Only Half Crazy
While I expected to keep cool during our not-trying-not-preventing months, these past few days, I’ve become obsessed with my basal body temperature, OPK results, and monthly symptoms. I’ve been posting daily to trying-to-conceive forums and checking my phone maniacally for updates. I got extremely upset today because I expected my morning temperature to increase dramatically but it only increased slightly. While it’s somewhat possible for me to be experiencing a slow ovulation rise, it’s more likely that I’m not a special snowflake and my body is just simply having a hard time getting rid of the birth control hormones.
Nonetheless, I was 15 minutes late to work this morning because I was on the phone with a receptionist at the highest rated fertility clinic in the area, discussing my options for progesterone testing. My appointment to get my hormones tested is April 5. Although we won’t even be trying for one full month at that point, this girl ain’t got time for infertility. Making that appointment helped me perk up a bit, to know that even if there is something wrong with my hormones, we’ll find out sooner rather than later and seek correction.
However, the stress eventually got to me and after work, I walked into the house, stood in the doorway, and cried. I cried over a less-than-ideal basal body temperature, y’all. I’ve officially lost my chill. It’s so hard to stay sane when you’re unsure of what your body is doing or whether it’ll ever cooperate.
Thankfully, Minh was there to talk some sense into me. He reminded me that it’s not like this is our only month to try conceiving, and technically we weren’t even going to start trying for another couple months. He also said that I need to concern myself more with the bigger picture – meaning, 1. when the perfect child is ready to join us, he/she will, and 2. it’s important to stay mentally healthy because we all know stress isn’t good for conception. Just talking and crying it out helped me realize that it’s not the end of the world and I may be catastrophizing just a tiny bit. But I can totally see now how stressful it is to experience infertility; even just waiting two weeks for my period is going to take some serious mental strength.