Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Delving into the crazy world of TTC

For those of you who aren't insane parenthood forum lurkers, TTC stands for "trying to conceive." I also do my best to stay the hell away from those cesspits of mania and desperation, but I am about to engage in one of their fetish activities: basal temperature charting.

What that means is I will be taking my temperature every morning at the same time before I've gotten out of bed and making a little graph. It will help determine when (and if) I'm ovulating. I've even bought myself a tricked-out thermometer.

Why would I do such a neurotic activity, you ask? Well, as it turns out, the pill messes with your body a bit. It generally takes 1-3 months for one's cycle to get back to normal, but the effects can last for up to a year (this is also why all the people I know who hadn't used the pill prior to trying hit the jackpot right away, while everyone else takes closer to six months, which is the time frame our doctor gave us). For someone who had a cycle you could set your clock to, unreliability is really disconcerting, particularly when you're hoping that the delay means babies. So, in order to make sure everything is working okay, and to give me the impression that I'm actually doing something, I'm joining the temperature charting bandwagon. Yay.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've just started the basal temp. charting myself. Being on the pill really screwed with my cycle. I started tracking my cycle on mymonthlycycles.com and realized just how screwy it was. Makes the whole getting pregnant thing a little tricky!

Teacher Anonymous said...

Indeed it does. Plus it's quite disappointing when the reason why you're late is not the reason you're hoping you're late. :/