On waiting:

(from Merriam-Webster)

Wait (verb, transitive) 1.to stay in place in expectation of 2.to serve, as a waiter 3.to delay serving

(verb, intransitive) 1.to remain stationary in readiness or expectation, to pause for another to catch up 2.to look forward expectantly, to hold back expectantly 3.to serve at meals 4.to be ready and available, to remain temporarily neglected or unrealized

(noun)A hidden or concealed position, a state or attitude of watchfulness and expectancy

Waiting seems to have taken the lead for me these days.... My own pod, as the name of this blog might suggest, is currently without pea. At this moment, I am waiting for another week or so (9 days, not that I'm counting) to pass before I can pee on a stick and hope for a result that is reliable, whether it's positive or negative. If it's negative, I will commence waiting again for my period to end, at which point I will again be waiting to ovulate and start the game over.

All of this after both waiting for my sweetheart to feel he was ready to start trying and waiting, then, for the insurance rider to kick in so we could begin this journey.

I'm more than a little sick of waiting.

So I've been thinking a lot about waiting, and anticipation (both of things desired and not). I am struck by the "official" definitions of wait, of the meanings seeming to be at odds with each other, and yet all coming down to the same feeling. To look forward, to hold back, to be hidden and watchful, to be ready and available... There is so much emotion tangled up in the waiting when one is trying to conceive. You don't dare to hope, and hope anyway; you want to scream during the dreaded "Two Week Wait" because time isn't moving fast enough, and you're waiting for any sign of your period starting... and yet you don't want to see those signs, because it will mean even more waiting.

I grew up in a family that was (and is, mostly) Roman Catholic, more or less. The back of my mind swirls with half-formed notions of waiting as a gift, the act of waiting as something to be treasured and savored. Whether those thoughts are my own family's reworking of Catholic doctrine-- my parents quietly disregarded some of the things they felt the church was flat-out wrong about-- or my childhood brain's interpretation of what I was hearing, I really can't say. I was left with a suspicion that the adults in my life were trying to find a way of explaining that there is no getting around waiting, and that I might as well get used to it. And maybe try to see it in a different light, so it would be easier to bear.

And now I'm doing what I've always done while waiting for time to pass (in itself a funny thought, as time is always passing, and it's pretty silly to get impatient as we've only got so much of it in the course of our lives). I read. More recently, in the last 10-12 years, I also sew... but mostly I read. Sometimes to distract myself-- fiction, sci-fi, books for "young adults"-- but these days, to fill my brain with as much information as possible.

How it all began, sort of

There's always a trick to picking a place to start; for my own curiousity and the beginnings of research, the start was cycles.



Having finally gotten my husband to admit that yes, he does want children (a victory in it's own right, as I worked hard at not being pushy), I was ready to launch into my information aquisition stage. We couldn't start trying right away-- insurance rules required waiting until we could officially add coverage, and then wait again for it to take effect-- but I figured I'd read up on how to get the job done (besides the obvious).



Off to Google "getting pregnant" and "improving chances for conception". Of course I knew the sperm-and-egg routine, but I had a suspicion there were certain points at which success was likely, and others when it would be unlikely. That was about the extent of my finer knowledge, despite having been required to take various Health Education classes throughout my school days. Imagine my surprise when I dug in a bit and discovered that there is actual logic to my cycles... How had I missed this? Why, at the age of 32, was I just now learning how the process of egg formation and release works? Why discharge looks different at various times of the month? And, most importantly, that the window of opportunity for sperm to gain access to egg lasts roughly 12-20 hours? With that kind of time frame, how did people EVER get pregnant?

So I've been giving a lot of thought to lack of information... the more I read, the more I thought, I want to have a daughter, just so I can teach her all this stuff early on, teach her to track her cycle and know how conception works... I began to wonder if I was the only one who had, evidently, missed the boat. Did other women my age know all this? Had I just been really dense and/or not interested enough to dig a bit deeper?

Maybe.

But if I'm not the only one... well, grab your calendars, ladies, and start counting. Go to your library and check out Our Bodies, Ourselves and read up on the amazing stuff going on inside you every month. Perhaps, like me, you've seen your period as an annoyance, a regular if sometimes utterly unwelcome visitor. And perhaps, like me, you'll feel a bit more kindly towards your own uterus after discovering the details of the process it goes through every month, just in case.

A word at the beginning....

I'm motivated to start this largely to help process my own thoughts, fears, and excitement as I contemplate becoming a mother. A compulsive reader, I've spent the last several months digging around the internet and local libraries for anything I can read to help "prepare" for the journey I believe I want to undertake-- and am starting to realize that information for women who are considering children is woefully scattered and incomplete, and to think of preparing for such a thing just by reading is, at best, wishful thinking.

This is not a collection of that information, by any stretch of the imagination; just a place for me to voice my thoughts, which I hope may be shared by other women. I'm excited, I'm hoping and trying to become pregnant, and yet I'm also terrified by the idea of successfully doing so. What if I'm not ready? What if I'm not good at it? What if I have to give up the time for myself, which already (not pregnant) seems precious and hard to come by? I know I'm not the only person who, upon deciding to try for children, has moments of reservation. Not the only one who must swing between the joyful thoughts of raising a bright, happy, well-balanced life and fear at my own potential to get sick of diapers, of the smell of sour milk, of tempers short from exhaustion.

In short, not the only one to wonder if I'm courageous enough to be a mother.