Charting

As I've alluded recently, Ms. P and I are embarking on the baby plan. The baby plan is a complicated sort of plan, since we are situationally infertile and must therefore mentally plan for all kinds of contingencies. The current version of the plan is that we will try, with generous contributions from R, to get me pregnant at home.

We are all very excited about this plan, which has created numerous moments of hilarity: scenarios about sneaky handoffs in the dark, jokes about buying R porn, R and Ms. P having respective moments of boy/girl ickiness. It has also created numerous moments of teary sentimentality: R imagining taking a little girl to self-defense class, talking about how to talk about our chosen family to others, imagining how we'd talk about sex when he/she asked about it, whether we'd buy Barbie if we had a girl. There is something very dear and very right about the three of us tearing pictures out of magazines for a collective collage while talking through expectations about the plan.

And even as I luxuriate in the family I have, the family I have chosen, there's a part of me that's sad we can't just neglect the contraception for a while and see what happens, that we can't just go along and not pay attention. I know not all straight people get that luxury either, but it would have been nice to live the fantasy for a little bit.

Because right now, right now I'm charting. I'm charting so I can see when I ovulate so we can make good choices about when we try to knock me up. Have you ever charted? If you haven't charted, know that it's like keeping track of points in Weight Watchers or something similar. On the one hand, it's straightforward and objective: I take my temperature when I wake up every morning and I make a note on my chart and I pay attention to the quantity and quality of my cervical mucous. On the other hand, the attention to detail is likely to make me completely fucking insane.

See, it's day 13, and I haven't had a temperature spike. No temperature spike means no ovulation. Ovulation happens 14 days before you begin bleeding. I have short cycles, so this should have happened two or three days ago. For three days, I've been noting small twinges (and some not so small) in my lower right abdomen and thinking yay! ovulation! Except it doesn't appear to be signifying ovulation. Worse, I'm feeling all of the other little pains and twinges that I would normally not really notice because they're part of the background exprience of my body.

Not having had a temperature spike sends me immediately down a path I didn't want to be on. Remember the endometriosis and my chocolate-covered ovaries? Well, if I'm not ovulating, that's probably part of the problem. And if the chocolate coating is part of the problem, then I likely need a laparoscopy to clean it all out. This is not something I look forward to, especially as I don't yet have a real Gyn. So I have to find one, explain my history and my present, hang out for the cooter-wanding yet again, and probably go through abdominal surgery, which while outpatient will be quite painful and which will lay me up for several days. I mean, imagine having all of your internal organs scraped clean of adhesions. The very idea hurts.

I could take my temperature tomorrow and see a spike. My stupid cycle could be doing one of its patented switches from a regular 23/24 days to a regular 32 days; It's happened before. I could find out that it's just not possible for me to bear a child, and we'd fall back and regroup. I've been saying all along that we don't have the luxury of being naive and thinking we'll get pregnant and stay pregnant immediately. There are lots of ways to build family and we're open to many of them. But none of that mean that calling around to find a doctor today and making an appointment isn't going to totally suck.

Comments

[Carrie]

Yay! Something I can help you with! (The charting, not the babymaking)

Your luteal phase--the time between ovulation and menstruation--is NOT always 14 days. Mine is usually somewhere between 10 and 12 days, for instance. This wreaks havoc with the due-date charts at the OB's, so just be warned. It usually needs to be at least 10 days in order to sustain the pregnancy, and if it isn't, then you may be prescribed progesterone. When my hormones are really out of whack, my LP is sometimes only 7 or 8 days.

When we were trying to get pregnant, we "tried" every month based on the 14-day belief. For three years. When I learned to chart properly, I was pregnant within 2 months, even with PCOS. So I wish you all good luck :-)

[Pronoia]

Oh, Carrie, that is good news! So I may see that spike yet, huh? I'll be sure and let you know!

I did go ahead and get an appointment since I want to have the endo checked out regardless, but you've given me a little hope.

[Sfrajett]

Cooter-wanding! Ha! I love it. Keep us posted about all this. GF and I are over the barrel about it all, and we are aging and edging past the point of no return. But we think about it and talk about it and talk about not talking about it. Best of luck with any and all of your plans.

[Pronoia]

Thanks Sfrajett! It's exciting but also terrifying, and you can be assured I'll tell you all about it.

[dale]

Whoa! Halfway into the first cycle is way too soon to decide things aren't working. Take your time, and let the patterns reveal themselves. It's way more likely that the pattern isn't what you expect than that your body's quit ovulating. It's twenty years since Martha and I were trying, and I don't remember the details very well, but I do remember that virtually everything we were told was wrong. In that way it was a good preparation for childrearing -- everything we were told about that was wrong, too :-)

[Susan]

I had no idea charting was so complicated (but then, I guess, keeping track of anything in such detail can seem a hassle at first). Good luck maintaining a sense of balance with the trying--it's so easy to be impatient at times like this. I hope it all goes smoothly.

[Rana]

Yeah, it's a pain, but it does start to make sense after a few cycles. Good luck! :)

[frog]

You know that the "spike" is tiny, right? It took me several months of charting to realize that my definition of "spike" was more than half the problem with the charting.