Reconciling the Chart

With the beginning of 2010 came a moment of realization for me: this could be the Year I Get Pregnant.

I've been mostly feeling butterflies of excitement for the first week of the new year.  I love fresh starts and new beginnings, and I have many beautiful things to look forward to in 2010.  But for the past few days, I've been feeling resentful and mildly anxious.  To be blunt - I've been frustrated about the pregnancy challenges that come along with being queer. 

With the guidance of some helpful books I began charting my fertility in November 2009, and for the past few months have been diligently taking my temperature every morning before I roll out of bed. I figured I was getting a head-start on the process since I have a somewhat irregular cycle and want to better understand my body's fertility signs. Yet I haven't been able to quite pinpoint the day on which I was ovulating during the past three cycles. My chart is all over the place.

I picked up my go-to-guide and began reading the charting steps again. I found I have been making a few critical mistakes:

1. Not taking my temperature at exactly the same time every morning
2. Not charting CM changes. At all. (I'll admit, I've been a little squeamish about this one)
3. Not being detailed enough about documenting "life" factors that may affect my BBT

While assessing my mistakes, I suddenly began feeling annoyed that I have to do all this work to make sure I know exactly when I'm ovulating.  Because frozen sperm is less effective than fresh.  Because every insemination costs a lot of money.  Because no matter how much we try, no matter how much we want it, S and I can't get pregnant without a donor, or "by accident."

Of course there are many people who want to get pregnant, queer and not, who face challenges with bringing children into their lives.  There are people who don't have the privilege of planning pregnancy, people managing infertility, people who don't have the resources to engage in an alternative insemination process.  My life is filled with many blessings for which, on most days, I feel immensely grateful. 

But these factors do not erase the fact that for now, at this moment, I am resentful.  It doesn't help that last year I was working in an setting with heterosexual pregnant women, many of whom had unplanned pregnancies.  Or that S continues to work in a women's health clinic and bring home the stories of the clients whose sweet little babies he holds in his arms.  I look enviously at the pictures of straight friends on Facebook who are moving along in their family-building journeys.  When looking at the world through my "victim" lens, pregnancy seems to come easy to many straight people. 

I know I'll get back to a better emotional place soon enough.  If there's one thing I've learned from my fertility chart, it's that my emotions are definitely affected by my hormonal changes.  My irritation should only last so long.  I'll be back to the "optimistic" part of my cycle in T minus 2 days.