It’s nearing the end of July now.  Translation: It’s been 6 months since my last post and I have nothing to declare.  I honestly didn’t think this was where I would have been at this time when I started this blog, but nevertheless…here I am–babyless and starting to freak out a bit.

We’ve ramped up the “trying” a fair bit since I last wrote.  I’ve discovered the wonderful world of basal body temperatures and the overly obsessive land of “trying to conceive” websites.  My foray began with the purchase of “Taking Charge of Your Fertility”, which included a link to a website to find an online BBT tracker (basal body temperature tracker, for those not completely engulfed by the fire that is trying to make a baby).  It was on that website that I found the forums. *cue dramatic music*

Oh lord…the forums.

At first, I thought the pages and pages of female support for those TTC (trying to conceive) were harmless enough.  Wasn’t it great that there were other women going through the same thing as me?  It can be a lonely thing as a woman, the gut-wrenching disappointment when month after month, nothing is happening.  I tried to talk to J about it, but he always gave the same series of responses: “You need to relax”, “It takes lots of people a while”, and the one that he has since stopped using, “We haven’t been trying that long”.

He stopped saying that=we HAVE been trying that long.  More heart break.

The forums were really helpful.  They provided a ton of information I was looking for and provided hope from the stories of women who seemed biologically similar to me.

Then I found the “Two Week Wait” group, and all hell broke loose in my ever so slightly obsessive mind.  This was a forum dedicated solely to the women in the “two week wait”–the stretch of time between ovulation and either a dreaded period or (*cue angels singing*)…nothing.  Together, we would analyze every single little twinge, every experience with food, really anything that we considered a possible sign of pregnancy.  Even worse than this, though, were the comments in the “BFP” (Big Fat Positive=pregnant) forum dedicated to newly pregnant women sharing their pre-positive symptoms.  Some of them had (wait for it)…

no signs at all.

Thus began hours upon hours (maybe a slight exaggeration) of staring at my temperature charts, hoping to see some crazy sign pop out.  The two week wait was killing me, and I felt like my whole life revolved around the date my period was supposed to come.  Would this be the month?

It hasn’t been so far.

Online, I learned about cheap pregnancy tests and ovulation strips, and stocked up at the nearest store that offered them.  I bought tea that’s supposed to help with fertility (FertiliTea–clever).  I started acupuncture again in May.

I’ve eased off the obsession slightly this month (July).  With school being out for summer vacation, my sleep schedule is all off so I’ve given up tracking temperatures.  Because of this, I haven’t been on tcoyf.com for a while, though I still used the ovulation strips.

A friend said that the lack of control a woman feels when trying to conceive is a sort of preparation for the lack of control she has over pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood.  This was probably the best thing anyone has said to me on the subject so far.

In the book that started all of this, “Body, Soul, and Baby”, it suggests that women who have not yet conceived mediate on all of their feelings around becoming pregnant and having a child.  They speak to the value of recognizing all the possible feelings a woman may have, such as not feeling ready, worrying about what kind a parent they’ll be, etc.  I read this initially and thought to myself, “Well, that’s not me.  I am ready.  Let’s go!”.  My reactions to friends who have announced they’re pregnant during this stage in my life has made me wonder, though, about why I need this to happen right now.  I’ve occasionally found myself thinking of getting pregnant as a race that I want to win.  I want to be first, I want to be the one who this all came so easily to, and I want to be the one to console those who are struggling.  I’m sure all of that comes from a longtime need for perfection that maybe I need to come to terms with before I’m ready for a baby.  Maybe that’s what my body is holding out for.

It seems everywhere I look, there are TV shows or commercials or radio stories about baby-related things, but maybe it’s just because now I’m paying attention to them.

I’m trying to accept that it’s not my time yet, but I have hope that it will come soon.  And when it does, I might just explode with happiness, fear, and anticipation.

-A little impatient Regular Van.