Silly OPK...

According to my ovulation predictor kit, I am highly fertile today. Since I know I ovulated almost two weeks ago, this seems strange. However, last time I was preggers, the same thing happened. After getting a high fertility OPK reading for over a week and then a peak fertility reading, we got a faint positive pregnancy test. That was in July.

It's only day 17 of my cycle, so it's a bit too early to take a HPT. I will continue to take an OPK test every day, though, so we will see what it continues to say. Still, it's hard to not get too excited!!

In case you're interested in the differences between an OPK and a HPT, here is some information I found interesting:

http://www.justmommies.com/articles/opk-as-hpt.shtml

Here's to the future, bright, hopeful, and full of possibilities!

March on, warrior women!! 

The waiting game...

I haven't written in awhile, and it hasn't been for lack of wanting to. Not much has been happening on the fertility front for us in recent weeks.

Last week, a fertility nurse informed me that LabCorp had messed up my bloodwork and not taken all of the necessary samples for further comprehensive testing back in early September. Since all of the bloodwork wasn't properly done, I had to get the necessary nine vials of blood drawn this morning and will not be able to see the fertility doctor until the end of October. Bummer!

My husband and I could be infuriated by this, but what's the point? Waiting a little over three weeks to see the doctor really doesn't matter one way or the other. 

In fact, we are taking a much more relaxed approach to getting pregnant now. We are not using any fertility treatments, but I have embraced Eastern methods of fertility treatments, such as herbs, weekly massage, and regular acupuncture. We are having regular sex but aren't stressing out about it. We are confident and optimistic that we will be pregnant again; we just have to be patient and kind to ourselves! I have even deleted all of the pregnancy apps from my iPhone! This says a lot.

It was certainly a good sign that my period arrived right when it was due the month after my miscarriage. My body is slowly getting back to normal and will soon be ready to conceive again. That much I am sure of.

In the meantime, I'm going to continue taking good care of myself. I now get more regular sleep than I ever have, love my new job, and am finding healthy, less demanding forms of exercise other than Crossfit. I am in a much better place -- physically and emotionally -- than I was just one year ago. 

God has chosen a special baby for us. We just need to continue having faith and good that we will meet him or her soon. In the meantime, our waiting game will continue....but we will continue smiling. Life is too short not to.

For all of you about to give birth....

I'm thinking of many of my current colleagues here!

Prayer Upon Admission To the Hospital

Upon Admission To the Hospital

Master of the universe: I believe with perfect faith that my salvation is in Your hands and that no mortal doctor has the power to heal anything. May it be Your will to save me from this mighty danger, and help me so that the doctor who comes to deliver me at the proper time may be Your faithful emissary; and that no mishap occur on his account, heaven forefend, and that I may give birth with good fortune and with no injury either to me or to the fetus.”

Prayer from a Yiddish prayer book of unknown date; translation from “A Jewish Woman’s Prayer Book” by Aliza Lavie Copyright © 2008 by Aliza Lavie. Excerpted by permission Spiegel & Grau, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

A Prayer for Labor

A Prayer While Birthing

Birthing Blessings

Merle Feld

Help me to protect and nurture and guide

this new, yet undiscovered soul.

And let me not curse the child or myself

when we both prove to be only human.

Lines excerpted from the poem, “Birthing Blessings” by Merle Feld, published in “A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey” (State University of New York), 1999

For when you want to make a baby! Yeah!

Here's a special prayer for that special time...

Prayer for the Night of Conception

On the Evening The Couple Wishes To Conceive

By Nina Beth Cardin

My God and God of my mothers and fathers, may it be Your will that You be gracious to us tonight. Make tonight a night of peace and joy, tenderness and loving, a night on which my beloved and I conceive a child. Hold us close in Your embrace, God, just as we hold each other tightly. Remember us as You remembered Sarah. Care for us as You cared for Rebecca. Tend to us as You tended to our mothers, Leah and Rachel.

Choose from Your sacred treasury of souls, and give us a child who is wise and caring, healthy and secure. May we be blessed with a pregnancy that lasts, with a birth that yields life, and a child who gives us joy.

May our family grow through the years, and through Your kindness, may we be a blessing to all who know us.
May the words of our mouths and the desires of our hearts please You, our Strength and our Deliverer.

Prayer from “Tears of Sorrow, Seeds of Hope: A Jewish Spiritual Companion for Infertility and Pregnancy Loss” 1999 by Nina Beth Cardin.

A Prayer for Fertility Treatment

Thinking of you all....

Prayer for Fertility Treatments

 

Open, o open for us the gates
I pray and pray

the body's silence
swallows my prayer

I want to run out into the sunlight
be impregnated by the virile air
take the syringe out of my uterus
where is my mother, where is the midwife
when will the darkness blur into a shape

in this room discarded ova hover
ghostly spheres above the metal ploughshares
of the fertility doctors
why am I here
I want to give life to a single cell
so little to ask

so much

Excerpt from a poem/prayer written during fertility treatment. Printed by permission of the author, circa 2008.

A Special Prayer for the Womb...

Prayer for the Womb

World Of The Womb

Tikva Frymer-Kensky

My eye cannot see you.

My will cannot control you.

But I feel your presence,

and I note your being

and I wish you all blessings,

and I love you.

Lines excerpted from the poem, “World of the Womb” by Tikva Frymer-Kensky, published in “Motherprayer: The Pregnant Woman’s Spiritual Companion” (Riverhead Trade), 1996.