Okay well, as most of my friends know (since I am an open book) how our trip on the baby train has been going. Slow to depart, so to speak. In a letter written to a close friend I paraphrase our journey thus far:

". . . I just finished my first dose of a fertility treatment called Clomid. Basically they think I am not ovulating correctly and this med will help me ovulate. We've been trying for about a year with no such luck and it was time to try something else. I'll be on this for up to 6 months or until I am pregnant (whichever comes first) - each month we are unsuccessful they up the dosage. I should be ovulating this week, so we'll see if the 1st round works. Typically it takes a couple of rounds so I'm trying to stay hopeful. This increases our chance of multiples to about 5-10% which we're okay with it just as long as we can get pregnant. It's been quite stressful and my level of irritability has increased with the hormones . . ."

That was written last week (1/12/09). And I unfortunately did not ovulate to the best of my knowledge. I am testing my ovulation with the over the counter ovulation predictor kits - basically a stick you urinate on (beautiful picture right?) so it can test your Luteinizing Hormone (LH Level). Here is a brief description of what the LH level is from WebMD:

"LH helps regulate the menstrual cycle and egg production (ovulation). The level of LH in a woman's body varies with the phase of the menstrual cycle. It increases rapidly just before ovulation occurs, about midway through the cycle (day 14 of a 28-day cycle). This is called an LH surge. Luteinizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone levels rise and fall together during the monthly menstrual cycle." - WebMD

So here we are in week 3 post menstrual cycle and to my surprise after days and days of anxiously awaiting the results from my pee tests, I think I ovulated yesterday! I have not had the exact colors of lines that match the box ever before and yesterday it seems as if they matched perfectly! Too perfectly in fact that I felt the need to test twice - the results being the same! And let me tell you, it's definitely no fun to insert a test strip into your urine for multiple days straight with nothing more then a yellow piece of linen telling you are not in the baby-making mode! So, when it actually shows that you could have ovulated or are going to in the near future after months of not, it's exciting! Of course I called Charley right away and informed him that tonight and potentially tomorrow are definitely our nights! He was happy to hear that but not before telling me that we had to go to Costco that night to pick up the secret weapon!

So what is said secret weapon? What could it be that made us drive after work to the bulk warehouse for our night on the baby train? You may be thinking many things that bring up many different coital thoughts but you would be wrong. Trust me. Nope, the secret weapon that he was referring to was the 7 lb chocolate on chocolate quadruple layer "Death By Chocolate" Chocolate cake in the bakery! No kidding. Every women's dream right? Sex and chocolate in the same night? What could be better!

There's an urban legend roaming around Charley's department at work that a couple of people subscribe to that this awesome dessert is lovingly referred to as the "Immaculate Conception Cake." One believer in particular says that every time he samples this luscious cake, his wife ends up pregnant - and he has multiple children to show for it. Charley, being a gambling man, decided that those odds are as good as any hormonal imbalance I'm having so we through caution to the wind and fell to the temptation of the decadent chocolate and we definitely had a wonderful Wednesday night!

Yesterday was exactly 22 days into my first month on Clomid. The medical books all say that women should ovulate on day 14 of a 28 day cycle but we all know that no one women is a perfect textbook example and my Understanding Your Fertility book tells me that women can ovulate anywhere from days 12 - 26 in a cycle that can last up to 42 days . . . which could possibly explain my lack of ovulation and subsequent non-pregnancy. So the Clomid has given us a jump start into my ovulation cycle and with our fingers crossed, knock on wood, belief in the "Immaculate Conception Cake" hopefully my next blog will be expressing my excitement of our final destination on our trip to parenthood.