10 DPO

If I weren’t away from my wife right now (I’m at my mom’s place till late tonight getting some free childcare in so I can work), I’d be peeing on a stick right now.

Another early pregnancy sign has shown up – and it’s a gross one. Gingivitis.

Only about a week after implantation with my first pregnancy, I had pregnancy gingivitis. [I looked back at my handy-dandy blog to see that I was complaining about it at my 5 week pregnancy update, and implantation cramping happened with Avery on the day my period was due – so, at about 4 weeks into the pregnancy countdown].

Today, I have gingivitis. It’s gross to think that my mouth is that nasty right now, but indeed, my gums are swollen and sore. I’ll do saltwater rinses till it’s gone. But gross as it is, it’s also an exciting possible early pregnancy symptom 😉

Oh, and another possible but subtle sign – my stomach is grumbling from hunger about an hour after eating. I got so hungry last night that I ate two massive pieces of homemade bread at 10pm, and woke up with my stomach grumbling again in the morning. It’s only a possible sign because it’s in contrast to my appetite over the past month. I’ve been feeling totally satiated from a light breakfast, lunch and dinner – no snacking needed.

Wow, am I ever going to feel like a dupe if there’s nothing going on in my uterus right now 😆

9 DPO – Implantation spotting

At 7 days past ovulation, in the evening, I had cramping and I felt dizzy and shaky. I was also exhausted. When I woke up the morning of 8 DPO I felt so nauseous and weak. I had to take Avery to an appointment and I thought for sure I was going to throw up in the waiting room. Luckily, the nausea subsided by noon. By the end of the day I noticed spotting when I went to the bathroom, and then again in the morning of 9 DPO. Luckily, the nausea is gone so far today.

The spotting happened 5 days before my period was due, so I’m pretty certain it was implantation spotting. Still, I’m trying not to feel too cocky!! A lot can happen in the next week or two, even if a blastocyst DID implant.

Also, I had that vivid baby dream that I had when Avery was first conceived. This time the baby I was holding was a boy. Let us see what the future brings, and then I’ll know just how psychic I am 😆

7 DPO

Mmmk I am somehow finding the mental energy to get lost in speculation of early pregnancy signs. I’m bloated, crampy, dizzy and suddenly feeling exhausted.

These are of course totally normal things for me to experience at 9 O’Clock at night after a long work day, but what if it’s not just normal tiredness? 😉

The first time we were TTC, I had all the early signs of pregnancy on the cycles we WEREN’T pregnant, and on the cycle that took I felt nothing! It’s really impossible to know. I know that. But I really can’t help myself from wondering 😊

6DPO

I’m mooching some babysitting off of my mom later this week which involves a two night trip to my mom’s place. She has already texted me about all the wine we’re going to drink 😶

It’s much trickier to hide that you’re trying for a baby when people know that you love to drink…

I’ve been too busy to worry much about the two week wait, though, so that’s nice!

Our first 2 week wait for baby #2

Well friends, we’re officially in a 2 week wait. My period is due on Aug 31st.

We didn’t do anything particularly special during this month’s attempts. In the past I’ve tried softcups and Robitussin and eating pineapple cores… All the old wives tales. This time we hurried to get existing kid to bed in time for our donor delivery, introduced the little sperms to their long, dark journey against all the odds, and then continued on with our evening list of tasks and chores. Life is certainly different this time.

For those who are looking for how-to tips, we did use PreSeed lubricant to “cushion” the semen in the syringe, and I kept my hips elevated for about 20 minutes after. And don’t forget the orgasm to seal the deal! It’s all up to nature, now…

It’s a go for baby #2

To be honest, I had this post drafted back in March, right before lockdown. We were about to try for baby #2, but after years of back and forth, COVID shut that down, too.

Finally, my wife and I are both on the same page about having a second child. We’re both excited. We’re both ready.

This week we sat down with our donor and his wife and signed updated paperwork, exchanged all of the tools needed for making a sperm transfer, and now we’re just waiting for the egg to drop.

I’m thinking it’ll be early next week.

I’m already having trouble focusing on anything else.

How my wife’s deceased mother is helping us conceive a second child

Recently, my wife’s father decided to sell the family home. He has let his daughters know that anything they don’t take home will be pitched, so my wife and her sister have spent some long day’s going through their old family home.

My wife’s mother was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer just a couple of months before we met (so about 10.5 years ago now), and she battled for 4 years before passing away. She spent most of those 4 years in their home, and had a hospital bed in the family room near the end. She acquired a lot of medical supplies during that time, and a lot of it was shoved in the basement after she passed away. While my wife was sorting the family’s old stuff and looking for sentimental items to save from the dump, she found a box of sterile specimen cups and a box of sterile 10cc syringes.

One needs both of those things to make a baby using at-home artificial-insemination, and both of those things are awkward and slow to collect through pharmacies (you can get one at a time without inviting questions…).

And that is how my wife’s mother is helping us in our journey to conceive her second grandchild, even after she’s gone. I think she’d giggle about it if she knew. ❤️

Fertility tracking

I have re-downloaded Fertility Friend, the ovulation charting app that helped us to inseminate efficiently the first time. I tried taking my temperature this morning for fertility tracking, but the battery was dead in my basal thermometer. I’m surprised I even kept it after we made one baby and deciding we were one-and-done. I bought a new battery and plan to start charting temps asap, but it’s very different this time around. In case you haven’t used temperature charting before, the rules are simple but tough to follow: take your temp IMMEDIATELY upon waking, at the same time every day, and put your daily temp on a graph to watch for the rise in temperature associated with ovulating. These days, I sometimes wake up in my bed, sometimes in Avery’s, sometimes at 5am, sometimes at 7am, and I’m up through the night, too. I don’t think I can depend on just temping.

So today I bought the digital ovulation monitor that I used last time for our actual inseminations. It’s a $50 device that comes with 10 ovulation tests, and it’s another $40 to get all the refill test strips I would hopefully need throughout our next round of TTC. It’s expensive, but what I like about it is that it distinguishes between the days leading up to ovulation and the actual day before ovulation (when the lutenizing hormone peaks). It’s really, really handy for the at home inseminating families who don’t have ultrasounds or meds to guide them. When I got the hang it of it last time, I was able to give our donor several days notice for the upcoming ovulation/insemination. And it’s better than temping for me these days, with the #momlife that I wasn’t living last time we conceived.

So that’s where we are with TTC right now. We’re tracking my cycles, and planning a get-together with our donor and his wife for early in the new year to talk about it. We hang out with them a lot, but always with kids in tow, which doesn’t give us the space to talk about making babies… This time we’re coordinating a childless double date, and I’m excited for multiple reasons!

Ready for a newborn again

I was going into this baby #2 thing a little reluctantly. I still felt overwhelmed by my first year and a half as a mother and couldn’t imagine doing it all over again. I was totally content with my one, perfect child. But my wife wanted another baby, and I wanted to give that to her. I knew I would love another baby and wouldn’t regret it, but I also knew it would be HARD.

But then I weaned my toddler from breastfeeding and suddenly I find myself CRAVING a baby again. It’s amazing what hormone changes can do to your mindset.

We’re still pretty distant from starting the process. My wife is going to give me the signal when she’s ready for an IVF consultation. We have talked about which clinic to use, but haven’t chosen one yet. When we do finally get that consultation appointment, we would move ahead with the process (because IVF is government funded in Ontario (so thankful), there’s a wait list and we’d want to get on that list pronto). However, there’s also a chance the the consultation will scare my wife off of reciprocal IVF altogether, in which case we’d wait a while and do things the way we did to make Avery – at home. It’s still all very much up in the air as to when we start and what method we’ll use. We haven’t even spoken to our donor about it.

I can feel myself getting antcy now. It all feels so familiar…

Countdown to TTC for baby #2: our timeline

My wife has started reminding me with increasing frequency that she wants another kid, and although we talk about it as something way down the road (“some day…”), there are a lot of moving pieces in our timeline and I think we need to be clear about all of the variables.

We’re still not planning to have another baby until I’ve finished my PhD, gotten a job, and have worked at that job long enough to be eligible for maternity leave. But the shortest estimated end-date for my PhD is about one year from today, and you only need to work about 3 months (600 hours) to qualify for maternity leave in my province. If I were lucky and got a job just a couple of months out of school, we could technically be birthing baby #2 a year and a half from now (*HARD GULP* – did not realize the shortest timeline was so short…).

And now for the longest (more realistic) timeline estimate. I would very much like to have baby #2 before I’m 35 – I already feel limited by my age when I’m too tired or stiff to keep up with my toddler (*side note: not all 35 year olds feel as old as I do and plenty of moms older than 35 can keep up with toddlers just fine). I’ll be 35 in July 2020. It takes 10 months to grow a baby from conception; therefore, I’d like to be working on conceiving baby #2 by early next fall (2019), which also happens to be about the time I hope to be starting a job. Yikes – when I lay it out like that we’re really cutting it close to the start of my future career. Sorry, future employer. And let’s hope I can actually find a job right away…

If we follow through on our plan for reciprocal IVF, it takes time to go through the planning, appointments, plus the 6-month sperm quarantine for a known donor. Let’s work backwards to see when we need to start the ball rolling:

June 2020 – Have baby #2. I’ll be about to turn 35, and Avery will be about to turn 4.

October 2019 – Conceive baby #2.

March 2019 – Put our donor’s sperm on ice and wait 6 months for him to get re-tested for STIs. Following testing, IVF can be done.

September 2018 – Start talking to our donor about going through the more intensive donor process for IVF, start researching reciprocal IVF.

So it looks like I have about 6 more carefree months before TTC research consumes my brain again! And I thought I was consumed by research on at-home insemination…. IVF is a whole new ballgame that I never thought I’d have to learn about. Maybe I can convince my wife to take the lead on research this time.

*Edit to say that I got my age wrong in the above calculations… I will be 32 this summer, not 33. Sheesh. So add a year to the longest possible timeline.