Five weeks four days:
So far so good. Still no AF after my BFP and am 28 DPO. Confused? I was too.
These are all terms bandied about on the Baby Central forums where I was advised to join and lurk. What you do is give your estimated date of delivery (in my case determined by my first day of last menstrual period) and it puts you in a group of women who will deliver that week. Or so I thought...
What I found were a lot of women talking about daily temperatures, OPKs, and all sorts of terminology I knew of as fertility issues, not pregnancy issues. Lots of people would have headlines like, "Now on to August :(" or "I got my AF, on to August." Or worse, talk about their BFNs.
This also confused me. Not just the abbreviations which I will get to in a moment, but because there were non-pregnant women on a pregnancy forum.
I'm well aware of the difficulties of getting pregnant. I've lived through it with friends and with my sibling who has tried everything, unsuccessfully, to make me an aunt. I know the heart-wrenching experience women have when they get implanted and hope it will stick. All the meds they have to take for optimum fertility. It is unimaginably difficult.
That is why I chose to go the fate route and avoid all fertility issues completely. I never got fertility testing (at age 40!). I never took a hormone in my entire life. I also made sure that I never focused too hard on the idea of having a baby. Yes, I've wanted a baby of my own, but I have two amazing kids through marriage (full-time since my husband is a widower) and could go on just fine with only them.
And yes, I had a feeling I was probably fertile (from a making eggs perspective) as I have a regular 27/28 day cycle. Are there abnormalities in the eggs? Who knows. I try to avoid the X-ray tech as much as possible, but I work in a hospital. I travel in airplanes. I'm exposed more frequently than most ordinary people. I could have some damage there.
I'm also a realist. I know I'm 40. I know I had a small likelihood of getting pregnant naturally, and that I have a large likelihood of miscarriage (especially from genetic issues). Our eggs are vulnerable to damage throughout our lives, so I know that by 40, my odds are low. Then again, I found the man of my dreams (literally...a long wonderful story) at age 38, so I know that fate works and can work in my favor.
BTW, here's why eggs are so vulnerable: At birth you are born with all the eggs you'll ever have. Actually, the baby I'm carrying now will soon create all the eggs (if a girl) she will every have in her life. Those eggs are not fully developed. They are stuck in First Prophase until ovulation which then triggers the rest of Meiosis I to complete.
Which basically means (for those who don't remember high school biology) that in the process of creating eggs through Meiosis, the eggs are stuck about halfway through the process. Fertilization triggers the finalization of the process to proceed and complete Meiosis II. So environmental reasons can mess with the proper division of genes/chromosomes/etc...
Men, on the other hand, produce new sperm constantly. Each is fully Meiosis-ized (term made up by me). So the sperm don't sit around getting pummeled by radiation or toxins of any kind for a length of time. They are born, they die, new ones are born and die. If they are malformed, they are too weak to survive the journey to the egg and die.
They don't get stuck halfway through creation for 30ish years like eggs. Men make gazillions of sperm through their lifetime. Women make 400 eggs (estimated) over her fertile lifetime. Doesn't seem fair, but at least they have to suffer through their prostate in their older years--which women thankfully don't have.
So back to the forum, it makes me sad to see all these women are so desperate to have a child that they join the forum for where they hope they will be pregnant, long before they are actually pregnant. The disappointment, IMO, seems to be compounded by the fact that they are doing this month after month.
The abbreviations? Well, AF stands for period. Huh? I wondered that too. AF is slang for "Aunt Flo" for whatever reason. I keep picturing this big heavy woman "Aunt Flo" bleeding. Not a pleasant bit of imagery. Seems like P for period would make much more sense. But alas, AF is what they use on the boards. Learn to love it. Or not.
And it is ubiquitous on the baby boards. BFP stands for "Big Fat Positive or I've seen "Big F---ing Positive" for the pregnancy tests (likewise BFN is Big Fat Negative). DPO is days post ovulation (that one makes sense). And OPK is ovulation predictor kit. Here's a list of all the terms commonly found.
Next article, I should be caught up with my blogging in real time baby time. And I will talk about all the apps I'm using to track my baby's progress.
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