It's really the little things...

...that build a testimony-- that make you believe that somehow, someone out there might actually be listening to and care about the desperate little pleas you make in the middle of the night.

So you know we're trying to have a baby. Last month I was a basketcase. As I've mentioned before, I took the full-court press approach, and did everything (reasonable) to get pregnant.

Then, towards the end of the month, I'd wake up in the middle of the night and be unable to go back to sleep because I'd be thinking about how I would be taking a pregnancy test in the morning. I had dreams almost every night about what my temperature would be when I woke up, had several dreams that I was pregnant, and had a couple of dreams about a baby boy. The idea of getting pregnant was percolating in my mind about 90% of my waking time. At the end of the month, when it was obvious that I wasn't pregnant, I realized that I didn't want trying to make a baby to be so stressful, and I prayed that the type-A, nervous wreck in me wouldn't take over again.

Now this month, we're doing it all over again. My approach really hasn't been any different. I'm still charting, temping, peeing on sticks. I still check in periodically on the Babycenter board for women who want October 2006 babies. I still really, really want a baby. But I'm not the wild-eyed freak I was last month. I'm not thinking about it all the time. Thankfully, it's not consuming me. I can pee on a stick, see that it's negative, and not spend the rest of the day going back into the bathroom to make sure that a line hasn't magically materialized (yeah, I do know you shouldn't even look at them after 10 minutes).

I think some of it is that the pressure is off. Since it's not happening on the first try, it doesn't really seem to matter to me if it takes two months or three months or four months (but I'd really like it to be two months). But since I'm still doing everything the same, the only explanation I can give for my change in attitude is that someone is listening to my silly, selfish pleas for help, and that someone loves me enough to keep my mind from obsessing myself to insanity.

--originally published 1/13/06