And I mean it. I need a Plan and I need to stick to the
Plan. I need to know all of the options and all of the consequences ahead of
time. I need to formulate plans B and C just in case the Plan doesn't work. And
if we go off course from the Plan, I go in to full on crisis management mode to
get back to the Plan as soon as possible. Hello, my name is Jennifer and I am
type A.
All of this means that once I really was off my birth
control (and once things had settled down from Christmas), type A me went in to
full on baby planning mode. I started reading What to Expect when You're
Expecting and learned that getting pregnant wasn't just a matter of you and
your husband making love. Oh no. There's tracking your ovulation on a calendar,
taking your basal body temperature before you even get out of the bed in the
morning, documenting this thing called cervical mucus, and even taking
something similar to a pregnancy test to see if you are ovulating so you and
your husband know exactly the moment when it's time to go go go!
I told my husband about everything I was reading and all
these things we could apparently be doing to get pregnant and he stopped me in
my tracks to keep me from going off the type A personality cliff. Then he very
lovingly, with only the teeniest bit of frustration, very firmly laid down some
perspective. All of those scary, kinda gross, and definitely not romantic
things I just mentioned were all for couples that were trying to have a baby.
We are simply going to stop trying not to have a baby. Because, as Danny put
it, if you’re trying to have a baby, then it’s a chore. But if you are simply
no longer “trying not to get pregnant,” it makes for all of the sexy time and
none of the stress.
While it will be really hard for me to not be actively
trying to do something (I need a plan damnit!), this perspective will be really
good, i.e. healthy, for me. No pressure. No stress. Just no more remembering to
take my birth control every night and sexy time with my hubby whenever we want.
That sounds much better.
So I’m fine, right? Totally relaxed and going with the flow?
Wrong.
While I know I’m not allowed to go in to operation Let’s Get
Me Knocked Up Before The End Of August, it wouldn’t hurt to get a lot of my
research out of the way, would it? So I’m still reading my What to Expect when
You’re Expecting book, I’ve downloaded not one, but two apps on my phone for
period tracking and pregnancy forums, and I’ve subscribed to both the Baby
Bumps and Trying for a Baby subreddits. Just how I dove head first into wedding
planning and to this day love a juicy discussion about chiavari chairs, pintuck
linens, and garden roses versus peonies, my type A personality loves to know
everything there is to know about something and now I’m wading fairly deep in
the challenging world of maternity.
And some of this research is not premature (pardon the pun)
and fairly helpful. For example, I know it would be a good idea to start taking
prenatal vitamins. So I’ve been researching what the recommended levels are for
prenatals and what options are out there. I also know that my sister was
diagnosed with Compound Heterozygous methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (aka
MTHFR) (aka compound heterozygous mother fucker), and that I will need to
mention this at my preconception appointment so that my ObGyn knows to test me
for it and check my homocysteine levels before I start a prenatal vitamin.
This is where I got in to trouble. Someone on one of the
forums I’m now following mentioned a product called Pre-Seed. I’d never heard
of it before. Apparently, most lubes and even saliva are not sperm friendly.
Pre-Seed is a sperm friendly lube for couples who are trying to get pregnant.
Think of it as the sperm HOV lane for lady parts. I thought
this would be a great idea for our sexy time and approached Danny about buying
it for when we stop “trying not to get pregnant” in May.
He was very patient and let me get through my entire schpeel
of how I found out about it, how it worked, and that I thought we could maybe
get some for us. Then he said no.
He knows my personality and my propensity for planning and
he is absolutely adamant that 1.) this will turn in to a mission and 2.) we
won’t have any trouble getting pregnant. But I need control! Of course I’m
worried I won’t get pregnant! Don’t you know who I am? I need to worry! So I
tried to come up with a compromise. He’s so sure we will get pregnant right
away and won’t let me do any of these things like buying sperm-friendly lube to
help speed things along. If August rolls around and we’re still not pregnant,
we can take a break for the fall and winter and not start up again until after
the new year so I won’t have a summer or fall baby.
But even that didn’t work for him. Because to Danny, a
compromise like this means that this new phase of no longer “trying not to get
pregnant” is actually us actively trying to get pregnant and even worse, us
considering the possibility that we might not get pregnant right away! And to
Danny, that's just way too dangerously similar to a chore.
So he came up with the bet.
Danny is so positive (or at least, trying so hard to exude
positivity) that we will get pregnant the very first month we stop “trying not
to get pregnant,” that he is willing to bet something major on it. So if we do
get pregnant that first month, he wins. If not, I win. [It’s really ingenious
if you think about it because while I’ll be stressing about not getting
pregnant, at least if I don’t that first month, I’ll still have “won”
something.]
At first, I thought maybe we could bet who gets to pick the
middle name. But Danny doesn’t have a middle name in mind that he likes, so it
wouldn’t really be a prize to him. Then I thought about the wall color for the
nursery. But adding pregnancy hormones on to an already type A personality is
kind of the prefect super storm of a reaction if Danny picks some horrible
color that doesn’t go with the Pinterest pins of nursery ideas I’m already
amassing. I’ll update you when I come up with something really good. It’s got
to be something that the winner will be super excited about, but the loser will
still be able to handle.
Either way, I love my hubby for his constant ability to
understand me and to come up with fun ways to give and take.
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