No news is just no news

In case anyone has been wondering what's been up around Casa Bonzo & Bonzette, there was no pregnancy in October, which I have determined is a good thing for now. When it came closer and closer to the time when I should have had my period I was thinking more and more about what a very serious step this was and I freaked out a little bit thinking I could actually be pregnant. Of course, it wouldn't be anything that we couldn't handle but it was like when you know something is a REALLY big deal but don't quite grasp it emotionally until later on. Well, I've decided there are a few more things I want to do before I well and truly settle down. I've always been a bit of an old soul and I think the running around that I never did much of as a 20 year old is now trying to surface.

So we're going to wait a bit longer. Bonzo was very understanding and said we'd just revisit in 6 months to see where things are at. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not even 30 yet so I do have quite a bit of time. I get on a track sometimes and am so focussed that I just keep shooting for the prize rather than really thinking about whether I want it and how. Better to think about all these things now.

I will be back but it may be a while. If there are any loyal readers out there, I'll see you in a few months.

No news is good news, or The Case of the Steaming Eyeballs

As is typical, my positive attitude has waned somewhat over the past week given that there is nothing to do at the moment but wait for the days to tick by. Still no period nor any indications that it's coming, which is a good sign, and the nips are still sore but other than that nothing really to report. Except my eyeballs feel hot today. Is that weird?

On a related note, this whole baby-making prep and implementation time is a great opportunity for me to actually pay attention to what the hell is going on in this body of mine. I have for the most part relied on fairly high energy and a high pain threshold to blow through life with little regard to my poor mortal coil, absent serious, and thankfully thus far temporary, breakdown. I know that this is a luxury that couldn't last forever, but I'm not 30 yet so I probably have a few years of this left. I do very little to abuse my body, too, besides not getting enough sleep all the time and having a fairly stressful job, so I may get extra juvenation brownie points for that. All of that said, I like the fact that I am being forced, or at least strongly encouraged, to actually pay attention to the little things going on with me. There is always the risk of me becoming obsessive with the details, as I can do when something interests me, but in general I think this is a very positive development. The eyeballs for example. Not the most relevant of observations you might say? Fair enough. However, I'm pretty sure that several months ago I wouldn't have noticed, or taken the time to notice, since it didn't hurt, didn't stop me from doing anything, and wasn't a recognizable sign of bad things to come. I still marvel at the fact that I was content to relinquish full control for a very important biological system to chemicals for so long precisely so that I didn't have to think about what my body was up to. I do love schedules! I like that now I've changed my mind. Though I have relinquished a different kind of control - the mental, planning kind - I have faith that ultimately my body will do what it has to do. At least I have faith this week....

In more practical news, we ordered some home pregnancy tests online last night. Only 5 (see, still pretty optimistic, if not completely so). I probably won't test until after next week but we saved a few bucks even with shipping. This will be lifetime pregnancy test #4 for me but the only one where there is a real possibility of a positive. That is if my period doesn't come in the next week of course. Ah, waiting. If only it were what I do best.

Beginning in earnest

It's official - at the risk of providing TMI (though on a blog abut babymaking I feel it's a bit of what the French call "endure ton osti de mal", or you asked for it) we've started trying. Yes officially. Still no period but I had a hunch that I may have ovulated around yesterday so we're giving it a shot. Don't know for sure, obviously, but I just kind of had a hunch and figure it may be those ovary drops working their magic. Something's got to take in sooner than 6 months, right? I expected to get more resistance from Bonzo about my plan since he seemed intent on letting two cycles go by before we started but not a word and I wasn't going to bring it up. Ah, my first official two week wait. Good times.

P + 2 Days

And we're back on the waiting game. Last Saturday was to be the start of my period if I was on a 28 day cycle but no and nothing yesterday or today either, which doesn't surprise me because I don't feel like it's on its way at all. The naturopath was encouraged with my progress when I saw him on Friday and I now have new ovary tuning drops. Oh yes, the herbal wonders he can pull out of his bag never cease. Apparently, he couldn't start me on them before a first period because they wouldn't be very effective but now that things have been "kick started", as he says, this will help to make me regular. He claims that women will often have one ovary that is lazier than the other, which can make cycles of varying lengths since one can be more regular and quicker to ovulate than the other.

I often surprise myself with how trusting and probably uncritical to a fault I am with medical professionals. Not all the time, but often I take what they tell me to without too much fuss. And with pharmaceuticals you have more chance doing internet research about what they will do to you since half the time the herbal remedies are less than descriptive about what they contain. As I write this I think again that I'm kind of nuts for saying ok, but I swallow it all daily. And I wasn't totally uncritical in this case. When Dr. L suggested I take this stuff, I specifically voiced my concerns about taking something else that manages my cycle. After all this trouble, I won't be doing any of that anytime soon. He assured me that this would only assist with what my body wanted to do on its own anyway. It tastes like absolute hell but at P + 2 I may need more assistance. Damned optimism. When you have low expectations you're less likely to be disappointed.

As time goes on...

I feel a little less confident about my amenorrhea being over. Not loads less, but a little. Time allows your mind to wander, to ponder the possibilities, and of course to worry. I imagine that the waiting to see if you're pregnant is a lot more nerve racking, though the bonus there is it's waiting for something good rather than fearing something bad. But the kicker in either case is that there is nothing you can do but let the days trickle by. I should be into cycle week three and having a period two weekends from now or so if we're truly back on track. I couldn't convince Bonzo to forget about the hormonal balance month crap so no actual trying for us this month and, thus, very unlikely to be a pregnancy. The thing is part of the reason I wanted to try this month was to hide from the fact that maybe I won't be regular for another several months. Not that us trying would help with that for long because I might get hopeful when I "missed" a period but we would find out pretty quickly, as we did in February, that the "missing" had nothing to do with pregnancy and everything to do with hormonal screw ups. It would give me an extra little bit of time to avoid the reality, though. Silly, silly, silly but who can be rational about this all the time? Another seven months is a long time. Sigh.

How quickly things change

It's funny how you can be so troubled about something for such a long time and as soon as the worry is removed, things are rosy as can be. There were times in my SMW (seven month wait) where I was pretty discouraged, with my body, with our chances for biological parenthood, with health generally. And nothing, nothing, nothing against my friends in blogland who are struggling through infertility, but reading about such challenges can make you feel like things can't go right for anyone. I felt like if I couldn't even get the period thing right, there was no way baby growing type things were going to happen for me. Irrational, I know, and I didn't feel like that all the time. I spent a few weeks of being pretty agitated and decided that life was simply too short to stay down indefinitely, especially over something I had no control over. This conscious attitude shift helped for the most part, but there were definitely some blue days.

But now that we've turned the corner, I suddenly am the eternal optimist. We've talked about waiting this cycle out to give my hormones more settling time, which I have mixed feelings about, but I'm already counting the months 'til Little Bonzo/ette day. Why would I have any more trouble with this whole conception thing? I've gone through my bout of frustration. Now, sadly I know of many, many women and couples who seem to face roadblock after roadblock in this most noble quest so I recognize that this is a merely a different form of irrationality than my previous grumpy form. This kind makes you feel better about life, though, so until I have a reason for dashed, or at least subdued, hopes I'm going with it.

And we're off!

OK, actually we're not off but back from a long weekend at a friend's place in Galiano Island. But we were off on Saturday, which was also...wait for it...period day one! Of course it was fantastic timing, given that we were sleeping in a tent in our friends' garden for the weekend along with 10 other friends all sharing one bathroom and no real bathing to speak of but hey! If you're happy with cramping you've got to be happy with inconvenience, too, right? At first I wondered if it was the real deal, since I'd been waiting so long and it was a slightly slow start, but it was the deal indeed. And it actually hasn't been that bad. Some mild but insistent cramping kept me up in the middle of the night on Saturday but otherwise it's been just a regular old period. I was kind of concerned that things would have been building up in there over the last seven months (it feels like longer but in retrospect seven months isn't THAT bad. Ah how quickly things change....) and when it finally broke out it was going to be something of a nightmare. Not so. It's like AF and I never parted....

So we've decided that we'll wait one more cycle out before we actually start trying, just to give my hormones a chance to regularize themselves into a cycle now that they've regularized themselves to at least get things started. Dare I hope for babies in the fall?