Sunday, October 28, 2012

These Are A Few of My Favorite Things...

A lot of people talk about getting pregnant and how hard it is to lose your pre-pregnant body shape. I'm sure when I'm on the other side of this I will miss my body and be depressed about my new shape and new stretch marks. But really, I'm not that worried about it. There a lot of things women have to give up in order to actually carry a baby. It's a distinction between the sexes. We give up a lot more than men, in my humble opinion. But so many women do it knowingly and willingly.

For me, I knew I was ready to start trying when I realized I was wiling to sacrifice somewhat in my career. I've always been so driven by my academic goals (to get a Ph.D) and my career goals. I've worked very hard to get where I am and I work very, very hard in my job. But, I realized that all of that was no longer my priority. I am more excited about the idea of sitting at home and watching my baby grow up. Now, don't get me wrong...I get sad about the idea of somehow "falling behind" or "missing out" on opportunities at work. And I by no means am planning on being a stay-at-home-mom, but I definitely can get on board with the idea of working part-time. An idea that, only a year ago, I would have scoffed at. Part-time? Me? My career is way too important for that! Not anymore. In fact, the idea of having a baby makes the annoyances of work seems so trivial.

So, if I'm not worried about getting fat or getting behind in my career, what, you may ask, am I sad about sacrificing?

Two very specific things.

Thing Number One:

Wine.

Seriously, I know this will make me sound like I have a little bit of a problem, but I absolutely love wine. I love the smell of it, the taste of it, the act of opening a bottle and sharing it with someone...just the overall experience of wine. It is a hobby for me, a pleasure, and something I share with my husband and friends. Not only that, it helps me to relax, damnnit! Soooo without wine, I will miss out on my evening ritual to calm down after a difficult day at work. I will miss out on participating in a large portion of social events with my friends. And I will miss the experience of sharing a bottle of wine with my husband on a Friday night. *sigh*

Thing Number Two:

Horseback riding. I have ridden my entire life and currently ride Dressage (you know, where the horses dance around prettily like in the Olympics?) at least once or twice a week. It is another stress relief and major hobby for me. At one point in my life, it was more than a hobby, but now, it's just something I enjoy doing. Some women choose to ride throughout their entire pregnancy. Some ride through the first trimester. But really, it's just too dangerous for me to consider it. The movement itself can cause placental abruption and then, if you fall, well...not likely to end well. And yeah, yeah...I haven't fallen in years (knock on wood), but the point is, with horses, you can never be 100% sure. And so yes, some women choose to keep riding. But then again, some women also choose to keep drinking wine.

What will you miss?

Friday, October 26, 2012

"When was the..."



"When was the first day of your last menstrual cycle?"

As long as I've been going for annual pap smears, that has been the hardest question in the world for me to answer. I usually stare blankly at the nurse and emit an intelligent-sounding noise like, "Uhhh...." Then I just arbitrarily pick a date a few weeks ago. Seriously. I have never had any idea as to the answer that question, besides, "uhhhh.....whenever my birth control placebos started last?"

So, if anything, at least now I will be able to answer that question!



#propsforlearningaboutmybody

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Caution: You Could Get Pregnant If You Proceed

I had an epiphany last night: I am having unprotected sex! Oh shit! I could get pregnant! What the hell am I thinking????

Anyone else ever had this oh-so-important epiphany?

Haha, but no, seriously. One thing you should know about me is that every since I went to grad school I have been converted into a "researcher." I love to have some sort of project that I am researching and learning more about. For example, when we went to Argentina, I researched the hell out of that trip. So much so that I was a walking guidebook for my husband and our friends.

My friend: "Hmm I could definitely go for some ice cream right now." Me: "Actually, Argentina is known for its ice cream. It is similar to gelatto, but not quite. In fact, if we walk two more blocks and take a right we will run into a wonderful little heladeria..."

or...

My husband: "I wonder what the temperature will be like when we get to Mendoza?" Me: "Actually, the climate this time of year is extremely hot, due to the fact that it is their summer right now. We should probably all wear shorts."

You get the idea??

Soooo when it came time to "making a baby," I researched that too. Way too much. So now I can't stop thinking about it. I also have this bad habit of wanting to do everything just "perfectly" or "just right." So of course, the more I knew about baby-making, the better job I could do at it. Now here I am, armed with a ton of overly scientific knowledge about how babies are made (which I now realize I probably should have known before age 30!), and I am set to do it right.

But then....*BAM!* Last night after, well, trying to make a baby, I realized, "What the hell did I just do? I could get pregnant!!!" Ha. Duh. Now, don't take me wrong, I have done a lot of soul searching and had a lot of deep, difficult conversations with my husband about this. I know (as much as I can) what I am getting into and I am as ready as I can be. But I still think that my methodical researching this to death syndrome has kept me somewhat removed from the fact that my entire body, world, career, relationship, LIFE will (*fx*) soon change. And for some reason, last night, it all came shockingly, excitingly crashing into me.

Holy shit.


Tuesday, October 23, 2012

The Pot Calling the Kettle



So being the dorky person that I am, I have researched this TTC stuff to the extreme. That means I have spent a lot of time lurking on forums. Wow, even the word "lurking" makes me sound like a super-creep. But I really have.

DISCLAIMER: If you somehow were directed here from a forum about TTC, please do not take offense at what I am about to say!!

But seriously people, spending so much time thinking about our own bodies can't be good for us. Before I joined your ranks, I read this forums and I thought "Are these women serious?" I mean, stop thinking that every time you sneeze or your left pinky toe itches, that means you could be pregnant.

Now, here I am on Day 8 of my very first cycle and I have officially plunged head first into a swamp of psychosomaticism. Without a life jacket.

How, you might ask, do I know that I've gone off the deep end? Because it is Day 8 and I am confused that I am having ovulation pain. Seriously? Ovulation pain was the one I used to scoff at the most. Did you really feel that or did you just eat a burrito? Ha.

But, I take it back. I apologize for all of the times I rolled my eyes and sighed dramatically at the overexaggerated attention to every little symptom. It's really too difficult not to join in. Sadly, I can understand this phenomenon from a psychological perspective. Listen close. We're not crazy. The mind and the body are strongly connected. If you wanted to feel ovulation pain, you probably are feeling ovulation pain. If you want to have sore boobs, then sore they will be. Because you're mind tells your mind that it is happening and so you interpret that it accordingly. We can even cause the sensations to really be happening.

What we can't cause is a pregnancy borne out of willing it to happen.

So, I am going to mentally shake myself a little bit and go do something more productive. Like, watch America's Next Top Model.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

A weekend of debauchery

One thing you should know about me if we're going to be friends: I absolutely LOVE wine. I spent the past three days with my husband and two other couple friends of ours, in wine country north of our home, drinking way too much wine and eating good food. It was a blast. Whenever my husband and I go tasting, we always end up buying way too much wine. This time, we did as we usually do, and came home with almost 3 cases of wine. When we were buying it, we kept looking at each other and I know we both were thinking "What are we doing?" I mean, why buy so much wine if I won't be able to drink it? Obviously, that doesn't mean we'll stop having dinner parties or he'll stop drinking or we can save it for the future and let it age. But STILL. I think we both were struck by what a change it will be.

I mean truly, the six of us spent last night around a campfire going through 5 bottles of wine. NOT going to happen with a kid in our life. So...things change. And I won't lie and say that it's not frightening and a little sad to me. It's fun to have a weekend away just feeling young and enjoying company of friends and tasting good wines. Being selfish with our lives and enjoying them for ourselves, without children.

It really is amazing what we are willing to give up for everything that we hope to gain, isn't it?

Cycle Note: I'm now on CD 6 and officially waiting to ovulate for the first time since I got on birth control 13 years ago. We shall see I guess. I took my temperature early this morning after our night of wine drinking and it had shot up 3 entire degrees. Pretty sure I was still drunk when I took my temp, so that may be faulty data!!

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Salud!

Well, now I can officially say I am on CD 3. Hooray! I feel like I joined some type of club. How exciting. I'm embarrassed to write this, but the whole point of this blog was to be able to write my nerdy, obsessive little thoughts, right? So here goes: I am so excited about all of this that I actually get excited to wake up in the morning to take my temperature. I can't be the only one who feels this way....right? Ha. Anyhow, I've become an addict at looking at my FF app, as if that will make the time pass quicker and give me some clues as to what the future holds. Yeah right.

Aside from this obvious excitement, this weekend is also a bit of a milestone for me. My husband and I are going away for a wine tasting weekend. We planned this weekend exactly three months ago with two other couples, just because the six of us love wine. Later, when I looked at my birth control packs and counted ahead, I realized that this trip would fall right after I finished my last pack. This happened when I was trying to decide when to start trying and whether to refill my prescription for more birth control. Well, this just seemed like too much of a sign. A weekend away drinking wine before I settle down to baby-making? Must be made to be :) So this weekend will find me, sitting in the sunshine, toasting to my friends and having a great time. Only my husband and I will know this is a little bit of a "bachelorette party" for my womb. Enjoy the vino, body, because I'm going to miss it!

Another oddly-timed event is that I went to dinner with a friend last night. A friend I haven't seen in six months. This friend also happens to be the friend I referred to earlier who has been having fertility problems for the last 2.5 years. So I sat with her in a Japanese restaurant, awkwardly trying to spear food with chopsticks and still express the shock and amazement at her story. I was amazed by her courage, the pure bad luck, the pain (physical and emotional) and the anxiety of her story. I was also terrified.

At the end of the night, and after multiple comments from her about other friends and acquaintances who have gotten pregnant, I felt as if someone was poking me with a needle to say something. I mean, here I was, on Cycle Day 2 of my first cycle trying, and she is telling me about a close friend that she no longer talks to because she had a baby? (I mean, ok, there was more to the story and said friend had been a complete bitch, etc, etc, but STILL). So I said, awkwardly, something along the lines of, "You know, this is hard for me, because I am sitting here listening to this and feeling guilty about the fact that I will soon be trying to have kids myself and I feel so badly about that and don't want it to cause problems." Or something like that. But even less eloquent. She promptly, without even having to think about it, replied, "Don't worry about it. I know it's going to happen. Just don't surprise me. Like, tell me when you stop taking your birth control."

Shit.

Me: "Ummmm...."

Her: "Oh, you've already stopped, huh?"

Me: (tiny lie) "Well, next month we're starting trying..."

How weird. Why did I lie? Why didn't I say yes? I mean, technically, it's true, we are going to be trying in November, since we're halfway through October, but what happened that I couldn't just say, "yes, I just started."

I don't know. But small white lie aside, it ended up being a great conversation and I was amazed by her openness and depth of understanding about where she is and how she has come to be where she is.

Cheers to my friend and other women out there in whatever stage of trying/waiting they may be. I will lift a glass of wine to you all this weekend.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Waiting...

After reading/lurking a lot of trying to conceive forums, it seems to me that trying to get pregnant is really just a lot of waiting. Waiting to ovulate, waiting to test, waiting, waiting...Well, I've been waiting to start trying and today here I am waiting for Cycle Day 1. It could be today or it could be tomorrow. I can see why people say that charting is bad for your sanity. It basically takes normal people and turns them into people with Obsessive-Compulsive personalities. I mean, people begin to over-think, over-analyze and basically obsess over every little detail of their bodies. It divides your life up into these odd little segments of time, waiting for this...waiting for that...when really everyone is just waiting for the same big thing.

The odd thing is, even though I can see how it could be unhealthy and anxiety-provoking, I am silly excited to jump in and try it myself. Ironic, no? I guess because lately I haven't found the same satisfaction from work that I always have. I don't know if this lack of satisfaction is due to my new job not panning out to be all that I had hoped, or just due to the fact that I am re-prioritizing my life. Either way, the idea of having this "secret game" with myself of waiting and watching, is kind of exciting.

I mean, I've never really thought about my body so much before. The idea of not having birth control pills coursing through my system and just allowing my body to go back to being a woman is exciting. I'm excited to see what happens with it. Hopefully, if it takes my body months to re-regulate and start being normal again after birth control, I can remember this excitement about "just letting things go back to normal." Someone please remind me to re-read this post if I am agonizing and bitching in three months about how much BCP have screwed up my body? ;)

*A side note here after re-reading what I've written. It's a weird feeling to be writing this blog. Most of the women on the forums are on those forums because they are having difficulty conceiving. I mean, most women just get pregnant and don't over-obsess so much (leave it to me to jump on the obsession-wagon). So finger-crossed that I will be one of the ones who does not have major problems conceiving, it seems kind of sad to be writing this blog about how "excited" I am, when other women out there have felt so much agony going through this process. I have a good friend who has been dealing with this for almost two years now and I cringe to think about what she would think/feel if she read what I have written about being "excited to try."

That said, this is my own journey and I am going to approach it how I will.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Good news!

A good friend told me she was pregnant today! Unfortunately, she's not a friend that lives close so I don't get to experience it all with her, but it's still just that much more exciting. I have another friend who is due to go into labor any day now. I know its no shock that my cohort is taking the same step as me, but it's not something I ever paid attention to before. Maybe I'm too self-focused. For example, I had never given a thought to weddings before I got married and so I was totally clueless about planning a wedding (wedding colors? what the hell are those?). It seems to be the same with pregnancy and babies.

Even though for my job I am well-aware of developmental milestones, important questions about healthy pregnancies, and all things kid-related, I don't really know that much about pregnancy. Or babies, for that matter. This same friend who is now 3 months pregnant had a little girl about two years ago. While she was pregnant, I didn't really know what to say or ask, besides "Congratulations!" and "How are you feeling?" This time I felt much more excited and asked some (just some) pertinent questions. I'm happy for her and happy that this whole process has been very smooth and easy for her. I really hope some of that rubs off on me...