Need advice - attempt this month or skip?

I am stuck as to what to do - due to DH injuring his back, long working hours and preparing for a holiday away DH has not felt up to DTD at all in the last three weeks :sigh: I am likely to get a positive opk the night before we go away this weekend and might be able to convince DH to bd before we go away but my chances of bd before then are nearly zero so it would be a 4 week abstain by the time we have our attempt. Given DH is 40 should we even try this month or just forget about it? Is it too risky? I am not sure what to do as definitely want to give DS a sibling asap and feel like we are running out of time but DH is not being overly helpful in this department at the moment. Any advice would be greatly appreciated (including ideas on how to increase dh's libido :wink:)
If by some stroke of luck we do manage to bd before our attempt on Friday or Saturday (depending on opk) when would be the safest time to do this without swaying blue?

I would attempt anyway. What's to say he will do better next month?
If you can I would BD tonight as well, but not if I thought that would cancel your attempt at positive OPK on Friday.

Maca root helped a little bit with my DH libido, and orders from a doctor that he has to release twice a week (which of course I had told him before, but apperantly he needed to hear it from someone else to comply). What really helped with his libido was two weeks ago when he tried viagra - but I guess that can be sensitive to bring up. In our case it was a doctor who brought it up and not me.
We've actually managed to conceive on our own in August, but it probably would have been a lot less stressful if we had gotten the viagra a long time ago so we could get in more attempts in fertile window (we weren't swaying, just TTC).

The abstain is NOT "if you do this you will have a baby with health issues", it is "there is a very very distant chance of this occuring and since it does not work as a sway tactic anyway, let's avoid it when we can just because we want to avoid that distant chance". Basically, this was something people were doing deliberately to sway and I like swaying to be as safe as possible and this does have a small risk, so why use it, yk? But that doesn't mean then that everyone should start skipping any months where it happens to work out that way, because like I said, the risk is very very small.

There is a big difference between having people do something deliberately that doesn't work anyway and does carry a small risk, vs. then extrapolating that to be a guarantee of disaster if you have to use it (example that comes to mind is having to ride in a car without a seatbelt - now obviously that is not a good practice most of the time but there is the occasional situation that arises where sometimes it happens for some reason or the other.)

I would still have your attempt. I would not bother "cleaning the pipes" before unless he's into it because it's not going to undo the abstain at all (all the sperm in development can be affected by an abstain and just getting rid of some does not eliminate the problem) and then it may make him less ready, willing, and able to get it done when the time arises.

Thanks so much for your replies, we will just see how we go later this week. I don't think we have much chance of getting pregnant this month so we will attempt at positive opk if we can then I will just forget about this month and look towards October. I think I read something similar you said recently Atomic about abstain and it only being a very minimal risk but not worrying too much but just not using it as an unnecessary swaying tactic, think I just needed the reassurance. Thanks again.