Body Lessons

Just a heads up, this is definitely a TMI (Too Much Information) post about fertility and conception.

Since we got back from Italy we are now officially Trying to Conceive. I, of course, am doing this in an organized and relatively thought out manner.

(In hindsight (hindsight? It’s been two weeks!) I should have been looking into this more before, I did do some research these last couple months but I have learned a lot this last week!)

I was looking for an app to track my fertility and after looking at a couple I selected FertilityFriend. It signs you up for their website, which has been really helpful. They have a free 20 day, 20 email “course” for charting your fertility.

It made me realize why I hadn’t done much more research because even getting ready to plan on growing a human being inside me and then knowing I’ll have to take care of their messes, the whole human body is super gross. All this talk about fluids that I never really considered or wanted to, lots of hormones and just paying more attention to my own body, is just really weird.

I know they covered this stuff in biology a little bit, but not really! I had straight A’s the whole time and I swear they either didn’t really tell or I really didn’t retain the fact that you can really only get pregnant like 2 days a month. With sperm life coming into play you have up to a 5 day window to conceive. It really makes me wonder how in the world so many people end up pregnant all the time?! It seems like a really small window to me looking at things from the TTC side.

So in order to maximize our chances, I get to learn way more about my body than I ever really wanted to. Although remembering my friend’s pregnancy, being pregnant I’ll learn even more things that I probably really don’t want to know.

In my pre-trip research, I learned that ovulation is the key. (Ok I did remember that from high school biology, but it was really reinforced now that I actually care about it) To time everything right you need to know when you will ovulate and to figure that out you chart everything. And I pretty much mean everything.

You can chart your BBT (Basal Body Temperature), cervical mucus, cervix size, ovulation predictor kit results, other monitor test results, any fertility meds you are on, and a couple other awkward things most people try not to think about. If you want to know the details, Google it, since I it's awkward, I won’t go into detail.

I initially opted to just stick with ovulation predictor kits (OPKs), which is a little stick you pee on to let you know if your luteinizing hormone is peaking, which indicates ovulation will occur within the next 24-48 hours. After starting going through the charting course I’ll be utilizing other signs my body naturally has that indicate the timing of ovulation (and will save me some money on the OPKs). 

I apologize for the TMI, but I did warn you :)

Needless to say it has been an interesting and informative journey so far!