Today is my first doctor’s appointment for me and the jellybean. I imagine that the blood tests will come back and say I’m iron deficient (again!) and I should be taking the super-strong iron supplements. Last time I was on them and they were about 20x more than the general recommended intake. And I took them twice a day. It wrecks havoc with your system, but it was the only way to get my iron levels up to a normal level.
As I’m in complete, unadulterated planning mode, I also called …

My 8 months of trying to conceive was long, gruelling and emotionally harrowing. And really, by comparison to the length of time it takes some people who suffer with secondary fertility it is a relatively short period of time. And yet, there’s nothing about it that seems short. I have an infinite respect for other people who go through the trying to conceive turmoil for only a small amount of time or an unbelievably long amount of time. After 8 months I was wondering how many more months I had …

Yes, the pregnancy test is my arch nemesis. I don’t think it’s weird at all that I’m almost phobic about an inanimate object. For months, pregnancy tests have tortured me with cold, hard, horribly accurate negatives. I hate even the idea of taking one. Because as much as I hate not knowing, it still has the element of possibility to it. I bought these tests a few days ago. They’ve been mocking me from the corner of the lounge room for all of those days. Despite my disdain for limbo, …

I spot the day before my period at 1pm. That’s how it’s been for the last 6 months. It may be longer and it’s only recently that I’ve noticed. It’ hard to say. It’s how I know that a cycle is a bust. There have been other months where I’ve held out hope after the spotting, but it always ends badly for me. Always. So when my body was talking to me I decided to listen to it.
The day I wrote Cycle 8 was the day I got my …

I lie there.
Riley is next to me, in the big bed. I wait to see if she’ll go to sleep. She fights naps now, which probably means she’s ready to give them up, but I hold on to them still. I have my back to her. So she won’t see me crying. And I try to minimise the way my body shakes with it.
Josh comes in. Trying to help. He doesn’t see the tears either. Because I don’t want him to. ‘Do you want puzzles?’ he asks her. I say, …

So I might have said something recently about not blogging about trying to conceive. And I might be going back on that already. A girl has the right to change her mind, right? I could rationalise that I’m still not blogging about the two week wait, just pregnancy in general. But really, that’s one of the things that I love about my blog is that I have the ability to be completely inconsistent on a whim.
I mostly feel right with myself as far as the whole trying to conceive thing …

When I first started blogging about my trying to conceive journey it seemed like it would be helpful. Cathartic even. To be able to vent all my neurotic thoughts and have them out of my head. To have a place where I could rattle on about symptoms and blather on about the two week wait. But 7 months later, I’m not so sure. I’m not backwards about sharing the journey and I don’t mind people knowing that I’m trying to conceive. I’m bad at keeping secrets anyway. Any friend of …

It’s that time of month again. The dreaded two week wait. It’s getting very, very boring. I try not to think about symptoms, but it’s my body and there they are. Kind of tough to ignore. But there’s never anything definitive in the two week wait, so if I do get any symptoms, it still doesn’t mean anything. But still I can’t help it – constantly assessing tenderness, tiredness, food aversions – even hormonal pimples on my chin.
At the same time, I’m trying to prepare for the seemingly inevitable disappointment. …

Month number seven. Seven cycles. And coming to the end of my favourite period of the month. The few weeks where I’m not thinking about symptoms. I try not to think about if of course, but that’s kind of seems like wishing the sun wouldn’t come up in the morning. So all I can really hope for at this stage is that my body doesn’t throw up too many red herrings into the mix. At least now I’m getting the hang of things.
Symptoms that are not signs of pregnancy:
Nausea, heartburn, …

It’s amazing how hard it is to say ‘I’m proud’ or ‘I’m good’ or even ‘I’m great’ without qualifying it in some way. As though, if I admit to it the universe will strike me down for my presumption. And if I don’t I risk the ridicule of others for being arrogant.
And while humility, being down to earth and being unassuming are prized personality traits, confidence, self-assuredness and self-belief are often thrown into the category of delusions of grandeur.
And it doesn’t just impact things on a grand scale – it …