The Dodgy Ov

My husband likes to make up his own abbreviations and nicknames for pretty much everything. I told him about the world of internet infertility lingo, and how it gives us our own club of insiders with whom we can virtually connect. He decided he felt left out of that club and felt compelled to create his own insider lingo for his own club of one. Hence, ovulating, frequently called "o-ing" in our web world, is called "ov-ing" at home (pronounced ah-ving, not owe-ving). So he's been asking me the past few days if I'm ov-ing any time soon. Of course I haven't been able to give any definitive answer. The past couple of cycles, I've spent at least a week thinking I was going to ovulate any time, and have even had my body gear up to release an egg and then fail.

Until yesterday. I had an internet friend who ovulated and got pregnant on day 21 of a clomid cycle, so I've had day 21 in my mind as the ideal day I would like to ovulate this cycle. But as day 21 approached, I didn't think it was going to happen. My temperatures have been all over the place, little ewcm, no sore boobs. I woke up yesterday morning to a slightly lower temp, but without the sore boobs, I still thought that I was at best a few days away.

I have been faithfully OPK-ing, and I have learned that it works best if I pee in the cup shortly before lunch time. I tend to consume less in the way of liquids in the mornings, so that's when my pee is most concentrated. This works fine on weekdays and Saturdays but is tough on Sundays, since I spend all morning at church and usually go out to lunch with friends right after church. So then I usually have to come home and reduce liquids for a while in the afternoon, but that's just annoying. I'm addicted to having a glass of water with me wherever I go, so I feel dehydrated without it. I know I'm far from being really dehydrated, but I've had enough UTIs (only two in my life, but still) to be very attached to drinking water.

Yesterday I was determined not to have to deal with a liquid-less afternoon. So I brought my OPK with me to church and thought I'd try to steal a minute between the service and leaving for lunch to pee in a cup and test in the bathroom. Of course, none of our friends were available for lunch yesterday, so we walked to the car planning to come home and I skipped the bathroom stop. But in the car, P and I decided we would rather eat out than at home. I figured I'd just find a disposable cup in the restaurant, no problem.

Turns out that disposable cups are not as readily available in restaurants as I envisioned in my mind! I should have known this; I did, after all, spend three summers waiting tables in college. I know that dine-in customers get real cups, not plastic ones. We sat down at our table and I asked for a diet coke, which I saw from other tables that they would serve in a can, and an extra glass. The waitress asked if I wanted ice in the glass; no, thank you, I don't need my pee to be cold. P pointed out that I could just dump the ice out, but I thought the waitress would find it odd to return to the table and find the glass she had brought filled with ice completely empty.

She forgot to bring the glass, which I decided was just as well, as it would also look very weird for me to take one of the huge red glasses they used into the bathroom with me. But then I was stuck. I was determined not to waste my morning of reduced liquid intake, but what could I pee in? I have the cheap-o OPKs, so I can't do a midstream test very well. When we got our food, though, I spied a small disposable cup on my husband's plate that contained his burrito sauce. "You can just dump that sauce on the burrito and let me use the cup, right?" "But I don't want to open up my whole burrito now and spread it out, I want to dip it!"

So I came up with the most ingenious plan yet. We had a basket of tortilla chips on our table, inside of which was a small non-disposable cup of salsa. I preferred to pee in something disposable so I could just throw it out rather than bringing it back to the table where we were eating. So, we dumped the salsa on the chips, dumped P's burrito sauce in the salsa cup, and I took his empty, disposable sauce cup into the bathroom and filled it up. It was the perfect size, really.

I finally returned to the table to eat my food with the OPK stuck inside its plastic wrapper in my coat pocket (all very sanitary, of course). I would wait the obligatory 10 minutes and then check it to see exactly how faint the second line was. Of course, I forgot to check for a while, but when I did (discreetly holding it in my coat pocket while pulling the stick out just enough to see the lines), I was shocked. Two definite lines! I couldn't examine it very carefully to see how dark the second one was. But it looked dark. (And when I examined later in the car, it was definitely as dark as the control.) I looked back at P with my mouth open in shock. A day 21 ovulation! Who knew such things were possible for me, even with clomid!

We enjoyed a quickie last night (right after the Oscar's) and I did the whole laying-on-my-back-with-elevated-hips thing afterwards while watching a rerun of House. I was actually pretty sore last night in the boobs and ovaries, and my temp was up this morning, so I'm pretty sure last night was the night.

I feel like I've been fast-tracked into the two-week wait this time, since it's taken so much longer each time before. I can't imagine what it would be like to ov on day 14 every cycle! Whatever the outcome this time, my most immediate hope is that my progesterone is higher at 7dpo. At least over 10 would be nice. That would help confirm that my problem before was just that it was taking my body way too long to ovulate, and the clomid-induced shorter cycle solved it. We shall see in a week.