Big Fat Negative

This was the second cycle of really trying to add to our family (prior cycles were just kind of a 'if it happens it happens' attitude).  I've been doing the standard stuff - charting my temperature, using OPKs, drinking green tea and paying close attention to what has been happening with  my body.  We got busier than normal this cycle and according to FF (Fertility Friend - a charting app) our timing was great.

Because of that I had high hopes. Like really high.  I was obsessively comparing my chart for this cycle to the one from the month that I got pregnant with Andrew.  The similarities in my temperature pattern between the two were crazy.  They weren't spot on, but they were amazingly close.  In my heart I knew this had to be it - I was going to take a test and see those two pink lines and then get to dress Andrew in the "Best Big Brother" shirt that I got for him and send him out to find daddy so he could tell him the news.

I woke up this morning at 4:30 and couldn't fall back to sleep.  I went and took my temperature and took a test, no longer able to hold off.  When my thermometer beeped I looked at the temp and was shocked to see that it was a full 1.5 degrees lower than yesterday.  I brushed it off as being much earlier than my normal time and being taken after I had tossed and turned for a little bit.  Then I looked at the test and saw a stark white test strip.

I still had high hopes remembering that I am 12 DPO and I didn't get a positive test with Andrew until the evening of 12 DPO with a stronger positive the next morning. It's still too early is what I told myself as I crawled back in bed.

A couple hours later I woke up to go the bathroom only to see that this was in fact not our cycle.  I had tears in my eyes as I crawled back in bed and I told J that it was official - this cycle was a failure.  He gave me a big hug and a kiss and assured me that it's ok, we have plenty more chances.  When I protested saying I'm not getting any younger and I'm upset because based on my data we had great timing and still failed he kind of chuckled.  I don't give him all the details of my charting so he doesn't really know what "data" I'm talking about besides me taking my temperature. He kissed away my tears and held me for a while until Andrew finally started stirring.

Seeing Andrew's smiling face when I walked downstairs helped me to feel a little bit better.  I know that we haven't been really trying that long and there are plenty of people who have longer roads than this, but with my "Advanced Maternal Age" I feel like my clock is ticking louder and louder each and every month until it's almost deafening.

I guess I could look on the bright side - I won't have to pretend to drink at my company Christmas party this next weekend.  And our trip to Dallas in two weeks for our first trip alone since Andrew was born should come at the perfect time to try again to give him a sibling.

I'll just have to keep my expectations realistic going forward so I don't end up in tears every month.  Too bad that is probably easier said than done...