Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Trying to Get Pregnant, NGP* Style

[NB: I wrote this post about a month ago. We weren't pregnant and since then we've had a break for a cycle and we're about to head back into the fray again in two weeks or so.]

Well, we are at the end of another two week wait with a negative pregnancy test this morning (at 11 dpo), but no period yet, so there is always still a glimmer of hope, and I’m a real sucker for that hope. My wife and I are trying to get pregnant with baby #2 and it is proving to be a little tougher than baby #1. Still, we lucked out with the first one. I got pregnant on the second try, which is kind of amazing if you consider that we were using frozen sperm and doing inseminations at home.

Almost three years ago, I was trying to be the one getting pregnant. Today, I’m watching and waiting and talking as my wife, Lyn, goes through the same routine. We've tried twice at home (and missed trying one month due to non-ovulation), and now we’ve moved to trying at the doctor’s office doing IUI. And this cycle we jumped the gun on ovulation so that we inseminated 4 times instead of the usual 2 (so don’t even think about how much it cost us).

I can tell you that it’s very different being on the other side of the pee stick. For one thing, I’m not the one agonizing over every abdominal feeling. And I’m not the one for whom “success” would initiate months of nausea and fatigue. Those are the pluses. In the minus column, I can’t help but feeling so much more detached this time. I have to keep pushing myself to get involved and to feel involved. I have to navigate the balance between being there for Lyn – that is, being the “supportive partner” – and going through the TTC experience myself. And then beyond that lie all of those hazy NGP (“non-gestational parent”) worries – What if I don’t love the second as much as the first because I didn’t through pregnancy? What if Lyn doesn’t get pregnant? What if she does get pregnant? How will we fit a new kid into our family?

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