Based on my temperature shift, I ovulated nearly 2 weeks ago. Am I or am I not pregnant?
One of the hardest parts of trying to conceive is the waiting. Every single menstrual cycle, there is a small window of fertility, then we need to wait a couple weeks before we can tell whether or not we succeeded. When you have irregular cycles — mine ranged anywhere from 35 to 100 days, compared to the regular 28 — this is even harder, because you don’t know when that window of fertility will happen, and you don’t know how long it will be before you have another.
Even the early pregnancy tests become vastly more accurate if you wait until you would have missed your period to take them, so all you can do is wait and wonder — even a negative test doesn’t mean you’re definitely not pregnant. You start analyzing every little twinge and feeling. Some women start getting breast tenderness as early as the end of the first week after fertilization, my breasts might be tender. Is that maybe a bit of spotting from implantation? I feel funny, I think, maybe that’s because I’m pregnant? Or maybe I’m just paying more attention than usual.
So we wait, and we check, and we hope. Because that is all we can do until we succeed or find it’s time to try again.
(Note: I could have written this post nearly anytime in the year and a third we spent trying to conceive — in fact, I did write various parts of it over time. I’ve chosen to date it relative to when we actually conceived because I had all these feelings then just as much as other times.)