Wrap it up

So. It's the end of 2008. What a freakin' year. I stopped blogging in January 2008. I was a newlywed who had the whole world ahead of me. Right? Too busy for a blog. It's funny because I've been following everyone else's blogs since then.

I have kept no less than three calendars at a time for the last three years. The past year I kept two pocket calendars and a wall calendar chocked full of activities, birthdays, special events and most importantly of all, a record of the journey that is trying to conceive.

I could go over each and every month's ups, downs and heartaches. I would like to enter a rambling post about the chemical pregnancy I went through and the fights with my husband over how hard and stressful (and sometimes not very sexy) it is to try to have a baby.

But I won't. I can address those topics as I try and try to keep up with this blog. I tend to distance myself from things that make me focus and deal with the hard things in my life. It's how I've lost friends, family members, and a lot of paperwork.

My ultimate goal of this little project? To someday post a positive pregnancy test followed by a picture of my child. And then, children. I'm about to hit my wall on this and I don't want to lose it. I feel like I wasted a year of my life tracking and obsessing over TTC. At the same time, it was a good thing, in my opinion. Why? Because if we hadn't tried for a year (at the beginning of Cycle #15 now) and experienced everything we did, we'd be the naive couple who wonders a couple of years down the road, "Why aren't we pregnant yet? What should we do about that?".

Yeah right. I. Control. Everything. I must know everything. It is impossible for me to do an activity without first researching it on the internet (yes I still use the library, but rarely). That is the theme of this blog. I Can't Control Everything. I've grappled with my beliefs (which weren't concrete in the first place), my husband, my family and friends, and most of all, myself. I usually get what I want in the end, if I wait for it.

Getting pregnant? Having a baby? Yeah right. I totally thought I could control that. I'm laughing now only because I look back at how many months I went to the Estimated Due Date calculators and planned the 12 week announcement to friends, families, co-workers, etc. I kept Word documents and lists everywhere (hidden, but between work and home). I memorized when my third trimester would begin and where we would be. I planned every activity and vacation around when/if I would be pregnant.

I'm not so sure I can do that this year. Trust me, I want to! But I am slowly accepting the fact that I don't want to waste another year holding my breath for a baby. It'll happen. If I can have a chemical pregnancy, that means that DH's swimmers can meet up with my eggs. But since it's been 9 months since that happened, we may be in for a longer adventure/torture than I thought.

Hopefully the specialist will help. I know what I can do to help myself: lose 20 pounds (long story, will address it another day), eat healthy, drink LESS diet pop and a lot MORE water, get more active in the winter (I golf 4 days a week in the summers and play softball the days I'm not golfing) and keep up on my prenatals. It's what the doctor will tell me so I'm prepared to agree fully.

The funny thing is, for the first 8 months we TTC'd, I weighed 20 pounds less, ate great, exercised, drank plenty of water, ate healthy and took my prenatals religiously. So we'll see what's going to happen.