Back in April of 2009 I decided to ditch my birth control pills. I decided this for many reasons. One was that I was in the process of getting off anti-depressants, so I figured that any pill that may be effecting my hormones and moods would be a good idea to ditch. Secondly I was nearly 200 pounds and wanting to lose a good chunk of weight. The average weight gain for people on birth control pills is something like 10 to 15 pounds, so I knew that they very well could be contributing to my weight gain.
I also had read that sometimes fertility doesn't come back for a year after quitting birth control pills, at least full fertility. Meaning you might ovulate, but your cervical fluids might be too dry.
I wasn't even engaged to Brent at this point, but we had been living together for nearly a year and it was clear that this is where we were headed. We also were pretty sure we were going to try to get pregnant as soon as we were married, if not a month or two before. Note: THANK GOD we waited, I felt sick from the pregnancy only a week after conception, which means had we gotten pregnant before the wedding I would have felt sick for my wedding and honeymoon.
I ditched the pills, but wasn't ready to get pregnant. So what did I do? I charted my temps and checked my cervical fluids. For those of you who are unaware, before you ovulate your cervical fluids become more wet, and after you ovulate your basal body temp increases and stays up until you menstruate. So you have to avoid unprotected sex a good week or so before ovulation.
I got really good at charting my temps, but the cervical fluids I was bad at. So eventually I just charted the temps and we used condoms after my period ended until the temp went up for three days in a row. We used this method of birth control for over a year and it never failed us. In fact I've never had an unplanned pregnancy on any birth control method.
Which of course only made me wonder. "Maybe I'm infertile!" Actually I should be on my knees thanking the gods that I never got pregnant accidentally, Brent and I didn't exactly use condoms properly, we used them consistently, but you're really supposed to put them on before ANY genital contact, and well we rarely did that, and we also used the "pull out method" a few times when we were out of condoms, a method I have scorned for years. But really this was all when we were engaged, and I think we thought if we had an unplanned pregnancy, it wouldn't be too bad.
So shortly after the wedding we decided to try to have a baby. This is the extent of our conversation before we began:
"So you want to try to have a baby now?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Really?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
"OK."
We had sex once a day for a good week until my temp spiked and we were pregnant. Apparently we were quite fertile (or extremely lucky) and all that birth control wasn't for nothing.
Today I am 11 weeks and 6 days pregnant, which means we conceived 9 weeks and 6 days ago, approximately. Pregnancy oddly begins the week of your last period before you've ever had sex or been artificially inseminated or whatever method you used.
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