If you're furrowing your brow in confusion and trying to count backwards on your fingers, it may be because one year ago today is the start of my last menstrual period -- the medically-determined start date of my pregnancy. The egg that became my half of Greta and the sperm that was Ben's half weren't even fully-developed -- much less joined together -- so most of us would find it hard to believe that this is a meaningful day to count as the start of a pregnancy.
And yet, it's meaningful to me. Perhaps not as meaningful as it is to the friends of mine who celebrated their first wedding anniversary today, or to the friend who today celebrated her 29th birthday. But meaningful nonetheless.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who has been intensely interested in her fertile and infertile periods since starting to plan a family. For me, that meant tracking my temperature every morning and recording on a calendar the types of bodily fluids that I experienced. The app on my phone still sets off an alarm everyday at 5:45am to tell me to wake up and take my temperature -- even though I haven't been able to regularly sleep in until that late on a workday since last schoolyear, and even though I haven't needed to record my basal body temperature in nearly a full year, I haven't deleted the alarm. Why? Because it is a reminder of an exciting time full of the hope, promise, and fear of embarking on a new adventure. For several months, I saw the start of each new cycle as an exciting new data point to add to my chart. A time that is usually filled with aches, pains and moodiness had a silver lining -- it meant a fresh beginning and another month to learn about how my body signaled its fertility.
A year ago today, I was attending a wedding in 90+ degree heat, with cramps so bad I wanted to double over. The wedding was perfect, though, and so full of love and new beginnings that my discomfort largely subsided. I also had an inkling (or perhaps just a hope) that it might end up being my last menstrual period for awhile. And it was.
My first week back at work after Greta was born, I started bleeding again -- very lightly, and only a little, and only after I'd pump. It was startling, since after the postpartum bleeding had ended I hadn't expected to see blood again for a few more months at least. But it was also exciting. I'd forgotten the bizarre joy that I'd sometimes felt at the realization that a new cycle was beginning. When I went home, I even recorded the bleeding on my phone app.
We're not ready for another baby, of course, so shortly thereafter, I went on the mini-pill, which does not give you a "break" each month and therefore often suppresses menstruation entirely. While the "fake" periods that I used to experience while on the combination pill gave me no joy (who wants to bleed when it's not even informative bleeding?) and I'm happy that this pill will relieve me of that frustration, it feels a little sad in general to not have that excitement of feeling fertile and hopeful.
The fact of the matter is, though, that there are so many things to be excited and hopeful for these days. Greta is turning 12 weeks old tomorrow. Her three month birthday is coming up next week. This past weekend, we took our first trip with her -- staying at a cabin with two other sets of new parents and seeing all the fun that we can expect over the next few weeks as she grows into a bigger, more skillful baby each day.
As much as I do miss the days of feeling fertile and excited, the fact is that right now I am not fertile and I don't particularly want to be. So tonight I think it's time to cancel the alarm on my FertiltyFriend app. Nowadays, I've already been up for an hour by the time it goes off anyway, so it's only been serving as a reminder of how tired I am.
Speaking of which, off to bed.
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