Why is everybody pregnant?
During the 10 years trying to conceive, before we would welcome our daughter into this would, many of our families and friends went on to conceive and saw their first child born, and for some of them it was not just their first child but the second… or the third. In this time we were still trying for our first.
My first experience of falling victim to feeling sorry for myself due to other’s successes, happened on a day that I got my soon to be one of many negative pregnancy test results. On that day I learned that my two sisters-in-law (each of my brother’s wife) and my older sister had just all recently found out that they were pregnant. “You are kidding me right?” If everybody is so fertile in my family, what is wrong with me?
“What?” I asked my sister on the phone, the one who had just found out she was pregnant again for the third time (I live in a different country far from my family so announcements, birth wishes, etc. are usually discussed during a phone conversation). I went on to say that this was supposed to be my time…. I could not help but to think that they all already had children…. and that was supposed to be my moment… I just couldn’t believe it!
I was the one doing the work… charting my temperature (Basal Body Temperature – BBT*) everyday for more than a year at that point, having sex at scheduled times and of course not enjoying sex any longer (if you ever had to have sex for the only purpose of trying to conceive, especially if you are trying for months and months already, you will probably understand why I could no longer enjoy it). I felt let down after putting in hours and hours on the baby making effort, and still it was not happening for us!
Back then at my tender age of 28 I started to think that something could be wrong with our reproductive bits due to our lack of success in achieving a pregnancy… even though I was doing what my Dr. asked from me (taking and charting my temperature every morning) to make sure I was ovulating…. still nothing was happening. How could that be?
They all got pregnant so close to each other that two of my nieces were born on the same day and the other niece less then a month from the birth of the first two.
But going back to the phone conversation with my sis I asked her:
“But come on! Tell me, what are you guys doing? What is the secret? Are you all drinking water from some special fountain? Did you all go on a vacation together?” (When you are trying to conceive one of the things people always tell you is: “You just need to relax! Maybe take a vacation… It did help someone that I know to conceive…. they just had to take a vacation and they got pregnant.”) How could I relax? Maybe it would have helped me if I had SCREAMED every once in a while!!!
So I have to ask if a vacation was what did it for them (sure I was being a little sarcastic) but of course the answer was as always is: ”We were not even trying, it just happened!” Grr… Fertile people… I’m telling you!
“Yeah! I know, I know… it will happen sooner or later!” Back then I think I was still believing that! My doctor didn’t seem to be concerned about it at all, so why should I? Right? He just kept telling me: “Keep taking that temperature every morning and have sex, lots of it, and stop worrying about it!” Huhhh? How could I stop worrying?
So maybe the secret to success is: Relax, take a vacation and don’t worry! Is this it? Is this even possible?
Right… right… Man, I was so naïve back then, I wasted so much precious time! If I only knew then what I know now…
Okay! I did fast come to terms with my defeat and had a “happy for you, sad for me” kind of attitude and went on to accept the idea of having more nephews and/or nieces added to our already large family!I will tell you later how big my family is/was!
*Basal body temperature is the body temperature measured immediately after awakening and before any physical activity has been undertaken. In women, ovulation causes an increase of one-half to one degree Fahrenheit (one-quarter to one-half degree Celsius) in basal body temperature (BBT); monitoring of BBTs is one way of estimating the day of ovulation.
July 23rd, 2008 - Posted in All Things Fertility | |
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