The Pill

I've been meaning to post the very exciting news that I took my last birth control pill two Sundays ago, but haven't gotten around to it since my husband and I have undertaken to remodel our master bathroom and my spare time has been spent laying tile and painting and taking endless trips to the hardware store.  I did a little happy dance when I popped that last pill out of the pack.

I didn't start taking the pill until I was 28 and I was annoyed at the monthly expense, not having been accustomed to having to fill a prescription every month.  I'm glad now to hear that the copay for contraceptives will soon be a thing of the past, so that will be something to be thankful for when I go back on it sometime in the future.  I found the experience of being on the pill to be interesting.  The utter predictability of cycles was reassuring.  I hadn't paid too much attention to my cycles before going on the pill, but I seem to recall them being sometimes a bit long and sometimes a bit short, though I didn't track them well enough to say for sure.  It'll be intriguing to see how they normalize without the influence of synthetic hormones.  I do remember that I was always sure when I was ovulating before I went on the pill due to the changes in discharge my body produces, so if that resumes now that I'm off of it, that should be a help in our quest to conceive.  I may miss the shortened menstrations that the pill provides, but so it is.

For just this short month, we're using a barrier method on the advice of my midwife who says that if I conceive without first having a natural cycle, it would be more difficult to judge the due date.  My husband has been fanatical about condom usage in the past weeks.  Even the day after my period ended, he encouraged me to hunt one down even though I assured him I wasn't fertile at that point in my cycle.  I tried to get him to "read up" on things about fertility he ought to already know, but I haven't followed up with him to see if he actually has or not.  Perhaps if I posted the pertinent information to a thread on Reddit...LOL!  

If my cycle remains the same as it has been, my upcoming girls' weekend in Las Vegas will be somewhat diminished as it falls precisely within the range of days in which I could be pregnant and have no way of knowing for sure, so I guess I'll have to be a teetotaler that weekend in which I'm sure there will be much indulgence on the part of my peers.

I've been enjoying afternoon coffee breaks at work lately, knowing full well that I should be cutting back since next month I intend to severely limit my caffeine intake on the off chance that we hit the jackpot during our first month of trying.  My boss is well acquainted with my afternoon coffee habit and will stop by my desk to announce when she's put a pot on to brew so she and I have first crack at it.  I'll have to come up with some excuse as to why I don't rush to grab my mug.

I have high hopes that we don't have long to wait before we're assured of our success in our endeavor.  It's been a long wait already, and lack of patience is a character flaw of mine.  For all that I worry about the few plans we've made for the fall, winter and spring - that being stuck on a 10-hour flight to Hawaii in my first trimester is a recipe for misery, that having to swear off alcohol during a weekend-long birthday celebration in Vegas with friends who will likely spend three days on end stumbling drunkenly through the casino and sleeping in with massive hangovers, and that my newly retired in-laws will be several states away on an RV vacation when I might have some big news to share with them - I still hope that we conceive quickly.