my early Christmas present

 

 

I received an email offering “unsolicited advice” a few days ago that started a fun chain reaction filled with girl gab, online shopping, a big purchase and starting tomorrow morning, I will continue the chain reaction with peeing on a stick.

It’s exciting, really.

I never planned on taking this big a leap into baby makin’ this early in the game, but thanks to Tiffany at & Baby Blackwell Makes Three, I have officially gone technological on the baby business.

Out with the ‘good old fashioned’ way, in with the Clearblue Easy Fertility Monitor:

 

 

Tiffany actually titled her email to me “Unsolicited Advice” – as if I wouldn’t be open to someone’s help in this matter I know nothing about! ha! Someone else maybe, but I am floored by anyone willing to take the time to offer kind advice to this stranger in a comment on this blog, let alone in email form.

I got her email last Thursday night and by Friday evening, this do-dad was on it’s way to my house via amazon.com. Tiffany has been amazing to answer my endless questions regarding pee sticks and periods. We have definitely struck up a friendship over this monitor and other bodily functions ;)

If nothing else comes of this big purchase, I will at least have a new friend!

ha =)

 

 

Anywho, back to my splurge…

Have you seen this thing? I had my doubts after reading the spill the website has but after reading the hundreds of reviews on Amazon and other sites – holy moly! Here’s my credit card, get that thing in my bathroom now so I can start peeing on it, ASAP!

{You should know you don’t actually pee on it, but on the nice expensive pee sticks that go into the monitor. Details, details. You get my drift how excited I was.}

 

But you ask: Lady, it’s only been 4 months, don’t you think it’s still a little early to be ditching the old fashioned way?

 

I dunno really, but I do know this – it really wasn’t the ‘good old fashioned way’ to begin with.

{No, we weren’t doing some wild Karma Sutra positions. Get your mind outta the gutter ;)}

It was the educationally informed good old fashioned way.

It was reading TCOYF {wonderful book!} and charting basal body temperatures, checking cervical mucous and googling conception tips and tricks. It was peeing on ovulation test strips, getting a big bold positive and still coming up empty handed.

This wasn’t the way our grandparents did it, people. I was already leaving good old fashioned behind in the dust.

And if you’ve read TCOYF, you may remember that she advises you to seek the advice of a doctor if you’ve been adequately charting and trying for 3-4 cycles with no pregnancy.

That’s us. That’s scary.

Some people say that the Clearblue Easy people say to give the monitor 3 cycles of use and TTC before seeking a medical professional’s help. All I could find in my manual was the advice of waiting 6 cycles. I’m giving it another 3-4 and then I’m checking in with the doc.

 

 

To finish my long drawn out story, the day I ordered it, I was at work for 12 hours. For 12 hours I researched and read in every spare moment I had, doing my best to toggle screens so no co-worker would see what I was looking at and be suspicious of my womb woes. It was a Friday and the first day of my cycle, I had to decide quick if I wanted it for this month – even with next day shipping it would only arrive by Monday and you have to start using it no later than the 5th day of your cycle or the whole month is out the window and it’s try again next time…

Talk about pressure at decision time.

I had reached a conclusion and was just about ready to complete my order when I felt the urge for my husband’s approval.

We’re not the couple that asks each other, “Honey, may I buy this?” because we trust each other as responsible, frugal adults with low tolerances for wasteful living.

{Don’t we sound fun?!}

But when I felt the need for back-up, for the most important person in my life to tell me it wasn’t a crazy, desperate, impulse buy – or at least to know that he wouldn’t judge me for my crazy, desperate, impulse buy – I texted. After all, I’d been at work all day, I hadn’t even mentioned to him I was thinking about it, and Lord knows the man had never heard of such a gadget even existing in his lifetime.

 

 

 

Our texts that evening:

{Mind you, I’m texting him out of the blue about this and we hadn’t spoken for most of the day.}

Me: Can I buy a high tech fertility monitor everyone recommends???

{Internal dialogue: “Everyone” as in a really nice girl I’ve never met before except in blogworld recommended it to me along with a few hundred other people that did a product review.}

Him: If it’s gonna help us create an heir to the thrown, you bet.

{Internal dialogue: He’s a nut.}

Me: Really?? It’s $137…

{Internal dialogue: $137 before tax and next day air shipping…}

Him: Does it help?

Me: It has glowing reviews of tons of ppl saying it worked the first month and I got an email from a blogger who reads my preggo blog telling me she was trying longer than we have been thinking they were doing everything right and never got pregnant till the first month they bought this. And we can reuse it for the next 6 kids =)

{Side note: That last part is pure joking. Not that you can’t reuse it, just that we’re not having 6 kids.}

Him: If it helps then I think you should get it.

 

Point blank: I LOVE THIS MAN♥

 

 

 

 

As for the price – I’m telling you READ THE REVIEWS. They are amazing. People trying for months and months, even years and being much older in age and saying the monitor helped them in the first month! Many said they used it as a last ditch effort before settling for the even larger bills from the specialist’s office or when going, that their doctor even recommended it themselves.

I buy products based on reviews – I have a hard time pulling the trigger without a positive review. These reviews sold me.

{I’m not expecting a miracle in the first month of use like many of these people, though I’d love to be pleasantly surprised. It’s also important to note, this machine will not get you pregnant itself, though many have probably had to restrain from showing it much appreciated affection when they finally got their BFP…}

As for Tiffany, she only had to use it one month. Go figure, I’m excited!

 

Does anyone else out there have any experience, good or bad, with this monitor or any of the others on the market? I’d love to here your reviews, as I’m sure others who read this blog would too! Thanks!