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Oh Boy (or Girl)
For the last four weeks I’ve distracted myself from baby-making, and instead focused on improving myself, my marriage and my home. I quit drinking as of April 14 and have focused that energy on deep-cleaning our house, running three half-marathons and maintaining a spreadsheet of landscape architects who can design our backyard. I haven’t even gone into #THAB’s nursery; the one baby-related thing I’ve been doing is logging my basal body temperature every day so I could predict when I would start my period.
I took a pregnancy test this morning since my period was five days late. I hadn’t been paying too much attention to when it’d come because my mind had focused its energy on finding the most responsive landscape designer with the most impressive portfolio. But this morning I figured what the hell, I’ll waste a pregnancy test and get it over with (mostly because there’s an unspoken universal law that a girl will get her period within an hour of taking a pregnancy test). I was in a hurry to get to work, so when I saw it was going to be negative I flung it in the garbage and forgot about it.
I remembered the test when I was on Reddit tonight and saw a user had posted a picture of a pregnancy test. The test was maybe positive — it was hard to tell. But it made me wonder about my test from this morning. Of course pregnancy tests (especially cheap ones) aren’t reliable if read after 10 minutes, but I headed to the bathroom to check, just in case. When I pulled the test out of the garbage I saw it.
A second line.
So I took another pregnancy test, not expecting much because first morning urine is the best to use for pregnancy tests (it was about 8 p.m. at that point). Within 15 seconds a second line appeared, and it was significantly darker than the one on the test from this morning.
It took a couple seconds to even register that I was reading it correctly. Did I accidentally take an ovulation test or something? But Minh confirmed — there were definitely two lines on both tests. I’m definitely pregnant.
While I wish I could say that I’m nothing but ecstatic, I’m honestly partially freaking out. I thankfully haven’t had a drop of alcohol since before conception/ovulation (which both happened on April 17, in case anyone’s wondering), but I drank a lot of coffee and Diet Coke. I mean, a lot of Diet Coke. And I ran a lot, which probably bounced poor little #THAB around quite a bit. And I touched up the purple on my bangs. And I cleaned the shower like three times and probably accidentally inhaled too much Scrubbing Bubbles.
But when I stop to think about it, I was just living. Had we not taken April off to avoid a Christmas baby, it would have probably taken us much longer to conceive. I wasn’t obsessing over my temperature chart this month, and I started taking better care of my mental and physical health — for me. The perfect environment for a little one to decide the time is right.
#TinyHalfAsianBaby is real, y’all. WE’RE HAVING A BABY!
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Answers
Today begins day one of cycle two, something I was bleakly hyperaware of as I scurried through the Tom Thumb self-checkout with $50 worth of super-plus tampons and Barefoot moscato. I’m of course upset, but I’m somehow not as upset as I thought I’d be. Because we won’t be trying to conceive in April in order to avoid a Christmas baby, I have about 31 days to drink all the wine and coffee I want. Minh (I think) is going to cut back on drinking and vaping in order to improve his sperm, because it takes three months for sperm to fully form and mature and stuff.
I think it’s funny how ten or fifteen years from now, my son/daughter may be reading this and will just laugh, because of course cycle one didn’t work out — it won’t work out for another three/five/ten cycles! It will be so obvious in ten years! But right now, it’s frustrating and scary to not know how things play out.
But tonight, I’m okay. I don’t have to worry yet. I don’t have to worry about whether or not this cycle will work out or if my baby is healthy. It didn’t work out. There is no baby. Those are the answers. I may not have a baby, but for now, at least I have answers. It’s a relief to know for sure that we have to wait a little longer.
By the time we conceive (no matter when that is), I’ll definitely have three months’ worth of folic acid and DHA and omega-3s in my system. And we won’t have a Christmas baby. So it’s okay.
Minh said that if June doesn’t work out (which would probably be cycle four), he’s willing to go to a urologist in July. So I rescheduled my reproductive endocrinologist appointment for the end of June, just to give ourselves some more time to try.
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The First Wait
Funny thing, bodies are. Turns out I did ovulate this month, and it happened to be the day before my super-emo post about how my body betrayed me. I was actually experiencing a slow ovulation rise. Ha!
So now that that hurdle is out of the way, my next concern was whether or not I conceived this month. I spent the past few days slightly worried about how I’ll react if this isn’t our month, but in the car on my ride home tonight, I found some sort of enlightenment. I was thinking about how crazy it is that 15 years from now I’ll have a child. I don’t know how old that child will be in 15 years or how that child will have been conceived, but I will have a child. It won’t matter that we had to wait two or three extra months for that child to come; in fact, it might make his/her appearance even more significant.
Will I be disappointed if this isn’t our month? Of course. Will I be angry or sad or frustrated or worried? Probably. But looking at it from a “bigger picture” standpoint, the next opportunity is just a couple weeks away.
Besides, once this wait is over, it’s just another wait for the first doctor’s appointment, the first ultrasound, the first heartbeat, the first kick, etc. Why not stop and enjoy not knowing for a second?
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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.
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Hormone-Free
Today was my last day on Nuvaring. While I’m thrilled to hit the “hormone-free” milestone in our journey, I’m a little fearful of my period for the next few months. But what can you do.
Oh, also, I had to discontinue the prenatals for the second time. They were causing shortness of breath in the mornings, which I recognized as the symptom that brought me to the urgent care clinic in September, right before my hospital stay. I scheduled a visit with my PCP on Tuesday and the doctor said that one, I’m allergic to something in the prenatals I’m taking, and two, I don’t need to take the fiber pills (I should just eat lots of fruits and vegetables).
She suggested that instead I take a a prescription pill called Neevo DHA. She explained that up to 80% of women have a mutation in the MTHFR gene (which, let’s be honest, we all kind of giggled when we read that) which means that they can’t metabolize folic acid. Neevo DHA has folic acid in its metabolized form. Only thing is, that means that the prenatals will now be one of the most expensive items in our baby budget. But because folic acid is important before you even get that positive pregnancy test, it’s something I’m totally willing to pay for to ensure healthy neural development. So on the plus side, my prenatal routine will go from 11 pills a day to one. Woohoo!
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Here We Go (Again)!
I started my prenatal vitamins today! They basically consist of six multivitamin tablets, a couple DHA/fish-oil pills, and a few fiber pills to keep everything flowing nicely. It would be super handy of the manufacturers to condense everything into one super-pill, but I’ve read that it’s better to separate the pills into smaller doses over the course of the day. Here’s the handful I’ll be swallowing for the next year or two. (At least I’ll have nice hair/nails in exchange for testing my gag reflex on a daily basis.)
I started prenatals about six months ago, but discontinued them while I was in the hospital for stomach ulcers. I’m sure that’s not what caused my stomach ulcers, but I’ve been afraid to touch the vitamins again out of fear of tearing up my stomach. But future #tinyhalfasianbaby’s brain needs these vitamins for healthy development, so I’m more than willing to try again! Here we go!
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So Here I Sit
I actually started this blog six months ago, but I abandoned it since the guilt of being a baby-obsessed psycho was getting to be too much for me. We started seriously planning for a baby last summer – and by seriously planned, I mean I even painted the nursery, sewed curtains, and created a baby quilt. All in the same mint-green, gray, and yellow elephant theme, of course. And when I say I painted the nursery, I mean I convinced Minh to do it. Although I did everything else, including sewing a stuffed elephant. But I digress…
It’s hard dealing with baby rabies. Friends’ babies plastered on Facebook and new pregnancy announcements what seems like daily, and I’m just over here drinking moscato and eating Oreo ice cream – basically doing anything I can to distract myself for three or four more months. But I’m telling myself that I’m doing my homework by waiting. Technically, we could start trying anytime, but I really, really don’t want a winter baby. We got married in the midst of an ice storm and I just don’t want to worry about dealing with driving in bad weather on #tinyhalfasianbaby’s peek-a-boo day.
So here I sit. Doing my homework: Reading about babies. Pinteresting nursery ideas. Avoiding Facebook.
Sigh. Only four months to go…
