Still waiting

I spent an hour and a half at a work social with C and V (my new-mom co-workers) and fully HALF of that time was spent talking to the second-in-command at our firm about babies and kids and twins and daycare options (or lack thereof). I stood there in dumbfounded shock that things had come to this. Here I am with the opportunity to network with the managing partner and of course, of course, the conversation goes here. And stays here. And I couldn't blame C and V for letting it go there instead of trying to protect me from it. If I had had anything in common with this partner, I would have milked it for all it was worth as well. She asked me if I had kids. "No, I don't," I said. She then said, "Well, should you decide to have children, blah blah blah." Uh-huh. So wait...I'm not sure I get it. I DID decide to have children. Last August actually. So now I should be enjoying whatever blah blah blah was, right? But I'm not. What gives?

So I had a glass of wine at the happy hour - I've decided a couple drinks before implantation is even possible is probably no biggie, but I am going to be better behaved for the second week. I did NOT partake in the soft cheeses. I had a cheese plate and, upon noticing that some were of the unpasteurized variety, I selectively ate only the pasteurized ones. Hopefully this didn't give me away, both C and V have been on baby-watch ever since I mentioned that my HCG is finally normal (why WHY do I share these things??!?). I probably won't be able to keep them at bay long if I do manage to conceive, but I'd like to think I can push the rumors out until I'm at least knocked up. I made sure they caught the wine-drinking. The listeria thing is just too scary to risk, and it's an infection so if this were my cycle, it may not manifest until a week or two in, as opposed to the wine which should wash out right away.

It being the 2ww and all, I am obsessing and googling and paying too much attention to every twinge and soreness and break out. It's as if I was brand new at this. I can't stop myself. And I've come up with some interesting observations.

One is that I've totally given up on having any idea when I ovulated. I tried overriding the "Advanced" ovulation-detection method on FF yesterday and tried the "research" and the "fertility awareness" methods and they all gave me different results. I got everything from CD16 ovulation to CD19. Go figure. And I've come to the conclusion that "Advanced" is the default because it's the most conservative. For some reason FF likes to prolong the 2ww into about a 3ww by giving you a testing date so far into the future that not even the most self-restrained among us could hold out for that long. They are of the "test once and only once" school and the Advanced O detection method is by far the latest possible day that I could have Oed so it gives me the latest possible testing date - a date that the test is sure to be positive if one was indeed pregnant. One might even be showing by the time that date rolls around. This was interesting to me. I don't like paternalistic software and I do like to know when people are telling me what they think is best for me rather than telling me the god's honest truth. I can handle a false negative thank-you-very-much-and-give-me-back-my-pee-sticks.

Fortunately, whichever day O was, DH and I did sufficient babydancing to make FF give me a "high" probability of pregnancy. Really? It's "high?" Relative to what? Is it 30% instead of 20%? 30% is not a high probability in my book. It's more like a low probability, being appreciably less than 50% and all. What kind of fuzzy math are they doing over at FF?

Anyway, moving on to this morning when I got a dip of .4 deg F in my BBT. And I also had some piercing pains around my ute. Not really AF cramps, they reminded me of last November actually. I think. But I don't trust myself to read my own symptoms anymore, I know better than that. So in order to find out if it could have been an implantation dip I am of course going to wake myself (and poor DH, necessarily) up at 6:30 tomorrow, on a Saturday, to see if the temp comes back up like it should. And then, if it does, inevitably I'll obsess some more and get my hopes even higher...this is torturous.

On the upside, life goes by so very very slowly when one is TTC. I've been reminded of that this cycle. And isn't that what we all hope for? For life to just slow down? I'm going to try to embrace that aspect of it. Good luck to me.....What? It doesn't work that way? Damn.