Today Is My Birthday

It's been my birthday all day and not a single one of my three selfish cats has wished me well. Harrumph!

TTC: Cycle 1

Well, my period started, as expected. I'm disappointed, although not horribly so. The odds of conceiving in the first cycle are only 25%, so it was unlikely anyway. But there's a part of me that can't help but be just a tiny bit bitter about it; after all, the odds of miscarrying my last pregnancy were "only" 20-25%, and I managed to score a bulls eye with that one rather effectively.

Ah, but since self-pity isn't going to help me conceive any sooner, I may as well let it go now. Or at least try.

It would have been a nice birthday present, though.

Verdict: Failure.
Future Prospects: Hopeful.

I Can Spell, Dammit (or is it damnit?)

This is the conversation that followed after my husband read my last entry:

Him (horrified): "Why did you tag it testicular torsion?" Pause. Looks annoyed. "And why did you misspell testicular?"

Me: "It's a pun. About testing. And how it's spectacular."

Him (less horrified): "Well, okay then."

Speaking of testing, I didn't even bother this morning. My basal body temp has tanked and Little Miss Menstruation is almost certainly on her way.

Post Scriptum: Let it be known that I do not actually think that testing is spectacular. It's expensive and, more often than not anti-climactic (for me, at least; my lifetime score is something like 200 negative pregnancy tests to my 1 lonely positive).

Hellcat

We have adopted a new kitten. Her name is Sega, she is approximately 3 months old, and she was almost certainly born of the fiery depths of hell. This is no exaggeration. We didn't realize this when we first brought her home, but several clues and recent incidents have brought me to this conclusion about her nature.

1. She is actively trying to stop my husband and I from conceiving. My poor husband's precious cargo has been attacked more than once since she arrived on the scene. Some nights I've resorted to placing a teddy bear between his legs to act as a buffer while he sleeps.

2. She loves to torture our other cats. Or tries to, rather. You know that cliché scene in a cartoon when a little guy tries to beat up a big guy, but never even has a chance because all the BG has to do is set a hand on LG's head, easily keeping LG at arms-length, and even as LG swings and kicks for all he's worth, he never ever makes contact with BG? Yeah, it's kind of like that. She's fierce but she's tiny, and (for now, at least), most of their fights end up with the big cat looking bored and the little cat trapped under his paw looking furious.

3. She loves to torture me and my husband. Sega has attacked us in the middle of the night by biting our fingers and ears and doing that kicky thing to our heads and faces. My husband once complained that she actually started chewing on his eyelid in the middle of the night. Once I woke up to find her asleep on my face - I'm convinced that this was an effort to suffocate me, but she was unable to do the job properly with her tiny lightweight body. On more than one occasion I've fallen asleep in bed with the spray bottle in hand. For more evidence that she intends to do us harm, also see #1 above.

4. She has a very expressive face. By itself, this probably seems rather innocent. But have you ever seen a robot with a face designed to seem human? The loverbots from Artificial Intelligence spring to mind; their faces and expressions are just human enough to seem familiar, but inhuman enough to creep the ever-loving shit out of you (no offense to Jude Law). Sega's face is like that. I've never seen such an expressive animal, let alone a cat. Charlie has two different expressions and Rocky has exactly one. But I've witnessed a variety of near-human expressions flash across Sega's tiny face, and not only is it fascinating to watch, but it is almost certainly evil and a sign of the devil.

This is our boy Charlie's usual expression, known as Serene Keeper of the House:


This is Charlie's other expression, Love Me Forever:


This is Rocky's expression, Oblivious to Everything Around Him:


And this is Sega giving me the stink eye:


And shamelessly pilfering her brothers' food:


We don't have very many pictures of her yet (she rarely sits still), so I can't yet show you the whole kaleidoscope of evil, but I'm working on it.

There you have it. I am convinced that we have inadvertently welcomed Satan's Kitten into our loving home. I'm off to scoop her litter box* before she decides to slash my tires or leave a horse's head on my pillow.

*I'm not actually going to scoop her litter box. Potentially pregnant ladies are not supposed to do that.

I Have A Confession

I am a compulsive tester. This has nothing to do with the recent conception efforts. I've been this way for as long as I've been sexually active. As a teen, I'd freak out and take a pregnancy test about every other month.

I got even worse in college. I always tested immediately after every slightly late period. And by slightly, I don't mean that I tested on Sunday if my period had been due on Saturday. I mean that if I'd been expecting my period to arrive between 8 and 9am on Tuesday, and it still wasn't there by 2pm, then I tested at 4pm. (It's not quite as loopy as it sounds, though. When I was on the pill, my period became so regular that I could almost always predict its arrival down to the very hour.)

When I dated I had a policy of taking a pregnancy test after the end of every old relationship, and at the beginning of every new relationship, and I stuck faithfully to that policy until I finally got married. I don't think it was such a bad policy, actually.

The day I found out that I was pregnant, I hadn't actually had any symptoms or anything else to clue me in. I did not actually suspect that I was pregnant. I just tested the morning after my missed period because I was a habitual tester. I was shocked - utterly blown away - to see the plus sign in the window; that had simply never happened before.

So, yeah. Testing is kind of my thing. And for the past few days, I have been testing up a storm. Today I am 12 dpo and am still getting negatives. I'm trying to stay optimistic, but it's hard when I have no symptoms and a little stack of stark white negative test results to drive the point home.

Ah, well. It's only my first month, and technically it's not over until the bleeding begins. I just can't help but feel that it's over, though.

Let's Try This Again. Again.

Okay, so I haven't been great about keeping this thing updated. This I know. I'm going to try to be better about it, and now that I have a new laptop that doesn't give me second-degree burns if I dare set it on my bare legs, perhaps I actually stand a chance.

We are trying again. This was not an easy decision. It did not come without tears, headaches, or nightmares. But here we are. My due date is less than two months away and we are trying again.

This is our first cycle of actively trying. For those of you who can read a fertility chart and care to, this is mine. There - now all of you know how often we've had sex in the past month. I hope you feel honored or, at the very least, jealous.

I don't know how this is going to turn out. I don't know how long it's going to take for me to get pregnant, and I don't know if I will be able to carry that pregnancy to term. Despite this, I cannot help but breathe a sigh of relief, because now that we are trying, I feel like I might actually be able to move on. I suppose we shall see.