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Friday, February 10, 2012

High five, reproductive organs!

I OVULATED!!! And on the exact day that my fertility app predicted!

I bought 50 ovulation testing strips on Amazon for $9. Because they were so cheap, I decided to start using them the first day I was fertile, two days ago. (Because sperm can live in you for days, you're fertile even before you ovulate, since the sperm will still be hanging around waiting for the release.) I wanted to have a comparison. My first test had a very, very faint pink line next to the strong pink control line. Then yesterday, it was slightly darker, but still faint enough to be negative. (The package is very clear that a faint line is negative.) My guess, then, was that maybe my body was beginning to produce whatever hormone it tests for, which made me hopeful that on my actual ovulation day, I would get a positive test. And indeed I did!

The first day, Nicole sort of rolled her eyes at me teasingly but grinned and asked to see it. She was interested in seeing the strip both before and after, and asked me how it worked. She asked how it could work if I am only supposed to dip the tip in my urine. I said, "It's like in high school when you used those litmus test thingies in the creek to test water quality. You only dipped the tip in, and it spread up the strip." She said, "Um, high schools in Long Island don't have creeks to take science students to..." Here we digressed into an unexpected and fun conversation about the differences in our educations, ha!

Nicole was interested the second day, too. I did the first two tests at night. Then today, I wanted to do it before work. Nicole asked why, and I said that I'd known the other two tests most likely would be negative so it didn't matter, but the day of my predicted ovulation, I wanted to have the opportunity to test both in the morning and at night if needed. This just meant it was more rushed, and I just had a faintly darker line that I wasn't sure about by the time Nicole left for work. I left it sitting out (you're supposed to wait five minutes before reading it, but the other two tests hadn't done anything else after the first minute) and then happened by it a little later and noticed that it was definitively darker. I took a picture of it and sent it to Nicole, and she actually had an excited response ("omg awesome") instead of a teasing or disinterested one. It was pretty amazing.


Doesn't get much clearer than that, does it?

My excitement felt a little silly...it's not a pregnancy test, after all. And really the expectation, the "norm", should be regular ovulation. It should be something you can take for granted, something you can just assume unless something seems off about your cycle. But I have never assumed this for myself, and it's extremely important that it be predictable because insemination is going to be expensive for us. It's not like we can have sex every day for a month and hope for the best. That's not to minimize the difficulties and expenses many opposite-sex couples can also experience with conception...but they have a chance from the beginning to at least try for free, or increase their odds, and we know we will have to pay for every single attempt. So if I can nail down the exact day and at least only pay for one attempt per month, I'll be a lot better off than if I were completely unpredictable.

This leads me to my next topic: my feelings about conception being a medical experience from the very beginning rather than a romantic one. Another post for another day. For today, I'm ecstatic to know that an egg is hanging around waiting to be fertilized. (Sorry, little egg, it's not your time.)

6 comments:

  1. There were some interesting scenes about intimacy during an at home lesbian insemination in the movie "Chutney Popcorn". Granted, different situation because the character in that film who's getting pregnant is a lesbian acting as surrogate for her infertile sister, but your post made me think of that movie. Have you seen it? It's on netflix instant, I believe! (At least, it used to be.)

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    1. I did see that movie, but I don't remember the insemination in very much detail.

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  2. I can't respond to this, because it's all gonna be in my next post! (and therefore much too long to go into here lol) :)

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  3. I got so excited about my positive too so I totally understand that part. Are you getting a temperature shift too?

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  4. Sorry, meant for that to be a new comment, not a reply.

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  5. Wahh... where'd my comment go??

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