Expecting Happiness: getting pregnant

1. Visiting your OB lab office to get blood drawn multiple times amongst all the happy mothers to be with their glowing faces and growing bellies.
2. Having your male colleagues repeatedly ask you why you had to take a sick day.
3. Your family all pretending like it never happened, let’s just talk about something else!
4. Getting to go back to using giant maxi pads, just like your first period in middle school.
5. Not having to finish filling out the pages of your “Belly Book”.
6. Packing up your maternity clothes again, who wants to wear comfortable elastic waist pants anyways?
7. Knowing that your pregnancy was “never meant to be”, it’s so comforting!
8. Those daily reminders of “how big your baby is today”, good thing your baby doesn’t exist anymore and you don’t have to worry about figuring out how big is a kumquat, really??
9. Telling your spouse he doesn’t have to worry about that “Doctors Appointment” he forgot off his calendar, no need to get an ultrasound of an empty uterus. Oh, and don't forget having to answer the question of "how many pregnancies have you had?" until the end of time.
10. Paying bills for multiple doctor visits and lab tests all for a baby you’ll never have. OK this one actually DOES suck. 😉

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Originally Posted on 5/6/13

It's just not as easy as those Teen Moms make it seem, especially when you are in your 30's or 40's.

Here's my advice for getting pregnant, I know everyone is different, but this came from a few recommendations from my sister, lots of reading on the internet, and books (see below) that I ordered from Amazon.

(This post contains Affiliate Links)

So, for my married friends who have not yet dove head first into the world of parenthood, whenever you are ready, here's what I recommend-

Read "An Impatient Woman's Guide to Getting Pregnant" by Jean M. Twenge. It is the best no-nonsense book for impatient people, and she gives very good practical advice on interpreting your Clearblue easy monitor. I am definitely an impatient woman and she made me feel totally sane for being obsessed with my ovulation dates. I am confident that this book played a large role in getting pregnant in 2013 in less than 5 months.

Purchase and use the Clearblue Easy Fertility Monitor (CEFM), it makes things so much easier. I was lucky to receive this free from my sister (they don't recommend sharing the monitor but I ignored that warning). This was also a large part in determining those exact ideal dates for conception. It seems expensive but when you are seeing those two lines the cost seems minimal.

Order some of these cheap WONDFO ovulation predictor kits (OPK). Also buy a huge pack of their pregnancy tests. I recommend this awesome combo pack. These are the kinds that the doctors office use and require a little cup to dip them into but for the obsessive testers this can save you tons of money. I did get a positive using this test the same day that I received a positive on the First Response tests.

Don't buy pregnancy tests with blue lines, they are terrible and have strong reputation for false positives. Stick with First Response with the two pink lines, they are the most reliable. Digitals are good too but it takes longer to get a positive result. The digital tests wait until they reach a certain threshold to give you that "Positive" read. With the pink ones you can hold them up to a window or a bright light like a crazy person and try to find that second pink line.

You are going to test too early, and it's going to be negative, and you are going to be really disappointed. You have to either get used to having false negatives, or learn to wait. I just got used to the negatives because I couldn't wait (and good thing too because I got my positive result fairly early, right at the earliest day that First Response will guarantee a result).

Check out the website- www.countdowntopregnancy.com An amazing place with all sorts of statistics and thousands of photos of other people's ovulation and pregnancy tests that you can vote on whether you think they look positive or negative. You can post your own and have people vote too! This is for all you early testers.

Download the Fertility Friend App, try out the premium features, you are going to want to keep these. It is worth the $20-30 it costs for a few months subscription to have the detailed analysis that tells you exactly what is going on with your body.

You are going to tell someone you are "trying"! And when they say "Don't try TOO hard", or "Don't worry it will happen", or "Don't forget it takes most healthy couples 6 months to conceive"- know that they mean well, but those things usually don't make you feel better. Just ignore the advice and know that any good book will say that you cannot try too hard and until they go through it- they don't realize how long 6 months, heck even 2 months, seems when you are going through this!

You will start hearing stories of people that it "happened on the first try", or "was just a happy accident"! You may become slightly annoyed with these people.

There are tons of vitamins and supplements out there that supposedly help with fertility. I started taking Vitafusion Gummy Prenatal Vitamins from the first day we even thought about trying to get pregnant. Then I started adding in more of the other supplements - B6, Evening Primrose Oil, Acidophilus. I drank tons of grapefruit juice (supposedly that helps), and for the most part I stopped drinking (except for special occasions).

Go see your doctor- get up to date on all of your immunizations, tell them you want to get pregnant. They can give you proper medical advice (my advice here is just what worked for me, it is not medical advice).

Go see your dentist- you want to get any dental work out of the way before you are pregnant.

Other Books to Read:
Taking Charge of Your Fertility,

by Toni Wechsler.

Get Ready to Get Pregnant: Your Complete Prepregnancy Guide to Making a Smart and Healthy Baby,

by Michael C. Lu.

Before Your Pregnancy: A 90-Day Guide for Couples on How to Prepare for a Healthy Conception,

by Amy Ogle.

Movies to watch:
Knocked Up
What to Expect
Look Who's Talking
Father of the Bride, Part Two
The Baby Makers
Friends with Kids

Movies to avoid:
Sliding Doors
Battle in Seattle
The Time Travelers Wife

Note: I purposely wrote this all down before I found out that I was pregnant so that I could accurately capture the frustration of the process. I already have a much more optimistic view on the whole situation.

ExpectingHappiness is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com

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Headings

10 Awesome Things about Having a Miscarriage

The Second Baby

GUIDE TO GETTING PREGNANT

LAST TIME I OVULATED, I GOT PREGNANT