How long can it take to make a baby, no more than 3 months, tops? Age is still on our side, we’re both fit and healthy, I’ll be pregnant by Mr R’s 30th birthday in March! What a great birthday present that will be 🙂 His birthday came and went.
I’ll be pregnant by our first wedding anniversary, that’d be a nice present too and that’s only a couple more months to wait. We were on holiday the week of our anniversary and my period was due a few days before, but it didn’t arrive. I decided if it hadn’t arrived by our anniversary I’d test that morning. Nervously I unwrapped a test, peed on it and waited the 3 minutes as instructed. Negative. Ok, the pack says to wait a week to do another test if the first one’s negative and my period hasn’t arrived. A week’s not long to wait… once again nervously waiting the 3 minutes which seem like 3 hours for the test to work. Negative. What’s going on, why is it negative if I’ve missed a period?! Have I gained weight recently? No. Am I stressed? No. I must be pregnant, no. A visit to the Dr for a blood test confirmed no pregnancy, just a messed up cycle that was nothing to worry about, but probably due to my body still adjusting to no longer taking the pill, according to the Dr it can take anything from a month to 2 years to work its way out of a woman’s system. Not mine.
Over 70 days before my period arrived. In the meantime our friends that started trying around the same time as us were now expecting their first baby, I was overjoyed for them, but frustrated for us. My next period arrived after 42 days, that’s better and only a week later than normal, I can cope with that. But things are never that simple, the next few cycles were ridiculously long, the longest being 180 days!!!! Another trip to the Dr, a set of blood tests and all’s ok, nothing to explain my ridiculous cycles, just still put down to the pill working it’s way out of my system. We couldn’t seek assistance to conceive as we’d been trying less than 2 years, and as I’d only had about 5 cycles that first year you could hardly count it as a full year trying. I did see the Dr again, and was tested for PCOS, all clear, but those 2 years maximum it would take to rid my body of the pill turned out to be the best part of 4 years. For the first time in my life, I tracked my cycles religiously, and although they were few and far between, I learnt a lot about my body.
I’d had one glimmer of hope in April 2008. We’d been on holiday and I knew, unless my period was going to mess about again, I’d be due on the day after we got home but my period didn’t arrive, nothing strange given my cycles but this felt different, I didn’t feel quite right and my tummy was really bloated, even my Mum commented on it. I took a test and left it on the edge of the bathroom sink and went off to do something, I must have come back about 10 minutes later and there was a line. Now I know tests say they’re not valid after 10 minutes, and I hadn’t seen the second line appear in the alloted time but come on, it’s a line, a big fat pink line!!! Reading the packet and scanning the internet for images I was pretty sure it wasn’t an evaporation line and the chances of a false positive are rare so I allowed myself to believe I was pregnant. It was short lived, whether it was false, or a chemical pregnancy I don’t know, I was going to test again in a week but a couple days later I started having bad cramps and a couple days after that, yep the “witch” turned up.
During those years most of our group of friends had become parents, some were even expecting their second or third child… We’d put trying to conceive on hold for a while, although not actively avoiding. As we’d moved house and I’d changed jobs I needed to be in the job long enough to ensure I’d be eligible for maternity leave/pay. We were just about ready to “actively try” again when my boss was diagnosed with Cancer; being a very small business she needed my support in the office even more especially as she’d be away from work for quite some time. Mr R and I agreed it was probably best if the baby making was put on hold again, although again, we still didn’t actively avoid…
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