Linking up today with Mar, Cynthia, and Courtney for Friday Five.
I'm trying to keep running as far into my pregnancy as possible. I'm even doing an occasional (short) race! Obviously, it's been a fun hobby of mine for a while, and I'll be sad when eventually (whether that's at 6 months or 8.9 months) it will end up becoming too uncomfortable for the time being (and hopefully it'll be my choice to make, and no complications will make it inherently unsafe). But as much as I appreciate any time I get to enjoy it, there are definitely both pros and cons to continuing to run.
Con: No matter how many times you go to the bathroom before your run, you'll still start feeling like you have to pee no more than 10 minutes into your run.
Pro: But you know the real reason you make sure to use the bathroom before a run? No longer that crucial. The lovely pregnancy symptom of constipation (which has actually been fairly mild for me) means even all the jiggling of your intestines on a run no longer makes a bathroom stop for #2 even remotely urgent.
Con: It can be a bit disheartening to know you're not going to set any PRs, and will in fact probably be getting slower each week.
Pro: You don't have to train for a PR. No need to follow a set schedule - do whatever you feel like doing. A nap feels more appealing than a 5 miler? No problem, take nap! No need to do quarter mile repeats literally as fast as you can, pushing yourself to the limit of having to catch your breath. You get to just do the easy, fun, relaxing running. (Or push yourself when you feel like it, but only when you truly feel up for it.)
Con: None of your cute running shirts fit you anymore.
Pro: You finally have a use for the unisex or just too big (cause standardized sizing is apparently just too much to ask for) race shirts you've accumulated.
Con: In part due to those unisex race shirts, you spend a large portion of early pregnancy with a stomach that maybe kinda looks like you're pregnant, but could very easily just bea little extra weight. So presumably everyone who sees you run - so incredibly slowly - is assuming that you're a brand new runner trying to run off that beer gut.
Pro: Eventually, you'll have an obvious baby bump, and it will make sense to everyone why you're chugging along so slowly.
Con: Even if you want to challenge yourself, do some races, keep up with a modified race goal - your body often just isn't having it. Some days it's just going to be a slog fest no matter what.
Pro: Maybe you can't brag about a new PR, but everyone you talk to is in awe that you're still running at all. It's never been easier to be so impressive!
I was technically pregnant for a couple weeks, at the beginning of December. Maybe two and a half weeks - not sure if I should be counting until the pregnancy tests started getting lighter (I assume that's when it stopped developing), or a few days later when my period finally started (five days late) and basal body temperature dropped. (Not that it really makes a difference.)
It was still early (four and a half weeks along by medical counting - which is dumb, and a rant for another post; 17 days post ovulation). I started testing way earlier than I should have (was hopeful for an early positive before the race I had in early December, just in case I had an early positive and excuse to take it easy), but only two days before I expected my period. The first one was so light I thought I might be imagining it, but as I continued testing and approached the standard 14-day mark (the presumed "average" luteal phase, or time between ovulation and expected period), they started getting darker and I couldn't deny there was something there.
And then they started getting lighter. (While relative darkness of home tests doesn't indicate levels of hormones, per se (it's also affected, for example, by how diluted your urine is), I saw severe enough changes day to day that it seemed obvious what was happening.)
I hadn't told anyone yet. I wanted to see the test get darker and be able to tell my husband with certainty and excitement, "We're pregnant!!!" Instead, I finally told him with a bottle of sparkling cider in hand, "We're tentatively celebrating, because things indicate that I'm probably pregnant." He had a day to be excited before being disappointed.
I asked advice of two online communities I'm part of. One was a TTC-subthread of an unrelated forum; they were all as cautious as I was, saying they hoped I'd get the "real" positive soon. The other, a very supportive facebook group of internet friends, many of whom already have children, told me that if I was seeing a line at all, I was pregnant. Which was true. (But they were also understanding once it went the other way.) But I couldn't get over my anxiety that something was wrong. I'd like to say it was mother's intuition kicking in early, but it's really just my personality to not believe it was going right until there was really concrete outside evidence to support it.
Having made up my mind to keep the crazy down and take a break from peeing on things every single day, I immediately woke up the next morning and my temperature had dropped significantly (which shouldn't happen in a pregnancy). I had some spotting, and then my period started for real later that day. I took a final test the next morning to ensure it was now blank, and it was really over.
The first couple days were tough. It was definitely worse than the prior cycle where I just had negative tests all along and just had an unsuccessful month of TTC. I felt devastated that it'd actually been happening, and now was gone. For Abe is was pretty much the same as the previous cycle, though - he only had a day of thinking I was pregnant; and knowing others who have lost babies much later on, it didn't seem like that big a deal at this point.
And I know it's not that big a deal; I hesitate to even think of it as, much less call it, a miscarriage, even though it technically is, just a very early one. It's certainly not the same, mentally or physically, as it would be weeks or months later. But, I was pregnant. I spent a week in limbo, trying not to get my hopes up, but still hopeful and knowing that it was possibly really happening. I saw a positive test; I was starting to feel mild pregnancy symptoms. But I don't see it as the loss of a baby, just the loss of hope and a future that I had just barely started planning.
A couple weeks later, I'm pretty much back to where I was the prior cycle when it was just a matter of moving on from the disappointment of it not having worked out this month; with a little bonus frustration of this cycle being almost a week later than it should have been (pushing a potential maternity leave that much closer to encroaching on busy season at work). I suppose I'm grateful that at least, if the pregnancy wasn't viable, it ended pretty much as soon as it possibly could, saving us hard decisions or grief that would have gotten increasingly deep with each month of building an expected future.
It was the very fact that I was trying to be in control of the situation as possible - temping, tracking average cycles, knowing when I could potentially get a positive - that even led to feeling out of control, to knowing that it was more than just an extra long cycle. Many people wouldn't have even tested yet, and wouldn't have known anything happened. It's still good to know, though - it's cliche but true (to think of for yourself; I don't think it would have gone well for someone to tell me this, especially in the first day or so) to at least have assurance that we're capable of getting pregnant in the first place.
I am very much a planner at heart (do I always follow through on those plans? Not always, but they will be great and comprehensive plans if I wanted to follow them!). So though we are still not even quite at the stage of trying to conceive ("TTC") (but getting quite close, now), I have already started googling childcare providers, calculating the probable timeframes for due dates and maternity leaves, and, of course, checking out medical providers.
For the latter, I asked two coworkers who have had babies recently who they used (that would be covered by our insurance), and both of them plus another friend all recommended the same place, so I set up an initital "preconception" appointment with a certified midwife there. I wanted to first of all get a feel for whether I'd be comfortable with them for pregnancy and labor, so that when I get pregnant I can just call and make an appointment, not still be scoping them out and making a decision when I actually do need to see them on relatively short notice.
But I also wanted to ask for any recommendations for the TTC process. I thought I'd ask about vitamins and supplements, exercise, whether it's real or a myth that guys having laptops on their laps are a problem, etc. And mention my various health conditions so they'd be aware, but didn't think that part would be a big deal.
Umm, apparently it is a big deal. Or at least, it might be. I know when I was initially diagnosed with PCOS that I was told it could potentially impact fertility (obviously, it is basically all about the reproductive hormones being out of whack). But until we start TTC, it's not something that truly has an impact on my day to day life. There certainly may be some blame that should fall on PCOS for days when I've felt fatigued and dealt with insomnia (but that also involves hypothyroidism and depression), and it's undoubtedly a part of how I got to be overweight and had a hard time losing it despite the exercise I do (but so is feeling like I've "earned" an excess amount of dessert). There's no direct line to be drawn between any specific symptom and the PCOS (as I don't actually have any of the cysts for which it's named).
And yet, now that we are about to TTC, the midwife deemed me subfertile - i.e., having reduced changes of conceiving when we do try. It's extremely possible that PCOS is about to have a real, direct impact on my life. I can plan all I want, but this might be even more out of our control than trying to conceive is even under normal circumstances.
I think it's even still sinking in, but it definitely felt like a hard hit to have the midwife spend the bulk of our appointment addressing what I thought would just be a passing mention. There's really a problem with me, with my body. Maybe not, but possibly. Perhaps even probably. (Combined with some other genetic predispositions, such as depression and high cholesterol, I've definitely had fleeting thoughts of, perhaps nature's trying to say something here...) Even just TTC under normal conditions has such uncertainty, but now... it feels more certain than not that things won't go according to our plan.
The good news is that because of the high possibility, we're actually going to start with testing on my next cycle, before we even start trying. The kind of testing that I understood to typically not even be considered until the standard one year (under 35) or six months (over 35) of trying and not getting pregnant (with an assumption that's nothing wrong until you prove otherwise with a lack of results). I like the vibe from the midwife in general, but particularly in that she took a very proactive approach on this. There was no "well, it might be an issue, but let's have you try for a few months and see how it goes". I don't need to not be able to get pregnant to show a likely lack of ovulating, I already have symptoms that indicate that (high testosterone levels and long cycles), so we're immediately doing testing (combination of blood draws for luteinizing hormone, progesterone, and testosterone (last test for that by my primary doctor was over six months and 15 pounds ago, so may have changed), and ovulation prediction kits that are home urine tests) to see what we can confirm about that. (We'll also probably do testing on Abe's side to just make sure we're covering all the bases and not wasting time.)
If this testing confirms that I'm not ovulating, then, again, we don't have to wait the six months or year of trying and failing to conceive! We can just go straight to considering interventions. At that point, it seems this midwife might be a bit overly aggressive - she suggested clomid as the next step if I'm not ovulating on my own, but running that by a facebook group that has some experience in pregnancies and fertility treatments, it sounds like that's not necessarily the standard protocol for my specific scenario, and could be riskier than the midwife made it sound. But it's at least an option to explore and research, and at least she's willing to look at interventions once we've firmly established there's a problem.
There's not really anything we can do to create any certainty, but there are at least steps we can take to continue planning for the best possible result within the new definition of our circumstances. It may all end up being a non-issue, if the test results show better information than anticipated. Or we may be in for a long path with still no guarantee. Which I suppose is all the same for anyone TTC.
NaBloPoMo prompt: Tell us about the last thing you hid.
Well, if I told you all that, I'd no longer be hiding it, would I?
This reminds me of one of the profile prompts on OkCupid: The most private thing I'm willing to admit. Um, this is a profile you're using to attract potential dates. How private are you really willing to get here?
My answer to that prompt was that I was considering not shaving my legs, because it's a totally arbitrary social norm (I actually have stopped worrying about having shaved legs even if they'll be visible, such as wearing capris to a yoga class. I do shave them about once a month or so, not for any particularly reason, though). So it was a "private" thought, in that it's not something I would necessarily share randomly with coworkers or other casual acquaintances. But it's not private in the sense that it's truly personal.
I figured a gender-norm-bending admission would be useful in filtering out guys who wouldn't be ok with critical thinking! And I think it worked. :)
