spingu

[spingu]

felt like i was doing so well today being mentally disciplined and not agonising over my fertility until i got a call from my husband who - after his fifth doctors appointment in the last few weeks - is now being screened for testicular cancer because they can't find any other explanation for his bizarre symptoms recently. to say i am spiralling and falling apart is an understatement

[spingu]

*giving you a loving handjob* and you love me. btw. youre in love with me. *gives it a cute little kiss* and you love me the most. right? *puts it in my mouth* sayw it or ilw bite as hard as i can

[spingu]

realising only now how deeply the anovulation at the end of April/early May rattled me. the extreme anxiety I am feeling over the fact I haven't ovulated yet this month is definitely related and i feel like it's a horrible timeloop where again I was due to ovulate on the saturday and the saturday has come and gone and i'm increasingly worried it's just not going to happen this month.

on the upside overall i'm a lot calmer this month, mostly because i'm just not letting myself think about it and practically i know i cannot be as insane as i was last month because by the time my period is due B will be staying and i will have to be behaving like a normal person.

i shall survive this week by 1. not thinking about implications of ovulation/not ovulating. no forward planning. just take each day as it comes and see what happens. 2. stay extremely busy. need to make plans for the end of the week. maybe I will get my hair cut or something else that will provide an immediate mood boost. 3. return to therapy on thursday. my first session with this therapist went well and i'm hoping she's a good fit. 4. prioritise being fit and healthy!! this is the hardest one but has the biggest payoff if i commit to it. i will not see the two week wait as wasted or terrible time if i look back on it and know i really took good care of myself. 5. DO NOT share timings of ovulation or lack thereof with mother or sister. does not help to have them tracking things along with me.

[spingu]

Feeling a lot of longing this morning. i really just desperately wish to enter this next stage of life. Also feel like a shitty friend because girls night last night was very very overshadowed by best friend talking about her pregnancy which is usually fine, but i have heard all her stories already/in more detail by the time she tells the group so it's boring to hear and means I can't get lost in the reacting in the moment because I already know everything she's about to say. Like great. I'm so happy your husband felt the baby kick for the first time. I'm back to daily ovulation tests this week and every time I look for a line I want to burst into tears. I'm aware this a very uncharitable way to feel but also, I host girls night. I have every single week for the last one thousand years. Maybe it's ok that I want to be able to sit in my house and not listen to conversations that make me want to cry?

[spingu]

Kaoru Yamada

[spingu]

ok time to go again. the upside of having very short regular cycles is that it's already time to start testing ovulation and hopefully ovulating this weekend. i find this process very exhausting. i do not understand the advice that seems to be so rampant online along the lines of "just have fun with it" "enjoy trying"... what is fun about having to time your sex life to a specific window and start every day by peeing on a stick. but i am trying to be positive and tell myself that statistically, i should be pregnant soon. i keep repeating this out loud to myself when my thoughts are starting to drift and i'm finding it somewhat helpful. also meeting a potential new therapist on thursday so fingers crossed it's a good fit.

[spingu]

lessons from this shitshow of a cycle

next month no testing until my period is late. i have to stick to this. i have run out of tests and i will not buy anymore. i am just making life harder for myself because i suffer the sadness of the negative test AND still don't believe it and then suffer again when my period comes.

no insane symptom tracking. this is hard, but no four page long notes app lists next month. it isn't helpful and my excuse of "oh it'll be nice to look back at my early symptoms the month i do get pregnant" isn't valid because i'd be able to piece together a list after the fact based on texts sent to husband etc.

need to be much busier during the two week wait. this will be easier next month because i'll be about to host B and fairly busy but I did a bad job of this this month and it made things 1000x harder.

time to restart weekly or fortnightly therapy i think. this is SUCH a reluctant step because the last thing I feel like I need in life right now is MORE time sitting in therapy rooms. but also I do fundamentally believe therapy works and I think even a short term spell would help me process some of the feelings i'm having about trying to conceive.

no more sharing specific timings of cycle with mum and sister. they are too emotionally involved (mum) and careless with their words (sister). i like being able to be open and honest with the people closest to me but at this point sharing with friends on the internet feels safer than dragging my real life mother's emotions through this with me.

[spingu]

thank you bags from various delis in New York 

[spingu]

feeling resigned to my fate today and still feeling incredibly unwell. i feel deeply deeply bothered that the last two weeks of insane body feelings were not pregnancy. yes, i wanted them to be pregnancy, but also because it's so alarming that without that there's no cause i can point to. i didn't feel more stressed than usual, nothing about my routine or diet was different, i felt less pressured than many other cycles. and yet this one has totally thrown me for a loop because i felt DIFFERENT. i remember writing a few days ago that one of my greatest fears was not being pregnant and losing all sense of trust in my intuition because i was so sure. my body has not been normal for the last two weeks and i have no idea what's going on now. why have i felt like this. what is wrong with me. did i bring this on myself somehow and give myself, what, hysterical conception symptoms??? is that even possible? anyway that's what's going round and round in my head today. and it feels like now i've told the very small circle who are close to me and 'in the know' that i'm not pregnant everyone's just disappeared. everyone wants to join in when it's fun symptom watching and hoping and excitement and the minute you say "no, not this month" everyone just crawls away because it's not fun talking to the miserable girl who spends half of her month hysterically happy that she could be and half the month absolutely devastated that she's not. poooor little me wow i'm really throwing a pity party but it feels cathartic to write it out and i know i will enjoy reading this dreadful little journal back one day when i'm on the other side of this. hi future me. i hope you look at your baby and feel soooo grateful and remember how hard it was to get where you are. don't take it for granted. i hope you feel less sad and lonely than i do.

[spingu]

Mt. Rainier, Washignton, USA by Aaron Reed

[spingu]

Foie Graphics

[spingu]

Two things of note: 1. I feel incredibly sick. I think this is far more likely to be from misery than anything else and I'm a sicky-feeling person anyway, but it feels incredibly cruel to have spent the last two weeks agonising over pregnancy symptoms and now feel SICK on top of it all just to rub salt in the wound. 2. I am so so so grateful I can go through this very hard time with my best friend. I was with her for every moment of her first pregnancy and the horrific loss and the incredibly long wait and painful months that followed that and am now able to celebrate the joy of her soon to be born baby with her. I am so glad that I have a blueprint for what all this looks like and someone to reassure me. We have just spent the last hour pouring over my fertility app and trying to make sense of it all and breathing through the nausea and also hysterically laughing because we are soooo good at clowning ourselves that There's Always A Chance Of Baby. I am very glad I can find these moments of humour with her whilst also knowing she understands how much this hurts. I feel we will look back on these two very difficult years of our lives with some measure of fondness and laugh at how utterly insane we were over waiting for our babies.

[spingu]

Ugh. Period has come, I’m not pregnant. I feel like I already knew this morning but somehow that doesn’t change the absolute crushing disappointment I feel now. Desperately wish I did not have plans I can’t get out of tonight. I know I haven’t done anything wrong but the deep down feeling of failure is overwhelming.

[spingu]

Feeling a tiny bit better this morning. well better than yesterday which was a truly dreadful mental health day. pregnancy test at 6am this morning was negative. I genuinely have no explanation for the raging hormones/moods of the last week. If this is pms i've never felt anything like it. Everything about this was so different to my usual week before period routine. Part of me thinks i've been inventing symptoms or looking for evidence that isn't there but to be fair, i am regular like clockwork and always have the same routine pms experience so it's hard not to notice something different. Also possible that i had another chemical pregnancy but not going to dwell on that as i think it's unhelpful. Saying that, I think i'll know based on my period because the one I had in feb was the worst period of my life and it was so obvious to me that something was going on beyond the norm. Until then i will sit here feeling queasy and confused with my two negative tests trying to keep a neutral mind. That's the goal of today. Stay neutral. Happy or feeling ok is truthfully a stretch but I need to try and keep my mind as neutral as possible so I can work. Also had a good call with Mr Sp this morning who was, as usual, perfect and said everything I needed to hear. I do wish I could somehow hold onto the feeling of being in his company/speaking to him though. He spelled it out clearly. Either I'm not pregnant, in which case, hey, one more month to get our ducks in row, or I am and my levels are just too low to be picked up by the pregnancy tests yet. So simple right? And if anyone else said it like that i'd feel totally patronised but somehow he can say it in a way that is sooo soothing like everything is under control. Either I am or I'm not and when he's saying it I literally feel this huge weight of the unknown physically lift of my shoulders and the minute the phone clicks off it comes crashing back down. And now i'm weeping again because it's our wedding anniversary this week and gosh i love this man so much and I want nothing more in life than to start a family with him. OK also can't entertain that line of thinking because now i'm crying again. The frequency of these big cries is unsustainable when I have a full day of work ahead of me and a to do list as long as my arm!!!!! AND I feel dreadful because I put off so much yesterday to sit and stew in my woes and now today is even busier. I'm not going to worry about productivity though because I will not get everything done today regardless and that is what it is. I am going to try and limit my crying episodes and maybe distract myself whilst using the bathroom by playing some music on my phone or something because the crying tends to start when I go to the bathroom and anticipate my period and when i see all the cupboard of stress where all the tests live. Phew. it's fine everything is fine i'm going to be fine. this is a normal human process and my hormones are raging and that's fine. and at least i ovulated this month. small wins

[spingu]

Havana Harbor (1902) by Willard Metcalf

[spingu]

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[spingu]

Hanging On - Michael Orwick

American , b. 1975 -

Oil , 48 x 36 in.