TTC: CHART 11 (8/4/14-9/4/14)

Over a year of charting, and only two ovulatory cycles to show for. A two out of 13 chance of conceiving. The odds are against me. In middle school family life education, they make it seem like boy cooties sneezed your way are enough to knock you up –who knows it would be this hard? I play the cards I am dealt, even though they turn out to be rounds and rounds of crappy hands. I try to become savvy enough to win. I have been doing acupuncture for six months and add Preseed and Conceive Plus lubes to the mix. My husband’s and my nightly ritual consists of shoving our smartphones at each other, me to show elevated temperatures on a Basal Body Temperature chart, and him to show elevated Wall Street efforts of the stocks he’s following. I'm sure neither of us cares as much about each other's data as our own. I always second-guess what is “normal”—something that works wonders for one woman may wreak havoc on another woman's cycle. Such a quandary to figure out the magic beans/secret sauce.

At the end of the both dreadful and coveted “Two Week Wait,” I reach the "can't sleep, can't think, can't work" level of distraction, hoping to make it past the mark of my normal Luteal Phase (LP), the second part of the cycle where temperatures remain elevated to indicate healthy progesterone levels. I can’t even concentrate long enough to maintain a normal conversation with people. I lose sleep over what my temperature will be for that day, then get paranoid and try to go back to sleep to record an accurate temperature, defined as your first waking temperature after at least 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep. It’s a mind-screw to keep temping, listening to the constant beep of the thermometer as it displays your cycle’s destiny, but you can’t stop, can’t give up. I contemplate how Daylight Saving Time would affect chart accuracy with as deep concentration as I give to the meaning of life. 

Ovulation Predictor Kits and Home Pregnancy Tests become necessary evil expenses, aggravated by the fact that PMS symptoms can mimic early-pregnancy symptoms, and I won’t know the difference as I never had a basis for comparison. When my cycle ends, my resolve wavers, and months of staying away from baddies like booze end in a binge night where I break into all available alcohol in the house: merlots, daiquiris, margaritas. I forget my woes for a night and then go back to pitying myself the next morning, not to mention feeling bad over my yo-yo dieting behavior with booze.

My attendance in aikido becomes less and less; I am afraid the rough impact of rolling, being pinned, and constantly falling and getting back up will be bad for a fertilized egg to successfully implant. I quit and take to domestic activities such as gardening, cooking, jamming, dehydrating newly ripened apples and persimmons, knitting, and paper crafting, hoping that all this domestic juju will prove fruitful for a future cycle. Maybe if I start to do more girly things, my body will somehow pick up on the nurturing and feminine aspects to create a baby. When my head becomes lost in concentrating on a pattern or piecing together something creative, I don't think so much over the many sadnesses of my TTC journey, and it's harder to feel like a failure or that I'm inept if I am creating beautiful things to "pay it forward" and give to others.

Tomato plants grown from seed

Blenheim apricot jam with chili

Fuyu persimmons to be dehydrated

Knitted scarf

Stampin' Up paper crafting

Traveling is hard on TTC'ers because different time zones can mess up your cycles, not to mention having to drag around tools like your OPKs, HPTs, and basal thermometer, and remembering to take all your prescription medicine. You end up trading one life goal in hopes of achieving another on time.

A coworker comes back to work after maternity leave. This boggles my mind as a woman has gotten pregnant, carried a baby to full term, birthed her, and has spent 3 months taking care of and bonding with her, all the while I'm still trying. They are working out the keys to the Lactation Room for her, a room that I ironically get moved closer and closer to during cube rearrangement, one that I hope to one day be in. I smile and welcome her back as we pass each other in the hall. I just wish my heart can genuinely feel what my smile conveys, but it's tearing me up inside. I sit at work, stare aimlessly at my computer screen, and struggle not to show my feelings in cubes with low walls. I wish I can be a better person than what TTC is slowly making me become.

Takeaways: Writing is therapeutic for the soul in times of distress.

Alone again in this house,
Furnished with hope, stocked with dreams,
I dream of you.
That I would feel your heaviness in my arms
As I teach you the names of the fruits and plants and tendrils that unfurl toward the sun,
Hold your tight fist as they grab me for support,
You taking your first clumsy steps toward the rosebush your father
Planted for me all those years ago.
 

People miss what they had and lost.
I yearn for something never there,
Its memory an ache in my core,
Its presence a ghostly shadow on the rough terrain of my heart.