I’m Either Pregnant or These Are Gas Pains October 12, 2009

As I write this, I feel decidedly un-pregnant.

But all day today I was sure that I was pregnant. First, I woke up with cramps and the feeling of having to pee especially badly. Then I was so tired, even after my morning coffee. On the walk to work, I stopped at one point and said to my husband, “ugh, I’m just so tired.” I was tired most of the morning and a little lightheaded and spacey. I hudled at my desk in my fall coat, and the feeling of being warm and swaddled helped my cramps.

When I got home, my back was aching and my abdomen hurt. Eventually I figured out that I was constipated and after a trip to the bathroom I was feeling much better. But I still have what I think are gas pains – they are in my abdomen, but closer up near my stomach, and they are in my back, but slightly higher than the spots where I usually ask my husband to rub my back when I get my period.

I’m actually getting tired of this back and forth. I enjoy the moments when I’m sure I’m pregnant, and it’s only a matter of time before a pregnancy test shows it. But when I don’t feel pregnant, I just feel stupid. I wish I hadn’t said anything to my husband (who already doesn’t rely on my passing symptoms and is perfectly happy to wait for the “real” verdict). And I almost feel silly for what I’ve already said on this blog, even though the whole point of starting it was to give me an outlet for my thoughts, feelings, symptoms, and all the rest.

If I had to test right now, I don’t think I would. That’s how un-pregnant I feel right now.

And after Saturday’s negative result, I had told myself that I wouldn’t test until the following Saturday. It might have been too early and I should learn my lesson.

BUT.

My son has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, and his doctor is my doctor. If I am pregnant, it would be nice to know before going so that I wouldn’t have to make a second trip one or two weeks later.

So I probably will take a test tomorrow morning. The problem is that I really, really don’t know when I ovulated. I had cramps on September 28th and that was the closest I got to mittelschmertz. But my temperature stayed pretty low for four more days, so I think that I ovulated closer to October 1 because the day after that my temperature rose consistently over the next four days and was finally over what I later established was the coverline on October 6. So if I ovulated on Oct 1 and if my luteal phase is 14 days, then tomorrow will be the day before my period is expected. But those are a lot of ifs.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Pregnant, Not Pregnant, Pregnant… October 11, 2009

If only this could be solved by pulling the petals off a daisy one by one.

I started out the day pregnant. (In my head of course.)

A couple of hours later, after breakfast I was feeling pretty good, so I concluded that I must not be pregnant. This feeling lasted a few hours.

In the middle of the afternoon, after a couple of hours of the tightness/pulling feeling back in my abdomen, I comment to my husband that I hope I’m pregnant because otherwise this is really annoying PMS to have to deal with. And then a couple of hours later, I broke down crying over work-(and thus life-)related stress. I spent maybe half an hour sobbing to my husband while tears ran down my face. And on top of it all, was I pregnant? Not pregnant? I had a thought – if I am pregnant, then once my period comes, all of these kinda crappy aching/tugging/crampy sensations will go away and so will my weepiness. So that’s a bright spot, right?

And now in the evening, I am back to thinking that I am definitely pregnant.

It will be nice to know for sure.

(At the same time, I’m actually a little nervous to find out. If I’m not pregnant, then how will I trust what I’m feeling in my body in the future? Of course, maybe that’s the point. If it’s really not possible to intuit when you’ve conceived, then it’s a waste of time and energy to try! And if I am pregnant, then … wow. Even though we’re planning for this, it would be really life changing. I am nervous about being pregnant again, giving birth (will I do another c-section or not?), taking care of a newborn, and raising two children together. But those are all things for another post.)

I’m Either Pregnant or Getting My Period October 10, 2009

A couple of nights ago my husband commented, “you could be pregnant right now.”

He could have said this anytime in the past six months and it could have been true. (But it never was.) I surprised him this time by saying, “you know, I think I might be.” A look a cautious hope flashed across his face, but then he caught himself and with a touch of eye rolling, he asked “what, did you feel a twinge?”

The first time we tried to get pregnant, we were successful the first month, so I never experienced a two week wait and all the phantom or misinterpreted “pregnancy” symptoms that go along with it. Now as we’re trying for a second child, I spent the first two months sure I was pregnant, only to be truly surprised when my period came. After that I learned not to read so much into every twinge and cramp, learning along the way that it’s possible to have PMS symptoms unlike any I’d ever had before. Nausea, fatigue, cramping, etc. In fact, I had previously thought I didn’t get PMS symptoms at all. And maybe I didn’t before. But I do now and they are exactly the same as all the symptoms I’ve since read about on pregnancy and trying to conceive (ttc) forums. (Yes, forums, the source of all unfounded claims and hypotheses on the internet.)

After two months of sure pregnancy symptoms and the negative pregnancy tests that followed it, my attitude relaxed. I realized that just because it happened quickly the first time doesn’t mean it’s going to happen on the first or second try this time. I read that it can take couples six months on average to get pregnant, that it’s very common for it to take time to conceive a second baby even if the first pregnancy happened quickly, and I have heard anecdotes from friends about trying for several months to get pregnant a second time.

But maybe a bigger factor in my new “relaxed” attitude was that I started focusing my energies on charting my basal body temperatures (bbt). All of my Google searches seemed to end up in the same place: a forum in which women listed and compared details about their cycles. I learned that it is possible to know when you’ve ovulated (but not predict it) just by taking your temperature every morning. (I’d heard about keeping track of your temperature as a method of birth control, but I never really gave it much thought because it seemed sort of complicated and would depend on me keeping really track of my cycle and I didn’t want to have to do that. Also, I just assumed you had to take your temperature vaginally and that idea vaguely grossed me out.)

It’s been four more months since I started charting (see the last four months below) and still no baby. But yet, because I know exactly what’s going on in my cycle, I am much more relaxed about my supposed symptoms and I haven’t wasted any more pregnancy tests.

Until this month.

BBT Charts: June - September 2009

The month started out as usual. The first week I’m moaning about my period. The second week I’m making sure we’re BD-ing (I first thought it stood for “bed down”, which I thought was amusing, but apparently it stands for “baby dance”) at least every other night. The third week I’m wondering whether my thermometer is broken. Shouldn’t I have ovulated by now? The previous three months I felt a sharp pain in my right side (mittelschmertz!) so I knew when I’d ovulated, and as verification my temperature always rose immediately afterwards. Though if you look at my charts above, you’ll see that my temperature rises verrrrrrrrrrrrrrry slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwly, so that my husband and I become frantic about how long we need to keep BD-ing for. Not that we don’t want to, but right around ovulation we try to do it more often than usual. Without going into any detail, I’ll just say that we get a bit tired.

This month I felt some cramps, but never ovulation pain and no subsequent temperature rise. Then my husband’s parents came to visit and while they were here I felt no twinges but my temperature did rise from its most recent dip back up to the coverline, and after hovering at the coverline for one more day it finally went up for real. So when did I ovulate? I have absolutely no idea. And that means that I have no idea when I’m supposed to expect my period.

So now all of the symptoms I feel in this “two week wait” (tww) are under extreme scrutiny. Is it too early for me to be feeling cramps? Or what about the twinges in my breasts? I’ve never had those as part of PMS. But then again, who knows what this month’s PMS has to offer. And what about the fact that I broke down last night, tears streaming down my face because I really, really just wanted to lay on the couch and watch tv (in fact, I’d been looking forward to doing that all day while I was at work) and my husband wanted to watch the baseball game. (The tears clinched my victory in that domestic disagreement, but I can honestly say that I did not encourage them. In fact, I spent a few minutes sobbing as discretely as I could in the kitchen hoping my husband wouldn’t think I’d totally lost all sense of perspective.) Ever since I’ve been paying attention to my PMS symptoms, I’ve learned that I do tend to get tired, emotional, and crampy in the couple of days leading up to my period. So is that what’s going on this month?

I just have this sense that this month is different. It’s like, most of the time, I’m aware of something in my abdomen. It feels heavier or achier or fuller or something, although I know these adjectives are far too strong for what I feel. I keep wanting to place a protective hand on my abdomen. Is this wishful thinking?

Last night I dreamed that I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. (Last month I dreamed of my period the night before it actually came.) Although it was kind of a fractured and confused dream, the belief that I was pregnant was so real that when my alarm went off this (Saturday) morning for me to take my temperature, I almost just turned off the alarm thinking I no longer needed to take my temperature since I was pregnant after all! But I did take my temperature and it was 98.1 – definitely not my usual drop before getting my period, but of course, I could still be a week or more away from my period. I went back to sleep.

When I got up a couple of hours later, I decided that for peace of mind, I should test.

Negative.

No big surprise, right? And after I tested, I felt more heaviness, almost like cramps, almost like my period might sort of be coming. I’ve felt like this all day. In the morning, I believed the test so strongly that I interpreted my symptoms as indication that my period really was coming. But as the day has gone on and my symptoms haven’t changed at all – I still want to put a protective hand on my abdomen – I am wondering if this test is really the final word.