I've been thinking about how to put this in words. The past few days have put me into panic mode. I've been googling, reading pregnancy websites, looking at BBT charts of women who became pregnant, and I had everything I needed as confirmation except the official pregnancy test from the drugstore.
Above is my BBT (basal body temperature) data for the last month. For you guys who read my blog, you are visual creatures who understand numbers. The chart is what I use as first evidence that my body is working properly or not.
Let me tell you that up through day 27 everything looked like a regular old month. Every month for the past 8 months have looked like this. I drew a vertical yellow line after day 27 to show all of you where things started to deviate. The pink dots at the top of the graph were my actual temp readings for days 28, 29, and 30. The hand drawn part of the graph sloping downwards is what a typical month would have looked like. Let me rephrase...Day 27 should have been it. I have never had a late period in 22 years of my 'womanhood'. Never in 22 years. As of yesterday morning (day 30), I was three days late and the typical sign that the monthly cycle is starting over based on a shift in hormones had not occurred. My temp was not dropping. WTF?
As you can see on day 28, my temp spiked back up to 98.9. I somewhat shrugged it off, thinking it was just an anomaly, but my typical two days of spotting disappeared and I no longer had any sort of bleeding at all. Again, WTF? This has never ever ever happened before. Hmmm. Day 29 high temp started made me really pay attention. I had been feeling queasy for a few days, but did not consider it anything more than indigestion. Still no period. Day 30...high temp, crazy nausea, full on panic. I had been doing some browsing online and read about the 'implantation dip' and was convinced that since my temp had risen back up to the high temps that there was a legitimate chance the nausea and tiredness weren't from something I ate.
Chad knew what was going on. He wasn't panicked at all. Cool as a cucumber, in fact. Yesterday morning, in the midst of all of the nausea, three-days-late, high-temp, panic-driven insanity, I mentioned to a couple of my guy running friends (only because I know they won't tell anyone) about my situation. The last thing guys do is share pregnancy news...it is just not in their DNA. Sharing my panic made me feel better and made me buy a 2-pack pregnancy test on the way home from workout.
The test was negative. I know some of you out there will say...you can have a negative pregnancy test and still be pregnant. I read up on that too. My plan of action (as recommended by the pregnancy test leaflet and everything that I have read) was to wait a couple of days and test again. I shared the results of the test with Chad, who still reacted in a calm way that seemed to ease my nerves.
Want more confirmation that I'm not pregnant? I started spotting again late yesterday afternoon. I was relieved and disappointed. I guess talking to other people about pregnancy suspicions jinxed me a little (sort of like being a teenage girl and wearing light colored shorts at the wrong time of the month...as soon as you wear them, it is a guarantee you will start your period...and yes, I wore cute light-colored shorts yesterday)
I still can't believe that my BBT chart looks the way it does and I'm not pregnant. My temp this morning is only slightly down to 97.7, enough to tell me that I'm likely going to be starting a new cycle today or tomorrow, but not low enough for me to be fully convinced. What if my temp goes up again? What if the spotting stops again? What if my nausea continues? I understand the doubt, hope, anxiety, confusion, certainty, uncertainty that some women go through when potentially being pregnant. It is all a matter of being patient, but how in the hell can you be patient when it is such a monumental life-changing thing you are waiting on??
At some point through all of the panic yesterday morning, Keith said something and reminded me that it "is a good thing, right?". Yes, it is a great thing. A pregnancy right now isn't really the best timing, but it would be a wonderful thing. Chad and I were intending to start trying in October after the marathon and even still are prepared for it to take a while. I had gone through all of the thoughts of running, not running, how to tell family, not telling family, cleaning the room we intend to someday use as the baby's room, shopping for baby clothes, colors, names...yeah, I would say that I was excited at the possibility as much as I panicked.
So this morning, I'm a little depressed. Chad admitted yesterday evening that he is a little sad that I'm not pregnant as well. He must have had some of the same thoughts as me (sitting in jury duty all day) about the way our lives might be changing. It tugged at my heart to hear his disappointment and makes me all the more hopeful for when we officially start trying later this year.
No need to comment. I am just putting into words what I have been bottling up for the last four days. I also have a few friends that need to hear most of the details. In the hopes that it makes
one person out there more aware or comforted or empathetic or whatever you want to call it, I thought it would be better to put all of this into the world to release it from my heart.
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