Hope Springs Eternal

You'd think that since we've never conceived without an andrologist being involved in the process (and we started ttc in May 2002), I'd never consider the possibility that we might get pregnant "on our own." However, in the past 10 months there have been two occasions when I've considered using a hpt. The first was several months ago (I can't remember exactly when). Paul was the one who mentioned the possibility due to my nausea, but I wrote it off as being due to sleep deprivation. The second occurred 2 weeks ago. I was having really bad heartburn for several days. The first time I ever experienced heartburn was early in my pregnancy with Nadia. It went away immediately after she was born. With Ian it didn't go away until the placenta was removed in January. When I had heartburn a couple of weeks ago I was really surprised. I looked at my fertility friend chart to see what day it was, and since I was in the low 30's, I contemplated buying a hpt. I hated to waste the money. I view it as being about the same as peeing on a $5 bill. Thankfully I held off. It turns out the heartburn was due to stress over Ian's surgery. I've gone almost 3 years without staring at a one lined hpt. I'd like to extend the length of that streak as long as possible.

Once the heartburn went away I was no longer tempted to test. Yesterday AF arrived, and what surprised me was that I felt some sadness. Not anywhere near as sad as I used to feel on day one back when we were doing injections. The worst was after the first fresh embryo transfer in August 2007. I really didn't think I still had any hope that we'd get pregnant on our own. Evidently I haven't lost all hope yet. Frankly I don't think that's a good thing. I think emotionally it would be easier if I could 100% come to grips with the idea that our family is complete. The other thing that surprised me was that I felt this angst toward my body. We know now that morphology is our biggest fertility issue, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with my body. I wonder how common it is for the woman to still feel at fault even if the couple has a male factor issue?

Another area in which hope seems to spring eternal is regarding Ian's sleeping habits. Paul put him down at 6:50pm last night. He slept until 4:30am. I thought that was too early for him to get up so I closed our bedroom door and rolled over onto my left side as my hearing in my right ear is still not very good (that's the eardrum that broke a few months ago). When I woke up at 5:30, I opened our door. Ian was crying so I went and got him. From how he was when I got him, I really don't think he had been crying for an hour, but since Paul and I were both sleeping, we can't say for sure. This morning his nap was 23 minutes long. I had high hopes that his afternoon nap would be about 75 minutes long since that's what he did yesterday and what he had been doing prior to his surgery. Wrong. He took another 20 minute nap. This time I let him cry for 30 minutes in the hopes he would fall back asleep. Wrong. I have no idea what to do to get this boy to sleep more. We've been putting him down between 7:00-7:30 at night, and I won't get him before 5:30. I've been putting him down at 8:30am and 12:30pm for his 2 naps. He needs more sleep than he's getting!!! Letting him cry was a total bust since he didn't go back to sleep AND it kept Nadia awake.