AAAAAARRRRRGH!

*insert incoherent, panicked blubbering*

That is all.

Anyone else?

This is supposed to be our first cycle ttc. CD 5 now, and I can't picture how we're about to jump back into the trying and the waiting and the testing and how we'll convince ourselves that there is enough of a chance that things could be ok. It is just all so much more terrifying now.

I hope this wait and it's outcome treats you gently.

Indeed.

I wish you luck, dear.

At cycle 6 post-loss, I'm finally feeling more able to let it go a bit. Possibly because I've crossed nearly all the self-imposed deadlines - due date, birthdate, cycle that would mean the same timeline . . .

I expect it may be harder in August, but for now . . . still waiting to ovulate.

Hope it passes quickly and that you don't go crazy waiting!

i'm towards the end of this 2ww. i've done two pregnancy tests (the super-sensitive ones... ), both negative. i've had my temp drop 0.5 degrees C for a single day (but too late for anything to do with implantation). my temp was really high at the weekend and is now 0.4 degrees lower but that's still 0.3 degrees higher than before ovulation and the weather changed from really hot to really cold about then. i'm on 11DPO and that has NEVER happened... well once before I was pregnant. mostly i only ever get to day 10. i feel weird but not in a PMT way. but nothing that could be described as a pregnancy symptom.

so, yeah, i can relate to the panic. with me it's a constant refrain of 'i might be pregnant! but i've already done two tests that were negative. but my period would usually turn up by now! but I'VE ALREADY DONE TWO TESTS THAT WERE NEGATIVE.' lather rinse repeat.

and i keep fantasising about this being THE MONTH and then everyone else suddenly getting pregnant too and how lovely it would be if suddenly we all got pregnant the same month and WE ALL GOT TO TAKE HOME HEALTHY LIVING BABIES.

i know it's unlikely, but i'm still hoping, for all of us.

oh, yeah. I have that fantasy too. That you and Leslie and Eliza and Bridget and all the many, many others would suddenly be pregnant at the same time. That fantasy actually brings on a fair amount of irrational guilt. I worry that if I do get pregnant on the first try that it is somehow unfair to all the friends I have that don't have a baby yet. I feel selfish since I already have my daughter. I guess it's because I have no control; if I did I would give everyone babies. I am keeping everything crossed for all of you. Thanks for holding my hand.

Lord, don't feel guilt. No no no. If you two are pregnant - that is wonderful! If you aren't, well, shit. That sucks.

I'd just be happy to ovulate right now. I thought maybe yesterday, but . . . apparently not, said my thermometer in a thoroughly cheerful and annoying chipping sound.

Why is there always so much guilt we carry around about this sort of thing?

oh, i have all manner of potential guilt that i shouldn't get pregnant before those who have been trying for much longer than me.

but what's the point? getting pregnant is in itself a double edged sword, as we all know far too well. it just means nine months of stress and panic with no guarantees.

it would be a lot easier if we could all just let go of the guilt, but goodness knows it's never that easy :(

and anyway, eliza, you are included in my fantasy of suddenly-we're-all-pregnant-and-it-all-works-out.

fingers crossed...

urm... I'm here. It's my first cycle post-Foster and we're trying. Today is O-day according to all those OPK thingies I bought. And I'm scared we'll get pregnant right now and I'm scared that we won't. (And this is the first place I've admitted any of this. In the real world no one knows anything about our current TTC plans other than our physician and our midwife)

I'm trying to be chill about it, but the next (forever) few weeks will be hell to wait through, as will the next cycle/pregnancy.

And I second the feeling of potential guilt if we were to get pregnant this cycle - I want all of us to have happy healthy pregnancies where the worst thing is a case of hemorrhoids and we have live babies at the end of it and we post about them for the rest of our lives and how happy we are. And while I'm wishing, I wish we could all have our innocence back too. May as well go for broke on wishes.

my temp has dropped again. i can't imagine i'd have two random blips in one cycle. dammit.

still crossing fingers for the rest of you.

Waiting with you Jen. Cycle 7? I don't even know any more.
AAARRRGGHHH! Pretty much sums it up.

Good luck all.

Ah, crap B, I'm sorry.

Thanks everyone for not telling my I'm crazy to feel guilty. I don't know why we have so much guilt wrapped up in all this. It really is ridiculous.

Eliza - I hope you get a big fat O pretty soon :)

Sarah and Catherine - good luck in the tww! I'll be waiting on pins and needles for you.

if it's not to be my month, i need it to be someone else's. i need there to be hope out there.

i'll still hang out here and keep you all company.

I've had crazy inconsistent screwed-up, late-ovulation cycles since my blighted ovum m/c in Jan. The first one was pretty normal, but since has been whack.
I had a nice spike on CD16 and though that maybe, maybe I had O'd like a normal human being, but my temp dropped, and so it probably didn't happen, and I'm not having fertile CM anymore.

All around me in the rest of my life all the people who spawn like it ain't no thing and had kids around the time I had my DS (lost to CHD) are having more and I still got shit. So I am a bitter crabby jealous little mess of crazy raging against the general unfairness of the universe.

Same here Melissa - since the chemical pregnancy in Jan - things have been off. My post O temps are lower than usual (everything's lower courtesy of a new thermometer, but I mean if you graph it without the degrees, just over a general 'coverline'). Several split peaks - o'ing earlier, then way later, now on average, it seems.

So frustrating and annoying.

The monitor has continued to say low low low. I've heard it's not uncommon with the first cycle to either get a ton of highs or go straight from low to peak. But while I'd been feeling calmer with it before, now doubt is starting to creep in. Is something wrong with me? Really wrong this time? Should I just drop the ttc and try to lose 50+ pounds for awhile?

Ugh.

UGH.

Sorry things aren't looking up B. Really very sorry.

Melissa and Eliza - I echo you girls. I am so sad and frustrated. I also think that maybe I should just drop the idea of having children. It has been so painful. When AF came last time I couldn't stop crying for hours. Really, since my first child was still born 1 1/2 years ago I clung to the thought that I would have another baby soon. I mourned and waited respectfully for 11 months and started TTC. Seven cycles later I am still not pregnant. How am I supposed to cope with that? What am I going to cling to? I take vitamins, I chart my BBT and all relevant things that happen during the cycle, and I BD right on time. My charts look beautiful. That is all I needed now: infertility after stillbirth. And ALL my friends getting pregnant and having babies.
AAAAAARRRRGH!
I hate when people say I should relax. Are you able to relax?

Francisca - I may never be able to relax again.
Eliza, Melissa - I hope your cycles start to regulate soon.

I hear you about wondering if we should have a living child, or TTC. We've come to the answer of yes for now, but sometimes I wonder if Foster is my only crack at motherhood and now I'm fucked.

I'm 3dpo and trying not to obsess. It's difficult since well, I just want to be pg again. barf. I'd like to just wake up 2 weeks from now and move on with whatever outcome we get.

Oh, Francisca. I understand honey. I was thinking the exact same thing yesterday before we had sex. What if Gabe was it? What if that was all? I mean, we have a few other options to explore, but it will take us years to save for surrogacy, and that will likely be a one-shot deal. So I wonder if I need to just kiss my plans for a big family goodbye, and then I get teary and wonder if I should kiss my plans for any family goodbye. I stood in the nursery yesterday and wondered how long we leave it a nursery. I looked at the clothes I bought for Gabe and thought that I really should send some to my friend G whose son was born when Gabe should have been.

I understand. I have no answers, but I understand.

As for relaxing - nope, not me. Not now, not before, not ever. I haven't any idea how to do it. It's never, in now 2+ years of trying (granted, that's been interrupted by various unsuccessful pregnancies), taken me this long to get pregnant.

This cycle is the closest I've come to relaxing, and it's solely because I made a plan to see the doctor for testing and help in August or September. I just don't expect to get pregnant again before that. So it's not relaxation so much as acceptance and waiting. Still trying - got my first high on my monitor and a near positive on an opk, so it appears I will actually ovulate soon (high time, as this is cd 24). But relaxing? Fuck anyone who suggests it.

I agree with Eliza, fuck anyone who says to relax.

Positive opk yesterday, peak on my monitor today (ha! the last day it would ask for a stick!). It appears I will ovulate today, if I haven't already.

Praise the lord, I can join in the 2ww fun.

If that sounds less than enthusiastic, you are reading it correctly. How is everyone actually in the 2ww doing?

I'm quite crazy right now. I find myself reliving a lot of my pregnancy with Aiden, mostly the bad parts. I cry a lot.

I'm so excited you are going to O, that's great news. I'll add you to my list of people I'm hoping like hell get a positive soon.

I've been doing the same with Gabriel. I was thinking yesterday - I was 7 weeks and we'd seen the heartbeat and it was before the bleeding began, so we felt so positive. I was so sick at this point, and we'd just told the families. I expect a lot of that going on as we draw closer and closer to August and the year mark.

It's astonishing how one part of me always feels frozen in that period of time from late April to late August. Just reliving it over and over.

When do you test, Jen? I need to keep track of these things. If you have a chart to stalk, I can always use another. . .

10 days dpo is usually when I can't stand it anymore. That will be thursday. I'm going to try holding out for friday but I've got so many tests right now I will probably just indulge my neuroses.

I don't have a chart posted. I was thinking about doing that with this one because it is not very clear (my temps are weird). Who do you use?

How about everyone else? When are you testing?

fertilityfriend.com

If you don't have an account, you can sign up through my homepage (where my chart can be seen in all its . . . glory? something or other, anyhow).

http://www.fertilityfriend.com/home/17b60f

A sidenote about FF. It's not bad, but can take some getting used to. If you are used to FAM charting (via TCOYF), there is a setting that you can change that will follow FAM rules (a bit stricter than the rules used by FF on their Advanced setting).

Also, at least while you have VIP access (which I pay for, and the reasons why escape conceptualization, except that it annoyed me to no end when I didn't have VIP), there are features designed to drive you insane, like the pregnancy test tool, the early pregnancy signs estimator, etc. You can simply hide those. . . they aren't good for anything but creating neuroses.

Relax? Yeah. Right.

Easy to say.

I am with Francisca and others. I get frustrated and question. It seems like it should just be easy but it's not, it's so not. I am trying to find other things to do to distract myself. I don't want to give up on having kids. I am "only" 29 after all and it's not over for me yet even if some days it feels like the tick-tocking is screaming in my head.

I feel like I will go insane if I keep waiting around for something to happen. Quit my job, moved 1200 miles to settle down and start a family. 2.5 years ago and here I am, nothing to show for it but a whole lot of crazy. And nobody hiring. Torn between doing anything (I mean, I could sell T-Mobil phones at the mall, hooray) just to do it, and looking for something meaningful.

Relax? Pfft.

I want to be pregnant. Trying and not succeeding is frustrating. Feel like I can't just relax because I want to have kids, so I have to keep trying. Maybe go get my thyroid checked.

But being pregnant won't fix everything. That won't mean relaxing. Then I get to worry about another miscarriage. Then I get to worry about another baby with terrible heart defects.

Maybe maybe if I get pregnant and get that clear echocardiogram, maybe then I could relax. But that's a ways off.

I tried relaxing. I tried enjoying the moment, putting all my heart into it and being "fair" to the new baby, not worrying. Then I had a bad miscarriage and got depressed and feel like my ability to think positive and be optimistic got ripped to shreds. I think it hurt worse because I relaxed, didn't hold back.

I'm 6dpo. and bleeding today. and crampy. I have no idea what this means (if anything) since i've never bled mid cycle like this before.

Eliza - I have a FF VIP membership too for the same reason - i was just annoyed by NOT having the VIP access and all the obsessive details of their little interpretive tools.
If you feel like obsessing over another chart - go to town: http://www.fertilityfriend.com/home/269rtt
I want to feel hopeful but I don't want to be let down - I hate being back here, trying to conceive a child that may or may not live through gestation and childbirth and after that. Sometimes it feels so bleak. (Ugh, now I'm depressing myself. barf)

Oh, Sarah, I don't think you ovulated until cd 16. I think (per the usual course of events) FF is smoking crack. I definitely don't think it could have been until cd 14, based on opk's. But temps, to me, say more like cd 16, which could place spotting/bleeding in line with ovulation.

Otherwise, it may be just random getting back to cycling weirdness. I've had short luteal phases the first full cycle after every pregnancy.

And the thing that has been true for me is that this whole ttc post-loss thing? Sucks. It is bleak. It wasn't a lot of fun after the first miscarriage. It was even less fun after the ectopic. Now, it's just plain torture. If that first planned pregnancy had worked out, Chickadee would be turning 1 this week.

If the ectopic had worked out, that baby would be 1 in August. Instead, in August, we hit the 1 year mark of Gabe's birth.

I started ttc over two years ago now. If that first cycle 2 years ago had worked, I'd be starting up trying for the second now. And I am trying for my second. That's the grim joke here, one I've laughed and laughed over before.

Being back here ttc is fraught with emotion, with the feeling of running in place and being stifled and with the bonus feature that we know - we KNOW, quite intimately - that all of this fuss and drama and hopes and expectations and disappointment may all come to naught in the end, because getting 2 pink lines only moves us to phase 2, which is still a million miles away from carrying our health baby home from the hospital.

Hmm. Good to know about the whack luteal phases. I'm convinced I O'd on CD13 - thursday - I had the side cramps and everything. Anyway - now I'm bleeding so it's probably a wash for whatever this cycle is.

And I personally think it's fucked to be TTC 10 weeks after giving birth. I hate that this is my reality.

When I finally managed to conceive again, I was *not* relaxed. Notwithstanding the first cycle TTC - when I spent more than $50 on digital HPTs so that the Big Fat Whatever would be absolutely crystal clear (but go figure, I was using them DAYS too early because I just could not wait) - I became more and more neurotic as the months dragged on. I still got pregnant. I can only conclude that it was time spent trying that improved my odds, not my mental state. Otherwise I'd have to RECOMMEND the stress!

opm, i smiled at your last sentence!

in a world where everyone thinks 'just relax!!!!!' is the key, it's so good to hear someone say that they conceived when even more stressed. it gives me hope.

and i just had a massage today! maybe if i'd read your post earlier i would have cancelled it and tried to get more wound up instead :)

I am 1week and 1 day post d&c . This was our second loss in a row. First one I was only 17 dpo but had a positive test. Mc naturally. This time I was just under 10w. And spotted, us showed baby at only 6w3d. We had already seen heartbeat. I have 3 children from a previous marriage and never had problems or any losses before. I'm 33 now my youngest is 9. Why is this happening to me? I'm so angry. Sad, mad just isn't fair. I'm scared to keep trying and losing babies because I feel like id just be killing innocent babies. Could 2 losses just be bad luck? Is there any chance I can have another baby?