Welcome to month three!
Welcome to month three! By now you have braved the ravages of the initial diagnosis and conquered the first two months of infertility. Only four more weeks until the second cry-mester begins!
The second cry-mester is a time of true relaxation, because the danger of accidental pregnancy is pretty much passed. If you’ve made it this far, you are unlikely to spontaneously impregnate without some intervention, so there’s one less thing to be anxious about during this process.
If you were in your third month of pregnancy, your uterus would be the size of a grapefruit and your fetus the size of an apple. Luckily, you’re infertile, and there’s no need to go around comparing your reproductive organs or offspring to items located in the produce section of the local grocery store. If you were in your third month of pregnancy, your apple-sized fetus would have nails and make urine. You may be infertile, but at least no one is peeing inside of you.
By now, you should have already been to see the reproductive endocrinologist for some RE-natal care. Testing should be well under way at this point, and not only for you. By the third month, ‘wish he were a baby-daddy’ should have made a firm appointment to check out the man-juice. This testing of the testes is vital, though sometimes overlooked in the beginning. Your gold-star HSG fallopian tubes and ultrasound-perfect ovaries are somewhat irrelevant if your partner’s sperm would perform better in a Special Olympics synchronized swimming contest than egg fertilization. A semen analysis is cheap and easy, so give the gift of porn and send your partner for a ‘happy-ending.’
You may still be feeling tired, moody, and constipated. You may also feel a new sense of calm. The urge to stay hidden under the covers all day long starts to pass as you enter the third month of infertility. This is caused by the small surge of hope you experience after your initial consultation at the fertility clinic. Having a treatment plan in place may further increase these feelings of hope.
Brace yourself, because it won’t last forever. This hope may be dashed each time you see a stroller, diaper advertisement, or sleeping baby; so keep tissues within reach at all times. This phase may last a long time.
Hopefully by now your initial weight gain has stabilized somewhat. The food cravings may still be present, and you can still reasonably expect to gain approximately twenty-five to thirty-five pounds throughout your infertility. Don’t be hard on yourself. Just repeat the mantra, ‘I’m big-boned, I deserve this ice cream, I’ll be pregnant soon anyway,’ and you should be fine.
I’ll see you next month for the infertility milestone second cry-mester. Let the good times roll.