If you have read any of my previous posts from the cycles before you will realize that one of my great struggles with infertility (besides of course the whole not getting pregnant thing) is wrestling with the dreaded Two Week Wait.
The Two Week Wait is a time of such anxiety for many women who are trying to get pregnant so this isn’t something unique to me and for most of it, typically I am fine. The last week of it I become a monster of mood swings and anxiety before crying my eyes out because of my negative test or getting my period and then quiet acceptance of the fact that I live to try to get pregnant another month.
I make it through though it is an annoying and hellacious rollercoaster ride. In talking with my husband tonight I realized that some of the worst feelings during this time is the anxiety of did we really do everything we possibly could to get pregnant?
And there really isn’t a hell of a lot you can do except try to have sex on the right days and take your prenatal and not smoke or drink too much and hope for the best. There is so little control in all of this that the lack of control itself can become a source of anxiety because we know we can’t do much about it but we know it just happens to so many people do why isn’t it just happening to us?
Often times my husband and I struggle to get to or stick to a plan that is consistent with Trying to Conceive because it is work. The sex isn’t extremely romantic and sometimes you really don’t feel like having sex at all. It’s a grind at 15 months and we have tweaked and then not gone through with the tweaking because someone didn’t want to do it that much or couldn’t or whatever.
And then when you are in the Two Week Wait you just sit there and you think bitterly “well what if we had done it that one more day!” Those nagging doubts sit on your mind as you wait. You look at your calendar repeatedly and gauge your chances, check your basal body temperature chart and obsess over your Ava data all that week hanging on to hope while sanity slips away.
And this is where Sperm Meets Egg came in and has been a centering force for me. Having a plan, and sticking to the plan and executing it makes you feel like no matter what we gave it our best shot. And knowing that provides some kind of peace because as I said you can’t control much of anything about getting pregnant anyway. But the sex schedule, well that you can control. And Sperm Meets Egg makes a LOT of sense.
The basic break down of the plan is that you start having sex every other day from Cycle Day 8 on. You take ovulation predictor kits and when you get a positive you have sex those next three days in a row, skip a day and have sex one more time. This, to me is great because it allows you to cover a wide span of your calendar without making your partner stay on top of you every other day all cycle as some other plans suggest. Perhaps for those in their 20s that is sustainable but I am 34 and my husband is 40 and we just don’t have the stamina for that much robotic sex. That also leaves us some time at the end of the month to have actual lust based sex which I think makes my husband happy.
Today we completed the Sperm Meets Egg plan. I am pretty sure I ovulated two days ago but we had sex on that day and yesterday was our break and today was our last day. As I spoke with my husband I realized that I was at peace because I know we researched a plan (ok I researched it) we executed it and now we gave the best shot we could towards pregnancy. The rest is up to nature, my body and whatever magic the universe has that is involved with this. But I did my part. There are no regrets on my end and no doubts.
And losing that anxiety means the world. Have you tried this plan? Do you have another plan? Feel free to talk to me!
Chasing Baby Mayr 