My TWW just ended with my stupid period! Ugh we’ve been trying since June. I would like to be pregnant already.
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Guh. Hugs. I wish you were, too.
May the time pass quickly! I’m about back in that particular fray as well after taking a cycle off for my Fauci ouchie.
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We are now in the position where I would be ready to start trying for #2 but Mr. G isn’t ready. I really hope he gets there soon. I haven’t really gotten started on my business, but other women in my industry have said that they haven’t gotten any new clients while pregnant. If I got pregnant soonish, I could be doing the prep work now and then launch very softly when ready after the next baby. It makes sense to me time-wise but obviously Mr. G has to be on board.
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We’ve been talking about moving up trying from November to… Soon?
But I’m literally about to have my last day of work on Friday and Greyman moved to self employment a month ago and has netted $50 since. 
We’re around 2/3 toward FI with several years of savings between savings account + investments (outside of retirement accounts) but also this is probably not wise?
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Can someone decipher TWW for us newbies? 
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Two week wait! The time between when you theoretically ovulated and may have gotten pregnant to when you would get your period, which is when you normally will have an accurate positive if you got pregnant.
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Why not wise? You are so much more prepared than most parents (more than I will be!) and one of you can always go back to W2 work if self employment doesn’t eventually cut it. But I expect that builds up and he has only been at it for a month!
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I dunno it just feels silly when we’re not sure what our (ahem my) next steps look like career wise. If I do wanna go back to work I would really like to qualify for mat leave, which means I should really get a job before we start trying unless I luck out with a “you get mat leave right away” company.
Also very strange how when GM was firmly in “no babies yet” camp I was like “Now! Throw caution to the wind! Let’s do it!”
Now that he’ ready I’m like… Is this a good idea? Should we wait? Should we be doing this at all ever?
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(It could also be that for years kids have been conceptually tied to “after FI” so a) because we aren’t there I feel like we’re not ready even though financially we are definitely considered ready by the average person and b) since I’m quitting without hitting FI or having kids there was a kids = not working this fucking job appeal that, since I’m freeing myself from the job without either, no longer strikes the same appeal)
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I think that’s right. I also think we humans have an… inertia of sorts and when the force opposing you (partner, job/school finances, etc) goes away it makes you question like “wait I can really do this now?” Not just re:pregnancy/kids but re:anything.
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I have ordered my meds and made my first batch of monitoring appointments for my third and final transfer cycle. It seems like a really fast turnaround!
I was never supposed to do three transfers. I was going to do genetic testing if I had 4 embryos; if I had three, I was going to do two transfers of untested embryos. But the fourth embryo snuck in.
I have one untested 3bc embryo made at age 39. If you are not IVF conversant, that’s… bad. Doc is giving me 10-15% odds.
My mom was a little surprised I was even going to bother transferring it, which… I mean, we’re already in for thirty or forty grand on this, and what if that last one is my baby? It’s probably not, but it could be.
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I think you’re making the right decision. You would always wonder otherwise.
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Good luck! 
Sounds worth doing! 15% is terrifying if it’s something bad, like disease mortality. So 15% should in theory be a big weight of promise for a good outcome too. Our brains don’t like to work that way, though. But 10-15% is ABSOLUTELY not zero.
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On the other hand, if you like being self employed, it could be nice to have a baby if you choose to be on COBRA for health insurance. That would depend on your health insurance options with your company vs. any ACA plans you might want to choose.
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So, if I’m communicating about my TTC journey, and I’m “counting cycles”—how does that work with a MC? Do I start over again? Do I count the first cycles before I got pregnant? Do I count the number of months it was in total since beginning TTC? Because I’ve been “trying to have a baby” unsuccessfully for 10 months so far, but as far as actual ovulatory cycles that I’ve been doing the whole timed intercourse thing, it’s been only 6 because I was pregnant for a while and then cycle-less for a while. But this is the first cycle THIS go-round, so it could also be Cycle 1 all over again? How do people usually do it?
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I would tell the doc exactly what you just laid out here. They will typically take it as 1 cycle of trying because it’s after each pregnancy (regardless how it ends), but it’s also useful info for them to know the rest of it.
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I usually just see like “23 cycles, 4 since my most recent loss” or for anovulatory or long cycles, a lot of people will say like “trying since DATE, with 4 cycles in there”.
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Tomorrow is likely CD1 for my first cycle of trying again, and I’ve been getting negative tests at 11, 12, and 13 DPO, so not hopeful.
Complaining about timing
So I just asked for some advice on the parenting thread about travel after baby and it seems like it is likely ill-advised before four months. This means I’ll only have four more cycles to try before getting pregnant will throw a wrench into my career plans. It is still very much what I want—and I’m still going to keep trying. I’m just super frustrated that it’s being so difficult.
One of the messed up things about having that miscarriage is that the pregnancy was so damned perfectly timed. I would have had the baby with only deferring my psychedelic program for a year, it was due right at the beginning of summer (June) before I start fieldwork for school (next January) so I could have the whole summer totally off, I’m fully working from home, and I would have given birth before I turned 40. There was literally not a better time for it to have happened. The baby would have been 7 months old before I started fieldwork and a year old by the time I needed to travel. I had all of these dreams of taking the full 12 weeks of leave and just having this idyllic, family-focused summer before having to start (all-online) classes and work again at the end of August.
Now, if I don’t get pregnant by my fifth cycle this try (my June cycle), then (if I get pregnant at all), I’ll have to defer my psychedelic program again, plus be juggling fieldwork that I’ll need to either get done or stay in the program an extra semester, plus at some point, my time is going to run out on 100% WFH (when the pandemic is over and my company’s new building is finished).
Even in my best case scenario—I get pregnant next cycle—I’m going to have to choose between starting fieldwork while on maternity leave or spending an extra semester’s worth of time (and money) in school, and I’ll be leaving a 7-month-old to travel, plus having to go back to a couple days a week on-site for work somewhere in there.
Worst-case scenarios are that either I just don’t get pregnant at all, ever, or that I have ANOTHER miscarriage after delaying the program again, pushing both motherhood and my career further away from me.
I know I’m only one cycle into re-trying, but some days I feel this illogical certainty that a baby just isn’t going to happen for me—that I’m destined to be this childless psychedelic medicine crone—and I should just give up and accept my fate and stop trying, focusing wholly on the thing that I know I can get. I really don’t like the fact that for everything else in my life, my success is just a matter of intelligence, drive, commitment, and competence, but for this one VERY IMPORTANT THING, I can be doing every single thing I can think of to make it happen and can’t do jack diddly squat about when or even whether it will.
This post brought to you by negative pregnancy tests and probably PMS hormones.
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PREACH 
Yes. This. Exactly. Exactly this.
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