Tuesday 6th April 2010

Gestation: 27 weeks, 4 days

One year ago.

Each morning, the light goes on and the thermometer is placed.

“It’s important that the temperature is taken the moment that you wake,” Suse assures me.

This done, she sets her timer and then spits on the microscope.

“You have to leave it for ten minutes before reading,” she intones.

And after that, she rises to pee in a cup.

 

* * * * *

“I’m done with that test,” she finally said two days ago.

“Thank Christ,” I replied.  “I hate that damn test.”

“Should we drop it?”

“Please.”

On the saliva test, ferning only remained for one day.  The next day we were back to pebbling.  This on its own, was a little disappointing.  After all, everyone knows that pebbling is not as good as ferning.  Everyone who spits on microscopes first thing in the morning, that is.

The plants had hibernated for another month.

* * * * *

Suse’s basal body temperature was up, but less than the expected half-degree.  Again, on it’s own, we were left wondering.  After all, there was the night of mittelschmerz.  But since the ectopic there’s been so much phantom pain that it’s hard to know what’s what.

So this morning, I decide to tabulate it all.  I take Suse’s scribbled little note from beside the bed.

And I put it in a spreadsheet.

* * * * *

I’d completely forgotten the faint line we got on the LH surge test on day twelve.  As hated as that test is, I’d dismissed it out of hand the following day when it again returned a negative.  Hell, we both did.  For three months of wee dipping we’ve earnt a solitary faint line.  Whoop-de-doo.

Yet, when it’s all put together, it looks like this:

Pretty isn’t it?  As a scientifically trained male, the information above soothes my need for order and rational understanding.  And, viewed like this, it looks good.

My own spreadsheet has a sixth column that lists the days we had sex, but I’m quite sure that this is relevant to no one else but us – suffice to say that with Suse’s temperature rising on day twelve, her pee stick showing a faint line on the same day, mittelschmerz a day earlier, and the ferning pattern appearing two days later, that we did our level best to ensure that there were sperm in the right place at the right time.

But what’s more exciting, is that given the chart above, there is a burden of evidence.  And that burden of evidence says that – despite her greatest fears – Suse is, in fact, ovulating.

Sometimes, you need stand back and look at the cold hard facts.

Sometimes, nothing beats an Excel Spreadsheet.  And here, above – exhibit A – is a beautiful little table that warms the cockles of my heart.

Sometimes, when you’re in this far, you can’t see the ovulation for the tests.

* * * * *