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!