Time is not on my side to have another child. It wasn’t on my side for the first one, and it certainly isn’t now.
When I met Alex, we discussed my age and knew that if there was going to be a problem conceiving, the only way to find out was to try. I took my temperature, charted diligently, and, surprisingly, got pregnant immediately. We were relieved, shocked, and thrilled.
When our son Aiven was about 5 months old, I stopped nursing at night in hopes of kick starting my ovulation. It took only two weeks to get my period. And then the race began. The temperature taking, symptom analyzing, pregnancy testing, and endless charting and scrutinizing on fertilityfriend.com. The hopes and dreams along with the worries and anxieties. Will I have secondary infertility? Will it be possible to conceive again?
I have two friends who are expecting a second child 15 months after their first, and a woman from my play group is going to have“Irish twins.” I made it into the mommy club, and now I am impatient to join the “let’s have a second child soon after the first” club.
I feel a lot of pressure on me. If I don’t get pregnant am I not as much as a woman as my peers? And then there’s that look of disappointment I see on my husband’s face when I tell him that we will have to try again next month. And the memory of what it was like growing up an only child.
I desperately want to give Aiven a sibling. But it is too soon to turn to fertility treatments, so all I can do for now is chart my irregular periods and pray to be blessed a second time.
Two days ago I neared the end of charting my third cycle. I was five days past the date I expecting my period, experienced no pregnancy symptoms, and every test (which were disturbingly numerous) came back negative. On the other hand, my temperature had not dropped yet, indicating that my period was not on the horizon.
But then I started spotting. I descended into a foul mood. No baby this month. I had convinced myself that after three months of trying, I was supposed to be pregnant, and I had failed. The fact that I was nursing, my hormones had not recalibrated, and my periods were irregular did nothing to assuage my anger, guilt, and fear.
The next day, I was still spotting and my husband asked if I was going to take a test. I said “no.” But 10 minutes later, as the shower steamed up the bathroom, I peed on a stick and put it by the window. I remembered about the test only as I dried off. I looked at in the warm sunlight and saw the faintest of lines. What? Was this some kind of joke? I had been completely sure I was not pregnant, and after 30 tests this one had a line! I showed it to my husband who assured me I was not hallucinating. I took another test, a different brand, another line. In disbelief, I took a digital test, and it replied without hesitation: “pregnant.”
I took two more tests yesterday and one this morning. All of them confirm I am pregnant. I am still shocked. And relieved. And grateful beyond measure.
But I am still spotting, so I am also worried. I went for tests today. I have to pause and remind myself this is something I cannot control. I just have to have faith that it will play out the way it is meant to. Only time will tell.
