2022 TWW Thread!

[atomic sagebrush]

Yes, have a shot at your next ovulation. Don't worry about the diet and the prenatal, just go for it from here on. And the difference between eating breakfast at 11 vs. 12 is never a thing anyone needs to worry about.

While I'm absolutely supportive of you trying (I don't even think you WERE off diet honestly, and the prenatal was only for a weekish) please keep in mind though, that is not a guarantee. I would not go in thinking "if I try right now, even though I don't feel ready mentally/emotionally, I'll for sure get 76% chance of pink" because that's not what it means. It simply means that of the people who did conceive after a loss, 76% of them got girls. Those were people who may have been pregnant longer than you, who may have had more impact from the loss than you did - I just cannot speak to YOUR personal chances and so if ever someone is telling me that they don't feel ready, I worry if they're pushing themself into a situation they are not comfy with and I don't want that. The only way we'd ever know for sure how much losses sway is by testing it much more broadly, among many many more people who were doing nothing else to sway, and with controls in place for early vs. later losses, etc.

The reason I share that stat is not to tell you that anyone who conceives right away will have that % of success (hey, you may have even better chances, no one knows!) but to demonstrate to you that clearly TTC the first cycle after a loss, even tho people have been off diet and on prenatals, has to be outweighing the risks of being off diet (but again, you weren't really even OFF diet) and taking a prenatal for 10 days or whatever. If being off diet and taking prenatals could be swaying so strongly blue, we'd surely not be sitting at that kind of success rate. I do think it's absolutely fine for anyone's sway to try after a loss (provided u have the medical ok) because we've got those numbers to show us that people are getting even better results at that stage, even being off diet.

I hope that makes sense, I just like people to take our stats with a massive grain of salt, because while they can tell us generalities, they can't be taken to mean "if I do this one thing I have X% chance, so I should rush in where I'm really not feeling like I want to"

[treens]

How are you other 2ww ladies doing? I am CD 20 and my app says 3dpo going to try to wait to test in 8 days.

[Cookies22]

Yes, have a shot at your next ovulation. Don't worry about the diet and the prenatal, just go for it from here on. And the difference between eating breakfast at 11 vs. 12 is never a thing anyone needs to worry about.

While I'm absolutely supportive of you trying (I don't even think you WERE off diet honestly, and the prenatal was only for a weekish) please keep in mind though, that is not a guarantee. I would not go in thinking "if I try right now, even though I don't feel ready mentally/emotionally, I'll for sure get 76% chance of pink" because that's not what it means. It simply means that of the people who did conceive after a loss, 76% of them got girls. Those were people who may have been pregnant longer than you, who may have had more impact from the loss than you did - I just cannot speak to YOUR personal chances and so if ever someone is telling me that they don't feel ready, I worry if they're pushing themself into a situation they are not comfy with and I don't want that. The only way we'd ever know for sure how much losses sway is by testing it much more broadly, among many many more people who were doing nothing else to sway, and with controls in place for early vs. later losses, etc.

The reason I share that stat is not to tell you that anyone who conceives right away will have that % of success (hey, you may have even better chances, no one knows!) but to demonstrate to you that clearly TTC the first cycle after a loss, even tho people have been off diet and on prenatals, has to be outweighing the risks of being off diet (but again, you weren't really even OFF diet) and taking a prenatal for 10 days or whatever. If being off diet and taking prenatals could be swaying so strongly blue, we'd surely not be sitting at that kind of success rate. I do think it's absolutely fine for anyone's sway to try after a loss (provided u have the medical ok) because we've got those numbers to show us that people are getting even better results at that stage, even being off diet.

I hope that makes sense, I just like people to take our stats with a massive grain of salt, because while they can tell us generalities, they can't be taken to mean "if I do this one thing I have X% chance, so I should rush in where I'm really not feeling like I want to"

Thanks Atomic. I appreciate your reply so much. Like you say, I wasn't completely off the diet, just eating breakfast and a snack here and there, and only took prenatals for just over a week. I'm worried though as it's two weeks today since I've been exercising (previous to that I exercised 6 x a week for one hour every day, for 14 weeks). Do you think 2 weeks off exercise is enough to throw the sway off significantly? I would have taken a week off anyway due to having Covid, I'm just getting my proper strength & stamina back now so I'm starting my daily cardio again today. Hoping 2 weeks off exercise isn't too bad in the grand scheme of things...

[atomic sagebrush]

No I don't, for all the same reasons I mentioned in my reply above! We'd not get those type of results coming back after a loss if 2 weeks of exercise was a dealbreaker. We have people swaying the first month after a loss, with even a month or even more off of exercise! And those are the people in that 76% results.

I'm glad you're feeling better!!!

[Cookies22]

Thanks Atomic, that's great news.

I think what's going on with me is anxiety relating to the loss. It's embarrassing to admit it, but when I was pregnant I started stressing about my sway, 'did I do this or that right', and suddenly had to think ok, I'm more than likely going to end up with three beautiful sons. Then I had to examine why that idea gave me any anxiety and the vast majority of it was about other people's reactions and opinions. Society has some pretty negative connotations about 3 boys and that really riles me up. Obviously this is something I really need to work on! The rude comments I got when pregnant with DS2 were horrible, I guess this time I'll be armed with sharper responses... then, when pregnant, I watched the film Stand By Me for the first time (not sure how it's taken me this long to watch such an important film). And I loved the idea of 3 boys growing up together. To me, that was magic. And the idea of being their Mumma, the one they love unconditionally (because let's face it, the love between a mother and son is indescribably special). In my experience, with girls it's much more complex. Also, my own mother is very vocal in her preference for female children ("I like girls", she says), so that really triggers me a lot.

We live on a 42 acre property in rainforest on the coast, and it is so well suited to boyhood... I think the uncertainty of all the unknowns kind of got to me, and I think I have a bit of PTSD from when I opened the 10 week test to find my beautiful second son was, in fact, a he... it shook me and it's so silly that it did! The bond between my sons is absolutely incredible. I guess the perceived pressure of producing a girl after 2 boys is a lot, and I wish it wasn't (maybe I'm imagining it?!).

My Dad is one of 3 sons. Each spaced 5 years apart. The third son was not loved in the same way as the other two were, because my Gran wanted a girl. His whole life was destroyed because of it; he never married (pushed women away) and is an alcoholic. I see the pain in his life and I wonder, am I the same monster that my Grandmother was? I know I would never, ever be rejecting and horrible like she was (I'm convinced she must have had undiagnosed PPD or something), but I worry about the bonding... I worry about any parallels. I also see it as an opportunity to correct that generational trauma. I am very close with my uncle now, I am his next of kin carer.

Also my DH's side of the family has a lot of weird women (lol) so there's also a worry that a DD would be a bit, well, strange...

I'm just dropping so much random brain fog here, but just sharing what's going on... so many mixed up feelings in my mind, I thought maybe it would help to write them down. I know before TTC I just felt there was another person who is supposed to be in our family, and when I thought of them, they didn't have a gender, it was just another body sleeping next to my sons in their bedroom... the big family that to me would be a dream. I just need to focus on that and let go of all ideas of gender perhaps? Basically just a HECK of a lot of overthinking, lol.

[atomic sagebrush]

Ok. I want you to proceed with great caution here. I have seen many, many women who have a gender preference, then either take longer than expected to conceive, or suffer a loss, who then start to tell themselves exactly the sorts of things you're saying here. That gender really doesn't matter, it's all societal expectations and not their own true feelings, that they don't care about the outcome, that all they care about is getting pregnant as quickly as possible with the healthiest baby that they can create, etc. And then they get pregnant, and in the cases where the baby is an opposite - most if not all cases with that type of scenario! I'm wracking my brain trying to come up with ONE instance where people went down this road and had a girl, and I can't think of any - and are plagued, absolutely plagued with regrets (and let me tell ya, regret after swaying and getting an opposite does not hold a candle to the regret people have after deliberately NOT swaying and getting an opposite.)

While it is fabulous to get your head on straight re: having another boy or a girl, and I applaud and support those efforts, the women who fell into that pitfall, without exception, ended up really regretting it. They wished they had it to do over again, because only after the fact really stopped to think about the permanence of that decision. A baby is forever, and most of us have only one more chance at this, why not give it a shot? You can still have a boy of course, but at least you can say you tried, and there is peace in that, giving something a whirl and then if it doesn't work out it isn't meant to be.

Wanting to have the experience of raising a daughter is not overthinking, nor is wanting to take some reasonable steps to make that happen. I honestly think what you're doing now kind of IS overthinking. Going back and assuming the things you're assuming right now in this message, like that you will have trouble bonding with your child, that there are any parallels, that you would have a weird daughter, those aren't really rational (sorry! atomic tough love alert). Those are anxiety fears borne from your mind wanting so desperately to believe that if only you weren't swaying, that you would be protected from losses, but that is very much not the case and even if you feel 100% at peace with the idea right now, I promise you can stop swaying entirely, get pregnant, and THEN be plagued with regrets over it.

Please don't start looking back at past generations to tell you anything. They had a lot of screwed up child-rearing practices (my grandmother, who is by all accounts not the greatest mother, altho a highly accomplished woman in other ways, told me that the experts said she could not pick up her children or comfort them when they cried, and that she regretted that), very strict societal expectations, people in that generation had a lot of baggage themselves from growing up in the shadow of the Depression and the war years, and women were much more 'stuck' into roles as wives and mothers and nothing beyond that. This led to many people growing up with those types of horror stories that you're describing - entirely BEYOND gender desire. That may have been the "thing" for that family, but plenty of other families had some similar tale where the mother favored one child or disfavored one child in particular or had insanely high expectations or was unfulfilled in their own life, or just overall was not a nurturing person. It is not something that YOU would ever reenact, not only because that person is not who you are, but also because you are dwelling in a time and place in which you are not trapped in a life that you never wanted to have!

Please do not tell yourself "my daughter might be weird so I'd be better off with a boy". I know you know this, but it's just silliness and you would love without question any child who headed your way. This mindset is a way to harden your heart as a defense mechanism, I think. For YEARS I justified not having a girl to myself, because I was a very homely child, no one liked me, I was "weird", etc and then my daughter came out very cute and entirely normal (indeed, I sometimes feel "weird" and even awkward around her because she's so effortlessly basic, LOL). I could easily have walked away all together based on this erroneous belief that I "couldn't make a normal girl what with genetics and all" and it simply wasn't ever the case. And she is SOOO outdoorsy! Girls also love growing up on big pieces of land with wilderness and such - mine sure does. I promise you that both boys and girls would love your living situation and greatly benefit from it. (I know you don't really mean that it's better for a boy than a girl, I'm just pointing out that there are a lot of girls who love nature and the wilderness too. And 3 of my 4 boys would honestly rather be inside with a good book.)

Cookies, in some cases I can look at a sway and not see anything that we could change. In your case, we absolutely CAN change something by having you do the alternate diet!! I would just absolutely hate to see these errant, anxiety-borne thoughts messing with your head and lead you down a path where you may end up someplace that you honestly don't want to be. At least not without me warning you about what others have experienced!

[Cookies22]

Thank you Atomic. I think I'm just finding it all hard, and channeling that anxiety over the loss into these details and justifications that really, as you say, aren't real! I guess I'm worried that swaying will make any gender disappointment a thousand times worse. It was hard last time. But I got through it, and there are plenty of Mums of three beautiful boys who have done the same, so I think I just need to focus on knowing that the baby I get is the baby I'm meant to get, regardless of gender. I think it's hard because during swaying you're constantly thinking 'girl', 'pink' etc, and then when you fall pregnant you have to switch your thinking all of a sudden to entertain blue?

The alternate diet is the one I'm on, yes? I weighed myself this morning and I'm 56.9 (up from 56.6) so I hope that's not a deal breaker that will ruin my sway. Still negative on OPK so I'll probably have one attempt tomorrow or the next day.

I'm definitely not jumping off the wagon, but I think it's making my anxiety worse if you know what I mean, I think that's why I aimed for an 'invisible' sway, but losses do throw spanners in the works! I think after knowing about swaying, it's impossible to TTC without implementing at least some of those changes. You can't ignore your awareness if you know what I mean! I probably just need to keep on doing what I'm doing, hopefully get a BFP and then stay off the forums so I can focus on a baby and not a girl specificially! In the lead up to deciding we would have another baby, I wasn't thinking about swaying, or even a girl specifically, but rather a third member of our family. I need to focus on THAT mentality because it was much healthier if you know what I mean.

[atomic sagebrush]

Yes, rereading that comment re the alternate diet it was confusing, what I mean to say is that based on your PREVIOUS sway. You are on that diet now, and I think that it's definitely something we can change to get a better outcome than your last sway.

I am totally, completely on board with an effortless, invisible sway, and staying open to a baby of either gender. ABSOLUTELY please keep in your mind the possibility of blue AT ALL TIMES - I don't want anyone to go into TTC without entertaining the idea of blue (and honestly, I didn't realize anyone was! Yikes!)

It is just that historically speaking, I see people start to talk the way you were talking there and then their next post is that they're giving up on swaying totally. Or equally commonly, they just vanish from the site (before I can write that stuff I just wrote to you above, to even warn them, hence why I was being proactive there) and then go off and do their thing and come back a few months later absolutely devastated. Please forgive me the preemptive strike, I figured I might only have one chance to convince you there.

I want to stress to you again that I actually thought you were far too low in weight and I would very much prefer if you just held steady where you're at right here. No weight loss. It will not undo your sway, and you should keep that little bit of extra weight on as an insurance policy to keep your cycle working.

[Cookies22]

Thanks Atomic. Definitely not jumping off the wagon just being realistic I think. I want to be excited about both possibilities, so I need to do that in equal measure if you know what I mean?

Yep I've been on alternate LE diet. Some days it's harder to find whole grains though I must admit; sushi is often a go-to when I'm out and need something for lunch, and it's always with white rice. For dinners we have a lot of risotto, and that is arborio... but any bread I eat is wholegrain and I've been eating brown rice for lunches when I can too. When I fell pregnant I felt my sway was pretty well perfect, I was drinking every night, exercising every day etc... now I haven't been drinking or exercising due to pregnancy, so it's more relaxed, but that might be a good thing for me and my personality anyway!

[atomic sagebrush]

That is perfect (and given your weight, you have more leeway with refined carbs anyway). White rice is actually not that bad overall and sushi is among my fave LE Diet foods for takeaway stuff!