Nothing messes with your head like trying to get pregnant. You’ll read countless books about how to make it happen and beg your husband to go out with the guys another time because according to your $400 fertility monitor, he needs to plant his seed between 5 to 7 p.m. tonight or else. And if you’re the first gal in your circle of friends to try to mommify yourself, it’s even worse. Are they really cheering you on, or are you killing the group’s spontaneity mojo? If you tell one of them, you have to tell them all, right? What if they expect you to be their expert on this stuff once they decide it’s time? Gah! Too many questions! Not enough answers! Of course, motherhood is a beautiful thing blah blah blah, but getting there—especially if you’re the one paving the way for your friends to do it after they watch you give it a go—can be an anxious ride. Here are just some of the things that will increase your stress levels while you’re TTC:
1. Getting your period. But I want a baby!
2. Checking your cervical mucous without getting caught doing it, despite your BFFs always coming to the bathroom with you.
3. Figuring out whether your cervical mucous is more slippery or egg whitey (seriously, aren’t those words basically synonyms?).
4. PMS symptoms and pregnancy symptoms being exactly the same. NOT COOL, FEMALE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM. NOT. COOL.
5. Remembering all the unwise things you did to your body in college that your friends bring up right around the time you’re ovulating.
6. People asking when you’re going to have kids in front of your friends, who have THE WORST poker faces.
7. Wondering whether you will lose those friends once your future baby arrives.
8. Doing the things during girls’ night out that you always do at girls night out because, What if you’re already pregnant?!
9. That friend you have crashing on your couch while in between apartments making your “meetings” with your husband rather awkward.
10. Your husband’s work daring to require him to travel in more than three-day increments some months. HE SHOULD BE ABLE TO STAY HOME AND CLOSE IN CASE IT’S FERTILIZATION TIME! GO FIND A NEW JOB, HONEY. THIS ONE IS STUPID.
11. Talking about your sex life with girlfriends even though you’ve been talking about it with them forever. Now there’s an end goal, so OMG, THE PRESSUUUURRRRRRE.
12. A friend accidentally getting knocked up while you’ve been charting and trying for months, making you decide that your plumbing is a hot mess and you’ll never be a mother and now you have to eat a tub of Chunky Monkey and cry in a closet for a while.
13. Your temperature.
14. The temperature of your friend’s apartment when you’re visiting her.
15. The temperature of your husband’s fruit basket when you’re not visiting it.
16. A broken DVR, making you decide between doing the deed or watching the season finales of the shows you have been waiting all year to see come to a conclusion, knowing that all your friends will be talking about it tomorrow.
17. Being told to “just relax, so it can happen” by your well-meaning girlfriends who have no frickin’ clue how much that stresses you out.
18. Soft cheese and wine, i.e. The Girlfriends Go-To Get-Together Meal Plan.
19. Your birthday, which makes your friends want to party and makes you want to jump into a time machine to go back a few years and start TTC before your eggs got so damn old and dusty.
20. Knowing there is a chance you’ll be all lumpy with baby bump in your bestie’s champagne-colored bridesmaid dress by the time her wedding day arrives.
21. Not getting your period. Holy sh*t, I am so NOT READY for a baby!
More for TTC:
- 11 Early Signs of Pregnancy You’ve Never Heard Before
- How to Take a Pregnancy Test the Right Way, Step-by-Step
- Pregnancy Books That Won’t Terrify You (+ 1 for Your Marriage)
