Don't Forget to Relax!

I had another monitoring appointment today. My follicles are being stubborn and haven't gotten much bigger. It looks like we'll be triggering Wednesday night and doing IUI Friday morning. I think Tim is more nervous than I am about the injection. I'm sure he'll do fine though.

Anyone who has been through IF has heard the phrase "just relax" or "don't stress" or "maybe you're just tyring too hard". Let me just say. These phrases do nothing but make me more tense and irritated. I don't know how or why someone thinks that relaxation is the key to pregnancy and that I am somehow "trying too hard" to get pregnant. Unless you see me standing on the docks waiting for a group of random sailors on shore leave, I'm not trying too hard.

Let's take a moment and think about stress. Think about animals which are under a lot of stress all of the time. What comes to mind? I'm going to venture a guess that the animals are not those at the top of the food chain, but rather prey animals like mice and rabbits and even deer. Hmmm...something tells me that their stress levels haven't had a major impact on their ability to procreate.

One of the funniest examples of the stress --> no baby stories I have is from this past spring. I was having lunch with a couple of my coworkers, one of whom was pregnant and the other has a young daughter. They both know that we have been struggling to conceive and frequently ask the "any news?" question when I see them.

On this particular day, the one with the young daughter was asking me what treatment we were currently undergoing. I told her, femara. She said "oh, that's the one that will give you like 5 kids at once, right?" Um, no. She then starts asking me about my stress level and how the treatments must be really hard on me and dealing with work and everything on top of it must be really stressful. I know exactly where this is going and I decide that I will hit her with a dead end in the conversation, but alas, she outwits me.
Here's how it played out.
Her: Wow, with all of this stuff going on in your life, it must be really stressful for you...

Me: Not really, actually. I have a wonderful husband, supportive parents and work is going pretty well.

Her: Really, you don't feel stressed?

Me: Nope, not at all. I'm all good.

Her: Hmmmmm. Well maybe you should try and get MORE stressed. I've heard that stress can have an effect on getting pregnant so if you aren't stressed, maybe you should be more stressed.

Me: Blank f-ing stare. I kid you not.

I mean really, what do you say to that? I think I said ok, maybe I'll do that, I'm not sure though because so much of my focus was directed at not letting my head implode. After that conversation, the geek in me wrote out what I believe to be the mathamatical equation for what she said. Here it is:

ΔStress α P(KU)

For those who aren't mathmatically inclined. That means a change in stress is directly proportinal to the probability of getting knocked up. Now go forth and change your stress!