Sigh.

I've been OK with the whole infertility thing. Not great, but OK. Until yesterday.

I am usually a happy person and it takes a lot for me to cry. I've only cried once since I found out the sperm analysis results, and that was only for a few seconds right after hearing the news.

But last night, one stupid commercial sent by a friend was enough to send me. And today I stumbled on a blog with all sorts of "can't live without" baby products and a personal review of each... now I'm trying to hold back the tears at work.

A friend is coming to visit tonight, and he and his wife just found out they are expecting their third. I'm glad he's dropping by and I really do want to know that everything is progressing well. If anyone deserves some joy, it's this family. (They had a butthole doctor who wouldn't believe that their normally healthy son was truly sick, so he kept sending them home. The fever and infection got so bad that their poor son is now permanently brain-damaged and will never walk, talk, or sit on his own. He will always have to be fed and have his stomach massaged afterwards to aid digestion.)

I just wish his visit wasn't today. My hormones are so far from cooperative right now (thanks to my period, I think), and I don't want to do the fake-pleasant thing. I want to be truly happy for his wife and him, and I think I could do that tomorrow.

But he's coming today. So I'm going to end this post and work on collecting myself.

I'm an adult and I'm gonna post like one

I'm old. I think I'm technically ancient in the online world.

I refuse to post like a tween. I can type, and a few extra keystrokes aren't going to make my arthritis flare up.

I do not have a DH. I have a husband (who, like all husbands, sometimes just isn't that darling. No one is.) And I certainly don't BD or even baby dance. Just... ew. I have sex, damn it. And I don't need a blinkie to tell the world that fact.

A few blinkies can be cute (not in my signature, but whatever) and even informative (it can be good to know that someone else is also a fan of Grey's Anatomy). But holy crap, I think I'm going to develop epilepsy from a half-screen of blinking animated crap in the signature just one poster. Add scrolling to the mix, and that would be smoke you see coming from my eye sockets.

Alright, now that I've shown my age and curmudgeonliness (and aptitude for nonsense, based on that last word there), I'm going to go retreat into my Luddite cave with a book.

Edit, one hour later:
I'm slightly revising my position here. There are very helpful abbreviations. I don't mind TTC. It stands for what it is, it's not a cutesy euphemism. LOL, IRL, O... all of these are just the first letters of phrases that we all know and like. I like acronyms. I have nothing against that. Thanks for letting me clear that up. Do I have to add some sort of winky, blinky thing here so that you know I'm not so serious IRL?

And I thought Mondays had to suck.

Embattled Attorney General Resigns

Off to see Mr.

Mr. is filming some commercials in one of my favorite cities. I'm off in an hour or two to visit him. No computers, thermometers, or fertility books. Just me, my man, and hopefully my favorite Indian restaurant.

Snoopy dance

I swear, I'm in a great mood today. Everything is coming up Beth. My husband is on a business trip and I might go visit him over the weekend, it is nearly said weekend, and my boss has been gone for 3 days. My beer-induced fog has nearly completely lifted, and I actually brought my gym bag with me this morning with the real intention of going after work. A colleague brought a big ass Toblerone bar to share today. Does it get much better?

This doesn't even bother me. This... this... I don't know what. It's a chunk of my FertilityFriend chart, showing a bounce-back today. Did my progesterone decide to take a couple of days off? Did it at least bring me a nice souvenir?

Some context to the madness

It might be helpful to tell you a little bit about where I'm coming from. (I thought this was going to be my quiet little online journal that no one would ever read, but now I'm digging the interaction and I guess that's kind of the point of Vox instead of Blogger or what have you...)

So. Here we are.

I'm 32, my husband is 37, and we've been married for a whopping 9 months. I know, not very long at all. That might make you wonder how long we've been dealing with infertility and why I feel the need to whine on the internet. The answer is also not very long at all and because I'm a big whiner. More specifically, since the beginning of May (yes, this May) and I'm more of a closet whiner. Or mind whiner. (I whine to myself a lot, but not very often out loud.)

About 6 months before I got married, I started to lose gobs of hair. (Gross.) And from that, they found out that I have high androgens. That can, but doesn't have to, signal a condition called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). When we decided to start trying to have a baby, I went and got checked out. It appears now that I don't in fact have a serious case of it. Hooray, right?

Well. Mr. had a hunch that something was wrong on his end, so he got checked out, too. Not so good. Horrible, in fact. A total count of under 1 million (normal is like 50-150 million, I think) and all of them, every last little bugger, was abnormal. The actual results said that each one checked had head, neck, and tail deformities.

The doctor won't confirm anything without a second sample, so my husband will have to go back in another couple of months. The doctor also said he's nearly 100% sure that the next sample will be just the same and that we won't be able to conceive naturally.

I'm OK with that. Mr. is starting to be OK with that.

But now you know why I need the sounding board.

P.S. I've heard it from other forums: I know it's really early to be complaining already, I know we're lucky to have found out so early, and I know that others have it a lot worse and have more of a right to bitch and moan. This is my blog therapy and I can do whatever I want with it, and that's why I'm writing here and not on the fertility boards. That's also why I'm keeping my board identities to myself. Thanks for understanding.

Now I've convinced myself

I went out last night with some friends and drank a whole lot of beer. See, now if I were truly delusional about being pregnant, I wouldn't have done that. Reality wins. (Or was it the beer that won?)

Oh, and I know you were wondering. Well, you probably couldn't care less, but I'll share anyway that my temperature is way down today. I don't think an implantation temp just keeps plummeting. More reality.

I have a headache (oh beer, last night you were my friend and this is how you treat me?) and I have work to do so I'm done posting for today. See you tomorrow.

(Oh, and no. This will not be one of those blogs where I update daily on my temperature or cervical position or other things that no one really needs nor wants to know. It just happened to fit into the reality smackdown theme today.)

I know better than this.

I know that I'm not pregnant. I can't be. It's nearly physically impossible.

But, as an insane person is apt to do, I thought felt 'twinges' yesterday. Down there.

I think I'm about 8 days past ovulation. That's just the right time for implantation to occur. And when I took my temperature this morning and added it to my chart, I thought, as an insane person is apt to do, "I wonder if that is an implantation dip."

I know better than to put myself in this position emotionally. I know better than to think that a drop in my temperature signals something. I know that this mythical 'implantation dip' is just some coincidental occurrence that has been built up in the minds of hopeful moms-to-be all over the internet.

And yet. Here I am.

My husband is away for 10 days on a business trip. Maybe this is a bit of guilty indulgence on my part. I don't think I'd dare allow myself these thoughts if his voice of reason was around. I have to talk myself down off of this ledge because it's too early in this process to start getting hopes up like this. We haven't even started treatments yet, except for Mr. Twinge's new vitamin regimen.

I have hope, sure. I know that one day we'll have an acceptable resolution (and I hope that comes in baby form). But I have to maintain a long-term hope, and not a daily "what does this or that or the other thing mean" kind of hope. It would wear me down too fast. I'm a laid-back, non-confrontational kind of person, and constant oscillation of emotion is something I'm not good at nor comfortable with.

But just writing this has already brought me a little closer to reality. Wow, blog therapy. Who knew?

Introduction

Hi. Call me Twinge.

This is a word that comes up over and over again in the world of infertility. A twinge when you want to be pregnant could be a sign of ovulation, a sign that a pregnancy is taking hold, a sign that something is going wrong, or maybe just that twinge of emotion from wanting something so much.

I've read and read and read about the condition of 'subfertility' and now I need an outlet to process all of that. I started a journal, but I type much faster than I write. It's such an intensely personal subject, and it might seem strange that I've chosen such a public platform. I don't mind sharing all of this as long as I can anonymously hide out on Vox behind a nickname for a while.

We've only told one person in the whole wide real world out there that we are trying to have a baby. And after I told her, we found out that we are 'subfertile'. So now she knows that, too. But really, there's only so much she and my husband can take of this subject.

What about my mom or my sisters? In the spirit of anonymous blogging, I'm going to admit that my family can be a pain in the ass and I don't want them to know until I'm safely in my second trimester, should that time ever arrive. Oh, don't worry about the details of my family right now. They'll be the subject of many posts to come, I think.

So if you've found me, hi. I'd be happy to chat with you, about anything. Books, TV, politics... whatever. Send me a note or post a comment. And I hope I'll be seeing you again.