Deck your halls & dress your trees, the BESH are gifting BFPs

[WinklyVersusTheZombies]

Doff your top hats, lean on your canes, 'tis a Victorian Christmas for the BESH. Baste those turkeys in Victoria & Albert style, and maintain a stiff upper lip when you fill in the BESHtionnaire to see if you are cynical stoic enough to win a Baybee.

My sympathies rie. Tis a nightmare, especially when you wonder if the sechsing is actually going to achieve anything anyway

We have hardly done the sechs since I got diffed. Bit like having a TTC holiday.

really I ought to be diffed or leaking jizz out of my ears by now.

Arf!

I feel a little bit queasy at the thought of having jizz leaking out of one's ears.

Do any of you feel that temping makes any difference? I've never done it, because of the part where you have to get up at the same time every day. That doesn't seem compatible with shift work.

I can always be relied upon to lower the tone

Twinks, I don't think temping makes much difference, no. However, it gives me something to do rather than feeling totally helpless, and I quite like having a record of cycle lengths and droid lengths. If it's a "normal" cycle, then I can have a decent stab at predicting imminence of droid too. I rarely seem to get the apparently normal biphasic pattern, though.

I started temping because I had somewhat irregular cycles (like 24-31 days, not crazy irregular) and my progesterone bloods weren't convulsive of ovulation. I tried temping to see if I could see a pattern. In that respect, once I'd got the hang of it, it was great. I saw clear patterns after 3 months, times my 'day 21' blood tests to 7 days post ov and got a progesterone of 28 which my consultant was happy with. However it is a commitment to check it every day. Some women can get away with a couple of hours time difference but I couldn't so I'd temp every day at 6am even days off. It started to make me more menkul though. I would obsess about my temps, even dreaming about the temp that morning. I could spend many hours trawling futility fiend looking for charts that matched mine.

I stopped charting when we realised that a. I was ovulating and b. it was male factor issues (I stopped in the August when we got the SA and we didn't see the specialist til December). I did try OPKs instead but frankly I knew well enough after 2 1/2 years when I was fertile. I had ditched everything but the healthy diet and exercise the month I got diffed. We had SFF on CD6, sechs with intent on CD11 and allegedly I conceived on CD11. No temps (we were camping, would have been tricky), no ov sticks, nada. Ironic, no?!

I started temping and stopped after about 12 days. I couldn't get the hang of it, and my thermometer was in Celsius and my temps seemed abnormally low. Plus I couldn't bear the thought of waking up early every day. Plus I usually have a wee about 4.30 which scuppers the whole thing.

Heh, I sleep like the dead and am a creature of habit, so am probably ideal for temping. I've taken my temperature almost every day for two and a half years now, and am occasionally worried the thermometer battery will run out before I get diffed...

I often need a nighttime wee, due to my pre-bed teas, don't fancy getting up at 5.30 to temp if I'm not working at 7, and can't see how any of it would work when I do my week of night shifts, so I suppose I won't be temping.

I don't want to go to work tomorrow. I mean, I really don't want to go. The thought of it is making me shake with worry. My team has gone from 8 + supervisor in July, to just me and one other for most of January, with no reduction whatsoever in the amount of work coming in. I know I am going to miss something important and fuck up badly.

You don't get up, though. I temp at 7am when the alarm goes off, and may well go back to sleep afterwards - if you get up you've already buggered it anyway. I think the idea is to measure when you've had a good long block of sleep, so it could work if you were on shifts, assuming you get enough/good quality sleep. Of course for holidays like we've just had, half my temps are unreliable as we've not had the alarm clock on. Back to normal tomorrow, though!

Fingers crossed all is well at work, wink - but if you're that under pressure would it be worth speaking to a senior person, or HR? if work is affecting your health (and dread like that counts) then there's something wrong.

Morning hags.

As far as temping goes, you need to have had at least 3 hours uninterrupted sleep to be able to take it. I'm not brilliant at taking my temp at the same time every day, hence the white dots on my chart, but it will accept it if you're within half an hour of your normal time. Weekends sometimes go a bit awry for me, but I often wake up when my alarm should go off, temp, then go back to sleep

Temps still up this morning

On way to work here, sharing the general work-related glumness. And I bottled out AGAIN of telling my mother about ivf. (i stay with parents during the working week) Do you think I could just put the drugs in the fridge and not mention it at all?

Can you email her, Norf?

My sister has her hotmail password and reads her emails. So no. Oh GAWD. I will try again tomorrow.

Aww, norf :( I bottled telling my parents over Christmas, too. HOTB told his, but mine are generally less nosy so there's no obvious "in" to get the conversation started...

Norfy I know exactly what you mean about having to be the one to remember and initiate when it's the fertile time. It's not exactly rocket science. My period arrives. I walk around for a couple of days clutching my belly and looking pale. About a week after that sh@gweek commences. We're on the 27th cycle ffs. How can he not have worked it out?

at Draf's tone lowering.

BTW, I am also convinced that my thermometer will die before diffage.

I like temping. It gives me the illusion that I have some idea of what is going on. Also, the temp rise brings an end to sh@g week. I don't work shifts, but do switch time zones a fair bit due to travelling and temping still works well enough for me to identify ov. I keep my thermometer right next to the snooze button on my alarm. As soon as it goes off, I reach out to snooze it and come back with the thermometer, take temp (sometimes falling asleep with the thermometer in and waking up with the "Beep" when it is done) and then dozing off again.

Norfy can you go off to work and leave her a note?

I will have another go at telling her tomorrow. God I am so wussy. Or such a Victorian gentleman.

I think my thermometer did die. And I have got to the end of a depressingly high number of tubs of frolic acid pulls.

Temping and tubs of folic acid. What a joyful topic this grey day. I temped for two months in April and May 2011. I hated it, and didn't get half as clear a pattern as I should have because apparently I do ovulate every month on my own. Also, I hated TTC being the first thing on your mind every morning. With stabbing it only needs to be by 7pm.

My prediction of "fertile" time is done entirely by noting a certain dampness down there, and thanks to bloody 6 cycles of IUI I now know I get that feeling a little in advance of ovulation, particularly since the MC. The scan lady was showing a student excitedly you could see a bit of black which apparently is the fabled fertile mucus. I have loads, but appear to be fairly infertile. Grrr.

And don't mention the folic acid. Thankfully I have been using cheapo, not posh pregnant ladies, folic acid. But the number of pots in 2,5 years is frankly scary.

and boak at sperm out of you ears.

I have two follies and will trigger tonight, googling pregnancy chances with one of 18 and one of 15mm now

Good luck my fabled northerly friends, with taking the words into thy mouth and expressing those to thy mother. It sucks! And clearly counselling has made me a terrible victorian gentleman. Btw I am finished, sort off, for now, with the counselling. I agreed to go back when I get in an IVF tangle, but for now, that is it :)

I think I have solved the Mystery of the Disappearing Pant Snot. I was taking decongestants for two days due to compacted snot in the head (actual medical term). So apparently the snot had migrated north. This I believe is perfectly biologically possible. Or the other far more sensible possibility is that the decongestants dried me up everywhere.

Sounds like a Famous Five book doesn't it? Five and the Mystery of the Disappearing Pant Snot. In fact can we have a Famous Five theme for the next fred? One of my better ideas I think. I can see so many possibilities:

Five and the Mystery of the Declining Fertility
Five and the Mystery of the Recurrent Ectopics
Five Run Away Together to the Fertility Clinic
Five and the Adventure of the Dildocam

Further suggestions welcome.

Five Go To Billycock Hill (euphemistically speaking)
Five Don't Get Into Trouble (despite their best efforts)
Famous Five at the TTC-side.

Ah, have a drink, bugs. It will instantly lead to a bfp tomorrow, you know. Tempt fate.

Five Fall Into The Pit.

Ah I am laughing grimly at all those suggestions especially Five Don't Get Into Trouble.

Or more plainly speaking Five Fail To Get Diffed.