Pregnancy: How I Got There, Part 2

'Temping' Your Way To Conception

BBT...BBT...BBT...I keep seeing these 3 letters everywhere I read an article or blog on pregnancy! BBT? .....Babies Be Teething...?  

Baby Boom Theory....? 

Basic Baby Techniques....??



Bouncing Baby Test....???



Can someone PLEASE tell me what that is...????

O...

Please don't tell me you have to...you know...stick it up there...?

Actually you can if you want to. Really. But if you do...you have to stick to that method every month!

SO, this is a Basal Body Thermometer, used for taking your Basal Body Temperature. Basal body temperature is the temperature of your body upon waking. Essentially it is your lowest temperature for that day, attained while your body is at rest. 

Why is this temperature so important?

Well, if you want to fall pregnant, then pin-pointing when you ovulate is the key to achieving pregnancy and your BBT will help you to determine that.

 

During ovulation, a woman's body temperature tends to rise up by roughly 1° Fahrenheit / ½° Celsius. Therefore, by 'temping' every morning and recording this temperature, you will become accustomed to the pattern of your own body temperature and will able to map out when you will be ovulating. The more familiar you become with your own body temperature, the better your chances of conceiving. Intercourse timing is important! (I found out much to my dismay...but making these planned intercourse sessions fun is fun in itself!!) 

You can purchase a BBT kit at any pharmacy. They usually come with a booklet in which you can record your temperature. There are also really great fertility sites that have a BBT chart integrated, so you can easily punch in your temperature on these sites and your chart will be drawn out for you with information about it. I was on 2 sites AND recording in my booklet. Sounds like I went over-board but I enjoyed all of it! So try out fertilityfriend.com and/or countdowntopregnancy.com. I found them the most helpful and filled with info.

How does 'temping' work exactly?

So there are a few rules you need to follow in order to be as accurate as possible. Accuracy is really important.

1.) Begin your 'temping' the first morning of your period. If your period arrived during the day, then start the next morning.

2.) Take your temperature EVERY MORNING at the SAME time.

3.) Take your temperature using the SAME method everyday. 

   --under your armpit -- under your tongue -- in your vagina --->whichever you fancy :)

4.) Take your temperature BEFORE getting out of bed. BEFORE moving. NO hugging the sexy man next to you. No talking to him either. NO cuddling. Don't even think about peeing just yet unless you have taken your temperature first! All these things affect your temperature as they can raise it to an inaccurate degree.

5.) Record it or write it down to record later.

Now...you may carry on with your day :)

Charting...

Everyday you chart your bbt, you will notice that your temperature stays at around the same level. Keeping in mind that every women is different and actually, your temperatures may be all over the shore. That is completely fine, you will still be able to determine your pattern.

Before you ovulate, your body creates a high level of estrogen. This hormone is what keeps your body temperature at a low. Once you ovulate, your body now increases its dose of progesterone and it is this hormone that increases your body temperature.

What you will notice on your chart is a slight dip in temperature followed by a big rise. 

See example in chart below:

This is my personal chart. As you can see after the slight dip, I am one of the women who actually had a slow rise in temperature. Most other women have a significant and obvious rise. 

That slight dip, before the rise, is the day you ovulate!! D-DAY!

If you are also tracking your cervical mucus and/or your cervical position as I had explained in my previous post, then you will see that it all corresponds accordingly and you will have egg-white mucus and a high, squishy soft cervix the day your temperature dips. 

Alarm bells should be ringing right about now to locate your man! Go! Go! Go!

The best time to conceive (according to various sources) is 3 days before ovulation and the day of, just to make sure :) 

Assuming you got your conception time right, your folic acid and iron levels are up to date, that you are loyally ovulating and your partner's 'sperm in shining armor' has won your perfect, glowing egg, then your temperature should stay in the high ranges from here on. Congratulations!!!! 

 

If you are not pregnant, after about 14 days, expect your temperature to drop significantly and your period to arrive the next day. It is recommended to chart your temperature for about 3 months before seeing an obvious pattern. I was just lucky enough to have done it on my first charting attempt. 

I had found it really helpful to scroll through various pregnancy charts on Fertility Friend. I familiarized myself with the different ways womens' temperatures fluctuated and strayed away from the 'classic' charting signs and STILL got pregnant. If it doesn't work for you the first time, don't be disheartened. There is a time and place for EVERYTHING. Even making something as precious as a baby. Your body will be ready when it is ready. It is just up to you to help prime yourself for pregnancy and your hormones will conspire :)

Have fun!!!! :) Lots of it!! It's an exciting time!

Pregnancy: Getting There!

Primal Decision

Since beginning my love story with my soul mate, Shahn, I had one day experienced one of the greatest realizations/feelings/inner experiences that had just exploded inside of me from out of nowhere! It's like a nuclear bomb sitting inside you just waiting for the right trigger to set it off. 

Yes, I am talking about that intense feeling you get that drives a woman to have a baby! It is such a primal feeling. But it hit! Hard. And so the conversations were sparked, the idea was given time to set in, and a year after marriage we were both ready!!

It was only after embarking on this journey that research revealed to me that there was so much I had not known about making a baby! All my life I thought it was just:

1+1= baby

No way! It's turned out more like this:

4 Months Before Conception

For the first 2 months after making the decision to discard all intercourse protection (yay!), we were just on a high checking and double checking for the very FIRST symptoms and signs that my darling husband's sperm won the race so we can celebrate and say "O my, what competitive athletes you have!" :) Oh but of course, the lining of my womb faithfully shed as it always did...and then the day came when we were booked into have a full body check at a wonderful wellness center. Oh my goodness, I can not stress enough how important it is to have this check done, especially if you are trying to conceive!! 

What we discovered:

My iron levels were lower than low! This meant that I was getting through each day on adrenaline instead of energy and that in turn made my thyroid glands work 100 times harder than it actually should and so it was not in optimum health at all. And what ALL this means was that it was causing me to not ovulate(produce eggs) every month! So obviously the sperm race was in vain because they were racing towards a non-existent egg!

My folic acid levels were low - extremely important for pregnancy.

My instructions were to not make a baby until these levels were up first. It would be impossible anyway, because my body was not primed for pregnancy just yet. 

And so began my next journey into making my womb an inviting and safe place for future baby. 

I had also begun research into ovulation and that opened up so many doors of knowledge that I found absolutely crucial to know. It is something definitely worth sharing, so here we go:

Two very important things happen simultaneously when you ovulate and you need to become familiar with it...

1.) Cervical mucus. You need to recognize the different types of your mucus throughout your menstrual cycle to get a clear idea of when you ovulate. That means, feeling it, looking at it, smearing it between your fingers! YES! It does sound gross, but it's a part of your body and you get to know this different part of yourself that you never did! How awesome is that! I enjoyed it - I actually felt proud of my body after monitoring it every week and saw the developments and improvements :) (Well done body!!)

2.) Cervix positioning. Your cervix changes position 3 times throughout your menstrual cycle. You need to understand when and why those positions occur which confirm ovulation on another level. It means sticking your finger up there and feeling around to confirm which stage you're at.

Sounds fun doesn't it! ;)

Cervical Mucus: The Details

These are the stages of cervical mucus after your period ends:

dry, flaky or no mucus --> moist, watery, creamy --> thick, sticky, egg-white, stretchy

Checking your cervical mucus every few days to see which phase it is in will give you a pretty good indicator of where you are in your cycle and how close you are to ovulation. The key here is to catch the egg-white mucus in time so you can do the magical deed to conceive. The egg white, stretchy mucus creates a wonderful environment for sperm to survive, thrive and move through obstacles quick enough to reach your ovaries. 

When you see this, drop what you're doing and drag your baby-making companion into the bedroom (or the closest convenient spot) ;)

Cervix: Where are you???

After your period ends, upon investigating, you should find that your cervix is positioned low and feels quite hard. Alot of people refer to it as the tip of a nose. So when you do decide to look for it, feel around for a hard nose :/ 

There is also an opening in your cervix that you may be able to feel. It's closed when the cervix is hard but as it softens, the opening becomes wider, more inviting so to speak.

As you proceed through your cycle, your cervix will begin to move a higher up and feel a little softer than it was before and nearing the end of your cycle, when you are producing egg white mucus (the most fertile), your cervix will be way up there and squishy soft. This allows it to open up and make it easier for sperm to travel into. It's like a light at the beginning of a tunnel for sperm. 

low cervix, hard --> med cervix, med soft--> high cervix, squishy soft

If you are really interested in seeing these phases in full colour, I suggest you visit this link:

Beautiful Cervix Project. This woman photographed the inside of her vagina everyday of her 33 day cycle and commented on what you see in terms of cervical mucus, cervix positioning and body symptoms. It's worth a look!

Final overview:

 dry, flaky or no mucus --> moist, watery, creamy --> thick, sticky, egg-white, stretchy -->

   --low cervix, hard--       --med cervix, med soft--        --high cervix, squishy soft--

          ~infertile~                    ~slightly fertile~                         ~very fertile~

Woohoo! In my next blog, I will be touching on the instrument that got me waking up at 7am everyday. It's quite fun to use, a BBT thermometer! :) Measuring your Basal Body Temperature every morning and making sure if it corresponds to your mucus and cervix is so reassuring that you are on the correct track and that your body is playing ball!

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it! :) 

Lots of Love,

Dhiya & Shahn

The Beginnings of a Timeless Love Story

There is a beautiful man sitting next to me. Possibly the most beautiful I have ever seen. No. Actually, he is THE most beautiful man I have ever seen - playing League of Legends in between researching the heart's electro-magnetic frequencies...

While typing this, I was overwhelmed by the sensations in my body telling me that I would do anything for him. You know, racing heart beat, butterflies, raging hormones - all that. 
It's a bitingly cold, rainy and windy autumn day in May. Wellington is a prime little city for this kind of weather. Robed in no less than 3 layers of clothing, beanie, scarf, gloves, sitting under a heater, I can't quite comprehend what my life would have been like back in sunny, tropical South Africa had I not followed my heart, or rather, this beautiful man sitting next to me.
I have vivid memories as a teenager creating a list of who "the man of dreams" is. Not knowing what I was looking for, I started listing the usual qualities you would think of for these things - good-looking, great personality, good sense of humour, etc. Boy did I get just that! And only that...
Every person has a "great personality" in essence. They just all may not gel with yours and vice versa. I later learned that being absolutely specific about what you want was the way to go. 
This relationship ended, of course. (Thank God)

So I updated my list and added in more specific qualities or traits that were missing which, not surprisingly, resembled a good chunk of my previous relationship. It came with a lot of challenges that I convinced myself to accept, which kept me from being who I so much desired to be. The relationship lasted approximately 2.5 years. 
I was left with myself, wondering what I would do with myself, remembering dreams I had of leaving South Africa, travelling, living 'the life' and painfully feeling the doubts that any of that would happen because I couldn't see 'how' to get there. I was forced to discover myself. My "the man of my dreams" list converted to my "ideal relationship" list and more details were mentally added to it. After many discoveries and realizations, one lesson became clear as day - that we are reflections of our most personal relationships because 'like' attracts 'like' and so I needed to be that ideal person in my list first. There is a quote by Neale Donald Walsch that perfectly reflects this idea. It stayed with me after years of reading his books and I still treasure it to this day; "Be who you are looking for and who you are looking for will find you". This quote had started making a whole world more of sense and I began to genuinely practice this wonderful truth everyday. Since I had made that life-transformational commitment a year ago,I find myself, in this most amazing moment, to be sitting next to the most beautiful man in my world and he is my husband.

And this is the beginning of our love story...

Our Beautiful and Life-altering Adventures of Love :)

The Stepping Stones:

As little kids we are innocent of any knowledge and experience of relationships. We become fascinated with feelings of "liking" someone in a different way from our friends and family or "having a crush" on someone. It's all very exciting and new! Without any conscious understanding of love - it is in children that you witness the innocence of love in its purest form.
Growing up, reaching puberty - just on your way to your teens - you find yourself anticipating the utterance of those three beloved words from your sweetheart, as a signal that you are special, and you think, "so this is love?" - still not understanding the depths of love and relationships, you still experience the deep ends of pain that brings. It leaves you confused, but you never give up on this mysterious feeling everyone calls love.
Just into high school, your hormones are raging, you find more people attractive and crave that special attention. You are blinded with emotions and excitement-still waiting eagerly to hear those three words-it seals the deal. 

Now you are in love.

A little while later you are left with a breakup out of nowhere to deal with. You can't understand why it happened. It caused you so much of pain and a whole new level of confusion. You thought you had this whole 'love-thing' figured out. You begin questioning it. Is it really what it's supposedly made out to be? Why can't you have it? You develop your own answers. Answers that really do make perfect sense to you and that you are satisfied with in that moment. Suddenly you have gone full blast into another relationship! Giving your all, your heart, and maybe even yourself. You know this will last, this is worth it.
Disappointment. Its heart-wrenching. What went wrong? Why? Nothing makes sense to you anymore. It's hopeless. You won't find love. You start finding fault with yourself, thinking something must be wrong with you. Love is not meant for you- its bullshit. It's not what everyone makes it out to be. It's 'over-rated'. That's what they say. You stopped believing in fairy-tales a long time ago anyway. But, deep down, subconsciously, that yearning for love is still there. 

So nearing the end of high school- we've been through enough relationships to accept that the "one" will enter your life or will happen to you in perfect time. Maybe. So we wait. Patiently.
Entering college with the same beliefs. A whole new world-a whole new life-a whole lot more lessons.
So, we've waited. We've rejected a few or more attempts being made onto us (which would have made our hearts dance a few years ago-but we've learnt what we don't want anymore). Becoming very selective about who we allow into our circle, we still have that yearning to be loved-yet know what we have been through in the past, we're skeptical about relationships now. Still questioning its system. But human nature gets the better of you and your past experiences of heartache and hurt somehow fly right past you without a single notice and low and behold, "Mr Right" has fallen into the palm of your hands. I mean, your old enough now to establish who Mr Right is, right? You are overwhelmed with happiness. You are experiencing a whole new, fresh, intense series of emotions and you think life can't get any better than this (when in actual fact it can, but you're not aware of this just yet). You have fallen love! Wohoo! Hooray for you! You look back and feel silly about your past relationships-what were you thinking? This is the first time you are experiencing so much of care and sharing and a different feeling of love from your past. This must be it. It has to be! You go out of your way to please each other. Attending to each others needs. 
Suddenly, you find yourself quite unhappy. And you can't understand why. He/she IS the one for me! I'm tired of looking for relationships! This has to be the one! You convince yourself that it's just part of the deal. You will get over it and live with it and put up with it. It's all good. I mean, so many other couples do it right? Put up with each other. It will fade. You are happy. You are just being selfish. You are afraid this will turn out a disappointment like the rest of your hopeless relationships. 

But...as you grow as a being. As you learn and become wiser and more clear about what you want. And know that what you want is what you will get and you will not settle for less - why should you? You stand up for yourself, for what you believe. You are brave and so mature now than ever before. You have learnt what you needed to from this relationship. You are grateful for it. It was good. It was what you both needed. But you can't stay in it anymore. Not if you want to soar and be the free spirit that you are. I'ts too constricting being in this relationship. You end it.
You have learnt plenty from your past.
You know exactly what you want-because you finally know who you are- with the help of your past.
You still haven't given up on love. In fact you're excited about it! You know that you will be with the one that is meant for you and you thank the Universe for that person - who is still yet to come.

You stop looking.

You learn that the essence of love and of relationships are about being the best of who you are in relation to your partner. You allow them to be exactly who they want to be, choose to be, strive to be. And they allow you the same.
You realize its not about need, but about giving. Giving without expectation from your partner. Its about learning from each other and giving each other wings to fly!

You stopped looking.

You realized that you needed to "be who you are looking for and who you are looking for will find you".
Your beloved appears into your life. Somehow. You didn't see it coming.
You find yourself in contentment, a sense of peace envelopes you in their presence. 

You need nothing from them. 

Just the need to give them love. Your beloved allows you the freedom to love yourself-which in turn allows you to love your beloved. For you realize...that you can only truly love someone by loving yourself first - or how would you be fit to love another? 
You know now that love doesn't need. It only exists. In you. It is radiated through you unto them and them unto you.
Holding hands has never felt so complete before.
You learn that you have been through so much of pain in the past but had never given up on love. You had been patient with it. Exploring it. And you understand with great clarity now, that you have been molded by these experiences, into being someone that is perfect for your beloved and your beloved has been through their pains and heartaches. Your beloved has been molded too...to be perfect for you. 

True love does exist.

You just have to be patient with it.