Source: maniacworld.com via Jill on Pinterest

For those reading from a phone who can’t read the text, it says “When faced with two choices, simply toss a coin. It works not because it settles the question for you, but because in that brief moment when the coin is in the air, you suddenly know what you are hoping for.”

And it made me think that’s EXACTLY what pregnancy tests do for me. If you ever want to know if you want to have a baby, take a pregnancy test. In the minutes it will take for that 2nd line to appear or not, you’ll know how you really feel.

At least I did.

Before I got pregnant with Kendall, we had an oops that made me think I could be pregnant. It wasn’t until I was waiting for that test to show the results that I knew that I would actually like the results to be positive. It wasn’t, but that next month we officially started trying.

And then, before Kendall was even 1, I worried one month that I could be pregnant, and there wasn’t an OUNCE OF WISH in my body that that test would be positive. Not one. I think I drank half a bottle of wine that night to celebrate the lone line that showed itself.

Agree? What’s your favorite pin of the week?

Sorry I still haven’t caught up with Pinterest invites from last week. If you are already in, would you mind inviting some folks for me? If you’re not, go ahead and leave your email in the comments section if you’d like an invite. Hopefully I or somebody else will have time to send you one soon.

After I posted my last entry, we left to go to Target and grabbed the tests there.  I laughed my ass off when my husband freaked about the cost of  “just three!!” tests and told me, “you better wait until you’re really sure…like until your period is 5 days late.  That’s a lot of money to waste.”  Ahh…the joys of loving a tightwad   I was too chicken shit to rush home and test right away, and I was actually thinking I’d just put it off until tomorrow so we went to grab some groceries.  That was when I became completely CONVINCED I was pregnant.

Immediately upon stepping into Whole Foods I could smell EVERYTHING.  I asked my husband, “Do you smell those strawberries? What about that pineapple?”  I could smell the tomatoes, the rice in the rice bags, but the perfume on the older lady picking out the potatoes is what killed me.  I thought I would vomit right there in the middle of the aisle.  It’s like all of the sudden, overnight, I awoke to find that I am now living in the body of a Bloodhound.  Hmmm…I am looking for a new job…do you think the search and rescue squad would hire me?

So now on to more waiting.  We have to wait to call the Dr.’s office on Monday to go in for a blood test.  Then we have to wait for the first ultrasound, but the hardest will be waiting to tell close family and friends.  I really would like to hold off until week 12 or so to let everyone know.  Luckily, we pretty much live in seclusion many, many hours away from any of them, so it should be easy to keep the secret – IF my big mouth can hold out.  I think I will allow myself the luxury of telling one friend who lives in Japan.  She’s been my BFF since the first day at my new school in 7th grade – I think I owe it to her ; )

Devil be damned!  I’m going to get it all out…  Here are my “symptoms”, psychosomatic or not.  *Warning* For those of you who have an aversion to hearing about bodily fluids and such, just close this post now and check back later when I promise I will give a full update minus the full report on the consistency of what is oozing out of my baby factory.

I began noticing creamy CM about three days after ovulation, and it has continued throughout this 2WW.
I became extremely tired about a week ago, but I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that I was traveling, staying up late and partying last weekend.  However, it has continued throughout the last few days when I have no real reason to be tired.
My temps are still up when I wake up, and I’ve been running a low grade fever during the day.
I’m 12DPO, had a 12 day LP last cycle and had already begun spotting by 9dpo.
My cervix is still very high.
Sore breasts that have become very large (but that typically happens before AF).
For the last 24 hours I’ve had a lot of cramping, but nothing to show for it.  I can’t recall ever cramping BEFORE getting my period.

So…that all looks good, right?  Still, I just really hate to think about testing and getting a negative.  I keep running to the bathroom after every bought of cramps expecting to be unpleasantly surprised.  I just need to suck it up and force myself to live in the real world.  If I’m not, I’m not….no biggie…..no biggie.  I’ll keep everyone posted.

Really, you don’t want to know me if I’ve gone more than two nights without  a good night’s sleep.  Not only am I prone to be a complete whiny bitch, but I am also terribly forgetful and clumsy.  That can’t be good if you have a baby to take care of during the day, or even worse – a job to go to.  I can totally see myself sneaking into a bathroom stall at lunch to take a nap on the toilet or calling the sitter to say I have to work late and locking myself in my car to doze.

Here’s hoping that along with those maternal instincts I will apparently develop upon birth, I will receive the super human ability to sleep while looking like I am performing mundane daily routines like answering emails, walking the dogs and driving….hmmm…maybe that’s what the lady who nearly killed me in her Range Rover the other day was doing. I should really give crazy lady drivers the benefit of the doubt.

So we’ve become slaves to the rhythms of my bodily fluids.  My husband has started to give me this look like, Egg white cervical mucus AGAIN!  Man, how many days are you going to be fertile?!  Just hurry up and ovulate already…I’m tired!

Believe me, I’m tired too! I had no idea baby making could be such a chore.  And yes, I know it doesn’t HAVE to be, but I’m a spaz and fiend for immediate gratification, so thinking that we could just have fun and let things happen is a joke.  I know what would happen if we stopped the charting and timing and just “had fun.”  We would most likely come up short at the end of the month, and then I would be pissed at myself for being lazy.  I would be mad that I didn’t just put forth a little effort.

And to make matters worse, Michelle Duggar just popped out her 17th snotbucket in 19 years!  Hell, I think all Jim Bob has to do to impregnate her at this point is sneeze in her general direction.  You can’t tell me they have time to have sex every day she has egg white cervical mucus.  Well, then again….those older kids seem to be doing a lot of the raising of the little ones, so maybe they have a secret baby making chamber in that huge new house of theirs.

Anyway, my husband’s OCD and paranoia have begun to manifest themselves in the Baby Rabies. This is the guy who goes to the doctor at least four times a year convinced he has some form of cancer, only to be sent home with some Tums for indigestion. I would be lying if I said I didn’t think it was cute. It is, in fact, very endearing that he’s so wrapped up in all of this. He’s by no means just the “sperm donor,” and I love him for that.

I thought it was so cute when he asked me where the section about increasing male fertility was in TCOYF after admitting to thumbing through it earlier in the day. He has even employed the use of Google the pimp to find out that eating lots of oranges is supposed to improve the quality of his semen. I have now been instructed to pack him at least one orange for lunch for the next two weeks.

However, I am afraid that he’s going to drive us both crazy before we even get around to the whole sperm fertilizing the egg thing. He came home the other day to me blogging with the laptop on my…well, my lap where it belongs. He started spouting some crazy rant about how I just endangered my eggs and begged me to remove it. He then told me how he’s really worried that his sperm count is being affected by all the computers he works around. I told him if that was the case, all of Silicon Valley would become a barren wasteland and we could just give up hope for the future of our society and technology because none of the Bill Gates’ of the world would be able to produce a viable spawn.

He has even gone so far as to stop keeping his cell phone in his pocket. Although, I think I’m with him on that one. It’s a RAZOR, and a bonafide piece of shit. I’m not too comfortable with something that makes every appliance in our apartment buzz whenever it rings being that close the the troops.

Paranoid or not, I guess I need to be grateful that he’s excited about this whole process. I know this is merely the tip of the enormous iceberg that will become my reality when I finally do get pregnant. He’s already spouting off the list of the FDA’s unapproved foods for pregnancy every chance he gets. I’m afraid I’m going to become a closet binge eater who scarfs down my super secret stash of tuna, blue cheese, and cookie dough every time he leaves the house.

Well, after seeing her sad little face when we got back I realized I need to toughen up.  Sometimes saying NO is the best thing for them.  Really, what kind of parent will I be if my child begs, “Please mommy, can I eat that whole bucket of ice cream?  I haven’t had ice cream in 4 days!” gives me the sad eyes and I say yes?  They will end up in an f-ing coma, and I will feel like a tool.

I really hope my dogs aren’t indicative of my parenting skills.  If that’s the case, I’m pretty sure my children will be laying their drooling heads on strangers laps at restaurants in hopes of catching a few crumbs, and curling up in the middle of our bed – sideways, farting in our face as we sleep and pushing us to the far corners of our queen size mattress.  Maybe it will be easier to say NO to somebody who talks back to me…and isn’t so furry.

Despite doing our best to hide that fact that we are TTC, I think it’s starting to show to those who know us well. In fact, I’m pretty sure my husband’s closest brother and his wife are on to us. We were always the blissfully unaware aunt and uncle that came into town, spent a brief amount of time with their young children, then complained to them about what hard work it was and how we just had no idea how they did this every-single-fucking-day of their lives. Well, the last time we were down, about a month ago, we replaced those complaints with questions….honest to goodness questions like how long do they sleep through the night at this age, what type of stroller do you have, and they’re not so bad, right? I thought we were being uber sneaky, but out of nowhere his brother turns to us and says, almost accusingly, “Whoa!! You guys aren’t thinking of having a kid are you? Man…seriously??? Don’t do it!” Of course, we looked at them like they were speaking Japanese and did our best to brush it off like he’s had too many of the baby’s Fruit Loops. We’re going to need to avoid them like the plague for a while.

See, number one, I’m just not comfortable with telling people we are TTC. I think it paints unnecessary visuals in their heads, and I certainly don’t want it to be brought up as the topic of conversation at other people’s dinner tables. I have never understood people who make announcements that they are ready to TTC. Ewww, thank you very much for that. Now every time I call and you don’t pick up the phone I’m going to assume you’re stirring the baby batter.

Mainly, I don’t want to tell anyone because it is going to shock the hell out of them when we do get pregnant (assuming that actually happens sometime soon), and I personally can’t WAIT to see their faces and hear their reactions – a hundred bucks everyone is going to assume it was an accident! Then I’m going to send them all here, proof that I have actually been infected for months and have blended into the rabies free society like a zombie. It will be earth shattering for some.

Until then, we must keep up this charade. I imagine it will get much harder once I actually am pregnant. We say we won’t want to tell anyone for a couple months, but who knows how hard it’s going to be to stay quiet at that point. I’m going to need lots of suggestions on how to look like I’m getting wasted on wine – per my usual self – when I’m not supposed to be drinking alcohol.

I find myself constantly saying to my husband, “I will NEVER…We will ALWAYS…yada yada,” but how do I know? I mean, clearly, there are some things that I can safely say we will always or never do. I’m 99.9992% positive we will always insist our child not refer to us as mother fucker and his bitch, and we will never sacrifice our baby to visiting aliens for a ride on their super cool space mobile (although that will be hard to resist). However, things like pacifiers past 6 months, and crying it out, and even spanking…yes, I have my opinions on them, but what is that opinion even based on? The rational part of me wants to open my mind and remember that all parents, children and situations are different, and that I shouldn’t judge, but then the other part of me – the your screaming kid is annoying the piss out of me part – wants to know why those parents just don’t have the good sense to get up and leave the GD movie theater with the 9 month old they should have never brought in the first place.

I really don’t want to be one of those parents that judges others and then holds themselves to such a high standard because of it. I want to be okay with not being the perfect mom, and I want to be okay with others not being perfect either. I think I’m going to perform a little experiment. I’m going to blog about all these things I judge other parents for prior to becoming a parent myself. I want you to chime in if you have an opinion or a point of view you think I should consider. Then, once I finally do have a little ankle-bitter, I’m going to come back and re-evaluate these judgements. I think it will be interesting to see if and how much my views will change. Also, if you already are a parent, I want to know how your point of views changed.

Judgement #1 – I hate wheely heel shoes. I can never imagine being okay with my my child essentially rollerskating around the grocery store, mall, and other places where adults are trying to get shit done without having to dodge out of control children.

(I was inspired to think about my “judgements” after reading I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids.)