This isn’t a resolution post. For one thing, I don’t usually make them. I’m just going to keep working on the things I’ve talked about in my last few posts.

Did anyone even read those? Is anyone even reading this? Do I have any readers left?

So, yeah, maybe not a resolution, but I’m back on the blogging horse, so to speak.  Over the last few weeks, I’ve sorted out why I haven’t been devoting much energy to the blog (or reading and commenting on others’ blogs).  I’ve written and rewritten this here paragraph like three times so I’ll just cut to the chase and say I let myself get distracted and bogged down worrying about who was reading or not reading and what they thought and what I was “supposed” to be doing or not doing as a “blogger”.

I can’t say I’m over that entirely (what blogger is?) but I’ve adjusted my thinking about it and figured out how to make blogging be what it used to be for me.

The best way I can think of to get a fresh start is to clear out all my saved drafts in one post.  Some of these would have been pretty good, if I do say so myself.  But, since I did not have my shit together you get the Cliff’s Notes version.

Why I Suck at Blogging Part Two

You guys.  This has been sitting in my drafts folder since MARCH.  March.  And do you know what it was going to be about? How I get worried about what other “popular” bloggers think about me and how I get too nervous and shy to leave comments on popular blogs.  Also about how I suck at self-promotion because I hate it.

That was nine months ago! Stuck, much?

Road Trip ’09

Our friend Allison got married in July in LA.  We decided to drive there and make it a week long road trip of attending the wedding, visiting Disneyland, and coming home by way of Reno.  How I managed to fuck this post up, I still don’t know. I was taking notes and pictures, people! I’d been planning to blog this trip from the moment we started making travel arrangements.

I mean, there was a wildfire on the way there with flames and helicopters and everything.

The bridge and groom did their first dance to Poker Face.

I got such huge blisters from wearing Teva’s to Disneyland like a fucking dumbass that I spent the last three hours of the day wearing white socks with my sandals and not giving a shit who saw it.

I had the best meatloaf of my life at some restaurant in Anaheim that I don’t remember.  It was so good that I cried when I realized I’d left my leftovers at the restaurant.  I’m not kidding. Tears and everything.

Sigh.  Yeah, that would have been a good post.

Mr. Mousey

Apparently while we were away from our house for over a week in July, some dickhead field mouse decided to move into our house.  With his family.

See, this was one of those posts that was going to be all funny.  It was going to start with the story about how I found out about the mouse by catching the little bastard red-handed in the middle of the night.  Sitting in my cupboard eating my gluten-free crackers.  Not the cheap saltines mind you, my fancy crackers.

Then there would have been some more funny about our various attempts to catch the crafty little shit.

And the story would have ended with him running off into the tall grass of the field where my husband released him.  After possibly giving him brain damage by releasing the trap on a tree branch so he could get a picture of the mouse leaving.  (Is he married to a blogger or what?) Things went a little awry and the trap fell off the branch and then he had to shake the mouse out of the trap and then the mouse kind of sat there on the grass stunned.  Like this:

Then I felt bad and worried about the poor little possibly half dead mouse wandering around.  This lasted about 4 days.  That’s about how long it took for all the baby mouses to come crawling out of various pieces of our furniture.  The more little mousey beds and piles of turds I found and the more Clorox I had to buy, the less bloggy I felt about it.

About My Uterus Part Eleventy Billion

Obviously I didn’t get pregnant this year.  I’m going to keep with my short version theme here because I do intend to fire up the Oh Baby! blogs again.

The bad news is we’re not going to get pregnant until I have another surgery.  My surgical consult is scheduled for Feb. 1, which means some more waiting.  Which I totally suck at.

But, there’s lots of good news too.  It’s finally been sorted out that this is an ob/gyn thing that needs to get taken care of first, then we start officially trying, and only if we’re unsuccessful after that do they start saying “infertility”.

I love my doctors, so I don’t want to say anything negative.  I’ll just sum it up by saying as a patient I got caught up in a bit of a labeling tug of war that I allowed to affect me more than it should have.

So after this surgery? No more infertility talk.  Just conception talk.

Yay for 2010!

Once again, the answer should be no surprise.  I’ve been unpacking and organizing, all while dealing with a moderate IBS flare-up. Which is kind of why I haven’t written – I’ve had things to say but not the time or energy or good humor to organize my thoughts properly.

I’m not saying I have time, energy or good humor right now, but I do have a great desire to procrastinate on doing something I don’t want to do.

So, what I don’t feel like doing is filling out the 80 billion page questionnaire that I need to mail back to the doctor so I can have my fibroid/polyp removal surgery consult scheduled.  I think I’m just having one of those moments where I’m simply SO tired of not feeling well.  I don’t want to think about this stuff, let alone answer detailed questions about it.

No.  You know what? It’s much more than that.  And I think I started to realize it yesterday when I started working on the form.

The first few pages were easy – name, address, insurance info.  Then it gets into reason for referral, current symptoms, and medical history.  Besides the fact that emotionally I didn’t want to think about it, logistically it was kind of tricky, because I’ve had lots of tests and procedures and minor surgeries over the last few years and my files are umm, around here somewhere.

It’s important that this form is accurate because the doctor reviews it before we meet so we can make the best use of our time at the appointment, so I was trying to at least get some sort of  timeline on another piece of paper so I didn’t leave out anything.  (OCD, much?)

Since I was going mostly from memory, I was kind of marking time in my head based on what job I was doing at the time.  I started the timeline back at my first abnormal pap in early 2000 when I was still living in Arizona and working for child welfare, through those first years when they were just doing a pap every six months, through when it decided it wanted to be cervical cancer after all and I had my first real get-put-to-sleep surgery in 2004, through when I was finally diagnosed with IBS in 2005, up to where we are today.

Seeing it all down on paper was insightful to say the least.

So, have I built it up enough? Are you ready to hear the exciting emotional breakthrough that I’ve had?

I have chronic medical conditions that affect my functioning and my ability to work.

Anticlimactic, no? Are you all sitting there saying, umm, how are you just now figuring this out, dumbass?  Especially since I wrote that fairly detailed post right after I quit about how hard it was to accept that I couldn’t do the detention job anymore because of my symptoms being so bad?

But see, that was just one example.  As I compared my work timeline to my medical history timeline, I realized that every job I ever quit was directly related to my medical problems.   Every one.

In 2000 was the first time my stomach problems got bad enough for me to seek treatment.  I was introduced by a mutual friend to a wonderful, wonderful woman who was a homeopath and a spiritual healer.   One of the many things she was amazing at was getting me to realize that it was ok to take care of myself first instead of last or not at all, so that I’m even capable of being there for other people. A lesson I periodically forget.

It didn’t take much to get me to realize that what I needed to do to not only manage my symptoms but maybe even heal a little was to not work a job that took so much time (50 hour work weeks anyone?) and emotional energy.  I quit child welfare and actually started working with her and studying homeopathy.

Also? She’s the first person who told me I was a writer.  Very matter of factly, like I would just realize it some day.

I haven’t yet, but it would be swell if she was right.  Or is it “were right”? See? No idea what I’m doing here.

I moved here and we eventually lost touch.  All my fault, by the way.

Anyway, despite having told myself I was done with social work I ended up getting a job as a mental health specialist in 2001.  I frakking loved that job.  Loved it. It had the perfect balance of being able to help and make a difference and do what I was good at and all that other good stuff, without being too emotionally draining.

Sure, I still had symptoms but I was managing them.  Then my paps got all scary and I had to have surgery.

The bad thing, it was the only bad thing, but it was a very big bad thing for me was that we were contracted through the state.  How to say this nicely? States have budget issues, and when they do guess what’s the first to go? Mental health services.

So I had a big expensive surgery after my hours had been cut and changes had been made to my insurance.  When all was said and done I had a $2000 medical bill and less money coming in to pay it.  It became impossible for me to live on what I was making, and although I didn’t want to, I had to find something else.

I applied and was hired with child welfare here.  Not only had I not learned my lesson, I decided to take the stress up several notches by doing intake instead of ongoing.  I’ve written about my emotional reasons for quitting this job before, but it was during this time that I was finally, after lots of testing, diagnosed with IBS.  One suggestion made by my PCP was finding a less stressful, time-consuming, and emotionally draining job.

Did I listen to him right away? Or course not! That’s how I roll.  I waited until I was basically completing falling apart physically and emotionally, then I quit.

By this time Jerrad and I had been dating about 6 months or so and let’s just say he was more than happy that I was no longer going to be doing a stressful, time-consuming, and let’s not sugarcoat it, sometimes dangerous job.

I went to work as secretary at my parish, completely convinced I was done with social work. Done!

My readers that have been around since the myspace days might remember the Parish Place blogs.  I won’t repost them here (yet) because I don’t have the privacy controls I had with myspace, but suffice it to say that shit was way more stressful than it needed to be.

While I was dealing with all that craziness, I was also trying to do all the things I needed to do to manage my IBS symptoms, on top of wondering why my periods were so heavy and I was in so much pain.

By this time, Jerrad and I were married.  We knew we preferred for me to be a stay at home mom, so at that point I was just trying to just suck it up and handle that job until I got knocked up.  Sadly, those stupid fibroids and polyps were already taking up all the available space in my uterus, unbeknownst to me.

Then the most awesome thing ever happened.  That mental health specialist job I loved so much? Was open again.  And it was still part-time.  And it was at my old branch with all my old peeps.  And the insurance didn’t matter anymore because I had an employed husband.

This was perfect, this was right, and I’d never been more sure that I was absolutely doing the right thing by going back to that job.

I settled into my old cubicle, renewed friendships, started new ones and was flooded with emotional support when I was diagnosed with the polyps and fibroids and had my first hysterosonogram and D & C.

Remember what I said about the state and budget cuts and mental health? Umm, yeah, I got laid off less than 6 weeks after I started.

By the way, God? I do not appreciate your sense of humor.

Then what followed was 7 months of looking for work while not-so-secretly hoping I would conceive before I found something.  Which didn’t happen because, again, those damn polyps just grew back, and oh by the way I have a bunch of new fibroids too.  I think the nice lady who sticks the giant camera in my hooha counted 7 or 8 at my last hysterosonogram.

I know I wrote a post when I got hired at detention about my reservations about accepting the job, but I’m too lazy to go look for the link.

I knew going into that job that it would be a struggle doing shift work given that I need to do certain things to manage my IBS symptoms, not the least of which is to be allowed to at least drink water during my shift, eat foods that I don’t have an intolerance for, and go to the bathroom when I please, not just during my 15 minute break.

There were also lots of scheduling issues with this job that I won’t even get into because it doesn’t matter anymore.  But it just seemed like whenever I could manage to get more than one shift in a row, it was always during my period.  I only worked there 3 months! What are the odds of that?

My periods are intensely painful.  And by painful, I mean cramps, excessive bleeding, and just.. pain.  I can’t explain it well, but everything hurts when I have my period.  Every single inch of all my ladyparts hurts, my cervix throbs because all that garbage is flowing over scar tissue and has less of an opening to get through.  Did I mention I lost about 1/5 to 1/4 of my cervix to the cervical cancer surgery?

Since I apparently can’t learn things without being slapped in the face with something obvious like a medical crisis, I got one of those.  And it was so bad and so painful that I had to quit that same day.  Fortunately it was a training day, but still.  It’s not the way I wanted to go out.

And like I mentioned before, my departure clearly wasn’t taken well – or possibly some didn’t believe my reasons, but I need to let go of that – since no one that I worked with (or for) responded in any way to my leaving.

It’s this last job quit that’s been the hardest.  It’s the incident that has, in fact, after all these years, gotten me to realize that I’m sick.

I’m sick.

I’m sick in such a way that sometimes, even when I eat everything right, and work out and manage my stress, I’m going to be knocked completely on my ass with a painful IBS flare-up.  For no particular reason at all.  Because that’s how IBS rolls.

And after my surgery? The fibroids and polyps are going to grow back.  That’s already been established.  Twice.

The acceptance part is tricky.  Very tricky.

I don’t like feeling weak.

I don’t like that most of this is out of my control.

I don’t like that most people don’t get how bad I really feel most of the time because I look healthy.

And I’m very, very good at pretending things are ok when they’re not.

Unfortunately I had let things go for so long that all I accomplished was cleaning the kitchen and bathroom and doing laundry. Which means I still have to dust and vacuum and sweep today. And fit in two hours of A Haunting. And some other shit I promised to do for Jesus, all while trying to remember that I am not allowed to eat meat today.

Can I just take a moment to say here that I might be the only person who doesn’t like hardwood floors? It just means I have to clean the damn floor twice, in two different ways. And since we rent, our many throw rugs aren’t a decorating statement so much as they are an effort to protect our deposit from Jellydog’s nails.

Anywho. Of course I’m disappointed that I’m not pregnant. But not terribly disappointed. Because I honestly expected not to be anyway.

First of all, even if my ladyparts were all in proper working order, it can take 35 year old women a year to conceive. On average. Meaning it could take us that long, for no particular reason at all. Second of all, it was our first month of trying. My luck is just not that good. Third of all, my ladyparts are not, in fact, in proper working order.

Truthfully, I don’t even regret FF getting me all worked up with their pregnancy monitor either. We’re supposed to be thinking positively here, and it was fun to pay attention to all the things that were going on with my body.

I have my own theory about what happened, with no way to prove it, it’s just what I think and feel. The only “research” I have to base it on is what was happening with my own body compared to some articles, blogs, and personal stories I’ve read.

There’s lots of talk about how even when both male and female parts are working perfectly, sex is perfectly timed, everyone follows all the rules perfectly, pregnancy still doesn’t happen that month.

The stuff I’m reading suggests that it’s not so much the fertilization that’s the tricky part. In fact, unless the issue is with the woman’s eggs or the man’s little swimmers, fertilization probably happens more often than it doesn’t happen. It’s that trip through the Fallopian tubes and finding a place to set up shop in the uterus where things tend to fall apart.

When Aunt Flo showed up and ruined all my plans I went back and looked more closely at my chart. I didn’t imagine the things I was feeling, even though I was trying to explain them away with caffeine withdrawal and alien brain thieves.

I most definitely wasn’t imagining the fatigue that started about 4 days after I ovulated. It was like nothing I have ever felt, and this is coming from someone who has had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in the past. It wasn’t just that I really wanted a nap, it’s that I could not function without one, sometimes two, a day. I once fell asleep sitting upright in my chair reading a blog.

My bbt went down, significantly, 10 days after ovulation. I had mild cramping that day, and the next. My boobs hurt. My brain cells appeared to be leaving my head at an alarming rate.

The fatigue just…went away on Tuesday. I had energy and felt like doing something for the first time in almost a week. I only dozed for 15 minutes on the couch as opposed to passing out and drooling on myself for two and a half hours. I could think clearly again.

Something was different, and I felt much less optimistic about the pregnancy test the next day. But Aunt Flo had to be a bitch and come later in the morning, so I still wasted a pregnancy test when I got up.

So, maybe, just maybe, what happened was that everything was going along swimmingly, and a little embryo (or is it blastocyst?) did implant in my uterus. And then a day or so later it was all, “Damn, these are not cozy digs. There’s no room up in here! I’m out.”

Which means Jerrad and I will be spending some time this weekend filling out ginormous packets full of terribly rude questions like how old was I when I got my boobies and how often does my husband jack off, so we can get an appointment with the fertility specialist and I can have more uncomfortable medical instruments inserted into my hooha.

Of course it was. I knew damn well I was testing too early, but I did it anyway. Even though almost everyone says not to test until your period is at least one day late. Even though the directions on the test specifically said that if implantation just occurred the test will be falsely negative. I still peed on it.

FF sure thinks I’m pregnant. I didn’t tell them about my negative result today, because I don’t need another person to say, “You tested too early, dumbass”. But it still thinks my low temp yesterday was implantation. And it got really excited at my temp today, because it was pretty high, making my chart “triphasic” which is also apparently a symptom of early pregnancy.

It’s also very excited that I’m cramping, that my boobs hurt, that I’ve had a headache for three days, that my back is killing me, that I’m having creamy cervical fluid, and that I’m constantly tired.

So now my pregnancy monitor is up to 63.

The constantly tired is getting old. I need a nap and I just got up three and a half hours ago. I have a to-do list a mile long and no energy. It’s really hard not to be cranky when you are this tired.

Anyway, I’m not terribly disappointed because I know I tested too early. So, I’m just pretending it didn’t happen. That’s what I do with things I don’t like. I just ignore them.

I can’t really say I feel pregnant, because I have no idea what that feels like. I do know that if this is PMS, it’s the worst I’ve ever had in my life. I do know that if this is fatigue from caffeine withdrawal, I’m pretty sure I can’t hang. I’m exhausted to the point of being almost dysfunctional.

But the main thing that’s making me think I’m probably not pregnant is the complete and utter lack of nausea. I realize some women don’t get this symptom at all, or don’t get it very badly. But, this is me we’re talking about here. I get nauseated and throw up if food looks at me the wrong way.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I did feel nauseated last night at bedtime, but I’m pretty sure it was because I ate three brownies. Yes, three. Who knew gluten-free brownies could be so delicious?

Craving chocolate sure sounds like PMS to me. And the exhaustion could very well be a little bit of depression.

Speaking of depression, here it is, Monday again. The day I do my weekly claim for unemployment benefits. Another week of pointlessly filling out job applications. And last Friday I had the pleasure of being informed that three positions I had applied for had been filled, and I never even got an interview. I’m more than halfway through my benefits now, and it’s not looking very good. Not to mention how bad it’s making me feel about myself. Especially now since my only job is to take care of my house and my husband and I’m too tired to even do a good job at that.

I don’t even want to talk about the search for a house because it’s even more depressing than the search for a job. I don’t even want to talk about how I’m so over this town it isn’t funny.

Blah. I’m going to eat some french fries and a brownie and take a nap.

According to everything I’ve read, even if you have one of those super fancy highly sensitive early pregnancy tests, you still shouldn’t test until the day before you expect your period. At the earliest. If you test too early, it’s likely you will get a negative, even if you are actually pregnant. Which is disappointing. Not to mention expensive if you keep testing too early every month.

Wednesday is day 28, and I almost always get my period between 8am and 12pm on day 28. Seriously, it’s that regular.

That means I shouldn’t test until Tuesday, which still might be too early. Meanwhile, today FF decided to tell me they are detecting early pregnancy signs on my chart. Which is awesome unless they are big fat liars.

The napping has continued in full force, and two nights this week I slept 10 hours when I usually sleep 6 or 7. The house is a mess and I have zero energy to do anything about it other than read blogs, watch TV, and comment on how dirty the house is.

I’m pretty sure aliens are sneaking into our bedroom at night and scooping out my brain cells with a spoon. I feel like I’ve lost about 20 IQ points in the last few days. I’m forgetting things, messing up words when I talk, and sending my husband to the store to buy things I’ve already bought.

I guess I should say that the reason FF is detecting early pregnancy signs today is because today is the first day I entered them. There are so many screens on that site and I ignore half of them because they don’t apply to me.

Anyway, this morning I woke up at 6 and had to pee really bad. So I decided to take my temp then, even though it was about an hour earlier than usual, because I’m pretty sure using the potty counts as “getting up and moving around”. I was really tired and planning to go back to sleep and also didn’t want to turn the light on and wake my husband up, so I took my temp and turned off the thermometer without even looking at it. It saves the last temp you took so I knew when I woke up for reals I could check it and put it in the chart.

Of course, I couldn’t fall back asleep, so half an hour later I just got up and entered the temp without really paying attention whether it was close to my other recent temps. My chart got all excited and put a big circle around the temp and called it a potential implantation dip because it was much lower than usual and occurred 10 days past ovulation. Then my pregnancy monitor, which previously had been blank, opened up a bunch of fields, and gave me this green ticker thing that said I had 35 points.

Fortunately there was also a “what’s this?” button because I had no idea what the hell was going on. Apparently there is a whole screen of symptoms that I’ve been ignoring. In my defense, there’s a lot to read on that site and information overload comes on quickly. Especially when you have less brain cells to work with because aliens are stealing them.

The last two days I’ve been feeling decidedly not pregnant because the symptoms I’m having are almost identical to PMS. Fatigue, irritability, headache, backache, and sore boobs. My weight even went up about 2 pounds yesterday which I chalked up to PMS bloating. Instead of the thousand extra calories I consumed the night before having a big ol pile of BBQ with a giant Sprite. Which was a poor substitute for the beer I really wanted.

Hey, that was the last Friday I get to eat meat for like 6 weeks. I was doing it up.

So this time I actually read the instructions, imagine that, and they tell you to just enter your symptoms without overanalyzing everything. They don’t know me very well. Overanalyzing is what I do best.

For some reason, cervical fluid was on there, too. I had quit reading all about that as soon as I decided I wasn’t sticking my finger up my hooha every day and I sure as hell wasn’t sticking it up there far enough to check my cervical position. I did remember reading something about how some women check their fluid by what they see in their underwear, and then they can sniff it as a way of determining what type it is.

Excuse me? First of all, I don’t need to sniff my underwear to know I smell like roses. And second of all, since I rarely leave the house, I live in pajamas. Who wears underwear with pajamas?

But then I saw a section that some women just before and during implantation have gushes of cervical fluid. Ok, so that’s totally been happening to me the last day or two. It happened so much yesterday when we went to see Twilight that I almost went to the bathroom because I thought I was having my period super early. Then when we got home, I gave in and smelled my underwear since I was actually wearing some. And, just as I thought… roses.

Anyway, the pregnancy monitor really liked that, and by the time I was done entering everything my score was 50. But. This could still just as likely be PMS with a healthy dose of caffeine withdrawal. That explains everything, too.

Tuesday is like forever away.

PS. Even super awesome men like my husband just don’t get Twilight. He was a sport and went with me to see it yesterday. And to his credit he only looked like he wished he was dead once or twice.

J: What I don’t get, is if he’s immortal, why would he be messing with some ordinary high school girl? Why wouldn’t he just be with some hot stripper or something?

Me: Exactly! That’s why it’s so romantic. He wants her, because she’s his soulmate and he’s been waiting like 80 years for her.

J: blank stare

Me: Men just don’t get this movie.

UPDATE: Ok, I seriously need my brain cells back because now I can’t even count. Tuesday is day 28, not Wednesday. Which makes test day Monday – tomorrow.

The rest of it is so much easier than I thought it would be. Thanks to the site I’m using for fertility charting, I don’t need to do anything other than enter my temp, my test results, and when we do it, and it does everything else for me. Including analysis of my chart and various types of alerts. It even gave us a high score on intercourse.

I’m going to assume that was for timing, not technique, or else this website is way up in my business.

I seem to have acquired an internal alarm clock that wakes me up at almost exactly the same time every day to take my temp, even on weekends when my husband’s alarm isn’t set.

I don’t even miss alcohol all that much. Stop laughing, it’s true. I’ve realized it was more of a habit to have a drink or two every night than anything else. Although I did cheat a little, tiny bit. I had one glass of white wine with dinner on Valentine’s Day.

Which reminds me, I should really find out if Communion wine is a big deal. I mean, it’s just one tiny sip once a week. And well, Jesus kind of sticks in the throat if you don’t have something to drink.

I knew my biggest challenge going in would be caffeine, but even that’s been easier than I thought. I’ve gone from a double shot latte in the mornings and one to two servings of extra afternoon caffeine to one cup of coffee that is half regular coffee and half decaf. Plus, I gotta tell you, I’m sleeping like a baby now.

I’ve always been plagued by insomnia and frequently relied on drinks, benadryl, cold medicine, whathaveyou just to get some sleep. I don’t even need that stuff anymore. Which is good because I’m not really allowed to have any of it. And even if something is considered “safe”, I only want to take it if I’m say, actually sick. Even then I think I would consider toughing it out.

It’s not like I’m naive enough to think that I really am pregnant on our first month of trying. Especially given that I’m 35 and my ladyparts are known to be rather uncooperative. But I can’t help reading all this stuff about early pregnancy signs and analyzing every little thing, and hoping. Positive thinking is supposed to help, right?

According to my fertility chart, I’m on day 23 of my cycle, 7 days past conception, if it happened to occur, and at least 4 days away from taking a pregnancy test. Everything else looks picture perfect on my chart. My ovulation date was easily pinpointed (right before Valentine’s Day, awww), our intercourse was perfectly timed, and my temps are doing what they should.

Including dipping slightly today, which if I did conceive, is when the cute little embryo would be burrowing into the wall of my uterus. Probably saying, “Damn it fibroids, get the fuck up out of my way!”

I’m also having some cramping today, another symptom of implantation. But that could also just as easily be my cranky intestines protesting the chicken nacho salad concoction I had for lunch yesterday.

Yesterday afternoon, the last thing I remember was that it was 3 pm and I was just getting annoyed that A Haunting was a repeat again, then all of a sudden it was 5 pm, my husband was standing over me as I was curled up on the couch, drooling, snuggled under a blanket I don’t even remember reaching for.

Then it took me at least 45 minutes to pull together a dinner comprised almost entirely of leftovers because I kept forgetting what I was doing.

Was this the exhaustion and pregnancy brain that plagues the newly pregnant even though it’s too early for that? No, probably not, especially when the more likely explanation is that I’ve recently cut my caffeine consumption by almost three-fourths. How can that not affect your functioning?

But still. I’m looking at my expected due date if I did conceive this cycle and thinking about things. Things like how much it would rock not to have to fast on certain days during Lent because I’m pregnant, when I’ll have a cute pregnant belly, when I can buy maternity clothes, and best of all, when I’ll finally have me some big ol boobies.

My expected due date would be November 5. Umm, November’s full enough already between my husband’s birthday, my birthday, and our anniversary. Not to mention the holidays. Also, that would give us three Scorpios in the house. Yikes.

Still. I just want it to be time to pee on a stick already!

There I was on Tuesday, minding my own business, all caught up in babymaking, temperature taking, fertility charting excitement, when my ob/gyn called to tell me the results of the pathology report from my polyps.

She left a message because I didn’t answer the phone on account of how I was using the potty. This happens to me all the time. I only get important calls when I’m otherwise engaged. Or when my phone has been in my purse on silent for three days.

After assuring me everything was benign, she said that she is “pretty sure” she still didn’t get all of my polyps out this time. I’m assuming she was “pretty sure” because the tiny dime size amount of polyp in the little specimen cup eventually got compared to the picture and estimated size/weight of the giant polyp(s) in my uterus.

Which led her to think it might be a fibroid after all. Bringing the potential fibroid population of my uterus to 6. Which led her to give me an immediate referral to a fertility specialist, instead of waiting 6 months like we had talked about just a few short days before. She ended with a cheery upbeat instruction to keep taking my prenatals and continue to “attempt pregnancy”.

This news would probably make most women sad. Nobody likes to hear the word fertility specialist. But I got pissed.the.fuck.off. I actually looked down at my uterus and said, “I can’t even talk to you right now, you traitorous bitch.”

I remained pissed off the rest of the night, but I woke up sad Wednesday morning. I listened to my doctor’s message again and cried for awhile. I emailed Jerrad, who can always put things in perspective and make me feel better. His response was,

“What’s the worst that can happen? That your uterus is completely broken? Then we adopt and you get to avoid the months of pain and nausea, and the hooha-stretching/ belly-cutting.”

All very good points. Incidentally, the topic of my possible infertility came up way back when we were talking about getting married. Before he proposed I wanted him to know that on account of my history of cervical cancer, incredibly painful periods, and the high rate of miscarriages in my family, there was a better than average chance he might not be getting any heirs to the throne from me. Infertility is hard enough on a couple when it’s completely unexpected and I wanted him to know what he might be signing up for.

This led to a discussion about how we would handle infertility if it did come up. For reasons I’ll discuss in a future blog, we’re not really considering things like IVF or surrogacy. We’re both fine with adoption.

Not to say that it would be easy to let go of the idea of having children together. I’ve wanted children with this man pretty much from the moment I met him. A few months ago, I saw a video his mom had of him doing a magic show when he was 11 or 12. It was the cutest thing I had ever seen. It made me want to tear his clothes off and do it right there on the floor of the semi-clean spare room.

I’m going to assume that was biology making me want a cute little baby with my husband’s looks, mannerisms, sense of humor, and sweet disposition, and not that I’m some sort of weird lady pedophile.

Anyway, Jerrad’s comment did, as usual, put everything in perspective for me. Plus, it’s actually working out better this way. I no longer feel the pressure to get pregnant in 6 months – which can be a tall order for women that happen to be blessed with a cooperative uterus. We can meet with the fertility specialist right away to discuss removing the fibroids. How many couples are lucky enough to get a referral to a specialist before they’ve even started trying? And maybe, just maybe, we’ll be cancelling that appointment because I’ll be pregnant after all.

So, now that I’m sure that we’re going to be parents one way or another, and my blog revenue is now in the double digits, I’m ready to start picking out baby stuff.

I started by googling “fertility chart”. Oh. My. God. It took about 2.5 seconds for me to get completely overwhelmed. There are codes, directions on how and when to take your temperature, descriptions of cervical position and mucous, and all sorts of sticks you can pee on.

I realize that’s small and hard to read, but yes they really are referring to intercourse as a “baby dance”, or BD for short.

After spending almost an hour reading about basal body temperatures, I was so annoyed I was ready to shove a thermometer in my eye. You need to take your temperature first thing in the morning, before you get out of bed, and ideally before you “move around too much in bed”. Umm, am I allowed to at least stretch and reach for the thermometer on my nightstand? Or should I sleep with it in my hand so I can use it as soon as I become alert enough to stick it in my ear?

Yes, my ear. We already own a perfectly suitable, gives a temp to the tenth degree, mercury ear thermometer. I am not buying a $10 “basal body thermometer” which is basically the same damn thing. And furthermore, I am not sticking a thermometer up my hooha every morning.

Nor will I be testing my cervical mucous and position. I am not touching my cervix every day. I repeat, not.

When Jerrad was looking online for bulk pregnancy tests (best.husband.ever.), he found some that come with ovulation predictor kits. Nifty little things that you can pee on that will tell you when to go do it because you are getting ready to ovulate in the next day or so.

So, when I read that your temperature goes up after you ovulate – as in, too late to get pregnant – I wondered why in the hell would I want to chart my temp and feel my cervix every day when by the time I notice a change it’s too late? And when I can just pee on a stick that will tell me the same damn thing?

Actually, my point is, we’ve been using a form of Natural Family Planning as birth control for a while now. So, first off, I really don’t need to start charting to learn my patterns, because I already know them pretty well. Secondly, my ob/gyn is only giving us 6 months of trying before a referral to a fertility specialist. I think the fertility chart is more for my doctor so she can see the patterns and more easily be able to determine what’s going on.

Which is why I’m going to go ahead and do the damn thing. Minus the touching my cervix part.

Which, incidentally, means I have not done so well with all those healthy changes I was ready to make. I’ve been “stress eating” and not working out, to say the least.

Yesterday’s ob/gyn appointment was a follow-up to this one. The link I included in my last blog to describe the procedure I was having was from an infertility site. I hope that didn’t give anyone the wrong impression – that site just had the best description of the procedure.

My test was to find out if those dastardly polyps had grown back. This was slightly more pleasant than last time because I didn’t have to do the full bladder thing, just the giant wand, catheter, bunch of cramp inducing fluid in my uterus thing.

Which was made even more awesome by the presence of my doctor’s medical student. Male medical student.

“I only have med students like 3 times a year… it just always happens to be when you are here.”

Uh. Huh.

So while they were all debating the advantages of side-opening speculums versus balloons for inserting catheters in uteruses (uteri?), she found two polyps. The good news is she thinks they aren’t new, because they are in the exact same place she couldn’t get to during my last D&C.

Meaning, they haven’t grown back, which is good, but I needed to have another D&C. Of course.

And lucky me, once again they were able to do the surgery the same day. Although a hysterosonogram is more than enough for one day, and I briefly considered chickening out and going home, I just wanted to get the second D&C over with so we could for sure start trying to conceive after my upcoming visit from Aunt Flo.

So while the med student learned which part of the cervix is best to poke the long anesthetic needles into, and how her nurses hate cleaning up after her because she just lets the blood splash everywhere, Jerrad held my hand and when it was over helped me climb down so I didn’t get blood all over my totally cute knee socks.

They have you sit there for a little while afterwards to make sure you won’t be too lightheaded from the anesthesia. And that’s when she gave us the go-ahead to start trying along with some instructions.

Instructions? I was sort of hoping to just have a lot of sex, but apparently it’s not as simple as all that. Especially when you are old like me. Due to my ripe old age of 35, she wants me to do all sorts of temperature taking and cervical mucous testing and charting right from the beginning.

So, the funny thing about this is that I’m Catholic, and we’ve been using natural family planning (umm, most of the time), so I’m already aware of how that all works. But she gave me a pamphlet from Planned Parenthood on charting your fertility pattern as a method of birth control, with instructions for us to “do it a lot” during the times they tell you not to.

Since I was, in fact, lightheaded from the anesthesia, I wasn’t really capable of a discussion about how I’m Catholic and I don’t want no inaccurate literature from no damn baby killing Planned Parenthood*. Plus I really like my doctor and that would just give me a reputation of Elaine-like proportions. I’d rather be the one with the interesting uterus who lets her doctor invite med students to all sorts of hooha exposing procedures.

Anyway, if I’m not pregnant after 6 months of trying, she will refer me to a fertility specialist. The next step could be a fibroid removing procedure, since I have some of those too. My uterus apparently has poor boundaries and will just invite any old thing to live there.

PS. I need a cute name for this series of pregnancy/conception blogs. Leave me a comment if you have a good idea.

*seriously, don’t even get me started on how inaccurate it was. The entire pamphlet basically said this method doesn’t work, with lots of scary, fake statistics to back up their “research”. Umm, yeah, it won’t work if you don’t even tell people the right way to use that method. I feel another blog coming on…