Balls out

I knew I likely hadn't ovulated for at least two months, so starting my period four days early wasn't entirely surprising.

What was surprising was that instead of wallowing, loading up on chocolate, and uncorking the closest bottle of wine, I enthusiastically drafted my Plan of Attack for this cycle. I touched on it in the previous post, and boy howdy, it is in action.

New pee sticks for the fertility monitor have been ordered and are en route. My thermometer and the Making Babies book are bedside. I've just guzzled my second enormous mug of raspberry leaf tea today, and my innards are buzzing with vitamin B12. I've taken to walking around the neighborhood twice a day, and now my neighbors just peer at me quizzically while they water their lawns. I've lost five pounds over the last several weeks; not huge, but I'll take it. Fruits and veggies are my friends and I've managed to mostly avoid gluten and sugar (excepting a couple of transgressions on Mother's Day, but who can blame me?). This week I started a dairy detox.

Basically, I'm not fucking around here.

And as I mentioned previously, I'm giving it until July before I put my fertility issues in the hands of a specialist. If I need to go back to a doctor, I'm not jacking around with my regular OB anymore.

But if the universe is willing, I think I can make this happen on my own. I got a surge of hope, and I'm clinging to it like a life raft.

The Next 3 Months

Let’s be real. I’m not going to promise to give up caffeine or alcohol. And I can’t guarantee I’ll remember to take my vitamins every day.

But just because I can’t manage to do it right all the time, doesn’t mean I can’t do better. When it comes to my health, I know I can do better.

One idea I really liked from the “Making Babies” book was to think of the three-month program as a premester – the very first trimester.

But honestly, I don’t like focusing on making my body “baby ready.” As exciting as pregnancy would be, having it as a goal is kind of a downer. I would rather think about making my body healthy and strong and “life ready.”

Regardless of whether I have a baby, I do have a life and I have this body for living it.

Lucky for me, this Saturday, October 1st, is the perfect time to start a new premester. We have exactly three months left in the year, three months to prepare for 2012.

It’s actually a little bit thrilling to think about the next 13 weeks as wide open space for making dreams come true.

What do you want to accomplish before the year comes to an end and the next one begins?

Keep on Keepin' on?

I am the world's laziest perfectionist.

I think that I should do things absolutely to the letter perfect, immediately. When I don't? I like to quit.

You think I'm kidding don't you?

The short list of things that I have quit after not mastering them instantly includes: guitar lessons, Yoga Booty Ballet, Vietnamese language lessons, anything Jillian Michaels related, knitting, vegetable planting, short story writing, pie baking, and origami.

For the long list you have to contact the Library of Congress.

I am trying really hard not to quit "Making Babies."

Every time I slip and have a glass of wine, or don't stuff my gob with spinach and flax seeds for a meal I think "what's the point" and total abandon the plan. Then I abandon it some more. Then I try to get back. Then I slip again. Then I figure what's the point of doing this at all because I am not getting pregnant because I am obviously not following everything closely enough and I am obviously a huge failure and my uterus is obviously not organic or and chi balanced enough to grow a child in anyway so why even bother.

I have never quit self-hatred. I think if it were a course of study I would have at least a masters degree.

I don't really want to quit. I need to focus more on one mantra in the book "eighty percent is perfection" and know any small changes I make are still changes. I need to let myself slip, and then not push myself down afterwards.

That may be the hardest part of this whole thing.

So, here I go again.