In the Whirlwind; or, Updates at 26 Weeks (2 Days)

I failed my one-hour glucose screening. Not by a lot: my practice's cut-off is 129 and my glucose level was 135. From what I've read, this is below the cut-off in less conservative practices. But the upshot is I'll be taking the three-hour Glucose Tolerance Test on Wednesday morning.

I was pretty upset when I got the results from the office. I had visions of testing my blood four times a day and of insulin shots. Of no more sweets or fruit or carbs. I felt like a failure-- I've tried to eat healthfully, with lots of fresh vegetables, next to no packaged or pre-prepared foods, and only the occasional treat. My weight gain has been a moderate, steady 2 pounds a month throughout second tri. How could I possibly have gestational diabetes?

This will sound whiny, so I apologize in advance, but I'd been feeling really good physically lately and was both grateful and proud of it. After all the struggle to get to this point, it was such a source of pride and comfort that my body seemed to like being pregnant. We might have had trouble making healthy babies in the first place, but once we (apparently, cross fingers) got one, everything seemed to be going well. The thought that my body was betraying me once again got me very down.

But after talking to various people, including my mother (who had GD after gaining 50 pounds in one of her four pregnancies), I feel a lot better. I've been able to mostly put the upcoming GTT out of my mind and focus on more immediate tasks and pleasures this weekend. I've also gathered that if I have GD, I'll probably be able to deal with it through diet modifications that don't seem too awfully restrictive. I should be able to manage them even while traveling in California. And there's a reasonable chance that I'll pass this second test (I hope so!), especially given the borderline result on the first.

And of course, the only important thing is that Smudgie is healthy. As long as he or she continues to thrive, I will take whatever comes my way.

* * *
Otherwise, life is busy but happy here in the Sloper household. We continue to make progress cleaning out the second bedroom--we've got bags and bags of books and CDs to donate next week. We're researching renovating that closet to make better use of the space and trying to find an affordable solution. We're thinking about ordering some baby furniture in a month or so. We did order (with my mother) the invitations to my upcoming Labor Day baby shower.

We also went Facebook official last weekend. After the 25-week growth scan, I consented to let Lawyer Guy say something (which he had been champing at the bit to do for months). While I'm still scared and worried about something going wrong, I also know that at this point I would want to publicly acknowledge Smudgie no matter what happens, so an announcement feels like less of a threat.

We bounced some ideas for what he could say back and forth for a while, but nothing really sparked. He wanted something more than a bare-bones "We're expecting a baby in October" post and I didn't want anything self-aggrandizing or too attention-seeking. Then last Saturday, while we were walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, we spotted a giant orange construction sign reading "Bump Ahead". So I posed in front of it showing the bump off in profile and we posted the picture without explanation and that was that.

The response to our announcement was sweet, but not over-the-top and I feel happy about the way we handled it. Because it was all so impulsive, I didn't have time to warn my friends still suffering with IF to hide my profile. But I hope that the post being so simple helped with whatever pain it might have caused. Over the past week, a few people have congratulated me on my wall, and I've thanked them as simply and briefly as I can. I haven't posted anything about the experience of being pregnant and I don't know if I will. I don't feel the need to, honestly. But I may post a few nursery pictures when it's finished and I plan to upload a picture of Smudgie after the birth along with his or her name, assuming all goes well.

* * *
In one week (on our fourth wedding anniversary!) I'll finally be in the third trimester. LG leaves for an out-of-town hearing in two weeks. I leave for California in four weeks. My baby shower is two weeks after we return. I officially take my oral exam (qualifying exam for my doctorate) on September 9th, the day I turn 36 weeks.

There's a lot to do and not much time to do it in. But there's also so much to celebrate, and I am so happy to be celebrating this summer. I may not have time to write much in the upcoming months until my exam is finished. But I am trying to savor every happy and special moment to its fullest.

Dr. Even-More-Wonderful; or Results and Predictions.

I got confirmation today that I am indeed a smarty-smarty, because my haphazardly chosen nickname for Dr. Wonderful is turning out to be so, so apt. She is really wonderful. I have never felt such relief and comfort after having radioactive dye injected into my nether regions.

So first of all, the results of the HSG were all clear: no obstructions in uterus, tubes flowing freely, everything where it should be and looking good. I was SUPER nervous for the procedure, but Dr. Wonderful talked me through it, making sure I knew what was going to happen at each step, making little jokes to calm me down, and even switching to a smaller catheter when I seemed to be having a lot of discomfort from the original one. She was so great.

Then Lawyer Guy and I headed back across the street to the clinic to monitor my response to the Clomid and to talk about the results of last week's SA (because Dr. W called me, LG never got a chance to speak with her about them). My follies are all still really small, so Dr. W said to come back on Friday to check them out again. We may need to bump up an additional round of Clomid at that point if they still haven't grown much, but she's hopeful she'll be able to do the trigger then and schedule the IUI for the weekend. I hope it can work out that way!

Then before we all left, Lawyer Guy and I had a chance to ask her a bunch of questions. She said she's not terribly worried about his morphology results-- she thinks it's the least important factor in the SA and that while it could be contributing to the delay in our conceiving, finding it wasn't an "a-ha" moment. Then she actually said that she doesn't think we're technically infertile! She thinks the timing maybe hasn't been quite right yet, maybe there was a little mucus in the tubes that has now been washed out, maybe some little thing here or little thing there hasn't been matching up and that's why we've been having such trouble. She also speculated-- while cautioning us that less invasive methods will probably work but require a certain amount of patience-- that she thinks she will be able to help us get pregnant within the next six months!

As much as I am super wary of letting myself think that optimistically, it was such a relief to hear her speak with confidence. After spinning these doomsday scenarios in my mind of IVF with ICSI and months and months of saving and draining our accounts and spending years on this, six months sounds like a weekend! I have to laugh a little at how dire I once thought waiting six months to get pregnant would be, while now it sounds like no time at all.

I feel much better today than I have in months. I could be doing an IUI very soon. And while this cycle might not pan out, that's okay. We've survived worse and we can survive that. One of these days something is going to go right for us, and for the first time in forever I don't feel like I'm the one who has to make it happen.

Answers, Maybe; or Action, Definitely

My head is reeling right now at how fast everything is happening. I'm heading into Manhattan in a few minutes to pick up my Clomid prescription. We're planning an IUI for this cycle, and as I'm CD 6 (or CD 5 depending on how you calculate CD 1), I need to take the medication in the next three hours.

Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

To back up a little, my RE called me last night at 7 pm, as I was just about to leave the house to meet Lawyer Guy, my sister and her fiance for dinner. She was calling with the results of LG's semen analysis--one day after he had the test!

(And for the record, I am soooo impressed that she called me that quickly. This makes me very optimistic for the state of my care at Cor.nell. I think I need to find a new code name for her. Dr. Woman is not very descriptive, you know? So I will provisionally adopt Dr. Wonderful as her name)

So, the results of the test: Count good at 30 million. Motility good at 57%. Morphology not good at 3% after a wash (4% is now considered normal. I don't feel comfortable giving the pre-wash numbers, because of LG's sensitivity around this subject).

Based on this, Dr. Wonderful counseled going directly to monitored Clomid + IUI, as this will give the sperm a better shot at reaching an egg and more eggs to be potentially reached. She did say it's not impossible for us to conceive on our own with these stats (obviously, as we already have) but cautioned that it will likely take longer.

After all these months, this might be an answer. I don't know yet if we can say that this has been causing our problems, but it's definitely a red flag. And the plus side to morphology issues (I guess) is that if we must go the IVF route (and I'm not ready to say we need that yet-- Dr. Wonderful didn't even mention it), it appears there will be every likelihood of success, especially if my HSG results are normal.

I was relieved when she first gave me the results (I had feared learning LG had, like, only 2 million sperm in his sample). Then the more I thought about it (and googled-- bad Sloper!) the more nervous I became. Then I started thinking about getting my prescription and when the pharmacy would open and how I could do this all before leaving at 8:30 to teach. Answer: I couldn't, so I canceled class. Some things are just more important.

Ultimately, I'm still not really sure where this leaves us. I've read conflicting information on morphology, from "It's the only thing that matters" to "We don't give a crap about it." I don't want to read any more and Lawyer Guy wants me to avoid independent research into it, too. If you have anecdotes or experience with this, please just hold off on sharing for a while, because we want to sit down and chat with Doctor Wonderful about what all this means to her before we start hearing from other sources. We're seeing a fantastic doctor at one of the best clinics in the country, and if we can't trust the care we're getting here, what can we trust?

So: it's an IUI. I don't expect our first shot at bat to win the game for us, but I'm excited to be starting nonetheless. I'm happy that we're learning more about our situation. I'm happy I have a doctor I trust and like who is prompt and active in managing our care. I'm happy that Lawyer Guy seems to be taking all this okay. He's very pleased that his count and motility #s are good and is refusing to speculate about what the consequences of the morph #s will be until we speak with Dr. Wonderful. I know that men--and my LG, in particular--can be amazingly good at refusing to look at things that bother them and refusing to acknowledge their pain, and I'm a little worried about how this is going to pan out emotionally for us. But I trust him and me to do the best with this situation and to love each other fiercely regardless of our temporary and momentary traumas and distress. I'm going to have to work on being as much of a support for him as he has been for me, because we're both in this together. And that's the way it should always be.

Black and White; or, Planning Ahead

These days, I've been bouncing back and forth between some very different reactions to my upcoming RE visit. It goes something like this:

*zoom*
Shit! Only two cycles left before we visit the RE!
*zing*
Yes! We can finally get figure out what the hell has been going on the last 18 months!
*ping*
Dammit, they're going to find out there's something horribly wrong with me and Lawyer Guy and tell us it was a miracle we ever got pregnant in the first place and we should have no hope.
*pong*
No! You're going to get pregnant before you go. Duh, making the appointment is the magic bullet!
*boing*
No! You're not even going to be able to get an appointment because the insurance issues won't be worked out yet, and you'll have to visit a third-rate fertility clinic, like, out on Long Island or something. And they wont get you pregnant and they'll probably mess up your uterus even more!
*bang*
Still, it's great to start this process!
*bing*
But why did you have to get pregnant at all if all it accomplished was delaying your RE visit by 9 months?
*bazingbang*
AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! Be quiet crazy lady inside my head!

See? Totally exhausting.

I've been kind of relentlessly talking Lawyer Guy's ear off about this process, which is majorly stressing him out. We deal with upsetting possibilities in very different ways: I try to predict and plan for the worst case scenario, so I feel prepared; he tries to ignore it and just live his life until he has to consider unpleasantness. So for me, having a two-hour phone conversation with our insurance providers to get all the details on our infertility coverage is ultimately calming (if also anxiety-producing), but for him it's like a giant anvil of doom dropping on his head.

So to spare him any more of my obsessiveness, I thought I would lay out the potential steps to come here on the blog, so I can refer back to them, keep track of our progress, and adjust my mind to what's ahead (and, of course, so you all know what the plan is).

• Aug 4: Visit my OB for annual check up. Will discuss testing/REs with her (though I have made up my mind to see one no matter what she advises).Will most likely have just ovulated (or will be about to ovulate), so preliminary testing will be impossible at this visit.
• Aug 13: Leave for Scandinavia. Will get my period on this trip. Will not be able to get CD 2/3 blood work until following cycle.
• After returning home, will start acupuncture/ Circle + Bloom relaxation techniques and continue with my herbs, yoga, and tea. Basically go balls out to get an unassisted BFP.
  
• Late August/Early September: have first RE consult. Praying hard that insurance issues are corrected by this point and I can go to N.YU. Will have good back-up, in-network REs.
• Mid September: Cycle # 8/15 begins. Get bloodwork. Will have hopefully had some other testing (HSG? SA?) by this point
• Mid-late October: Possibly do one treated cycle
  
• November/December/January: Break from treatments due to my sister's August 2011 wedding in California (try very hard not to hate her for this).
• February 2011: Dive into the madness of treatments for the foreseeable future

Wow, laying everything out like that really shows how much time all of this takes! February sounds so far away, but so much will happen in between now and then. The fact that the start of treatments will exactly coincide with due dates that would prevent me from attending my sister's wedding really sucks and was one of my fears back in November when I miscarried. I'm sure it will be hard to back off just when we've finally got the ball rolling, but I will just have to suck it up.

The other difficult aspect of heading into treatments is that LG and I are going to have to completely backtrack on how involved we've made our families in this process. Right now we don't call them every time we have sex or I ovulate or anything (I save that for my lovely internet friends), but they do know how long we've been trying, what some of my fears are, how long it's been since the miscarriage, and when we're thinking of enlisting outside help. That's fine and I don't mind them knowing (especially not my mom, who never ever brings up baby stuff unless I do first).

But I don't want our families to know about what treatments we're doing and when. If they're waiting hopefully for the results of an IUI or IVF, that will just make the disappointment much keener when something fails. I also really, really don't want my brother- and sister-in-law to know anything about our possible fertility treatments. I have enough jealousy and bitterness toward them in general. If I suspect they're pitying us for our sucky reproductive organs, I'll drive myself crazy (even though I'm sure their pity will be entirely in my head and they will never say anything to us).

I'm a pretty open person, so it will be hard to shut people we care about out of this process. But I just can't handle the extra pressure, so I know it's the right thing to do.

Taking Stock; or, Advice from the Blogosphere

Well, Cycle #4/#11 followed in his brothers' non-baby producing footsteps. Time to see what Cycle #5/#12 can do.

The days before I get my period are always the worst. I try to keep my hopes up, but the fact that yet another cycle has failed becomes increasingly hard to ignore. I rapidly leap from realizing that this cycle didn't work to predicting that no cycle will ever work.

But on CD2, cooler heads prevail. The past 16 months have taught me several good things about my and my husband's chances of conceiving a child. I know that:

• He's got sperm, of whatever quantity or quality, and at least some of it is capable of swimming up to and poking an egg.
• I have produced at least one egg at the time when my CBEFM said that I did.
• I am capable of building a uterine lining thick enough to allow implantation.
• I've got at least one clear tube.
  

Those are all positives, I'm aware. And while it's hard to watch other women conceive on their first tries without feeling like a failure, I do believe that left on our own, Lawyer Guy and I would eventually conceive another child.

But I also know that 18 months is long enough to try on our own. 18 months is a good, serious shot. 18 months is time to start looking for answers and possibly even solutions.

We're giving the unassisted baby-making a few more goes and then will visit our first RE at the end of August, right after our sixth cycle of TTC post-miscarriage and right after we get back from Scandinavia. I hope we get happy news before that point, but with only two cycles left, I'm prepared to begin testing.

And this is where you come in! I've done some preliminary research and am considering N.YU Fer.tility Center, based on their reputation and IVF results and the fact that they claim to accept my insurance. (My insurance covers testing and prescriptions but not procedures, so any iui or ivf would be out-of-pocket). I know that there are other good clinics out there, though, and I want to hear from NYC loss/IF bloggers. Please tell me who you see and why you like their practice. If you are not from NYC, never fear, I care about your opinion, too! How did you find your RE? What factors are important to consider when looking for one? How did you make your decision to start visiting a specific clinic?

With this info, I hope to schedule my appointment this month for the end of August. Scary, but exciting!

There's one other issue I'm looking for bloggy advice on. Over the 7 months since the miscarriage, I've put on some weight. Not enough to be "heavy," but enough to feel like my clothes don't fit great and I'm not happy with the way I look. I forced myself not to worry about the weight I was gaining because I didn't want to add stress to my life while we tried to get pregnant. But with that pregnancy who knows how many months away, I need to get back to liking the way I look and feeling good about my body again.

I want to lose 5-7 pounds and don't have a strict time frame in when it has to happen. Does anyone have any good weight-loss strategies? I belong to a yoga studio rather than a gym and I attend 2-3 classes a week. I try to eat healthily, though I do eat too many carbs and too much dairy, and I tend to snack when I'm in the 2ww and depressed. Any advice is appreciated--not just for the kinds of foods recommended to eat (most of which I can probably guess) but also for how to judge portions, figure out how much of what kinds of food to eat in a day, how to keep track of your calories and stuff like that.

By the end of the summer I want to be lean, relaxed, and pregnant, but I'll take the first two if that's all I can get.

Three Doctors; or, Health Turns Out to Be a Curse

Yesterday I had two conversations with doctors.

The first was my first session with the new therapist I was checking out. And it went great! I loved the energy in her office, I loved her approach, and I feel incredibly hopeful that this could develop into a wonderful therapeutic relationship. While I see the benefit in cognitive behavioral therapy and have been able to take away some positive strategies and lessons from my sessions with my other therapist, being prevented from "dwelling" on my feelings about this issue just makes me feel guilty for having those feelings in the first place. I've set up another appointment with New Therapist for next week. Now I just need to figure out how to cancel with Old Therapist, a prospect that leaves me rather anxious.

The second conversation was an e-mail exchange with my OB/GYN. She wrote that she'll do the blood work to test my thyroid levels at our appointment next week (yay!) but that she was sure my primary care physician had already tested them.

Um, yeah, so that brings me to my third doctor. Or rather, the gaping Derridean absence that marks the place of the third doctor. I don't have a primary care physician. I haven't had one since I was eighteen and left my pediatrician's office back at home.

Go ahead, yell at me. Everyone does. But I never (and I mean never) get sick, so I haven't had the need to acquire one. The last time I had a fever or the stomach flu (but it might have just been food poisoning) was 2001. I have never in my life gotten the seasonal flu, not even when my asthmatic, pneumatic husband is ill and I drink from his glass. I occasionally get one cold in a year, and that cold occasionally turns into a sinus infection, but whenever that happens I visit my allergist to get an antibiotic. And I haven't had any colds or infections in three years. My weight is very stable. My blood pressure is always perfect. I've never broken a bone and I haven't had a serious injury since I was a child. When I had my eye exam last year at Lawyer Guy's insistence, it was the first time in 20 years I'd had my vision checked. See? I'm really, really, really robustly healthy.

And I'm also extremely phobic of needles, primarily of blood draws and IVs. Until I had my d&c, I had not had blood drawn since 1999. Doctors had recommended blood work in the past (my old psychopharmacologist said I needed to have my saline levels checked to be on the anxiety medication she prescribed me), but I ignored them, so much did I fear getting blood drawn.

Which (as I'm sure you've figured by now) is all to say: No, my "primary care" physician has not tested my thyroid levels. If my thyroid levels have ever been tested, the last time was 11 years ago.

So I'm doing this. I'm going to get my blood drawn and maybe get some answers. I'm really scared, but I want to do the best I can for my babies (the m&m and any babies to come), so I need to be brave. I might ask my husband to come hold my hand, though.

Weekend Update; or, Jane Austen Makes Everything Better

It was a good weekend. I kept busy, spending time with friends and Lawyer Guy. Even the crappy weather couldn't get me down. Saturday I went to yoga and had brunch with a friend who's going through IF testing right now, then ate dinner in Manhattan (mac 'n' cheese, the official meal of the 2ww) and attended a 30th birthday party for a friend who sang rock and roll karaoke with a band at a club. Yesterday I went to Palm Sunday Mass at a church in Brooklyn I'd heard good things about. The music was gorgeous and the community seemed friendly and supportive (and not excessively young-family heavy), so I'm sure I'll be back. Lawyer Guy cooked a delicious dinner and I watched most of the BBC Pride & Prejudice from 1996 (which I justified to myself as homework for my Jane Austen class) and worked on the blanket I'm knitting and went to bed in a good mood.

I'm still in a good mood today, a lot of which I'm sure is thanks to being on Spring Break and looking at a week of (productive) downtime to come. But some of it is also due to the decisions I've made about moving forward with my TTC plans next cycle.

I'm fairly certain I'm not pregnant and will be getting my period in a few days. It's disappointing, but I have an appointment scheduled with my doctor for April 8th, and I'm determined to have blood work done. Last week I did some reading up on thyroid disorders, and I think there's at least a chance that I have one. It would account for my cycles suddenly becoming irregular two or three years ago and even possibly for the miscarriage. I probably don't need to start seeing an RE yet (I'll save that for 6 months of post-miscarriage TTC), but this blood work is something my OB can do and will give us at least a bit more information to go on.

I also made an appointment with a new therapist for tomorrow. She seemed very nice on the phone, and I'm hopeful that this will be a better therapy relationship than the one I have with my current therapist. She's also much more conveniently located to my school, so that's a bonus!

And a lot of other positive things are happening: the BIL and SIL and nieces decided not to attend the seder tomorrow after all; I was able to avoid the mass crowds of baby gushers by visiting niece #2 in the hospital last week rather than at their home this weekend; we heard from our accountant that we'll be getting a larger refund this year than expected, so we can plan our trip to Scandinavia for August; the invitations we're sending out for my 30th birthday party in May just arrived!

All in all, it's been a good 2ww. I was worried last month that the week before my period would be similarly miserable for the rest of the time we were trying, but I suspect I just had to grieve the return to the TTC routine. As hard as it was to cry almost every day during that time (and as much as it upset and worried Lawyer Guy to see it), I'm glad I let myself feel and release those emotions, because I'm much better off now.

I'm sure I'll be sad when I get my period later this week, but I'm already looking forward to next cycle and the one after that, so I don't think it will hurt too much. Right now, I have faith that eventually we'll get our baby. Amazing what a good weekend will do!

* edited because I spelled "seder" wrong the first time. Wow, I am super embarrassed right now, because this will only be the tenth one I've gone to with Lawyer Guy. I blame my terrible spelling abilities, rather than a lack of knowledge about Judaism.

15 Weeks Later; or, Normal

15 weeks after my D&C, 8 weeks after I began weekly phone calls to two separate doctors' offices, 5 weeks after I first cried on the phone, 4 weeks after I learned I was never given the release form I needed to sign, 3 weeks after I faxed the release form in, 1 week after screaming at my doctor's receptionist over the phone...

I finally got the lab results from the genetic testing on the m&m.

Normal.

My doctor said this is good news, that we don't need to worry about karyotyping and that future pregnancies are highly likely to be healthy.

But now I don't know why this baby didn't make it. It's much, much harder to accept this miscarriage as "not meant to be" when the baby likely would have been healthy and normal and fine if he or she had progressed.

Yes, he or she. We asked to not be told the sex.

My dad says this will just be one of life's mysteries for me. Holding a healthy, living, cuddly baby of my own, I think I'll be able to accept the mysteries of life better than I do right now.

Back at One; or, Be Gentle, It's All So New to Me

My 1 year anniversary is coming up in March. Not my wedding anniversary (we're going on 3 years) or a grad school anniversary (this is my 4th year) or an apartment anniversary (we've been in Park Slope almost 2). Nope, I'm gearing up for my 1 year anniversary of trying to conceive a child.

First year TTC anniversaries are momentous things. They usually mean a full complement of blood work and semen analysis and a visit to the friendly neighborhood RE. But mine won't. Mine will most likely mean another pee stick in the fertility monitor, another temp charted on my fertility software, another night of hoping this one works and this one sticks. And another blog post (that one I can guarantee).

Because I won't have been trying to have a baby for 12 months. I won't be on my 9th cycle of fucking with purpose. I'll be on my second month, second cycle. A total newbie!

Miscarriages restart the clock. After all, the process worked (well, it didn't really if the goal was a child in my arms rather than a vial full of "products of human conception" in a lab somewhere, but you know what I mean). Pregnancy #1 was achieved. #2 is a different beast.

Most of the time, this feels like a good thing. I'm glad to let go of the accumulated disappointment and despair of March-December 2009. I'm glad to be starting over, a nice low number on the calendar and plenty of reason for optismism. It'll take 3 months, right? Sure, why not. It does for other people.

Other times I think--what if? What if it takes a full year? What if it takes 9 months and then I lose that one, too? And suddenly, I'm seeing second anniversaries, third anniversaries. Suddenly, I'm seeing how couples wind up waiting two or more years before trying any treatments, something I swore once upon a time I would never do.

But most of the time I don't think about the what ifs. And it's not just because they'll fuck with your head.

I'm new to this whole thing, remember? I'm counting on beginner's luck.

Do or Die Time; or, Letting Hope Live

I'm 15dpo and I don't see or smell any blood. Unless my period starts some time today (which it could and probably will), I'm going to test tomorrow morning when I wake up.

I'm really scared to test. It doesn't make sense, but I'm afraid. I'm afraid because I've started to think this might be...it (I can't even write the words).

And I like feeling this hopeful feeling. I could hardly sleep last night, and I woke up at 6:30 am. I kept tossing and turning in bed, imagining how I would tell my family and my friends if what I hope comes true.

The thought of looking at another negative test makes me feel sick.

I want to hold on to my hope a little longer.

Waiting on the World to Not Change; or, AF Keeps Things Interesting

(Warning: Those with a low tolerance for discussions of bodily fluids should stop reading now).

I'm blessed to not only have irregular cycles with inconsistent ovulation days (anywhere from day 18 to day 30), but to also have an inconsistent luteal phase. It's always "long enough" but almost never the same length. In the 11 months since I first charted, I've had an LP as short as 10 days and as long as 15.

After pregnancy testing early in my first couple of cycles and realizing that getting the heartbreak of a negative twice in one week does nothing for my spirits, I made a resolution to no longer test before 16 dpo. I've yet to reach that goal.

Today I am either 13 or 14 dpo. And everything in my body tells me my period is on its way. Ravenous eating habits. Bloated lower abdomen and swollen, tender boobs. Looser stool. All the signs are there.

Except...

I usually spot before AF comes. And even before that, I'll see a tinge of blood in my cervical fluid. And even before that, I can smell the iron of the blood in the mucus and on the tissue after wiping.

There's no blood. No smell.

If AF is coming, I'd really like her to just hurry up and get here. Because waiting through the weekend only to see her show up on the day I'm supposed to test will REALLY not do anything good for our relationship. And she and I are on uneasy terms at the moment as it is.

Annual Checkup; or I Love My Doctor

I went in for my biannual exam/annual pap on Tuesday. This was the first appointment with my gyno since the pre-conception visit back in February, when I confidently expected that I would be knocked up the next month.

While there I brought up my irregular cycles, the weird bleeding last month, last month's extremely short cycle and period that only last for two days. We've got a plan for moving forward, and I feel okay about it. No, I feel good about it.

We keep doing as we do this cycle, the sixth. Then, starting with the seventh (sometime in September) I get an ovulation predictor kit. If it registers that I ovulate, I let my doctor know and we keep trying until January (the 11 month mark) when we take the "next steps." If I don't register ovulation, then I let her know and come back in (in October) to start testing.

I don't know why I feel so positive about this. She just seemed so upbeat about my chances, that it made me feel good. "You're going to get pregnant," she said. "Aren't I always right?" she asked her nurse. And if I'm having trouble ovulating, she asserted, "We'll get you pregnant. There are ways."

I know some people dislike cheerfulness before the fact. I know some women would suggest I find a new doctor who'd more aggressively test or who would mitigate against hopefulness. But I can handle the doom and gloom on my own. I can provide the pessimism.

She gave me a big hug and a smile before she left, and I felt like she was already happy for me. And for the first time in a long time, I feel okay for me, too.