BDing w/ DH for LO who I will EBF... OMGWTFBBQ

Hubs and I have decided to wait a cycle to start trying (This decision based solely on the fact that we are going to San Francisco next week and we want me to be able to go out and drink.  Responsible parenting right there!), so I thought I would write something on the ridiculous abbreviations I keep coming across in books and online that have to do with fertility and conception.

My husband is a gamer - WOW and Starcraft mostly - and he got me into WOW.  One thing most people know about nerdy online gamers is that there's a whole other language being used:

"Can't cast" - "I can't cast a spell and am probably going to die,"
"Sheep him!" - "Turn that bad guy into a sheep, rendering him defenseless"
"Lok'Tar!" - Orc for "victory!"
"pwning n00bs" - Killing players who are low level
"qq more n00b" - (sarcasm) "Go ahead and cry about that some more"
"L2P" -  "Learn to Play" which I've been told a few times :(

...are some that come to mind.

One that I've never quite understood was OMGWTFBBQ - OMG and WTF are self explanatory, but BBQ?  Idk.

When I started reading about conception and fertility, I learned that this world, not unlike the World of Warcraft, has its own language too (from The Leaky Boob and The Impatient Woman's Guide):

AF - Aunt Flo (period)
AP - Attachment Parenting
APNO - all purpose nipple ointment
BBT - Basal Body Temp
BC - Birth Control
BD - Baby Dance (sex)
BF - Breastfeeding
BFP - Big Fat Positive
BFN - Big Fat Negative
BM - breastmilk
CIO - cry it out
CLW -child led weaning
CM - cervical mucus
DD - Dear Daughter
DH - Dear Husband
DOC - date of conception
DS - Dear Son
DTD - Do the deed
EBF - Exclusively Breastfeeding/breastfed
EBM - expressed breastmilk
EGCW - eggwhite cervical mucus (means you're fertile)
FTT - failure to thrive
FT - full term
FX - Fingers Crossed
HCP - health care provider
HPT - home pregnancy test
LC - Lactation Consultant
LO - little one/loved one
MC - miscarriage
MW - midwife
NIP - nursing in public
OB - obstetrician
POAS - pee on a stick
SAHM - Stay At Home Mom
SAHD - Stay At Home Dad
SAHP - Stay At Home Parent
SO - significant other
STTN - Sleep through the night
TTC - trying to conceive
US - ultrasound
2WW - wait time from ovulation to using a pregnancy test

... And that's just a small sample! OMGWTFBBQ!!

Take a look at any message board about fertility, childbirth or parenting and you'll see whole paragraphs that look like:

"DH and I have been TTC, just got EGCW and BBT rose, so BD tonite! FX during 2WW to POAS on HPT and get BFP!!"

Whatever happened to, "I'm ovulating, so tonight's the night to get pregnant!" ????????

Honestly, I would never refer to Hubs as DH (gag!) and if the term BD ever came to mind while we were TTC I'd probably laugh too hard to DTD!  And I don't know why it's so hard to type things like "pregnancy test" or instead of BFP, just saying "I'm knocked up!"

Keep it simple, folks!

Time to Start Peein' on Sticks!

...No, not a pregnancy test (yet).

So after reading The Impatient Woman's Guide to Getting Pregnant (as well as What to Expect Before You're Expecting, which I DO NOT recommend) I quickly decided to skip taking my hoo-ha's temperature or investigating my cervical mucus (side note: I know that there's plenty of gross stuff that goes along with getting pregnant and having a baby, as well as changing diapers etc, so why not eliminate as much ick as possible!?!) and just get a fertility monitor.  The Clearblue Easy monitor, to be exact:

That's a little underwhelming, and my rug in the bathroom looks like crap.  How about this:

Much more appropriate to the level of fancy here!

Basically, if you are trying to get pregnant (or, you might want to know this is you're trying not to get pregnant) you have around 6ish days out of the month of higher odds, with about 3 of them being optimal for getting preggers.  Not that I don't enjoy getting it on with Hubs, but wouldn't you want to know if you were even in the ballpark?  Besides, now he has 3 days of guaranteed sex!!  And, later on, I'll have a much clearer idea of a real due date. (Off-label benefit: I can keep drinking wine until my hormone levels rise!)

So, starting with day 1 of your cycle (the day your period starts, or the day after if it starts in the afternoon), you turn the thing on, tell it you're starting a new cycle, then pee on a stick when it tells you to.  It measures the amounts of estrogen and LH, or Luteinizing hormone, to tell you when you are about to ovulate.  If you're trying to get pregnant, having sex just before and during ovulation increases your chances (the "just before" having more to do with the life cycle of sperm etc.  Read all about it in TIWG).

Today, I didn't even have to pee on a stick - if it's day 1 of your cycle, you're not fertile.

From here on out, I turn on the monitor every morning (before going to the bathroom so my pee has the highest concentration of hormones) and do what it tells me to do, taking note of where the fertility level is (low, high, peak/ovulation).

It's almost baby-making time!!



Acne and Where Will We Be Raising This Child?

The going-off-birth-control saga continues, now with teenage acne!  I've always had "troubled" skin, which turned into sensitive, combination, adult acne skin, but in the last year, I've felt like I've solved it with Obagi Clenziderm.  My skin was looking pretty good at one point!  Then I gave the Nuva Ring the boot and this happened:



SOURCE

Another side effect I was warned about via the Internet, but geez! Is it ever worse than I thought!  My skin hasn't produced this much oil in 15 years!  It's slowly starting to dissipate, the oiliness is getting much better, but I still look pox-marked. :(

Ryan and I are looking for houses here in Orlando - to rent, since right now, we only can count on being here for another 1.5+ more years - and haven't found much yet.  Since he is still rotating in Tampa, the house hunt hasn't gone full force yet.

What is starting to ramp up is Ryan interviewing for fellowship positions.  He's decided to go into Musculoskeletal Oncology (which is what he is rotating though in Tampa right now), so now I get to play the "Where Will We Be Raising This Child? (for at least one year) Game."  The possibilities (in red) and more distant possibilities (in light blue) are below:

 

 



The list (in order of my preference of places to live) includes:

1. Tampa, FL
2. Gainesville, FL
3. Nashville, TN
4. Chicago, IL
5. Miami, FL
6. New York, NY
7. Boston, MA

Other possibilities include Toronto and Rochester, MN, but I don't know how really possible they are.  Luckily fellowship last for only 1 year (for the most part; some programs are 2), and I figure I can tough it out anywhere for a year.  I'd just like to be some place where our family is relatively close if there is a kid involved.


It's getting close to a month of off-birth-control; my iPhone calendar has a reminder to take out my Nuva ring this Thursday.  My next post might have something to do with the fertility monitor!!!

Baby... Crazy...?

Y'ALL.  Getting off birth control is a bitch.  A crazy, redneck, meth-addicted bitch, calling you a "cracker," while she aims her shotgun at you, cigarette dangling between her lips, personal-sized Jack Daniels in her back pocket.

For the last week and a half, this was me. Can't wait to impregnate that, right, fellas?!

So, after going off the Nuva Ring, I certainly noticed some side effects - fatigue, nausea, heightened emotions - enough for me to Google "going off Nuva Ring side effects" and find that many other women were experiencing the same thing.  No prob.  If they can handle it, so can I.  Then last Wednesday happened.

Went to work exhausted, came in a little late because I honestly could not open my eyes.  Every time I hit snooze, I went right back into REM sleep (bad sign).  Got a Redbull on the way to work, which I had cut out in favor of the healthier option of coffee (pulling back to 200 mg or less of caffeine per day).  Felt like I was gonna hurl, but pushed through it to try to work.  Around lunch, I realized that, in addition to feeling kinda nauseous, I was starting to feel some anxiety - like I was going to jump out of my skin.  Ok, I deal with anxiety and depression every day, I can do this.

And this sums up how well that worked...

After taking deep yoga breaths while we were all eating lunch, I finally jerked up my head, slammed down my hands and asked my boss if I could either go home and get meds, or go to the liquor store and get wine, cause I was losing my shit - "Because I'm off birth control!!!" Cat #1 out of the bag (Ryan and I haven't wanted to share the news that we are going to start trying, or TTC for you pregnancy/mommy bloggers out there.  Oops.)  Got permission to run home, took some Temazepam, and chased it with some a (juice) glass of Chardonnay (that I chugged).  -----> I fully know that this is really bad mental health management.

Was in between laughing hysterically and crying hysterically the whole time, got voicemail at my psychiatrist's office and Ryan was in surgery.  So, I called my mom. Cat #2 out of the bag.  Double oops.  To give her credit, she didn't get all super excited, gushy, OMG! on me (which would have made everything worse); she talked me down while I drove back to, then paced around my office.  (She tell me how excited she was when I called her back later to let her know I was ok!)

My shrink called me back, and I told him that I thought he might need to send the nice men in white coats to throw me in a van and take me away.  He laughed, said it was normal, and to take Lorazepam (or, Ativan, which I have a Rx for but don't use - gave me intense dreams/nightmares), as needed to get through the worst of the anxiety, which could last for another couple days (?!?!?!?).

Ryan also called me after seeing my increasingly crazy texts:

...Not that I'm complaining, but this would be justification for calling my mom!

 

He listened to my symptoms, was happy that I called my psych and not so happy that I called my mom ("You are just not good at keeping secrets!").  Luckily, he's always had a good handle on what I need when I'm having a meltdown, and knows that, overall, calling my mom was a good idea.

I don't really remember much about the rest of the day, just that it was mostly a blur and I went home and hid in bed.  For the next 24 hours.  Couldn't do work the next day.  Just. Couldn't.

 

 Everything has gotten much better since, though still feeling the fatigue and the new, fun side effect of sore boobs/nipples - again, thank you, mothers-to-be of the Internet, for easing my worries about my boobs falling off.

 

Apparently, hormones + ongoing mental health issues (that are usually under control) = crazy hormonal spazz. (or see first pic above)