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ready to start my adventure - advice welcome!

hello beautiful ladies of CTP!

my husband and i are planning to try for our first child this month!!

we sort of half-tried earlier in the month, meaning...

i used OPK's, we tried a couple of times right around my ovulation date (august 5th), and today 14 DPO, the ever so lovely AF made her grand entrance.

this time around, we're doing our research and are hoping to have our first baby on the way in the next few months!

i know many of you are like me and very new to this, but i also know so many of you wonderful women have been trying for so long, and you ALL have my prayers and well wishes!!

i would LOVE any advice, tips, good vibes or words of wisdom that any of you have to offer. i am so excited to start this amazing journey and would love to have some friends who can relate along the way.

hope to hear from some of you soon...good luck to you all and remember god has such amazing plans for you!!

7 Replies • 11 years ago


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Hi Hon :),

Welcom to CTP. OPK's a great, but not conclusive and harder to understand. Unlike HPT's, your test line has to be darker or as dark as your control line. Just saying this in case you didnt know (lot's of woman assume they just need 2 lines, like an HPT). You may O anywhere between 12 to 48 hours after you have your possitive OPK. OPK's detect the LH (hormone) surge, but you can have more than one in a month (your body may gear up to O and then, something happens and you dont... you may O a little bit later then you expected.

Another sign of O is your cm, when you ar most fertile, it will be like egg white (EWCM) or liquid (like water). However; when you will O with these types of cm vary from woman to woman, some will have the ewcm 5 days before they O, others will have it on the day they O. Thats something you will have to determine by keeping a calendar and your BBT.

Which brings me to BBT, just remember that while BBT is a good indicator, it is not flawless. Many things will affect your temp. For ex: If you get sick, the room temp changes, you dont wake up at the same time every morning, one night you wear a warmer pyjama then the next, you wear your bikini to go to bed, your sleep is interrupted (you wake up 2 hours before you should, you fall back asleep then take your temp at your normal time... that data wouldnt be valid). If you can stay consistent, then, you should have proper data.

My REs (fertility doctors) suggest you bd every two day from when AF stops for aprox. 2 weeks (sperm can live between 2-5 days, but don't count to much on 5...). This way, by BD'ing every two days, you will be assure that you still have some live ones waiting for the egg.

You have to remember that there is a 20% chance every month that you will conceive, so if at first you don't succeed, try try again.

Base on personal experience, the best suggestion I can give, is that you get a complete CD3 blood work done, just to rule out any hormonal imbalance. I saying this because of my bad experience (TTC 4 years now, and just got a doctor to do blood tests, no other would... and I just found out I will not be able to conceive on my own). If I would have found this out 4 years ago, i could have done something about it then.

Not sure what else I can add. But if you do have any questions, dont hesitate to ask.

Lisa


2008 - Laparoscopy for endometriosis 4 years of TTC (I suspect endo is back due to symptoms but no doctor will beleive me) July 2012: referred to Fertility Clinic August 2012: Test results are back High FSH, Low AFC (could be caused by endo) As I though, the endometriosis is back (take that doctors, I was right, you were wrong) Male factor (perfect count, they are just too stubborn and too lazy to swim properly, LOLL) August 2012: Moving on to IVF

11 years ago


I think the best advice I can give you is to be hopefull, and always keep that hope alive, even through the discouraging times. I have been on the TTC journey for quite some time and I have been through times of anger, jealously, discouragement and have had my heart broken many times... You may not have a long journey ahead of you but each month it is a journey... of waiting for the dreaded AF to end, then to realizing you have a fresh chance, trying to get the timing right to be with hubby, and then of course the 2 week wait... the time of impatience...because all you can do is wait to see...

OPK's are good but like lisa said you want to make sure you are reading them right alot of people think 2 lines must mean its ovulation time, but it does not. Opk's kinda give you the heads up that ovulation will occur after 12-72hrs after you get a postive and sometimes you get more than one postive opk...its always been told to go by the very first postive opk.

BBT charting is a good way to see what exacatly is going on with your body and cycles, but with charts you don't really know you have ovulated until after... so alot of women use opks & charting together.

CM- is one way to predict that your ovulating along with other signs or other systems such as the one's mentioned above... but I would not use this method as a way to know if your ovualating or not... I tracked my cm for months and well it never added up with my BBT charts or opks... and I always have wet cm right before AF comes.. yet wet cm is a good indictation ovulations on the way... so sometimes CM isn't the best judge on ovulation... my doctor told me because I had asked and was worried that my body wasn't making enough... but he assured me that at the time no research proves that it is necessary.
(some times you will hear ladies talking about PreSeed, it is a lubricant that is safe for TTC couples, I have tried it is nice. but its not really to be used as a CM subsitute)

My doctor recommend to have sex every other day, when trying to concieve. I also have found that to be a good thing, it really gives the man a chance to build back up a good bit of sperm.

Also...I don't know if you have been on the birth controll pill or not but if you have, it can be awhile before your body gets back to normal.. normal cycles or even ovulating...so keep that in mind.

Anyways I wish you the best of luck on this journey!! I am around if you have more questions or just need to talk.

Jen

11 years ago


also- go ahead and start taking a prental vitamin or atleast 400g of Folic Acid... any woman trying to conceive should be taking that viatmin.

11 years ago


About the OPKs... I started using the digital ones with the smiley face on them for that very reason - I couldn't deal with trying to figure out whether the line was darker or as dark as it should be or getting lighter or whatever... and I consider myself pretty good with noticing colors and shade variances - I mean I do graphic design for a living, so I should hope I am! But it was too much for me, so I sucked it up and figured the extra money was worth my sanity.

Also, they say it's best not to use first morning urine since the LH surge usually happens during the day so you might miss it if you have a short one and test in the mornings. I usually test when I get home from work.

And like the others said, keep hopeful, there will be frustrating times along the way but hopefully your journey will be short. And have fun! I know sometimes it can feel like a chore to schedule BDing, but it's supposed to be fun ;)


BFP 11/2011; missed m/c 12/2012; D&C 1/2012. Surgery to remove fibroids 4/2012. Trying again 7/2012~ --------- I'm on a quest to live life as if every day were vacation. Follow my journey at http://summerandsundays.com

11 years ago


ladies!!!

i appreciate your replies SO, SO much!! all of your advice was very helpful...some i had heard before, others i didn't have a clue!!

i can't thank you enough for taking the time to write down all the tips that you gave me.

i came off of birth control on the 22nd of july and i knew that it could throw off your AF and OV, but i did use line tests and the smiley face tests to detect my OV day(s) the last time, but i don't think we tried as much as we should/could have.

we would love to have a boy the first time around, so i've been doing research on that as well. it makes it a little tricky because some studies say your chances are greater for a boy if you have sex just at the time of ovulation, not much later or before. i also ate/didn't eat a bunch of crazy things, drank a spoonful of cough syrup before we had sex, and a lot of silly things i read on the internet. but we figured it can't hurt our chances, so why not? : )

i also started taking prenatal vitamins just after stopping birth control and i'm still taking them. definitely a good tip.

the TWW was absolutely brutal for me!! i didn't really realize how badly i wanted to be pregnant until i really thought i could have been. i'm kind of a control freak. anytime anything is wrong with me, an ache or pain or whatever, i want to know what's wrong right then and there. so it was killing me not knowing whether or not i was pregnant!!

i swear i had nearly every symptom in the book. i was nauseous almost all the time, so tired i could barely stand it, cramping (but not AF cramps), and even weird things like sneezing all the time and getting uncontrollable hiccups. i thought for sure i was pregnant, but i must have just talked myself into feeling those things, who knows.

also, another sort of question, if any of you ladies are members of the itty bitty titty committee like myself (ha). do you think i'll have any symptoms as far as sore or tender breasts go if i have super small boobs? by super small, i mean i barely fill an A cup (yes, it's a sad existence. just kidding). i don't ever get any changes in them when AF comes, so i just wondered if they would feel any different during pregnancy. i had no symptoms concerning my breasts last month but i wondered if i would even if i WAS pregnant.

anywho, thanks again so much for your replies, girls. means the world to know how kind strangers can be, especially when you know you have something in common with them. : )

hope to talk with you again soon!

11 years ago • Post starter


hopeful, yes that TWW is a pain!!
also- sometimes you can have a cycle where you do actually have alot of symptoms that could be pregnancy related but they just turn out to be more AF related or something else.. Alot of times we are not used to watching every single thing so closly about ourselfs.. that when we are TTC we are watching every little symptom etc.
I finally got to the point where I stopped bothering with what this symptom is for etc.

I am also a memeber of the itty bitty titty committte. So from my own experience... I have had a few cycle where my boobs felt a little tender or well a tad fuller than normal.... but not like a completely sore kinda thing... I also have a (non) cancerous tumor on one of my breast, it grows more during certain times of my cycle... because it feeds off of estrogen...so when there is more estrogen it gets a little bigger.

While you may get pregnant soon or you may not... and if you do not, don't loose hope but

I think its a good idea though, for a few months to write everything down... so you can kinda compare it to other months... to see whats normal in your cycle and what isn't.

11 years ago


You came off the birth control less than a month ago. Don't be too hard on yourself if it doesn't work for the first few months. That's normal. Give time to your body to get rid of all the chemicals it has ingested for god knows how long.

To increase your chance to conceive a boy, yes, studies do state that you need to have sex just before your ovulation. The reasoning behind that, male sperm swim faster than female sperm (therefore, they will reach the egg before the female). However; female sperm, live longer therefor, increasing your chances of conception by a couple of days. Remember that you ovulate for about 12-24 hours only. If you try to time yourself perfectly with you ovulation you may miss the mark completely (ie: You know exactly on what day you ovulate, so you have sex at 9pm because you want to have a boy (have sex on O day to increase your chances of having a boy makes sense right?!?!?!, well not necessarily), it turns out that you ovulate at 6am but your one of those who's ovulation only last 12 hours, this means that at around 6pm.. your fertility window closed on you). Ok, the cough syrup thing.. that has no effect on the gender of the child, especially if you take it. The main reason for this, the sperm will decide if it's a boy or a girl. It is said that sough syrup, if taken by the woman, will improve her cm. I was told, by my fertility clinic, that if a man has motility issues (sperm swim backwards) cough syrup may help them (to a certain extent of course). Should you want to try cough syrup, make sure that the only active ingredient of guaifenesin (Robitussin has a cough syrup that contains this as the only active ingredient). Unfortunately, there isn't any way to increase your chances to conceive a boy. The fastest and the strongest sperm, will win the race (unless you go to a fertility clinic and go thru IVF with gender selection). If I can say, try to stay away from Soy Isoflavone. If you ovulate on your own, don't touch it. Some woman use it to try an induce ovulation (like chlomid), however; its main use is for menopausal woman.. If it not broken, don't fix it..

Prenatal vitamins or just plain folic acid is a must. It is suggested that you start taking them 3 months before you start TTC. AS I can see, you started a month ago, therefor, you're on the right track.

Nothing in this world can explain how brutal the TWW is. Just remember that we are all in the same boat (it's a pretty big boat, lol) and we are all here with you.

Truth be told, it is very possible that your brain was playing tricks on you. Making you feel like you were pregnant, the brain is a very very strong thing..

As for your boob question, I can't say that I'm in that boat but I can say that it varies from woman to woman. Some say they hurt before they find out they are pregnant others not until much later. If I take myself for example, when I was pregnant with my DD (that was 9 years ago), they didn't change and dint hurt until a day or so after I gave birth to her (when the milk production got into gear).

Thank you for your thank you, and you are most welcome. Sometimes, it's better to rely on strangers that are going thru the same thing you are, than talking to people you know, that have no idea what you are going thru.

All the ladies here have given you great information :)

Lisa


2008 - Laparoscopy for endometriosis 4 years of TTC (I suspect endo is back due to symptoms but no doctor will beleive me) July 2012: referred to Fertility Clinic August 2012: Test results are back High FSH, Low AFC (could be caused by endo) As I though, the endometriosis is back (take that doctors, I was right, you were wrong) Male factor (perfect count, they are just too stubborn and too lazy to swim properly, LOLL) August 2012: Moving on to IVF

11 years ago


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