It's becoming less of a secret that Brian and I are starting to talk babies. I've been baby crazy for awhile now, and I finally talked Brian (read: beat Brian over the head) into considering having a baby.
For those of you less familiar with how conception actually happens (contrary to what high school sex ed tells you, every time you have sex you do NOT get pregnant, although I still have my theories about the water in Bedford county. That place is full of babies), allow me to give you an impromptu lesson.
First, not every woman has a perfect 28 day cycle, meaning that not every woman will ovulate halfway through her cycle. In fact, its kind of rare to find ANY woman who has a cycle like that. I think when they tell you that 28 is the average, they mean the mathematical average where they add up all the days in the cycles, then divide by the number of cycles and magically got something close to 28.
Secondly, your body really does not want to become pregnant. It's amazing the lengths that it goes through to ensure that no baby is taking residence for the next 9 months. Really, you only have about 4 days each cycle where you stand even a 20% chance of getting pregnant, and that's assuming you get the timing correct. Sperm are really stupid little creatures and apparently get distracted somewhat easily and wind up long on the way up. Considering my surprising ability to get lost a mile from my home, I'm surprised my little sperm managed to find its way 20 years ago.
So you say, okay, then just have sex a bunch of times during the four days you're able to get pregnant. Not so fast.
How do you know when those four days are? You can use OPKs (ovulation predictor kits) but they may not work for some women. You can take your basal body temperature every morning before rubbing the sleep out of your eyes and put it on a chart, but it'll only tell you AFTER you ovulate, and by that point, its too late to try baby making.
That's aside from the fact that having sex everyday is counter intuitive and can actually lower your chances of getting pregnant.
Experts say to have sex every other day.
But let's consider reality here; Brian and I both work 50+ hours a week. We come home, see our dirty house, manage to scrape some sort of food together (our food bill is ridiculous every month since we eat out 3 or 4 days a week because we're too lazy to cook) and by the time all of that is finished, I'm barely able to hold my eyes open, much less try to pretend to care that I didn't shave my legs that morning in the shower or ignore the fact that Brian's feet are smelling up the room. Sexy it is not.
Then lets consider the fact that the majority of fertilized eggs don't turn into a drooling little pooper in 9 months.
It's depressing really.
This month, my body decided it hated me, and I thought I had already had my 4 day window of opportunity. Phew! I don't have to worry about trying to seduce my husband when both of us aren't in the mood!
Psych! Just kidding! Turns out my window was 5 days later, and we barely had 5 minutes alone together before I lost my chance.
My hopes are not high, but then again, I've read the stories about pull-out babies with condoms and spermicide while on your period, so I'm also hoping for a super sperm to have done the job.
But thus began what is "affectionately" (read: cursed like Satan) known as the two week wait (TWW). It was a bit like backtracking. As I said, I thought my TWW had begun an entire 5 days before it really had, and now I'm back to day 1.
To distract myself from obsessively Googling symptoms ("My leg just twitched! I wonder if that means I'm pregnant!") I have come up with some various activities to occupy the mind during the TWW.
1) Begin a Journal. Talk about your thoughts, fears, how annoying it is that your husband is learning the guitar and is playing your favorite song incorrectly in an attempt to turn you into a squishy puddle of adoration but is really just making it worse because he is NOT Hunter Hayes.
2) Start researching quick dinner recipes to cut your food bill. Find something you plan on making, fail to prepare by setting out meat to defrost before leaving for work, get home, realize it will take another two hours to defrost unless you do the yucky auto defrost in the microwave, give up on the entire idea and order pizza.
3) Go through your clothes and donate everything you haven't worn in the last year (and probably the old t-shirts that you should have gotten rid of a long time ago instead of religiously wearing them every day).
4) Begin looking at maternity clothes online. Begin to imagine what you will look like with a preggo belly. Poking your stomach out as far as it will go while looking in the mirror is okay. Putting a pillow up your shirt and cradling your "tummy" is probably going too far.
5) Clean the house from top to bottom. Include dusting, windex-ing, vacuuming the dog hair out of the couch and cleaning out the fridge. By the time you finish, it will probably be time to start over.
6) Clear out your flower beds. Plant a hope tree, a hope flower, a hope anything while convincing yourself that you are in fact Mother Nature and you will faithfully nurture this plant everyday. Realize you haven't watered it in a week, rush outside to see the dogs dug it up several days ago and your hope flower is now a dry brittle hope twig. Reassure yourself that you will not forget to feed your baby or that the flower is not a metaphor for your uterus.
7) Begin planning your pregnancy announcements to your husband, your parents and in-laws, and to the world in general. Begin shopping on Amazon, Etsy, and EBay looking at props for said announcements, get distracted looking at baby shoes, and realize you can't afford to buy the $200 worth of shoes that the baby will never walk in, and give up on the whole idea.
8) Buy a book with the intentions of reading it. Research the top best-seller and purchase it at Barnes and Noble. Feel accomplished with yourself, get 20 pages into it, feel your foot twitch and abandon the book in pursuit of Dr. Google.
9) Research baby names. Make a list of every name you have ever thought about, think about how it sounds with your last name, and look up their meanings. Come down to exactly 3 names. Curse your sister and cousin for stealing two of the names you have been obsessed with since your early childhood.
10) Pull out that old Sims game. Create a family with a wife named Micah and a husband named Brian and make them Woo-Hoo a buncha times until your Sim begins throwing up all over the place. Congratulate yourself on a job well done and fawn over the baby that is produced 5 hours of playing time later as if it was your true first born.
11) Look up from your computer and see your dog lying peacefully beside you. Decide that you haven't paid much attention to her and try to make it up by following her around the house with your arms out in preparation for a hug saying, "I love you Maya!! I'm sorry!!" Get paper towels out when she pee's herself in fear that she is about to be smothered to death.
12) Get out the cookies and come up with new tricks to teach your dog. Push away your second and decidedly stupid dog when he gets in the way of the tricks because he wants a cookie too.
13) Take a nap. Hope that sleeping will make the time go by faster and the TWW will be over. Startle yourself awake when your foot twitches again to spend 2 hours of your "nap time" on Google.
14) Make a list of things to do during the TWW. "Only 2 hours have passed. Damn." Now what?
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