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!!!

Back to Basics

I think my body just realized it isn't on birth control anymore.  I haven't felt like this since I was 16.  Pinterest (actually some other site, but I found it on Pinterest) feels my pain:

 

 

Also, I wonder if Ryan would be interested in registering for this:

From 21 Inane Baby Products For Questionable Parents

Clearing Roadblocks

Since my last entry, I've been setting up appointments, talking to "advisers" and generally making sure that we can do this whole baby thing.  I'm basically the secretary to a CEO that doesn't exist yet!  Clearing all of these things of my list (the list of things I've worried about) has felt awesome; it's great to find solutions to things I thought were problems.  Roadblocks we've tackled so far:

• Preconception Health:  I've been taking prenatal vitamins for months now, so that was already in place.  After reading The Impatient Woman's Guide to Getting Pregnant, (which I LOVED!  I'll be adding a Books page on the blog to talk about the pregnancy books I've read and liked - or disliked!) I've added things like CoQ10, a calcium supplement, and I have an iron supplement on the way.  Gummy vitamins are the way to go!  Ryan and I have been trying to stay on a Primal/Paleo diet, and I did a little research to make sure it was compatible with pregnancy - looks like it'll be fine, and it will help me lose some more weight before we actually start trying!  I decided not to make an appointment with my OBGYN; Most of my vaccines are up-to-date (I know I've had a TDAP in recent years, thanks to cutting my feet twice!), and I just saw her a few months ago - everything was fine.  They gave me a preconception packet then, and I'm good with everything in it.  Cutting down my caffeine intake has been hard - switching from Redbull to coffee, and drinking less in general - but I'm working on it!
• Preconception Mental Health: Anyone who will eventually read this blog (seeing as I'm keeping it a secret at the moment!) knows I am and have been treated for depression and generalized anxiety.  Luckily, it's easily handled with Zoloft, some type of benzo, and regular talk therapy.  I met with my psychiatrist last week to tell him our eminent plans and discuss what medication I can continue or should continue and what I have to stop.  I think he thought I was going to freak out at either staying on one med or getting off another, but the research I've done lines up with what he advises, which is that staying on Zoloft is fine, but benzos have to go.  There are lots of opinions on this issue, but my doctor and I are in agreement: the health of the mother has to be balanced with the health of the fetus, so staying on the antidepressant is a good idea.  But, anything that can cause addiction has to go, so I'm trying to step down on the anxiety meds.  It's hard.  With Ryan rotating in Tampa, I don't sleep as well, and lack of sleep eventually gives me general anxiety.  We wont be trying to get pregnant until I am completely off of ristoril, so that's incentive, but I can't say that it's easy.  On the talk therapy side, my therapist has been very encouraging and helps me talk about and work through my fears around getting pregnant.  She's fantastic in general, and she has kids, so it's something she really helps me with!
• Financial Status:  I don't want to get into the whole thing on here, but short story is that Ryan and I both have accumulated some credit card debt.  We are on a strict budget now, with shared accounts, and have both been spending around $200 per month out of our personal budgeted money to pay down our cards, but like most people, we weren't getting anywhere.  Last week, we talked with my financial advisor, told him we were going to be trying to have a baby and our money situation.  He basically approved our plan to take a smallish amount of money from the portfolio he manages and get rid of our debt - and to not build it back up!  When I get my AmEx paid off, I'm cancelling it - I have the number memorized and the temptation is too great!  We are currently waiting on the check to clear, and should have that taken care of by next week, allowing us to take any extra and put it in savings.
• Support:  While we haven't wanted to tell anyone that we are about to start trying (I really don't want people immediately thinking I'm pregnant if I don't feel well, or watching my waistline obsessively), I did have to talk to someone about it who knows what I'm going through and will go through.  Luckily my very good friend Caitlin just had a darling little boy, Jackson, and is a great source of information.  Her husband is in a 5 year residency, like Ryan, so they are dealing with a similar financial situation and similar issues - like spending money to interview for fellowships and the possibility of moving in two years, then moving again.  She and I (and Jackson!) Skyped right after Ryan and I decided to go down this path, and she was really, really comforting, and continues to be.  Plus, her kid is so darn cute, he makes the case for having a baby all on his own!

BOOM! There go my ovaries.

Things we still have to tackle:

• House: The house we are living in currently has been great... for me Ryan and 2 cats.  I can't imagine having an infant in it, though; it's tiny and has a bad layout for a nursery.  So we are in the process of looking for a 3+ bedroom house, possibly on the water or with water access, with larger cabinets, a larger bathroom vanity, that will let us have cats, for less than we pay now.  Oh, and close to the hospital.  This is probably impossible.
• General fertility: I have been on birth control for a loooong time.  Since high school (at the time, it was for my skin) until last week.  I know it can take time for everything to start operating normally... but HOW LONG??? Ugh. I hate not knowing this stuff for sure, so the only measure of control I could get was purchasing a fertility monitor.  As of next month I'll already be peeing on stick to monitor my fertile days (then jumping Ryan when I have high LH levels!).

Fun, scary exciting times!!