Trying to conceive at 38 – the two weeks wait

Ready for our next little one to join our family, I learnt that trying to conceive at 38 seemed like the never ending 2 weeks wait. At 36 I fell pregnant in the first two months of trying. It felt as though we looked at each other, sneezed and BOOM there was our little one in my belly. At 38 I quickly discovered I did not have much (or any) reserve energy after looking after our first bundle of energetic joy.  Struggling with the trauma from the birth of our first, toppled with finding the time to connect as a couple, made baby making a challenging and exhausting experience.

With our first we did not do much in the way of monitoring my cycle or ovulation.  It was so quick and easy there was not any need. While trying to conceive my next I had to track my cycle as it was no longer regular. Not even a little regular. Thankfully these days there are a myriad of apps available to make the tracking process relatively easy. We used ovulation strips to determine when ovulation was occurring. All of this additional knowledge did not seem to help at all when each month, my cycle would return, and we would be back into the never ending two weeks wait.

Waiting, waiting, waiting! Falling pregnant seems to fall into two cycles of around two weeks of waiting.  The first two weeks you have your cycle and baby making happens and the next two weeks you are waiting to see if all your efforts have paid off. Two weeks feels like months and at the end of the second two week wait, if there is not the exciting (+) on the pregnancy stick, it feels really confusing why all your best efforts are not working.  It feels as though falling pregnant is just never going to happen. All there is, is more waiting.

Hang in there! The waiting eventually ends.  We were about to book our appointment at a fertility clinic to see if there was anything physical preventing my husband Carl and I from falling pregnant a second time.  I was on my last two ovulation strips and had a very short cycle that month.  I had no idea when I might ovulate due to my cycle being so short.  Carl and I decided to really try and make time for each other, to connect and to give it one last shot before booking the appointment. I used the ovulation strips on the days the app I was using predicted I would be ovulating.  On both days it showed I did not have the LH surge on those days. It felt hopeless. We tried anyway and hoped for the best.  After our next two weeks wait I took a pregnancy test and voila!  I was pregnant!

Our two weeks wait was finally over and the “waiting for the nausea to end” was about to begin…