Munching on a Sadie-sized pear.

Okay, so now that Sadie is nine months old, this isn’t going to sound like the major revelation that it was for us when Sadie was six and a half or seven months old (I can’t quite remember when we had this lightbulb moment). But that’s about when I discovered the concept of baby-led weaning.

Prior to this discovery, I had made and frozen a bunch of baby food purees—squash, green beans, sweet potatoes, peaches, pears. I had this image of Sadie dining on locally-grown produce, picked and processed while in season. We got a little hasty with starting Sadie on solids (she just seemed SO READY), so we stuck with rice and then oat baby cereal, putting the pureed fruits and vegetables on hold. Once she reached six months, we started experimenting with the purees. It was going fairly well, and I’m not even sure what prompted me to Google “baby-led weaning.”

So! The basic principle is that, at or around six months, babies are developmentally ready to learn—not just to eat—but to feed themselves. What an idea! Instead of shoveling mush into Sadie’s mouth, I could give her whole foods (in appropriately-sized pieces, mind you—the definition of which is open for interpretation) and let her figure it out. There’s not a ton of information out there about baby-led weaning, but I’ve read most of what these two sites have to offer.

Basically, I try to feed Sadie some of what we’re eating. Of course, we only feed her the parts that are Sadie-appropriate (so, no fried catfish or anything like that). For example, the other night we had a dish with eggplant, onion, garlic, herbs, tomatoes and green olives. I didn’t want her to have the tomatoes (possibly allergenic—but I’m starting to question all of the allergy rules) or the olives (way too salty), so I just pulled out a few pieces of the eggplant before I added those ingredients. Should have pulled out more—she loved the eggplant! Sometimes our dinner is totally inappropriate, so I’ll do a little something special, like steam up some carrots or give her some toast. And she almost never eats all that I’ve got for her, so I save it for a meal the next day.

A funny aside: when I was first getting started, I kept being so confused when I’d read on the website to cut fruits and vegetables into “chip” shaped pieces. I thought, “How the heck am I supposed to manage that—a chip?!” Well, duh. These ladies are Scottish, and “chip” to them is “French fry” to us. Much easier to cut a bell pepper into a fry-shaped piece than a potato chip-shaped piece. Surely you wouldn’t be as foolish.

Here are some of my thoughts on baby-led weaning.

• I am by no means a nutritionist. Or a doctor. Or anything other than a mom who reads and writes a lot. Don’t take my word on anything—do your own research!
• I definitely don’t claim that this is the best or the one right way to teach babies about solid food. It’s just what makes the most sense to me with Sadie. If she weren’t the proactive baby she is, this might have gone horribly.
• Disclaimers aside, this REALLY clicked with me.
• I feel like Sadie is truly learning how to eat real foods. Yes, she gags. No, she’s never choked. A couple of times I’ve helped her get a tricky piece of food out of her mouth with her finger, but she’s even learned how to do this for herself. The gagging has taken some patience on my part to get through. Having always seen adults jump out of their seats at the first sign of difficulty and whack the baby on the back or swipe a finger in the mouth, I had to re-train myself a bit. Instead of assuming she’s about to need the Heimlich, whenever she’s having trouble, I just wait her out. And she works it out on her own. Oh, and this is all with just two teeth. She puts those gums to work!
• I feel like this will help her develop healthy eating attitudes and habits. My job is to present her with healthy food options. Her job is to decide what goes in her mouth. No force feeding (this goes along very well with Attachment Parenting principle two, Feed with Love and Respect). At this point, her nutritional needs are still being met by my breastmilk. Any solids she eats are just for the experience of it. I’m not sure how things might change after her first birthday, when she will need a more complete diet of solid foods, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
• I suspect this will also help her be a less picky eater. For one thing, she’s already been tasting my diet every time she nurses (so she’s good and ready for Ben and Jerry’s as soon as I let her, I’m sure). Aside from salt, I’m no longer avoiding seasoning the food I give her. There have been very few things she’s fully rejected, so I take this as a decent sign.
• If there’s a Next Time, I definitely plan on waiting the full six months before introducing any solids and starting with whole solids from the beginning. No mush at all! I’m pretty sure that pureed baby foods came about at a time when the trend was to start your baby on solids at three or four months. And an industry was born. But at six months, many babies can sit unsupported/in a high chair, can pick up smallish objects, can put these objects in their mouths, and can do some chewish movements with their jaws. Sounds like a good case for not spoon-feeding a six-month-old to me!

Yes, I do have a freezer full of purees. Some of them have “expired,” because I made them too far in advance. The fruits have gone over pretty well when spread on a piece of whole wheat toast. And I’ve also started to pre-load a baby spoon for her, which she is then able to stick in her own mouth.

So what has Miss Sadie been eating? Well, she has had (in their non-mushed forms, and in no particular order) squash, zucchini, green beans, carrots, pears, apples, grapes, rice, oats, broccoli, wheat toast, flour tortillas, black beans, avocados, sweet potatoes, lady peas, green peas, chicken, turkey, eggplant, cauliflower, wheat pita, hummus, oat cereal and puffs. Her favorites so far are pears, black beans and green peas. She also really likes cereal. I bought some for her that turned out to be too crunchy for her…the solution? Soak them in breastmilk. She had that for breakfast this morning, and she loved it!

As for the food allergy situation, there is a lot of conflicting information out there on this. Even within my own family. We talked to Sadie’s pediatrician about this at her appointment the other day, and she said that the current guidelines are suggesting that waiting until a year to expose babies to potentially allergenic foods probably doesn’t prevent—and possibly even causes—the increased likelihood of an allergy. Since neither Trevor nor I (nor our siblings) have any food allergies, I think we’re going to relax a bit further on some of the foods we’ve been waiting to introduce (dairy products, citrus fruits, berries, egg yolks, pork, etc.). We will still wait for peanuts and egg whites, because apparently the reactions to those can be pretty ugly. Honey, of course, but because of botulism, not allergies. We haven’t exactly been by-the-book about the four-day rule, but I think I will stick to that when we introduce these foods.

How have you handled introducing solids to your wee ones?

Bananas, RICE, Applesauce, Toast. These are the foods you feed your baby when she has diarrhea. So, why is rice cereal the recommended first food for babies? Heck if I know. But let me tell you, we’ve got one BLOCKED UP baby on our hands, and it is not pleasant. I feel so bad for the little one, and I’m worried that I made a foolish decision to start her on solids before 6 months. She just seemed so ready, from a behavioral standpoint (sitting well, watching us eat and fussing about it, etc.). We’ve had a rough few days (it took me a while to register that this was, indeed, her problem), and last night was horrible. I ended up sleeping with her on my chest on the couch like when she was a newborn. And she was oh so restless. We’ve given her small amounts of diluted prune juice, as well as some peach puree at dinner last night–I know, breaking the one-new-food-at-a-time rule. She’s had some poopy diapers today, but she’s still pretty miserable about it.

These pictures are from last night, hoping the peaches would help (they didn’t). Right now I’m feeding her some Gerber prunes (not what I thought I’d be feeding her at this stage, but at least she likes it). Here’s to hoping tonight goes well, and that tomorrow we have a strain-free day.

I’m sorry if it seems like this blog has taken a turn for the dismal. I promise, there’ll be more cheery posts and pictures of Sadie in the near future. It’s just that I’m in a bit of a funk lately. Sadie’s sleep had gotten pretty nice–she was giving us a solid 4 (sometimes 5 or even 6) hour stretch and only waking up to nurse twice before morning (usually waking up a third time in between those two, but being easily settled without nursing). Then, we had a couple of really rough nights. I think it’s a gas issue, but I don’t really know how to tell for sure. The past few nights we’ve given her gripe water at her “bedtime” nursing, and it’s helped some. But she’s back to waking up three times a night–effectively every two hours–wanting to nurse. Part of me wonders if she’s waking up more because she’s in the bassinet, but it actually seems like she falls back to sleep more easily in the bassinet than she does in our bed, which is why I’ve been putting her in there after nursing her. Well, that, and I also sleep a bit better without her in bed (there, I said it).

Her naps during the day are getting out of whack, too. It seems like she has a hard time sleeping longer than 45 minutes at a time (we’re going on 58 minutes now, and I’m probably pushing my luck). Just last week, though, she could almost always be counted on to go down for two two-hour naps a day. I think this might have to do with change, too. She’s getting close to being too big for the bassinet, so I’ve been putting her down for naps in the crib during the day. That way, when she really can’t sleep in the bassinet at night, it won’t freak her out to be put down in the crib at night. Not sure if it’ll work, but it makes sense to me.

I really wanted co-sleeping to work out for us. I never would have thought that I’d be the problem. I figured it would be Trevor, because of being nervous with her there or something. I’m a much pickier sleeper than I knew, and I can’t seem to find a comfortable position to sleep in with Sadie in the bed. I think it might be different if we had a bigger bed, but our bedroom simply isn’t big enough for a bigger bed. When we do co-sleep, I seem to get such poor sleep that I get absurdly frustrated when she wakes up to nurse.

The other thing I’m struggling with is the nursing itself. I sooo wanted to looove breastfeeding. It’s not that I hate it, and I’m DEFINITELY sticking with it, it’s just that it’s STILL not the blissfully pleasant experience I expected it to be. Of course, I was mentally prepared for their to be rough times, but I figured things would get nicer as we got better at it. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Maybe we don’t have the latching thing down as well as I think we do. Maybe it’s because of her tongue-tie (though I took her to a doctor about it yesterday and was told it’s not bad enough to clip it presently). Maybe it’s the forceful let-down. All I know is that there is generally frustration on both ends of the deal, and that makes me so sad. As in lump in throat, tearing up right now. And it doesn’t help that she’s lately been nursing what seems like all the freaking time. Maybe my supply is decreasing (though I can’t imagine why it would), so she’s not getting enough at each feeding, so she has to feed more frequently. I don’t really know how to tell…

These are just the two things I’d really counted on being some of my favorite parts of mothering her. It’s so disappointing to have it be otherwise. To keep this post from being utterly dismal, some of my favorite parts are: how alert Sadie is, how engaged she is, how much she’s “talking” to us, how delighted she is at things, bath time, and carrying her in the sling.

In other news, I received my official letter stating that I am now a Licensed Master Social Worker. Pretty exciting stuff. And I’m doing my best to find a job. Do you know of any? In case I haven’t already told you this, I’m looking for a part-time job that will pay enough for me to stay home some with Sadie. I’d take a social work job, I’d take a writing gig, I’d really do just about anything. There are some jobs I’m applying for, but I’ve never ever gotten a job without having some sort of inside connection (even a summer job at American Eagle).

And here are some random pictures of our furry companions, to brighten my mood:

It actually looked like a kitty crime scene when I walked into Sadie's room.

Willow with her hilarious summer cut. She looks like a bat-lamb.

Nari after being Furminated. And she's STILL shedding a ton!

We’re excited to welcome Sadie AND Seth Edwards, born 4:01 this morning.  We’ll post more later!  Gotta rest up!

So this isn’t exactly baby-related at all, but I just have to share this crazy story.  As if getting up two to three times a night to pee isn’t bad enough, apparently Trevor and I also have to be crimefighters:

I was awoken at about 3:45 this morning to this banging noise coming from our next door neighbor’s (Mr. Bishop) house.  It was still windy, but I KNEW it was a human-made noise.  I shook Trevor till he woke up and asked him to peek through our blinds (it’s hard for me to maneuver in bed these days) and see if he saw anything.  He didn’t, and he rolled back over.  The noise started up again, so I got out of the bed to look through the blinds in the baby’s room, from which we can almost see Mr. Bishop’s front porch.  I still didn’t see anybody, so I got back in bed.  But the noise kept going.  I peeked through our blinds again, and noticed that one of the curtains on one of his windows was pulled back–totally unusual (even at 8:00 in the evening when he surely has the lights on inside, we’ve NEVER seen any light coming from inside his house). 

Then, Trevor saw a figure walk by the crack in the curtain.  Mr. Bishop is sort of oldish–maybe mid 60s or 70s, and not in great health, so he sort of has a shuffle to him.  At that point, I insisted Trevor call 911.  He called, they sent the police, and Trevor saw them apprehend the guy right in the street–apparently he had just walked out of the house when the cops pulled up.  We watched them cuff and frisk him.  Then one of the officers came to our door (totally blowing our cover as the “informants”) and talked to Trevor.  She asked some questions about Mr. Bishop, who often is gone overnight for several nights at a time–sometimes visiting family out of town, sometimes for stays at the hospital.  She said that the perp had bottles of Mr. Bishop’s prescription meds in his pockets.  Which made me think that it must have been someone from within the neighborhood who would a) know Mr. Bishop is old and must have some meds, and b) have known that Mr. Bishop was gone.  She came back a bit later to ask us about Mr. Bishop’s friends, because it apparently looked like this man had been staying in his house and that the house was trashed. 

THEN, at about 5:30, Mr. Bishop’s sister was knocking at our door.  We’re still not entirely sure how she found out that his house had been broken into (I suspect that she was coming by to check on the place since he’s gone).  The officers were gone at that point, and she asked Trevor to go into the house with her.  He said the house was indeed totally trashed.  I asked about the metal door on the front, and Trevor said that it wasn’t all jacked up on the outside, but that Mr. Bishop’s sister had trouble getting the door to open, even with her key.  So I sort of think that dude was stuck INSIDE the house, and was banging on the metal door to get it unstuck so he could leave.  But who knows. 

Well, later this morning after I’d gone to work, Mr. Bishop’s sister told Trevor that she’d spoken with the police and, it turns out that the perp lives in the duplex just caddy-corner to our house.  This man was caught just about a month or so ago with his 7th grade son, who he was using to help him break into other neighbors’ houses (I’m pretty sure he’d had four priors for burgularly).  Apparently bail was posted for him, so that’s why he was home and could break into Mr. Bishop’s house.  I bet if I’d just put on my glasses, I’d have recognized him (I see him just about every day out in his yard) when the police had him just across the street from our house.  CRAZY TOWN. 
 
At any rate, we’ll definitely be getting the alarm activated ASAP.  I just hope, when he gets out on bail again, he doesn’t retaliate on us for getting him arrested.  He certainly knows that we’ve got two dogs, but I’m also sure he knows what our house looks like when we’re not home… 

We still love our neighborhood.

If you’re squeamish about feet, this isn’t the post for you.’

Okay, so I had a busy couple of days.  Tuesday we had a little potluck dinner to celebrate Trevor’s last pre-fatherhood birthday.  Trevor had Tuesday off, so I actually got out of most of the cleaning.  But I definitely WAS on my feet a lot during the party, and I definitely DID eat foods I might oughtn’t have (and drink cherry soda instead of water).  Then, Wednesday, I took the day off from work so I could spend Trevor’s actual birthday off with him.  We sort of lounged around during the morning, not doing too much.  Wednesday afternoon was spent running around town doing this and that.  Trevor got a tattoo for his birthday, and we spent about forever at Babies R Us and Target getting the last of the “must haves” (as far as we can tell, at least) in preparation for the arrival of Baby Edwards.

Early Wednesday evening we had our home visit with the midwives.  Our primary  midwife, Kim, was there; the midwife who taught our homebirth class, Mary, came–she’ll be serving as Kim’s assistant at our birth; and the apprentice midwife, Shea, who will likely also be at our birth, was there.  It was pretty chill, and my prenatal check up went just dandy.

After our home visit, Trevor and I went to Bonefish Grill for birthday dinner.  It was there that I could really start to feel my feet start to swell.  By the time we got home, they were HUGE.  We’d rented a movie, and Trevor let me have the whole couch so I could elevate my feet.  When I got up at about 1:15 in the morning to go to the bathroom, they were still huge, and my face was pretty swollen.  That’s when I started to worry a bit–sudden swelling, especially in the face–not usually a good sign.

This is Wednesday night, at about 9:30 or so.

I got up for work a little after seven, and, fortunately, the swelling in my face had almost completely gone away.  I couldn’t get my black shoes on, so I figured it must be time to start busting out the black pants with brown shoes look.  I got to the office and called Kim to see what she thought about the swelling.  She told me to get my bum home, to get my feet way up, and to drink as much water as was humanly possible.  She also wanted to have me swing by Birthworks so Mary could check my blood pressure (which, for the record, has been exceptionally perfect all along–even at my home visit, which is apparently quite uncommon).

This is Thursday morning, at about 7:30...not much difference.

By about noon, the swelling had gone down considerably, and I had peed so many times I lost count.  I went to see Mary at 2:30 or so, and my blood pressure was still good (117/75).  It looks like I really just over did it Tuesday and Wednesday.

And here's Thursday at Noon. Ahhh, what a difference. Still not my pre-pregnancy feet, though.

It was definitely a signal from my body that I’ve got to take it easier.  Sometimes it’s hard to remember that I can’t move as quickly, shouldn’t stand as long, and need to drink even MORE water than I already am.  In fact, I’ve just come back from book club, where I sat almost the whole time, and my feet are puffing up a little bit again.  Blarg.  So now it’s off to bed to get the tootsies up again.  Too bad our house reeks of brewing beer–Trevor made the “baby brew” tonight while I was gone.

This is not the pretty side of pregnancy, let me tell you…

This is the third post in the Edwards Family Road to Homebirth series.  Read about how we decided to grow our family and how we got pregnant here.  And read about how we came to the midwife model of care and to planning a homebirth here.

The process of planning our homebirth:

We had our first appointment with our midwife when I was about six weeks along.  It was exciting to get to sit and talk about how we felt about being pregnant and planning a home birth, and to talk about how I was feeling overall.  I don’t think the nausea had set in at that point, so I was feeling pretty great.  After talking for about 45 minutes, I went to the bathroom to collect my urine sample and to test it for all kinds of things.  Then she weighed me and took my blood pressure.  It was way too early to try to catch the heart beat on the Doppler, and I think it was too early for her to start measuring my fundal height.  But that’s essentially what every appointment has looked like since-45 minutes of talking about my pregnancy and birth plans and 15 minutes or so of checking my urine, my weight, my blood pressure, the baby’s heart beat, my fundal height, and the baby’s position (once it was big enough to tell).  I saw her monthly until I reached 28 weeks; now I see her every other week, and I’ll see her weekly starting at 36 weeks.

An important thing to know is that homebirth is not for everyone from a physical standpoint (there are other reasons, of course).  Due to licensing rules and regulations, licensed midwives in Arkansas may only provide care for women who are deemed low-risk.  In order to determine this, I have to have two risk screenings to make sure that I don’t have any conditions that would preclude me from a homebirth with a licensed midwife (the regs list a ton of different conditions).  One was done at 10 weeks, and the other will be done at 36 weeks, with a gestational diabetes screening at 27 weeks.  So far, I’m fit as a fiddle for our homebirth.  If anything on their list comes up between now and when my baby is born (that includes during labor and delivery), I will be transferred into the care of a physician at a hospital.  Also important to note is that I can only have a homebirth attended by a midwife between 36 and 42 weeks.  So if the baby wants to come tomorrow, it’s off to the hospital I go.

Early on in the pregnancy, I had two major worries.  One was that the baby’s organs would be on the outside, which was calmed by our ultrasound at 21 weeks.  The other was that I was going to “risk out” late in my pregnancy and not have a clue as to what doctor I might want to transfer to.  The thing is, I’d never been to the same OB/GYN more than once, so I didn’t have a doctor with whom I had any sort of relationship.  This was a somewhat more difficult worry to get over.    I mean, what if I found out halfway through that I wasn’t low-risk and couldn’t have a homebirth?  Where would I go?  I had heard good things about the doctors at Cornerstone Clinic for Women, so I made myself an appointment with one of their doctors.  To be perfectly honest, I did not tell him when I made the appointment that I was planning a homebirth.  I knew that if I did, I could be kicked right out of the office without a second glance (yes, turns out doctors can fire patients).  After that appointment-which worked out to cover my first risk screening (which I DID pay for), I called and told his office that I would be planning a homebirth with a midwife, and they confirmed that the doctor would no longer see me.  But I felt better-I had met an OB with a good reputation that I liked just fine.  Granted, I’m sure there’s a good chance that if I had-or even if I were to now-risked out of midwife care, that this doctor would refuse to see me.  And that’s fine, because I’m just not worried about that now.  I see that the chances of my risking out are so slim, and even if I do, I’ll just cross that bridge when I come to it.

Another major part of my preparing for the homebirth has been educating myself about birth.  Trevor and I have been attending homebirth classes, I’ve been reading a number of books, and we’ve watched some videos of various types of births.  Being the nerd that I am, this has been one of my favorite parts of the preparation (which I would have done even if I had been planning a hospital birth, to be sure).  Learning about what my body is going to be doing during labor actually has me excited about going through it.  Women’s bodies are so amazing-we conceive a life, carry it with us for nine months, and then bring it to the outside world.  I daydream about how to handle contractions and how my body will be serving its ultimate purpose (of course, trying to avoid any concrete expectations).

Our next step in the planning process is to have our home visit with our midwife, Kim, and another midwife, Mary, who will assist Kim at our birth.  Mary has been the instructor of our classes, so we’ve already gotten to know and like her.  We’ve had to order our “homebirth kit” from a place online, and we’ve had to collect other assorted supplies (for example, pull-up diapers…for me…fun!).  We’re trying to get the house as ready as possible for the baby by the time we have our home visit, but I’m not so sure how close we’ll get to that goal.  One thing I’ve forgotten to mention is that we’re going to be set up to have a water birth.  I’m not making any advanced-decisions about whether or not I’ll actually deliver the baby in the pool (Kim has one that we’ll use), but I want to have it available to labor in and to deliver in if I want to when the time comes.

This is the second post in the Edwards Family Road to Homebirth series.  Read about how we came to the decision to grow our family and how we came to be in the family way here.

How we came to the midwife model of care and to planning a homebirth:

This part goes way back further than any other part of this story.  I had this boyfriend in junior high and high school, and I have this memory of him telling me that he and his younger sister had both been born at home, and of me thinking that that just made so much sense to me.  Of course, it went on the back-burner, as I wasn’t really making childbirth plans in junior high (just trying to get a handle on my crazy hair); and, as mentioned above, I went a number of years thinking I’d never have babies to begin with.  Another conversation I recall, though I can’t remember who the other person was, was of someone telling me that midwives couldn’t practice legally in Arkansas.  Well, that put it even farther on the backburner, and I just figured that if I ever had a baby, I’d just do it as close to how I wanted it to be in a hospital.  But then a friend of mine got pregnant and started seeing a midwife in Conway.  I asked her-isn’t illegal for the midwife to attend a homebirth?  Of course not!  In fact, they’re licensed by the state!  Coincidentally, at the Arkansas Earth Day Festival in April 2008, I came across the booth for the Birthworks midwives and doulas.  I hit it off with one of the midwives, Kim, and it turned out that she was my friend’s midwife!  I sent her an email one day asking her lots of questions about midwifery and home birth, and she gave me a call and talked to me for over an hour one day.  When we learned I was pregnant in July, I immediately knew that I wanted to use her as our midwife, and Trevor totally agreed.  (Trevor’s back story is that he and his three sisters were born naturally in a hospital, but the thought of having a homebirth was comfortable for him right from the start-he knew I could do it).

Can’t believe I’m just 5 weeks from my due date (alright, 5 weeks, 1 day).  Crazytown.  I’ve been horribly negligant about posting belly pictures, because it’s kind of a hassle to take them.  I’m actually sort of sad that I haven’t been doing them weekly, as I originally planned; but I’m honestly not that surprised.

I realized when I was writing my last post that I actually haven’t done too much writing about how we’ve gotten to where we are so far.  So, for posterity’s sake (aka Baby Edwards), I’ll start from the beginning.  This will be a series of posts throughout the week or so…we’ll call it the Edwards Family Road to Homebirth, just for fun.   

How we came to the decision to grow our family:

Trevor and I had been talking for a while about when we wanted to make ours a family of three (not counting the furrier members).  Back before I knew Trevor, I used to say that if I made it to 26 years old without having a baby, I would have one-with or without a partner (which is quite the change from my high school/college years when I swore I never wanted children).  Well, I turned 26 after Trevor and I had been married just a bit over a year…a little early to be making baby demands, I thought (for us, at least).  So we started talking about 28.  It seemed like a pretty good plan-to start trying to conceive around my 28^th birthday.  But I started getting a little antsy when 27 came and went, and so did Trevor (probably had a bit to do with several of our friends getting pregnant and having babies!).  When he learned in mid 2008 that he was on track to get a promotion at work to Services Manager and a corresponding raise, we decided it was time.  “They” say that if you wait till you can afford children to have a baby, you’ll never have one.  But we thought the promise of increased income was a good enough reason for us. 

How we came to be in the family way:

I’d been on an oral contraceptive (which my therapist and I now suspect was what was giving me such emotional troubles, but that’s a WHOLE other story) for several years.  I’d always heard that it could take a good little bit once off the pill before being able to conceive a baby.  I’m sure this is true for lots of women, but it was NOT the case for me!  I started a calendar to try to casually track what might be my fertile days.  We gave it a bit of a try-not very strategic-right after I went off the pill.  I thought that I was comfortable with it taking a while, but when my pregnancy test came back negative and I soon started my period again, I was much more disappointed than I had prepared myself to be.  I took that as a sign from myself that we needed to be more serious about our strategy the second go-around.  We were, and it worked.  We couldn’t believe it!  In fact, Trevor sort of wouldn’t believe it until I had positive blood results back from my doctor.