Just Pretend I'm Not Here...

(Which you probably should since I can't seem to keep up with this blogging thing lately. I'm actually considering signing up for ICLW this month to see if having a little accountability will improve things!)

But really, the title of this post refers to a tea I had with two of my friends (I've become addicted to high tea in San Francisco - the city has an abundance of affordable tearooms) earlier this week. Two of my pregnant friends, I should say, but it honestly feels like I don't even need that adjective because I swear to you that it seems like ALL of my friends are pregnant.

I should've seen it coming, considering I knew they were both knocked up, but I thought that as educated adult women in our 30's, we could pass 2 to 3 hours together without having to talk about babies and being pregnant the whole freakin' time. Either I'm ridiculously naive or pregnant women are just asinine - probably a little of both.

What made it worse, I think, is that this is A's first pregnancy and M's second, so all A could talk about was about how sick she was during her first trimester, with M reassuring her about all the stages and telling her all the things she could look forward to in her second trimester. I felt like I was part of a strange tryptich: the wise and knowing second-time mother, the anxious and excited first-time mother, and me...the barren bitch.

Anyway, I serenely smiled through the whole thing and drank my tea. (I drank a lot of tea - by my 2nd pot, I was kind of wishing they were the Long Island Iced kind.) And when they did remember that (oops!) they were sitting in the presence of an infertile, talk turned to more inclusive subjects like work, food, marriage, etc. I mean, it wasn't all horrible - they are both incredible and positive women, they have a great sense of humor, and the tea and snacks were yummy. I think I just overestimated my ability to sit through all that baby talk without feeling a little like a useless bag of dysfunctional woman parts by the end of the day.

And of course, I agreed with them by the end of the tea that it'd be tons of fun to have dinner with them and our respective spouses later this summer, which it would. But to quote fellow blogger Glum Bunny there will be inevitable moments of wretchedness. At least I'll be better prepared this time around, and I'll have Mr. Stick there to lean on.

In Other TTC News:

* I turned 34 last week, which happened with little fanfare as regrettably, there was a death in the family. It's a strange yet life-affirming thing to spend one's birthday at a funeral home. Anyway, this qualifies as TTC news because it means that I have less than a year before I hit "advanced maternal age" - stupid western medical terms.

* I can honestly say that this last cycle was a total break. No temping, no peeing on sticks, and having sex only when we're in the mood. I forgot how freeing this feels - it actually makes me reluctant to get back on the TTC train schedule.

* That said, though, I can tell from my boobs (I feel like Karen from "Mean Girls") that this cycle is completely wonky. They've been sore all week, which of course means AF is coming, but they're more than a week early. I don't know if being here has suddenly reset me to a 28 day cycle (San Francisco is better than Clomid!) or if my body went anovulatory from travel stress.

* I have a consultation with Pacific Fertility Center on Tuesday the 20th with Dr. Herbert, which I thought I had strategically scheduled to happen at the start of my cycle (I want that day 3 FSH test damn it!), but if the above is correct, then we'll have to wait through another cycle, and there goes the summer. Hrmph.

Nancy Drew & The Mystery of the Sore Boobs

My breasts hurt.

For most women, this would be cause for pulling out the pee sticks and going to town, but in crazy-upside-down Stickles world, it's just a reminder to stop obsessing and prepare for AF.

Let me back up here just a bit.

Sore breasts used be a once-in-a-blue moon thing for me. I certainly never got them when I was taking the pill, and during those wasted years when I was off the pill and actually "trying-to-avoid" I'd have one or at most two cycles a year where I'd get tender breasts.

Naturally, during these rare occasions, I'd freak out a little that we had an "accident" (more so about the fact that I was probably drinking alcohol and caffeine during my cycle moreso than the reality of being pregnant), but those worries all came to moot.

So the really, really crazy thing is that since we started actively TTC, I get sore boobs during every cycle. Every cycle. This has wreaked severe havoc in my head. Those first few months of TTC, every time my girls started getting tender, I'd whip out the pee sticks only to see a BFN and a visit from AF within 48 hours.

I have asked my OB, my RE, and my acupuncturists about this, and no one can give me a satisfactory answer. The docs think I'm just more sensitive to the changes in my body (which, I don't think so, because those few times I got tenderness in the past *really* stood out - I have notes in my charts to back me up) while acupuncturists seem very pleased by this information because it means that my body is producing good progesterone.

So I am left to wonder if I am really creating my own version of a "hysterical pregnancy" towards the end of the 2ww or if this is an indication that something strange is going on in my body. Like maybe I could actually be conceiving, but something goes wrong at the end of the implantation stage, and no one seems to be catching it.

Oh, and just to throw another curveball...

I've also noticed that these three cycles of Clomid I've been on, I get the sore boobs later in my cycle. In a normal cycle, I start getting sore at 7 dpo and get AF about 4-5 days later. While on Clomid, I'm getting sore at about 10 dpo and getting AF about 2-3 days later. I really don't know what to make of this.

So this is all just to say that although I could obsess over the strange little things that have happened this cycle, like the acne breakout from hell a few days ago, or my need to take a nap yesterday afternoon, the fact that my boobs are sore in exactly the way they've always been sore these past oh...26 months...I'm not having a whole lot of optimism right now.