced in the last five months.
It didn't take more than a few days for me to believe I could be pregnant. I had a few very vivid dreams, and a few things in those dreams were symbols of the circle of life and new beginnings. Since I had a dream that told me I was pregnant before I found out the first time, I took this as a good sign. My biggest indicator is that my BBT spiked and didn't go down by much as it had been doing during my last three cycles (although it was following the same pattern it had the month before, only with higher temps). There were other symptoms, but I will make those into a separate post.
Because I don't like waiting, I bought a bunch of EPTs that you can use seven days before your missed
period. I took one when I should have been five days away from my missed period. Look what happened after three minutes:
The line is super faint, but... I'm pregnant again!
And because I'm a peeonastickaholic, I have taken two more pregnancy tests. Thankfully, that first line got darker each time.
There's the well known two week wait, which occurs between ovulation and your period (or lack there of if that's what you're hoping for). Then there is the lesser talked about wait that occurs between your period and ovulation.
If you use ovulation predictor kits (OPKs) like me, then you spend quite a bit of time each month itching to pee on a stick. After my period, I get excited to pee on an OPK stick so I can see a positive result indicating I'm about to ovulate. Then I get anxious to pee on an early pregnancy test (EPT) to see whether or not I'm pregnant.
I got to pee on lots of sticks this month. I've been charting my temperature since my miscarriage, and with the help of Fertility Friend, I found that I ovulate on day 15 of my cycle.
Woo hoo! I thought this month. I have been charting long enough to actually know when I could start peeing on OPKs (which is several days before my anticipated ovulation day). That will save me a few tests. The less I have to pee on, the more I'll have left for next month if I need them.
On cycle day 12 (a Sunday) I started peeing on sticks. To my dismay, the tests were negative. I didn't get a result that looked remotely positive until the afternoon of day 15 (Wednesday). Maybe I was having a short surge this month? I made sure Jake and I did The Deed that evening.
But then I started thinking that maybe my surge was just beginning. The previous month I got positives three days in a row. I was peeing on a new brand of OPKs, but I didn't think that six of them would be giving me a false negative.
So the next morning (Thursday) I peed on another stick. It looked just like it did the night before - pretty positive, but was still hard to tell for sure. I peed on one when I got home from work that afternoon. Pretty positive again.
I determined that I hadn't actually ovulated.
The morning after that (Friday) I decided to pee on an OPK one more time. It took about three seconds for the result line to turn darker than the control line -- a definite positive. Nope, I hadn't ovulated yet. When I got the same result after testing again that afternoon, I knew we needed to do the Baby Dance that night if we were going to give ourselves a good chance of catching that egg.
I wasn't exactly excited about telling Jake that we needed to try one more time. We were going at it about every day to day-and-a-half for the past week. Trying had lost its fun for the month. But I couldn't not try. One more month of getting upset when I found out someone else was pregnant and not me? The thought alone made me cry (as with everything else that week).
So we tried again.
I was reading on message boards that to really give yourself a good chance of conceiving, you need to have sex the day before, day of, and the day or two after ovulation. I just couldn't do it. I was done. If we didn't catch the egg with this last try then I'd try that theory next month.
Several days later Fertility Friend confirmed that I had ovulated on the Friday. At least I could say that Jake and I tried on the day I thought I would ovulate and the day I should have ovulated. Considering I got pregnant the last time by having sex the day I ovulated, I was feeling pretty good about our chances this time.
And thus began my next two week wait. Only the wait to pee on a pregnancy test is more agonizing. At least in the wait between my period and ovulation I felt like I could have a drink or do Bikram Yoga. I could have coffee and not feel guilty.
But I wanted to make sure that I didn't do anything that could screw up my chances of giving birth to a healthy baby in nine months. I know most people will tell you that what you do in the first month shouldn't have much of an affect on the embryo; heck, the baby is only about a week old by the time you find out you are pregnant. But I didn't want to do anything to risk the emotional turmoil and heart break I've experienced in the last five months.
It didn't take more than a few days for me to believe I could be pregnant. I had a few very vivid dreams, and a few things in those dreams were symbols of the circle of life and new beginnings. Since I had a dream that told me I was pregnant before I found out the first time, I took this as a good sign. My biggest indicator is that my BBT spiked and didn't go down by much as it had been doing during my last three cycles (although it was following the same pattern it had the month before, only with higher temps). There were other symptoms, but I will make those into a separate post.
Because I don't like waiting, I bought a bunch of EPTs that you can use seven days before your missed
period. I took one when I should have been five days away from my missed period. Look what happened after three minutes:
The line is super faint, but... I'm pregnant again!
And because I'm a peeonastickaholic, I have taken two more pregnancy tests. Thankfully, that first line got darker each time.
No comments:
Post a Comment