March and April proved to be be a different kind of difficult for me. I was starting the very slow process of feeling more myself each day, but I became obsessed with getting pregnant again. At the end of February, I downloaded two fertility tracking apps. Remember that Baby C. 1.0 was conceived without ovulation sticks, basal body temperature taking (BBT) or other methods of fertility tracking. When my cycle returned 32 days after my miscarriage, I was thrilled! There was so much worry and anxiety regarding how long it would take for my body to go back to normal again. It was invigorating to think that we could try again very soon. I remember thinking to myself that it didn’t take THAT long for us to conceive the first time. Surely if I tracked every little symptom and checked my BBT every morning I could speed up the process. I woke up at 5:30 AM every morning, took my BBT and then would record it in my app. One of these apps in particular allowed you to compare your BBT chart to thousands of others’ BBT. You could chart match to see if your temperatures coincided with an ovulation, or pregnancy, or miscarriage. I was fascinated by this. The more I learned, there I analyzed every little symptom that I felt. Was that ovulation pain or indigestion? Were my boobs sore because I was pregnant? Or were they sore because I worked out hard and did extra push ups? I felt a little dizzy here and there- could it be a symptom of pregnancy? I became obsessed.
Before these months I had never heard of the “two week window.” (TWW.) It refers to the time in between doing the “baby dance” and the time that you can take an early pregnancy test. In my TWW in March and April, I noticed an increase in my overall anxiety. Things became harder to manage in that two week window. Right before you ovulate, your temperature will dip. After you ovulate your BBT rises. If you achieve pregnancy, your BBT remains elevated up until your next cycle is due. Tracking your BBT is the only way you might be able to tell if you conceived or not in that TWW, based on your temperature trends. Consistency was key. The temperature rise and dip can be even less than 0.5 degrees, so timing is everything. I wake up at 5:30 AM for work, so 5:30 AM became the time that I checked it- even on my days off. The problem with my doing this is that if my temperature dropped more than I wanted it to, it affected my mood. I’d plot it on the graph and analyze it at 5:30 in the morning. It didn’t rise high enough, or it stayed the same. Our baby dancing didn’t work this month. I’m not pregnant. And I would be so upset that early in the morning that I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep on my days off. I was told to stay off google and those horrible message boards. But I didn’t. I began to investigate “low progesterone” and BBT. I became suspicious that my lower baseline temperatures might be correlated with low progesterone. And if my progesterone was too low, I might not be able to sustain pregnancy. So I called my OBGYN and asked if we could test a mid cycle progesterone. I was told by a nurse again that “they don’t do that in this office.” I urged her to ask the doctor for me- stating that I was a NICU nurse who knew a thing or two about this and that my mom needed progesterone during her pregnancies. My OBGYN called back and told me that he didn’t believe in progesterone supplementation. He said that if the pregnancy was healthy enough, I wouldn’t need progesterone. My anxiety level sky rocketed after that conversation. I remember feeling such rage and conflict within myself. Shouldn’t I trust God and His timing for conceiving again? Shouldn’t I have faith that all will work out in time? Shouldn’t I know better that it can take a while to conceive? Shouldn’t I be more patient? I knew all of this but still I wanted to know as much as I could about my body. It became my mission to do as much investigation as possible- in the small HOPE that I would save myself from another miscarriage.So I bought the bulk supply of ovulation predictor sticks online, and I tested each day from CD 11 until I saw a positive. And I took my temperature every morning. And I charted every little twinge I felt. And I remained obsessed.
My hair stylist noticed in April that something was off. I had been on prenatal vitamins for over 6 months and my hair had been growing like crazy. My unhealthy head of hair had become so full and vibrant in those six months. She looked at my roots and asked me, “have you been stressed? Your hair has not grown like it normally does.” And I started crying and told her everything. Coworkers noticed that I was suddenly touchy. And when I shared with a select few what was going on, some listened. Others told me that I needed to “RELAX, and then it would happen.” I cannot put into words how infuriating those words were to me- and how infuriating those words are for anyone who is having difficulty getting pregnant. I felt so much anger in March and April, and I had learned that THAT was okay. It was okay if I felt angry. But I didn’t feel like ME when I was angry. And in all of that charting, and data plotting and analysis, I still felt so out of control.
Again, my therapist came to my rescue. She heard that my anxiety had been at an all time high in these two months and she asked me an incredibly honest question. “Is this charting HELPING you?” I immediately began defending it. I said that I wanted to have data to show my doctor in the event that six months from now it might shed some light on why I wasn’t still pregnant. It reassured me that I was ovulating regularly- that my body was doing what I wanted it to do. She listened, and then asked me again. “Is this HELPING you?” And I knew at that moment that it wasn’t. I thought of the days that I looked at these apps multiple times each day- even hourly and scoured other charts hoping to shed some light on if I was pregnant or not. I left therapy with a vow to change- to try to stop charting in those apps. I vowed to live in the moment and not dwell on getting pregnant and worrying my life away. And at first it felt like I was giving up breathing. It had become such an obsession that I didn’t know if I could let it go. A couple good friends reassured me that I needed to try to give it up- even if it was only for a month. So I made a promise to try to do that. And to my surprise, I not only gave it up, but I really felt like I started living again.
