I had the dream again. Well, slightly different – in this dream I was thinking about the other dream, thinking, “Well at least this one’s not a dream!” I don’t know if this is my mind’s way of laughing at me, but it’s really not too funny.

All I can hope is that my body knows something I don’t and that this is a good sign. If it’s not, it’s going to make me cry even more.

Last night I had a dream. Den and I were bargaining, and what I got out of the bargain was to test early. For some reason he did it for me, though… he went into a bathroom and took forever. (Am I to assume my pee was already in there??) It was torture waiting. When he came out he had a little test, and when I looked I saw two pink lines. I started crying. I ran around showing everyone. I grabbed a camera and took a million pictures to get the right one.

And then I woke up. It was so depressing to wake up and realize that it was just a dream.

I hope this is a good sign. But more likely, it’s a sign of my obsessive impatience.

This month’s post-O temps are very consistent. It’s a little weird. Especially due to the fact that my waking times have been all over the map this month. I figure I’m going to continue this temping thing, since it does seem to work, but I’m just not going to stress about when I wake up – just me getting several hours of sleep strung together is an accomplishment. So I’m hoping that these stable temps are a good sign. Although I’m of the opinion that temps mean absolutely nothing until you get near the end of your LP. There really don’t seem to be any “indicators” of pregnancy until the end when it jumps up instead of drops down. But eh, I keep looking for something to give me hope.

Yesterday my stomach area was feeling funny. I was eating quite a bit – mostly junkfood, I’m afraid – and my stomach had this pinching, light cramping feeling on the left side. I don’t know if it was from the food, from the lifting I’d done at work on monday, or something else. Here’s hoping for the “something else.”

I’m finding that the first week after O goes by quickly enough. I have other things on my mind. There’s nothing to obsess over yet. We did our job, now it’s just the wait. But after about a week it really starts to drag and I start getting impatient – not that I was really patient to begin with.

I’ve set my first testing date as saturday (11dpo). Early, as always, on the off-chance I’m one of the lucky few. AF is scheduled to arrive next tuesday. So we shall see.

A very well-meaning woman that I know online emailed me specifically to tell me to relax. I only brought up TTC in a thread because one of the other women there are pregnant, and I congratulated her but mentioned that I may or may not be replying to baby threads, because of our situation – I just didn’t want her to take it personally, the “it’s not you, it’s me” thing. ;) I tend to be upfront like that.

But what do you reply to the “just relax”? I didn’t want to spaz out – okay, I did want to, but thought it was a bad idea – because the woman is very nice, I like her, I know she’s well-meaning. But arrgggggg. Arg. What I ended up doing was mentioning that, scientifically, “relaxing” doesn’t change the probability of the outcome (unless stress is messing with ovulation). I then went on to just explain our situation a little (since she brought it up) and hopefully get across some of the sadness and frustration we feel. And point out that we don’t know if there’s a medical problem or not.

On the plus side, she didn’t say that relaxing will solve all TTC problems – she prefaced it with, “If you have done testing and know you are ovulating and hubby’s sperm count is good…” So that to me says that at least she understands there are bigger problems. So I just replied that we don’t really know yet – beyond knowing that my charts say I’m ovulating (there can be problems beyond that that we don’t know, unfortunately, like insufficient uterine lining) and we’ll be finding out Den’s SA next month, we don’t really know. That’s part of what makes this so frustrating right now, because every month of negatives make us think that something is wrong and we just don’t know what it is.

Yes, I definitely ovulated!! And… FF gave me coverlines! Solid lines, too. Oh how sad is it that this gets me very excited. It’s saying exactly what I was thinking, anyways – ovulation on CD 15. My temp was already slightly starting to rise that morning, and my CM the rest of the day was creamy, so I’m thinking I ovulated early in the morning while I was sleeping. Just conjecture, of course. But that one afternoon of sex is great timing, 2 days before. And since we hadn’t had sex in days, I’m hoping that’s just what we needed.

Now on to the horrible 2 week wait.

My tactic this month: I am not using my laptop in bed. I haven’t for a week, since I put it on the dining room table for sunshine reasons. And now I’m going to try really hard not to tote it back into the bedroom. I’m worried about the heat of it hurting any little zygote. I know any normal person would have removed the laptop at once, but that is SO hard for me, even harder than cutting out lots of sweets from my diet (seriously). I LOVE snuggling into bed with my laptop and working on stuff. I feel so exposed out here sitting at a table… and so uncomfortable. Anyways, if I do end up getting my BFP I’ll ask my midwife whether or not it’s okay. I forgot to ask last time I was in. Doh.

My chart is looking fairly likely that I ovulated about two days ago, right when I thought I did. However, even putting in fake temps for tomorrow and the next day, I’m not getting a cover line. probably because I missed a temp on CD14. But it’s still annoying me. CD14’s temp shouldn’t matter, as CD15 was about the same level as all the previous ones. Missing days is inevitable for me, and it annoys me greatly that FF can’t figure something out, even dotted lines, when it happens. But either way, I’m pretty sure I ovulated. Tomorrow’s temp will confirm.

On a completely non-parenting/TTC/Pregnancy forum the topic came up, someone mentioned they (married couple) were starting TTC. Me and someone else wished them luck and pointed them towards Fertility Friend and TCOYF. What struck me, beyond the obvious hope and excitement, was the expectation. Just like I had when we started. You think, at most, it will take 3 months to get pregnant. A fall baby is good, yes, this is a good time to start. You rarely see someone starting TTC saying, “Well our long-term plan, if we don’t get pregnant…” You just don’t see it. People think that you stop birth control, you get pregnant. Easy as that.

Someone replied to the thread with some advice. And then laughed about how she went off birth control and weeks later was pregnant. She said her husband was disappointed because he wanted to “have more fun trying.” I know the comment was not directed to me in any way, and was in no way intended to be hurtful or annoying – but it just made me twitch. It brought back to me Den’s relatives shrugging off my concerns when I mentioned that it had been months and months with no pregnancy by saying, “Enjoy trying!” It’s an insulting statement, and I can’t quite put my finger on why.

Maybe because it dismisses all the pain that we’re feeling, instead telling us that this should be enjoyable and fun. I really get my nose out of joint when people from the outside of my life tell me how and what I should be enjoying. It’s like my mother trying to convince me that using phones is fun and that I am simply crazy for having panic attacks when trying to use them. It diminishes my feelings.

And also, it rubs in what others have and we do not. Those who say “enjoy it!” are ones who got pregnant quickly, with no clue what a mess this TTC thing can be. Similar to statements such as, “He just needs to look at me and I get pregnant!” it further points out that for some people it’s an easy thing. It makes it obvious that we are not “normal.” As many TTCers, I really don’t like to be reminded how easy it is for other people to get pregnant.

Part of me is frustrated that so many people are completely oblivious to all of this, and I wish they could understand. On the other hand, I am glad that others don’t need to go through this. I’m sure, when I finally do get pregnant, it will all fade for me as well and I can stop twitching at innocent comments.

Well, no sex again yesterday… or the day before. I’ve been so tired. Last night I just went to bed at 9pm, way before Den goes to bed. He was busy. And of course I fell asleep. So when he came to bed and snuggled up to me, asking if possibly any sex was in his immediate future my initial reaction was to think, Don’t touch me, let me go back to sleep! Okay, so that was my only reaction, though I didn’t quite say that outloud. He mumbled a bit about hating the pillow he’s using, and I pretended I didn’t hear him because I don’t want to give the good pillow up. And I fell back asleep.

I feel a little bit of guilt/panic over that, because I don’t know when I’m ovulating?? Probably was yesterday. But I don’t know that for sure. So we should have had sex. But man, we need to start putting our focus on that at a time of day other than when I’m dead asleep.

But then I think, every other month we’ve been having sex every other day or even every day, and it hasn’t done diddly squat. So maybe this will make the difference? Hopefully.

I did not need to read this.

Not.

Dear Baby,

I’m hoping you are being conceived right this very minute – or at least in the next few days. Nothing would make me happier.

One day, when you feel like the world is a crappy place and you are angry with me, you are going to say, “I didn’t ask to be born!” (I know, because I used it myself on more than one occassion.) But you know what – I did. Me and your daddy both. And I’ll probably needed to be reminded of that fact a few times. But be nice about it, because believe it or not your mom’s a very sensitive person.

Maybe someday I will let you read all my writing, and you’ll be amazed at what we went through to have you. (And you’ll also say, “Eewwww, MOM, I don’t want to know about you and dad having sex!” Sorry kiddo, that’s just how it works.)

Love, Mama