Joy in the Journey

tales of the sleepless and jet-lagged

skins — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:32:00 GMT

How come I mostly blog when I'm cranky? Must because I have things to get off my chest.

So our alleged "oops" last month resulted in a BFN. I was both disappointed and relieved at the same time. In equal measures. It really wouldn't have been the best timing - we have a huge event coming up at work in mid February, so having a Feb 1 due date would have been pretty inconvenient. But still, I was sad. I was very good, very careful about what I did -- the last part of my TWW was the first part of our vacation, so no alcohol, no hot tubs, etc. etc. Once AF came (sucks to get AF on vaca, dude), I let loose some more and treated myself to wine, champagne and the hot tub/steam room/ sauna at the hotel spa. Which was nice and indulgent.

Speaking of AF arriving on vacation, I can't tell you how much using the Diva Cup has changed my life. In former days I would have totally panicked about having to travel, especially internationally during my period. I had a very unfortunate "leakage" accident during a flight to Europe once and it was highly embarrassing and not fun. I feel freed by the Diva Cup, being able to put it in and forget about it. So easy, and so little to pack! So though AF sucks, especially on vacation, it really was not so bad.

Now we are back from vacation and I'm winding up to O next week sometime, probably W-F sometime. We should begin the BDing this weekend, I think - dependant on when I get my EWCM. I am excited and nervous, but I am also very jet lagged, and that is resulting in a bit of a depression. And that leads to my silly, self-indulgent story of the day.

Last night, DH and I forced ourselves to stay awake until 9pm to combat the jet lag and get readjusted faster. We fell asleep immediately at 9 when we crawled into bed. At 11pm I was woken up by the sound of belching. DH has a pretty sensitive stomach, so it is not uncommon for him to be woken up by gaseous emissions - either from the front end or the back end. I also had happened to leave all the doors open to keep the air flow going - it was quite warm upstairs. I thought about reminding him to close the bathroom doors and our bedroom door if he found that he needed to get up in the night, but I didn't want to be a nag, so I just didn't say anything. Well, he had closed the door between our bedroom and the bathroom, but left open the door between the bathroom and the rest of the upstairs loft as well as the door between our bedroom and the rest of the upstairs loft. The upstairs loft is a large open space with wood floors, and as we just moved into this place, it doesn't have much in the way of furniture or decor. So it is very loud and echoey, a veritable amphitheatre, which perfectly amplified the sound of DH's enormous belches.

This went on for 10 minutes as I got wider and wider awake, and madder and madder. I was so mad, that when he came back to bed, I pretended to be asleep and refused to cuddle up to him. That'll show him. Except that within 10 seconds after he laid back down, he was twitching in that telltale way that meant he was fast asleep. At this point, I was wide awake. it was just after 11pm. I laid there, wide awake until about 2am, listening to him softly snore and murmur happily. First I got madder and madder at him. I thought about waking him up to make him share in my misery. Then I realized that that was stupid, he'd just be tired and and cranky like me in the morning. I tried going downstairs, going online, listening to relaxing music, drinking warm milk, going to the bathroom, etc. etc. I was SO ANGRY that he was sleeping and I was awake and it was his fault that I was awake.

I realized I was never going to fall asleep angry. So I started to list off the things I love about him, like counting sheep, and pretty soon, I put myself to sleep.

Until 4:30am, when he stirred violently, and woke me up again. And again I was wide wide wide awake. So I got 2 blocks of about 2 hours of sleep each.

I realize that I will have to do this type of thing and function properly whith a baby. But the fact is, I do not have a baby, I have a man. And I shouldn't have to deal with this! Blah.

Mostly this is just the jet lag talking. I just want to be able to sleep, get some rest, so that we can enjoy the BDing this weekend! And so that the stress of not sleeping and jet lag won't delay my O! I really am excited about TTC... I just need to get past this temporary malaise to get back to the excitement.

Happiness comes in bunches

skins — Wed, 12 May 2010 16:11:00 GMT

WOW.

After the way the past few weeks have been, today is just amazing.

First of all, I got and took the job that I posted about last time. (Same company, different project.) I consulted with all of my "working mom" gurus, and determined to take life (and work and pregnancy) as it comes and not worry so much about having it all planned out. The new job is an amazing opportunity for me, plus has the added benefit of getting me out of this hellhole that I'm in at the moment. I am going on vacation the week before Memorial Day, then I'll start the new job right after that, so June 1-ish. that means that I have the rest of this week and all/most of next to get ready to transition out of here. Phew. I am SO excited!!!

In reproductive news, I had my annual gyno exam yesterday. I've begun my care at the birth center, so I was examined by a midwife. It was INCREDIBLE. Best "girly" exam I've ever had, by far. I was comfortable and relaxed. She spent basically a full hour with me, chatting, getting to know me, answering my questions, discussing my concerns. We chatted right through the exam part, and I barely even felt the swab in there! Plus we talked about starting to TTC, and when I left she said she hoped to see me again real soon!! Which brings me to the next piece of news...

WE'RE TTC!!!! I have ovulated on our last TTA cycle, and am now in the good old LP. And even after AF comes again... there will be no more condoms! I am thrilled to my toes (both about the no condoms part and the TTC part. Equally.) I officially started the prenatal vitamins (that i've had for a month) yesterday. :o) I also picked up some fish oil, because the first bottle of prenatals I picked up doesn't have DHA, and the midwife really recommended that. I hate the fish oil (with its fish burps - uck!), so my next bottle will have the stuff already in it. :oP

So the ONLY thing right now (and this isn't really a bad thing), is that... we may have had an oops this month. Well... not really an oops, since I knew I wasn't SURE and we went ahead and ML anyway, but we were technically supposed to be avoiding. What happened was that I flew two redeyes within a week of each other, as I think I mentioned. Crazy travel always messes up my cycle, and this basically dropped a bomb in it. Delayed O and all that. My temps took a nose dive, and only veeeeeeeery sloooooooowly recovered. They kind of stair-stepped up toward normal. When they got back to the normal range, Ovusoft and FF both detected enough of a jump to call it ovulation on CD19. So on CD22, I was feeling frisky, and he was feeling frisky, and I didn't feel like having a condom. I knew that I wasn't real real sure that I had actually o'd (my cervix was still pretty much open), but I figured, hey, we're TTC next month anyway - who cares! And you know what happened then...

The midwife who did my exam told me my cervix was still open yesterday. I'm pretty sure the temp jump on CD21 looks more like ovulation than the one on CD19. Which would put our indiscretion at 1dpo (~9% chance of conception). But... oh well! :o) DH shrugged and said, when will we know?

Two weeks, baby. And get used to it. I see many (but hopefully not TOO many) Two Week Waits in our future.

Maternity leave worries before there's "maternity"

skins — Mon, 03 May 2010 17:56:00 GMT

Bah.

So I've posted before about not being totally happy in my current work, and looking for a new job in a different area of the same company (the pros of a BIG company). Well a couple weeks ago, I had a great interview with a really exciting division here. They are on the cutting edge, making it all happen. Very active, very cool. Much more exciting than the graveyard of buried hopes where I'm working now.

I got a call from the hiring manager today. I didn't get the job. They gave it to someone else with more practical experience in the area. Blech. HOWEVER, the mgr said I "impressed them so much" that he wants to offer me a different, but similar position on a different project. YEAH sign me up!! The catch is this: he only has budget for this position through April of next year. After that, I'll either try and find a role on a different project in that same area (which is likely to be available, to be honest), or I'll be starting the job search from scratch yet again (less likely, but still quite possible).

There are many career-type reasons why this is risky or non-risky, and I'm weighing all of those things. But here's one major wrench: DH and I want to start TTC next month. If we get pg, my due date will be Feb28 or so. I'm planning to take 3 months of maternity leave (we get 6wks paid, then I'm probably going to take another 6 wks unpaid). That means i would be gone from work for March, April, and May... right across the time when funding runs out on this project. Right across the time that I'd need to find a new position. Ack! There are several things here:

I recognize that the odds are that we won't get pg the first month TTC.
If we get pg even the 2nd month, I'll be in a position to line up my post-leave work before i leave. That's good.
However, starting a brand new job right after maternity leave seems stressful and like a bad idea. Not to mention that I know hiring managers don't necessarily like to "invest" in women who are obviously pg and might stay home. (Is that prejudiced? Yes. Is it illegal? yes. Does it still happen? Of course.)
I really don't want to delay TTC for work.
My workplace is very flexible about employees personal lives. Women here get pg all the time, and they have great maternity leaves, and they come back to work and it's no problem.

I think I'm going to take the risk and take the job. I really want it, and it's an excellent opportunity. I'll cross the maternity leave bridge when i come to it. I suppose there is no sense in worrying about maternity leave before there's a pregnancy. And I know that I think too much, worry too much, try to plan too much ahead.

That doesn't stop me worrying about it, though.

Has anyone been through a similar situation? Am I overthinking this? Do I need to calm down? (yes)

sad today

skins — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 20:41:00 GMT

I'm sad and it's stupid and i shouldn't be sad, which just makes me feel worse and it's like a death spiral of sadness today.

DH is on another of his two-week business trips to Hawaii. I went to Honolulu over the weekend to be with him and (duh) enjoy Hawaii. We had an awesome awesome and very relaxing time. Then I took the redeye home on Sunday night and went straight to work on Monday. Now it's Tuesday and I'm sad all over the place.

I'm sad mostly because I'm just plain old EXHAUSTED. Every time I do this - a redeye or super early morning flight followed by going straight to work - I say that I'm not going to, that i can't do it anymore. And then we go to book the next whirlwind weekend trip and i volunteer to do it again.

Which makes me sad, because I'm stupid and should no better. And it's my own darn fault for doing this.

I'm sad because although I've known that I need to refocus on getting in shape and losing weight for TTC, I finally measured myself today. I have put 3 inches on my hips and 4 inches on my waist since January. I am SO ANGRY with myself, and so embarrassed. I have put in a lot of work to lose weight and get healthy, and I let myself do this. And now, we're ready to TTC starting next month, and I'm completely out of shape! :o(

I'm sad because I miss DH. We had a great weekend, but I hate these 2 week trips when i do day-to-day life without him.

I'm sad because (get this) I haven't heard about the job I applied for. I mean, how lame is that?!? It's not like I didn't get the job... it's just that I don't know whether I got the job. And that's enough to make me sad. Which makes me mad at myself, again, some more.

I'm just sad and lonely and stressed out and pissed off and miserable.

Not my best day, here. :( Need a little more Joy in this Journey.

(Disappointing) Relief

skins — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 14:41:00 GMT

I have been freaking out for the past week that I am pregnant. Irrational? Yes. Well... probably. As I mentioned last post, we were strong. We used protection on my two most perfect fertile days of a great looking cycle. And then my temps went up and the egg was gone.

And then, on Friday, I had some sharp-ish pains low in my abdomen. Like, in my uterus. On Saturday, I had this feeling of fullness with very little appetite. When I did eat, I was nauseous, with heartburn, and much burping. These symptoms of pinching in my uterus, nausea, heartburn, burping (my usual PMS gas is, erm, at the other end), and mild cramping continued through the weekend and into this week. I was also irritable, emotional. I have tested four times, all stark white BFN, each time stressing out more. How could this have happened? a condom failure, pre-ejaculate with sperm in it...? It was shaking me and my faith in FAM to the core.

The dam broke yesterday (9dpo). DH called to say he was on his way home and that work had made him grumpy, and this caused me to burst into tears. I then viewed this over-emotionality as yet another pregnancy symptom when I should absolutely *not* be pg, which made me panic and cry even more... DH rushed home and scooped me up in his arms. He said, "What are you not telling me?" (He knows me so well! I can't hide from him.) I led off with "I'm not pregnant! But I have all these symptoms... I've had these symptoms all week!" He smiled and held me close and said, "Well, if you are pregnant, we'll be happy! It's good news!" Which I guess was what I was worried about, that if I was, he would doubt me and FAM and be angry because a pg this month would alter some plans (as posted about in the past). He held me as I buried my face in his shoulder and said, "Hey - one day, real soon, you are going to look at those tests and see only one line like you did today. And you'll be really mad!" Did I mention how well he knows me? Then he did something silly which made me giggle, and things got better.

For the rest of the night, he kept joking, "Well, you're pregnant, so..." and laughing. Then finally just before bed he was serious, and said, "You're not pregnant." I said, "I know," because deep down I know that the probability is about zero. Then he said, "I know [FAM] works." The show of faith made me SO happy.

DH doesn't always handle things well, but from top to bottom of this issue, he was an absolute gem. He said and did all the right things. I think he really is ready to try for a baby, and next month, or the month after that, I know he'll be right by my side, looking for that second line.

As for my symptoms, they've all seemed to go away today, other then my standard PMS sore bbs. So I have no idea whatever what was up with my GI tract the past week. AF is due Monday or Tuesday, but DH is leaving on Monday morning for another business trip, so I might take one final test on Monday (14dpo) so that if we're wrong, I'll be able to tell him in person before he leaves.

As my differential equations professor used to say, "It's not impossible, it's just that the probability is zero."

Diving the plan

skins — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:08:00 GMT

Well we did it. The will overcame desire and we DTD protected this weekend, both times. He said, "we probably should, right?" and I knew he was right. We had talked about it. Talked about the pros and cons. In the end, it's practical - timing would be off for many things, including a couple trips we want to take, and my brother's college football schedule. All of these things could be mitigated by simply waiting a month or two. And so we waited. I was simultaneously disappointed and relieved. I had run out to pick up some prenatal vitamins and took a dose of them on Saturday morning just in case. I wanted to just "roll the dice." But i know that it wasn't the best timing.

If there's one thing i'm good at, it's sticking to the plan. "Plan the dive, and dive the plan."

I think I ovulated yesterday. My temp isn't over the coverline, but I've seen this "dip plus slow, 2-day rise" pattern before. Tomorrow's temp will have to confirm. I hope it does, because i've been strong now, and I can't hold out for too much longer.

The timing would be best in two months. But maybe we'll be a little "less careful" next month, when the consequences of "rolling the dice" aren't so obnoxious. On the plus side, I'm going to try and refocus (again) on getting into shape. I'm up 15 pounds since the wedding and 20 pounds from where I definitely should be. 30 pounds from my goal weight. I finally gave in a bought some bigger pants. So possibly I can work on getting that back under control before we really try in earnest.

In other news, DH's high school sweetheart (who he pined after for most of college) just told us that she's preggers. We're all friends now, and she's a sweet, smart, fun girl to hang out with. But deep down I still feel like she was DH "first love" and that it's not fair. I'd rather she be jealous of me than the other way around...

Rule #1: Don't Be Stupid

skins — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 16:21:00 GMT

So, DH is coming home from his business trip on Saturday. I've been consumed with thought of ML to him again. Unprotected, au naturale, and call it TTW on CD14 with probable O CD15-18. Buuuuut, I went back and looked at the data and recommendations on malaria and pregnancy. We are going to Malaysia in late May, and had planned to wait to TTC until after the trip due to risk of malaria. In one of my lasts posts, I was getting excited about DHs willingness to try, and was about to throw caution to the wind and say, hey, if I get pregnant, I'll just use anti-malarial prophylactics and it will be fine!

This is stupid. Very very stupid.

Malaria is so bad for pregnancy - both woman and fetus - it's not even worth talking about. On every website about traveling while pregnant , malaria pretty much the only condition that is specifically called out (over and over again) as so horrible that you should stay home rather than risk it by traveling to a malaria-endemic area. It's even bad for women who already live in these endemic areas and may have some sort of resistance. Or at least resistance to mosquitoes - which I don't. Little buggers eat me alive. My mom calls me human bug repellent because they leave her alone and chow down on me. And apparently, mosquitoes are even *more* attracted to pregnant women. Great.

So no, I won't be throwing caution to the wind this month. No, I will not be going to Malaysia if for some reason there is an oops. No, I will not be so stupid as to put myself and my baby so thoughtlessly at risk.

I'm sort of embarrassed that I even had the thought in the first place.

After May 21st, though, all bets are off. :oD

(Although... if it happens... I could just stay in Singapore, which has no malaria issues to speak of [lack of mosquitoes in the big city] instead of going into Malaysia... Oh dear, here comes baby fever again!!!!!!!)

Fortune

skins — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:56:00 GMT

My fortune cookie from my chinese noodle dinner last night: "An unexpected event will soon make your life more exciting."

First reaction: One can only hope!

Second reaction: I'm not sure I can handle more excitement than I've already got!!

:o)

There's an order to things...

skins — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 03:22:00 GMT

This is what my DH says every time I get baby fever. "There's an order to things... first we get married." Well, yes. We did that. Then: "There's an order to things. First we get married, then we find a house where we can settle down together... and THEN we can work on the baby."

Well, guess what??? We're HOMEOWNERS!!! As of last Wednesday! We drove the loaded moving truck to the closing, I'm so not even kidding. It's an absolutely beautiful place. I already love living here! And I can't wait to bring home a little bundle here! We have lots of rooms to fill with the laughter of children! DH even said last week, "See, honey, there's an order to things. First we had to get married, and then we had to find a house to settle down in, and NOW we can work on the baby!" Did you see that? He said NOW. He even said (jokingly) as we were unloading the moving truck that we should start working on conceiving our boy immediately, because he's going to need help working on the house sooner rather than later, so we can get cracking! LOL.

I have baby fever SO bad right now. I want to start TTC!! I just discovered yet another friend on facebook who changed her profile pic to her ultrasound image. Subtle, right? and i actually thought to myself "Well, she's older than me, so she's allowed to be pregnant before me." How terrible is that?!? I feel bad for being ridiculous and egocentric, but I want it to be MY TURN! I stalk the TWW thread on here and wistfully wish I could legitimately be a part of it. So it's like, two of my cousins are pg, a dear friend from high school has a really impressive baby bump, several friends from high school and college have new little ones, and now this girl posts her ultrasound pic. I want to be among them!!!

Why can't we just try, seeing as how all the things on DH's ordered list are checked off and a baby is the next logical step? Well we were waiting for after our trip to Malaysia in May, so that I wouldn't have to get anti-malarial treatments. Malaria would be bad for a pregnant lady. But... would it really be so bad? If I'm pregnant, I'd just get the stuff that's safe for pregnancy. In my head, it has sounded like a good idea all day, but now typing it out, it seems really silly. Silly to put a baby at risk, silly to risk morning sickness on an international trip like that.

But still. DH is out on business travel until April 3. Then he's leaving for another trip again the 5th. I don't really want to make love to him after we've been apart for two weeks with protection. That is supposed to be my fertile period. If we do it once, we'd be rolling the dice, and TTW. If it doesn't happen, we'd still be on course for following the plan. If it happens.... well.... :o)))))))

I don't think he'll go for it. What if he does? Should I be strong and say we should wait??? ARGH I want to try for a baby!!!

All These Little Earthquakes

skins — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:05:00 GMT

When last I wrote, I was considering making some changes at work. We've basically decided to go with plan B (not applying for a new job at a different company, TTC in May). While of course I'm thrilled about TTC in May, work still sucks. I've been trying to pass my resume around internally (large company), and see if i can change roles here and get into something more interesting. But even changing roles internally seems slightly silly if TTC works fairly quickly. We'll see. I have up days and down days. The days when i have defined tasks and a team to work with are pretty good and I feel like i could do this for a while. The days when my tasks are done or incredibly ill defined (like yesterday and today) are torturous.

The bigger news is that we're in the process of buying a house. For real this time. We've been in a limbo situation for the past 6 months, combining trying (and failing) to buy a short sale/foreclosure property with dealing with a sociopathic landlord (not kidding - very creepy). We didn't want to get preggers until we were settled, or at least well on our way to being settled. The new house is awesome, and I can't wait to bring a kiddo home to it! <3 It's also the same distance away from the birth center as the other place we were involved with, no farther, so that's nice. It definitely seems like a huge step on the way to being ready for a baby, and I'm super excited. The new place also has an in-law suite already in there, so that option of having the in-laws come for periodic child care is seeming more tolerable, seeing as how they'll have their own personal space, and I'll have my own personal space. And my own kitchen - I'm not gonna lie, sharing my kitchen is a big deal for me.

In other news, my college-age cousin just facebook-messaged me that she found out in October that she was pregnant by the guy she'd been dating for a month, and in February they eloped. What a mess. I mean, she's a great girl, and she'll make a great mother, but I'm sure it's not the way she wanted things to go. Not to mention that it's on my nerves - I have carefully constructed my life to be responsible and prepared for bringing a life into this world, and I'm annoyed at myself for being jealous of her pregnancy. She's the third of my cousin's from that family (all younger than me) to have kids. I just want my turn to come!

Moving on up

skins — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:10:00 GMT

So, it's like, daily drama all up in here for me.

Back to the work thing - I'm contemplating applying for a job at another company, because i am sort of unsatisfied with my current work. If I did that, and got the job, I wouldn't want to take maternity leave for at least a year, which at first sounded scary, but after doing the math, that would put us TTC around August/September, which was what we were sort of planning anyway. Not so bad. Call that plan A

But then DH suggested something. I had thought about this, but i didn't want to push my luck with him, since he's been so convinced that he's "not ready" yet. But he brought it up! The proposal is this: TTC now-ish and stick it out at my current job for the next 9-10 (or whatever) months, then go on maternity leave. If the work situation has improved, take a long-ish but normal leave and then come back. If it has not improved, leave the company at that time and get a new job after a nice long leave (1yr, even). Call that plan B.

AAAAAAAHHHHH!!! DH was talking about TTC NOW!!! Unfortunately, like I said in my last post, I did, indeed O on monday (or sunday maybe), so the eggy is gone for this month. Fortunately, that gave me time to think some more. We have a trip to Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong booked for May. Though I don't particularly have a problem with travelling pregnant, Malaysia does have malaria issues. And though my research shows that there is an anti-malarial prophylactic that "hasn't been proven harmful to a fetus," I really would rather not subject my baby to drugs needlessly like that. Like I said, I could use a few months to get back into shape before baby-making anyway.

So last night i presented my research to DH and proposed that in the case of plan B, we wait to TTC until after the trip. He said, "Yeah, I think May would be okay. We could start on the trip, even!" (Ahhh!!) So we decided to pursue plan A (apply for this new job) and if I don't get it, go with plan B.

The thing is, now that TTC had been moved up to May, I find myself increasingly attracted to plan B, and strangely enough increasingly motivated at work. It doesn't seem so bad here all of a sudden. ;o) I suppose we'll see if that motivation lasts. But if it does, we may be on track for TTC in May. AHHHHHHH!!!

Stay tuned for the next chapter of drama... :oP

Man plans, God laughs

skins — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:09:00 GMT

Life is insane. We're in the process of buying a house, and that process has stopped and started several times (although today it seems to have started again, so I'm less worried about that for now). DH just started a new job, which is great, but he is feeling like he wants to settle into it before we talk about TTC. We had a pretty big fight about the whole "getting his parents to do child care" thing, because I'm nervous that (a) I won't be able to assert myself on parenting issues and (b) if they end up living with us, I will reallyreallyreally want/need some personal space! I love my MIL, but I don't really want to live with her! DH is pretty convinced that this is the best option for child care in terms of economics and love for our child (can't disagree with those points), and he says that they'll only be here a month at a time probably anyway. So I don't know. I keep going back and forth on it.

OTOH, we went skiing last weekend. DH has been very worried that "once the kids come" we'll be giving up a lot of the fun activities that we do - hiking, skiing, travel, etc. I'm trying to convince him that we don't have to give them up, they'll just be changing a little. The ski place we went to this weekend is super kid-friendly, and he spent the whole weekend saying "I can really imagine bringing the kids here!" and "When I bring Junior here..." So that was awesome. I had some awesome EWCM this month and really wanted to take the opportunity. We didn't and it's probably just as well.

To top it all off, things are a mess for me at work right now. I haven't been happy there for about 1.5 years, and I really need a change. I might have an opportunity to make a change, but it will be a step away from what my childhood dream was. So I'm goign through this major identity crisis about who I am and what i want and how i've changed. Sometimes I think it'd be a good time to get pregnant because i dont' know what I want at work. Other times I think I better sort the work thing out first.

I think I ovulated today, which means that the decision has been made for another month. As DH says, "Bye bye egg..."

Amibivalently Avoiding

skins — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:04:00 GMT

I originally started posting my story in the "Ambivalent Avoiders" Buddy Group, but I realized that I wanted to keep a record of this stuff all in one place for myself. I have a blog that's prepared to share with my family and friends, but this TTA/TTW/TTC journey is something I don't really want to put out there for people who will put pressure on the situation. So here are the first 3 entries, and hopefully, this is the beginning of a beautiful TTA/TTW/TTC journey for me and my wonderful husband.

I feel like I am the definition of "ambivalent avoider." DH and I were married in August 2009, and we are really enjoying just being married and being together. Most of our dating and about half of our engagement was spent as a long-distance relationship (DH in Boston, and me in either Denver or houston), and now that we're together in Denver, finally, we're just happy to be "just us."

And that's all well and good, and it *is* fun, but that is literally the only reason that we are TTA. If DH has his way, we would wait until we were married two years to have the baby, so in his mind, we should start TTC nine months before that. On the other side of that argument, we have me who is nervous that we we'll have trouble concieving - both of our mothers had issues with conceiving and miscarriages, and I have had borderline PCOS in the past. So I'm not sure his conviction that "if we want a baby in August, we should TTC in December!" is as foolproof as he thinks. Not to mention I just have plain old baby fever, and would like to build a family with my awesome DH!

Theoretically, I'd be okay with starting to TTC on or around our first anniversary (1 August), which he's mostly okay with - only 3 months ahead of his schedule. Ideally though, we have a big vacation planned for May, and I think that would be an excellent time to "be less careful."

In spite of pulling in the wrong direction on when we should TTC, DH is being a real trooper about getting himself educated on this stuff by asking me questions about TCOYF and FAM, reading some books on his own, and suggesting that we talk to his (retired) parents about their role in child care, as I am planning to continue to work, at least part time, after Junior arrives. I'm also trying to lose 30 pounds or so in preparation for baby, so I'm trying to focus my baby-wanting energies on that.