This and That
P: Friday was cycle day 21 for V, until halfway through the day when it become day 1 of a new cycle, because she started her period. I am a bit confused and did not expect for her to have a 21 day cycle. Since we had unexpectedly moved the first insemination date up by a few months we do not have months and months of ovulation tracking. We have decided to track this cycle diligently and bought a bunch of ovulation test strips from this site. Thanks so much to the ladies over at Love + Love = Marriage for recommending the cheap ovulation strips. These strips are going to be coming in hand since we are going to have to test twice daily starting on cycle day 8, just to make sure we don;t miss her ovulation. Plus, when I was going over here temperatures last cycle she did not have a spike that was more than a degree, so now I am not sure if she is ovulating at all or if the basal thermometer we ordered is not working accurately. So much up in the air right now. I am considering buying a mercury thermometer because apparently they are more accurate, just harder to read. What did/do the rest of you use to temp?
We also have not found our donor yet. We had one picked out from Fairfax, but decided that we would like to use a bank that allows for home insemination. Which we are both incredibly excited about! I was always a little bummed that a doctor was going to be part of our insemination process, unless of course we need the assistance due to conception issues down the road.
Next week V has her pre-pregnancy appointment with the midwife that we will be using and am hoping that we get good news from her. I am planning on trying to get off work so that I can go with her. This is a little tricky because I don’t know how my employer is going to respond to my partner’s pregnancy and what kind of time I will be allowed to get off. We are hoping to schedule her visits after school hours to decrease the number of times I have to take “sick” time. (I will not miss one of her appointments) As a teacher I only get one personal day and 12 sick days a year. I do not have vacation time that I could use to go to visits with V to the doctor. I would have to take sick days, which are reserved for myself and my immediate family. I do not know if my employee considers V as immediate family. And my principal is a stickler for making sure we use our sick time according to the guidelines. I just hope that it is not a battle to take some time after the baby is born!
We also bought a few more things over the weekend. We had to go to Babies R Us to buy a shower gift for one of our friends and ended up with an adorable outfit. It is one of the cutest and softest outfits ever! Then we went to Target to buy a wedding shower for a different couple and found the most adorable white blanket with polka dots on it. It is many of the colors that we want to use in the nursery, so we bought it. If we can’t leave a store without buying something for the baby before we are even pregnant , I can’t imagine what it will be like when we are!
Big congrats to Two Moms and a Baby for the new addition to their family!
Mommies In The Making 
If she had a temp spike that was a whole degree, that’s plenty. In fact, I only usually spiked about half a degree, if that.
I did use a basal thermometer, and it worked just fine. I would recommend that you continue to do so because you won’t be able to get quite the specific temp on a mercury thermometer. If she’s temping orally, make sure she places it in the same spot under her tongue every day. It’s best to go to the side of the frenulum (the membrane that attaches the tongue to the floor of the mouth) and all the way back (this webpage has a little diagram about half-way down: http://www.bd.com/thermometers/howto/). Otherwise, you can get really inaccurate readings. Also make sure she’s testing at exactly the same time every day. Even half an hour can make a huge difference. I used to set my phone alarm for 5:00am every day, and I would barely wake up, take my temp, scribble it down, and go back to sleep either until the real alarm went off or until I awoke on my own. This way, I didn’t forget to take my temp.
I hope this helps! This whole process can be a little maddening. I think you’ll find, though, that having the OPKs really makes a difference in how in control you feel about it all. I hope the appointment goes well!
Thanks reproducing genius. Yes, we had been taking her temp at the same time each morning and in the same spot everyday. I just thought that the temp spike would be more than about half of degree to three fourths of a degree. (My blog was written wrong, she never raised a whole degree.) BUt, since you also never experienced a raise even to the next degree I feel a bit better about when I thought she ovulated last month.