To all us crazy ttcs on B&B!

The TTC Survival Guide

* OPKS - before ttc, the only peeing on a sticks you had heard of were pregnancy tests - little did you know that twice a month you would be anxiously looking for two blue lines. By the time the month is up, you could have bought a couple of designer handbags for the amount you have spent on these little sticks. Cheapies! Huh - not when you buy ten boxes!!

* Thermometers - mornings before ttc used to be romantic with hubbie serving you coffee and croissants in bed. Now, it is spent with DH rolling over to find you, with a thermometer hanging out of your month, a crazed expression on you face and shouting, 'no - I have to take my temperature first to see if I am ovulating!.'

* Charts - the last time you spent this much time obsessing over line graphs was when you were 16 and had forgotten to revise for your Maths prelim. Surprisingly, this time you are so clued up on every rise and fall in the chart, you could have sat a degree in the subject.

* TTC acronyms - why oh why is the 2ww so annoying? First you need to find EWCM before you and DH/OH can BD. Then you have the 2WW before you can POAS to find out if it is going to be a BFN (please no )or a BFP! Confusing - 2 weeks on B&B and it will be a second language to you.

* The Green Goddess - five years ago, the extent of a health regime to you would have been opting for the sugar free Bicardi Breezers and going for a red wine over a beer and possibly taking off your make up before you fell into bed. Now, there is nothing you don't know about supplements and herbology. In fact, if you had lived in the Medieval times, the villagers would have been exclaiming, 'witch' as you soared past with a carrier bag full of recommended potions. Not to mention giving up caffeine. You used to be a five cups a day girl, now your tipple of the day is likely to be called rooebus or ginger tea and smell like something that could be used to shift the worse of drain blockages.

* Lingerie and other 'man temptations' - for a week out of every month, your man thinks you have gone sex crazy and he knows it is 'that' time of the month. Biggest clues - the donning of your best Agent Provocteur (or however you spell it) lingerie and a come hither look usually follows the whoop of joy from the bathroom when you recieve a positive on your OPK. By the end of the four or five day sex sess your DH is feigning headaches and attempting to barricade himself in his car.

* a box full of HPTs - for the early testing of course. Usually varied in type from many 'cheapies' for the days leading up to the main event. Then after the first microscopic blue line, comes the empress of the hpts, the 'Clearblue Digital.' Just so you can stare at the word 'pregnant' for days and days (well at least until the battery runs out)!

Good luck girls on getting your BFPs!

hilarious the thermometer reminded me that i temp every morning when hubby's alarm goes off. i reach over, put it in and then he asks what i am doing. as i cannot speak i make a kind of noise and then he gets up and takes a shower and forgets about it. then next morning the same thing happens and i just realised i have never actually explained to him what i am doing, as after it's done we both forget about it until the next morning when my mouth is full once again!!

LOL Genius. So True.

I know what you mean! My hubbie asked me to explain it as well - but after a couple of minutes using such terminology as BBT, his eyes kinda glazed over. He nodded and said, 'oh.' Unsurprisingly he never asked again!

I just thought of another one:

* Pregnancy Guides

Once ttc, you will inevitably purchase a (who am I trying to kid - two or three) pregnancy book. In the back of your mind, you argue that you should get one after the BFP, but still, you justify it by saying, 'well, it's good to be prepared.' So after covertly buying it in Ottakers or Waterstones, hoping that a friend or colleague is not in there shopping at the same time and dreading that the woman at the counter doesn't ask 'when is it due?' you sneak it into your knicker drawer at home. Well it wouldn't do for your hubbie's best mate to pick it off the bookshelf when looking for a sci fi novel would it?

lol, how about:

*Knicker Checking (kc)

it starts with an innocent glance into ones gusset as one pees around 4 days before af is due. as the days go by kc is done with more frequency and urgency until the final cacophony on the due date when one becomes obsessed and will check every hour (or more) whether one needs to pee or not. on this day it is essential that white knickers are worn for best chances of catching af if she decides to show up.

so true - 'is AF coming - or is it implantation bleeding?'