Day one, again.

I'm not pregnant. Actually my period started while I was typing that last blog post. Maybe that's why all the intense anxiety I had at the beginning just melted away halfway through. So, now I'm on day one of my pregnancy, right, since they start counting from the first day of your last period? And for all intents and purposes this will be my last period, right?

The Moment of Truth

I am amazed how desperate I feel right now for my period NOT to start today, tomorrow, or the next day. I know that pregnancy is really not very likely this time and nothing that I do or think or feel can make one smidgon of difference in the matter right now, but I just want it sooooooo muuuuuuuuuch. I honestly feel nervously sick to my stomach (and no, I am not even pretending that is morning sickness) every time I sit down and think about it. I am really trying to avoid sitting down and thinking about it.

I hope that after this cycle I will feel a little less desperate as they come and go. I think the intensity of the obsession this time probably is a combination of circumstances that this is my first cycle since having Rhys (so it's all brand new all over again) and that Kevin is out of town and I don't know when he will be back (meaning I don't know when we will actually be able to try again).

Whew. I think just typing this out loud to the world helped me feel a little better. The most rediculous thing is that when I think about having another child right now, I'm pretty ambivalent. I generally like the idea, but then I always like the idea. But my arms aren't aching for that tiny, snuggly body quite yet. This is probably good, since one isn't immenent in the immediate future. But it makes me feel silly for being so desperate to be pregnant. I think at this point I'm more excited about another chance at childbirth than I am about actually having the baby here.

And please, no one read this and think I am an immature, egocentric mother who only wants children on a whim of the moment, who tries to have children with no desire or plan of caring for and loving them. This is only the fleeting feelings of the moment I am describing. I always have an intense, burning desire in my soul to welcome and nurture children of my Heavenly Father into this world and love them up throughout their entire life in righteousness. And I want exactly as many of them as and at exactly the times that God plans as the ideal for my family.

That said, my period probably will start today, or tomorrow, or at most on Sunday. And on Monday I will know I am pregnant. :) Cheers!

Plotting

I'm alread plotting how I will tell Kevin when I can officially say that I am pregnant (only after 14 days of high temperatures). But because I'm sure that I am, I have to figure these things out ahead of time. Usually Kevin is in on all the agonizing over everytime my temperature goes up, so there's really not a point when I tell him--he just knows everything I know whenever I know it. But he's not here, so I can't agonize to him every day.

I thought about how he doesn't know, but then I realized he could read my blog just like everyone else if he wanted to know.

But I'm still plotting: Make him guess it over a chat one night? Send him pictures? Wait until he gets home to tell him anything? Let Willow be the one to tell them? The possibilities are vurtually endless. Now to wait until I can officially confirm or deny the pregnancy I'm mentally sure I already have. Because the last two days temperatures have been higher and higher than the ones before them. And I don't feel different, really, in any way at all. And both times I was pregnant, I mostly didn't feel different from how I felt all the time, so feeling absolutely, eerily the same as always is practically proof of pregnancy. Am I right?

Mental Pregnancy, Day 8

Neoma did it and I’m not sure I’m glad. I was perfectly content to assume that I was anovulatory because I had not yet had a bleeding period since weaning Rhys. Recording my temperature right now has been almost entirely a formality. There was a small purpose of having proof against myself so I couldn’t psych myself in to thinking I have ovulated. I have not been looking for patterns. And I haven’t seen any either, until today.

I’m trying to remember what it was that Neoma said, or what our conversation was about, but I can’t. The conclusion of it was, however, that she told me she didn’t have an anovulatory bleeding period before she ovulated for the first time after Benji. What? Don’t tell me things like that. This was my shield of sanity. I haven’t bled yet therefore I don’t have to worry about being pregnant. I really believed it.

Besides that, I haven’t dried up from nursing Rhys. It’s been more than 2 weeks and I’m still leaking. Surely if my cycle was going to start again before I dried up, it would have started much earlier after weaning Rhys. Forget the fact that I really never felt like I dried up at all after Willow. I wasn’t leaking, but I just had this feeling like if at any time I tried nursing again there would be something there for her.

Over the last week or so, I have had my ever-present litany of evidences that I am pregnant—my tummy seems to be sticking out oddly, I gained 1.5 lbs last week when I have been continually losing weight up to now, my carpel tunnel syndrome seems to be worse, and most pervasively, I freakishly lose my balance doing simple things—but they were merely perfunctory. I knew I was not pregnant. Not only that, I knew there was not a high likelihood of pregnancy in the near future—my husband is at sea! So there is no reason to even be worried about this. I almost stopped tracking my temperature a few days ago because I was so convinced nothing was happening. I was still going to take it, just not waste the paper to write it down unless something major happened, like the temperature went up, or I started bleeding. But I decided to keep recording it anyway, because the temperature did go up after being down for a couple of days. Before that it was up, before that it was down. The typical erratic non-pattern of my non-menstrual non-cycles. Or maybe not.

Neoma’s comment about pre-bleeding ovulation led me to look at my chart again. If I had ovulated, then I could begin to figure out some approximation of when I may ovulate again, and when I should start getting anxious for Kevin to be home to take advantage of it, and when that would mean the baby would be due.

For the last 3 days, my temperature has been up, consistently more than half a degree than what it was prior to that. I could be 3 days into this cycle. Oh, wait. Before those 3 days were only 2 days of a low temperature, and it was consistently high (exactly the same 97.2) for 3 days in a row. And prior to that, it was consistently either 96.8 or 96.9. These temperatures are not erratic at all. They are very consistent. In fact, they have been totally consistent since two days into this tracking period, which I started a couple of days into weaning Rhys. An estrogen dip a few days after ovulation is not uncommon, producing one or two days of low temperature. If this happened to me, that would mean that I am possibly 8 days into my luteal phase.

But wait, there’s more! After the 2 day temp. dip, my temp. didn’t just go back up to where it was, it went higher—97.3 then 97.5 for two days. Is that a second thermal shift I detect? Because it is at the right time--day 6 or 7, just in time for implantation! No, no. That’s crazy talk. The first temperature spike didn’t happen until after Kevin was gone. But only 3 days after he left. That is still within the realm of feasibility. If it is meant to be, it is definitely possible. Is this what my inexplicable happy feelings every time I think about having another baby even in the face of no evidence that one will be forthcoming have been trying to tell me?

Oh, yes, I am back. I am back with a vengeance. When I first discovered this this morning and then sat down to write this blog I was mad. I was writing out of frustration and outrage at Neoma for doing this to me. I was plotting how I would march upstairs and throw my temperature chart down in front of her and give her the “You Did This to Me!” bawl-out. But going through it all here, I’m suddenly not frustrated any more. I’m really excited. I was upset that my carefully constructed protections had been so frivolously swept aside. I didn’t really believe that I was pregnant, I was just mad that there was enough evidence to make a plausible argument. But having hashed and re-hashed it all several times now this morning, I think I have convinced myself. I am pregnant. I’m sure I am. And so I am happy to be back. Hello Hypopregnia!

The Gauntlet

The gauntlet has been thrown. The challenge has been made. Neoma is Pregnant.

Yesterday I didn't see her for most of the day, and when she came home in the evening I was at the computer. She asked if I had read her blog yet today. I said no and she told me I should. I said OK.

A couple of minutes later she walked by, noticed I wasn't reading it yet and said, "You're not reading my blog fast enough." Ever oblivious (I totally didn't see Kevin's marriage proposal coming, either), I opened her blog in a different tab, then went back to what I was doing before reading it.

A couple of minutes later Neoma walked up behind me and tossed something right next to my hands on the keyboard--a pregnancy test with a grinning blue + in the middle of it.

I'm so happy for Neoma. And a little sad we don't get to enjoy any of our hypopregnia together this time around (I'm not there yet, and, well, she's officially over it for the next year). But mostly I'm happy. I'm actually not jealous (at least deep down. There is a little surface jealousy). I am content knowing the the Lord is doing my family planning. My body is exactly where it should be because I am doing what He asks me to do and leaving the rest to Him. And this is a kind of peace that no money, nor any amount of scheduling, planning, tracking, drugs, or intervention can buy.