What kind of watch doesn't tell time........the OvWatch!

Having a slow rise kinda sucks. My temps go up a tad and then seem to get stuck for about three days before I get a big enough rise to consider that ovulation has taken place. Am I ovulating the day before the big rise, the day before the little rise or somewhere in between? I've been charting, usings opks and the Clear Blue monitor to try and pinpoint it with varying success. A while back I read about the OvWatch which claims to give you four days notice of ovulation. It looks like a sports watch and you just wear it for at least six hours a day or at night and then it will give you a reading. I decided to buy it as one more way to try and see when exactly I ovulate. Well, after spending quite a bit of money on this new device and wearing it for 15 nights, I just got my first fertility reading. So, according to the OvWatch I won't ovulate until day 19. Now I know that can't be right. The latest I've ever ovulated is day 16 and this month I got a postive opk on day 13. I'm pretty disappointed that the OvWatch turned out to be such a waste of money. OvWatch be damned! I intend on ovulating either today or tomorrow.

I'm feeling hot, hot, hot

Traditional Chinese Medicine prescribes hot foods for people like me -spleen and kidney chi deficiencies and a cold uterus. Doesn't "cold uterus" just sound horrible? To try and correct these imbalances I am trying to eat more hot foods like soup and less cold foods like salads or ice-cream. I figure though that something like a salad is still acceptable given it's good nutrients. My real downfall comes with room temperature foods like chips. I definitely crave chips more than I do candy, although with all the Halloween candy around I've been eating my fair share of that too.

Yesterday I ran into the store to buy milk and just milk and ended upcoming out with $70 worth of groceries. How does that happen? I'll tell you how, first, buy organic whole milk for your child at $6.29 a gallon,then, because you are trying to eat healthier and hotter foods, buy pumpkin bisque and veggie soup from the fancy section of the store, top that off with some organic, whole grain pasta frozen dinners, walnuts because everyone keeps saying they are a super food and round it out with honeycrisp apples at over $1 a piece, a pineapple, organic baby lettuces and organic fat-free salad dressing and you end up spending way more than you ever thought possible. I guess I feel a little better knowing that I side-stepped all the temptation and only bought good for me foods but it's still depressing to see how much I spend every week.

It's up to you New York, New York

Can you be happy and sad all at the same time? I think that's possible. You could be happy to get a promotion but sad that it means you will have to move. You could be happy to find out that someone else is pregnant but still sad that it isn't you. This is the way I've been feeling lately. I know many women who are trying to get pregnant and each time one of them announces their success I am thrilled for them but sad for myself. I want to be pregnant again.

So, the trip to New York was wonderful with the exception of getting many, many blisters on my feet and also getting my period right during the Van Morrison concert. I was disappointed but not devasted. I think being on a mini-vacation really helped. Maybe I should start doing that every month! Anyway, it was a whirlwind trip. Saturday we walked around Soho and had dinner at a very tiny (six tables total) Spanish restaraunt followed by lots more walking and dessert at a 24 hour bakery. Sunday we headed in the city and hit the Empire State Building, Grand Central Terminal, Rockefeller Center, Top of the Rock, Tiffany's and finally Central Park.

Sunday night was the Van Morission concert which was exquisite. I've now seen Van five times and although this wasn't my favorite show, I'd probably rank it second. Van's music just has a way of making me feel at peace with the world. Who knew that a short, chubby, balding man could have such an effect?

My doctor upped the dosage of Clomid for this cycle so I'm now at 100mg. He also said that it would be okay to try to on days 3-7 instead of 5-9. Well, I've been researching Clomid for months and months now and have turned up a study that shows great results with taking it on days 1-5. It seems a bit crazy to take it so early but it was soooo tempting to do so after reading the study and I gave in to temptation. I took the last dose on Friday and am now just waiting to ovulate. I've pulled out all the stops this cycle. I am charting my temperatures, using my Clear Blue Easy Fertility Monitor, I bought an OvWatch and am using that, I'm taking the traditional Chinese herbs, getting acupuncture, taking a million supplements, drinking green tea, using ovulation predictor sticks and trying like heck to cut out caffeine and junky food. I'm falling short in that department though. I've traded my morning coffee for green tea but I just can't seem to get my diet in order. To my credit, I did bump up my fruit consumption last week but I still ate a whole lotta crap. Why isn't getting pregnant enough of a motivator for me?

Don't grocery shop when you're hungry

How many times have I read that little diet tip? Probably a thousand times and probably it was always written by a skinny woman who never had food issues. Today I did not follow follow this rule and ended up spending way more than I planned to spend at the grocery store and bringing home way more food than I planned to. Everything looked so good.

I've gained and lost weight over and over and over again over the years. My first big weight loss was in college when I did NutriSystem. Then, after I gained it all back I lost it again eating a very low fat diet. At the time Weight Watchers had a plan called Fat and Fiber and that worked, for a while. Yet again, I gained all the weight back until I had success with low carb and Atkins before my wedding. I ate anything I wanted on my honeymoon and never got my eating back under control and so I gained all the weight back. I made a New Year's resolution to lose it all again in 2006 but less than a month later I found out that I was pregnant. Oddly, pregnancy was the best diet I've ever been on! In those early months I just had no appetite and was throwing up all the time. I lost 15 pounds without even trying. I gained the 15 back plus another 10 and haven't lost any of it since having QT over a year ago. Now that's depressing.

Here's my question, why did I have no appetite for all those months? Was it the pregnancy hormones? Why can't doctors figure out what made me feel that way and then just inject me with that so that I just no longer really wanted to eat? Why o why can't it just be that simple?

Right now I'm mulling over going to get the Cool Ranch Doritos out of the kitchen so that I can enjoy munching on them while catching up on my reading. The only thing stopping me is all that Dorito dust that sticks to your fingers.

Priceless

You know those Mastercard commercials where they list off a bunch of expenses and then come up with one priceless thing that is just worth every penny you just charged (at 22% interest)? Well, as I was writing out my check to the acupuncturist for my needle treatment and herbs I started making up my own commercial in my head. It goes something like this:
Fertility Monitor : $100 off Ebay
Sticks to use with Fertility Monitor: $30 from Amazon.com
Opks to use in case Fertility Monitor isn't working correctly: $30 from local grocery store
Clomid: $15 from Walgreens
Mucinex to try and counteract bad Clomid side effects: $20 from Walgreens
Green tea for the same reason: $3.50 from local grocery store
Acupuncture treatment: $60
Custom made herbal formula: $40 from acupuncturist
Prenatal vitamins: $30 from Walgreens
Pregnancy tests: $30 from Walgreens
Seeing two pink lines come up on the test: priceless.
But you see, it's not priceless because it does come with both a monetary and physical price. For some women it's very expensive to get pregnant and for all women it's very expensive to have children.

Rainy days and Mondays always get me down

It's Monday and it was rainy all day. Fall is almost in full force. The leaves are changing color and crunching under foot. I just love this time of year. The air is crisp and you can't help but take a huge breath in and try to take it all in. Of course, there's a down side too, such as it being pitch black at 6:00am. It's hard enough to drag myself out of bed in the morning what with having a wonderful Tempurpedic deluxe, sink in and mold to your body, mattress, but now it's even harder because it appears to be the dead of night and yet my alarm is going off.

How did my Monday go? Well, I'll just say this, the fancy digital ovulation predictor stick reader that I paid $40 for fell into the toilet BEFORE I got to put the test stick into it. The water rendered it useless, which also renders the remaining sticks useless. There were two very dark lines so I'm taking it as a positive test even though the instructions clearly tell you not to try and interpret the lines. What do they know anyway? I'll bet they are made by men. No woman would make a product to help you get pregnant that involves two lines, and then tell you specifically that the lines don't mean anything. So, I should ovulate tomorrow or Wednesday. Stay tuned.

Okay, gotta run because I'm spending the rest of my evening with Dexter, that wacky serial killer everyone just hates to love.