Anyone Benching Due to Holidays?

Tiko99 · October 2014

I'm benching myself until the new year with the hopes of dropping a few pounds. I want to try the baking soda douche in the mean time and have been taking pregnitude/melatonin, royal jelly and my normal prenatal....but now I'm thinking maybe we should just stop everything other than normal sex because of the holidays. We have family and friends visiting almost every weekend starting in two weeks and up until the new year and to be honest I want to DRINK and have a good time and not be stressing about having sex on time and OPK testing....anyone else thinking about taking a complete break until the new year?

jenmcD11 · October 2014

I think that for some people a holiday break could be a much needed time to relax. For me, the holidays are pretty low key so I'm not worried about trying to juggle it all. For one, Thanksgiving was last weekend and it is quite a long way until Christmas. I also won't have anyone staying with us and we are not going out of town, so besides Dec 24-25, the rest of the time would be business as usual. Even if the holidays were super intense though, I can't imagine wasting any more time by benching myself. It's go time!

AnonymousNurse · October 2014

Did your RE recommend the baking soda? I remember another poster here talking about it but I've never heard of it otherwise.

I figure that we possibly have time for 2 more IUI cycles (hopefully we won't need them!) before Christmas so that's the plan. If I'm not KTFU by then, we'll wait until the beginning of February for any more treatment since we are going on vacation at the end of January.

Autumray · October 2014

I am planning on it. We are doing 1 more Cycle with my RE then if that doesnt work we are breaking til after the Holidays. I also plan on trying to drop another 20lbs (or what I can of it) before new years. AF showed up tonight so since its late tomorrow will tech. be CD1. I have my Appt with my RE Thurs and I plan to let him know about this being our last cycle for a bit. Holidays are crazy, DH works in retail, I work in health care, we have lots of family stuff. My RE is at his office in my town 1 time a week so scheduling with him is already difficult. I wanna just chill and relax and enjoy my holidays. So yeah long story for the simple Yes answer I was concluding lol

AnnaClaire256 · October 2014

Yes ma'am! We started our break this month and I seriously love the decision. I thought I would stress and fret and dwell on the "wasted" time, but the opposite has been true. I still pay attention to my body and have every-other-day BDing but now it's more for fun! I feel human again and that's awesome!

dogshowgirl · October 2014

Tiko99 said:
I'm benching myself until the new year with the hopes of dropping a few pounds. I want to try the baking soda douche in the mean time and have been taking pregnitude/melatonin, royal jelly and my normal prenatal....but now I'm thinking maybe we should just stop everything other than normal sex because of the holidays. We have family and friends visiting almost every weekend starting in two weeks and up until the new year and to be honest I want to DRINK and have a good time and not be stressing about having sex on time and OPK testing....anyone else thinking about taking a complete break until the new year?

What do you do with the baking soda? What is Pregnitude? What do you use the melatonin for? What is royal jelly? All this is new stuff to me.

To answer the question- Yup! Hubby and I are taking a break for now. This baby making business has been starting to take over our lives and affecting other priorities. Figure we will start back to it after the new year.

lisa89760 · October 2014

Kinda...We are doing one more injectable cycle after this with no IUI and then I have my lap surgery scheduled so I'm benching myself until Jan at that point.

lebradford · October 2014

Of course not! Doesn't Thanksgiving day sound like a great day for a beta? ::sarcasm::

To answer the question, I am not benching myself because I've been on the bench for 3 months and I'm sick of it, but I'm nervous about cycling during the holidays.

kallygirlie · October 2014

I'm currently 2dpIUI and I think we have decided that this is the last cycle for the year. Last yr we ended up having monitoring appts on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve and it was just a pain. Since this is IUI #4 for us, we will be breaking through the holidays to start thinking about IVF. Doc gave us the choice to move to IVF or try another IUI. Just came off a 3 month break in Aug and honestly, I'm not hating the idea of another break. Just takes so much out of you. hoping we'll be telling everyone we are pregnant through the holidays instead of taking a break tho

kristyn831 · October 2014

We should be done with our first IVF by the holidays, but I wasn't going to take a break either way. I think a break is great for those who need it, but I wouldn't stop the prenatals. It's recommended to be on them at least 3 months prior to conceiving.

moto611 · October 2014

Ug the holidays. We are trying to continue with treatments but I'm stressed out about it. I counted out the days on the calendar and it looks like the November and December IUIs would be literally on Thanksgiving and Christmas. My husband keeps saying maybe the October IUI will work and we won't have to worry about it, but I'm pessimistic and I'm a planner. My family is all coming to our house for Thanksgiving. So at least we'd be in the area in case we need to run in for an IUI.... but it would be super awkward because I haven't told any of them about the treatments. Christmas is more of a problem - we're supposed to go visit my in-laws. I really don't want to have to come up with excuses and then spend Christmas away from family. That would make me resent IF even more than I already do, especially if I ended up with a BFN. I'm trying to decide if it would be easier (make me less resentful) to just skip those cycles and take a break until January. But it's hard to voluntarily take a break when I'm so anxious to get pregnant!

mmmKayy · October 2014

We are currently breaking/benched until after the 1st of the year. Partially due to the holiday's because of the money that comes with them, and we wanted to be stress free and be ourselves again during our favorite time of year. And like you, I wanted to DRINK! Peppermint schnapps hot chocolate anyone?!

I suggest that if anyone if throwing around the idea of a break, DO IT! It is so worth it!!!

Ann612 · October 2014

lemonliz said:

dogshowgirl said:
What do you do with the baking soda? What is Pregnitude? What do you use the melatonin for? What is royal jelly? All this is new stuff to me.

Someone posted a while back that her doctor suggested that she douche with baking soda because her vagina was too acidic for sperm to survive. Apparently, after they did a post-coital test, the nurses determined that it worked, as in it did not kill the sperm. That's as much as I know about that. I would assume that unless you have an acidic v you wouldn't need to use baking soda, and it was a pretty hot topic round these parts because most doctors think douching is unsafe.

That was moi! I should say - they were not in any way advocating regular douching - just once about a day or so before the BD is done. And it was not recommended to me until after the post-coital test. That is, they weren't advocating douching until they knew there was a specific issue at play. I feel like I have to specify these things because I did this all under an RE's care - I would hate to see this passed around and ladies doing it without at least the specifics (preferably after speaking to your own RE about it first).

That all being said - the first post-coital test I took (for those who don't know, the morning after sex, they take a sample of mucus from the cervix and look at it through a microscope to see how many sperm are alive and kicking) showed ZERO sperm alive (i.e. zero chance of getting pregnant). The theory was my mucus was killing them all.

I was advised to do the baking soda douche that evening, about an hour before sex. The next morning, another test. Total difference. They like to see at least 2 to 3 alive for each screen shot - I had more like 20 to 30.

They said going forward, there was no need to douche again. So it was just once within an entire cycle. I was also told to take 1200mg of Mucinex twice a day (regular, NOT DM - which can hurt things), and that continued until after I ovulated.

The baking soda douche was 2 tablespoons of baking soda to a quart of warm water. It was no big deal - my vagina didn't shrivel up and die from one time douching.

ritacita · October 2014

Yep! Although we are benching for a few different reasons, one of the major ones is that my husband and I both work in retail (me in two different stores, plus my own retail business) and so there is just no freaking way we could make all the appointments to do a cycle in November or December. But, we are also benched because we're moving to IVF and we're broke

I'm hoping, praying, and pinching every penny so that we'll be able to continue in February, but my fear is that it'll get pushed all the way back to April. 7 months is a long freaking time to wait when we've already been waiting 7 years.

Tiko99 · October 2014

mbrookeRN said:

Did your RE recommend the baking soda? I remember another poster here talking about it but I've never heard of it otherwise.

I figure that we possibly have time for 2 more IUI cycles (hopefully we won't need them!) before Christmas so that's the plan. If I'm not KTFU by then, we'll wait until the beginning of February for any more treatment since we are going on vacation at the end of January.

My RE didn't recommend the baking soda, but someone on here had success with her second post coital test after she used it so I may give it a try without asking my RE. I have LARGE amounts of CM and it's pretty thick and I've always wondered if that was the issue, so I thought why not put some baking soda up my vag and try it out lol.

Tiko99 · October 2014

dogshowgirl: apparently douching with baking soda helps if you have hostile CM. I have a ton of CM and it is pretty damn thick so once I started researching it I thought, why not. I take Pregnitude and Melatonin for egg quality along with royal jelly and CO Q10. None of these supplements were recommended by my RE, but after doing an insane amount of research I decided to jump on the supplement banwagon.
I was diagnosed with CIN 3 cervical dysplasia from HPV in April 2013 and took an insane amount of supplements (about 10 daily) to try to bring my body back into balance and so far I've had two normal paps so I'm a huge believer in supplements. I do a lot of research on the source of the supplements to ensure quality and try to only buy organic supplements and vegan if available.

Tiko99 · October 2014

@Ann612 thanks again for the secret potion recipe! I know I should be doing it under a doctors order, but I have a gut feeling my CM is the culprit of our issues. Every since your initial post I researched the shit out of it and was very surprised at all the success women have had with this method. I will only douche once per cycle though....Thanks again! If I get preggers the cycle I try it I'm sending you something special in the mail!

Turns out I've decided to side with alcohol over trying the baking soda douche. My best friend is coming to visit the first week in November and I want to drink my brains out with her. I haven't seen her in 4 years (we live on opposite coasts) and don't want to worry about a possible BFP. I think December will be my baking soda cycle. YAY for baking soda. I use that stuff for everything....shampoo....laundry detergent, toothpaste and now I'll try it up my vagina. Love the stuff.

Ann612 · October 2014

Tiko99 said:

@Ann612 thanks again for the secret potion recipe! I know I should be doing it under a doctors order, but I have a gut feeling my CM is the culprit of our issues. Every since your initial post I researched the shit out of it and was very surprised at all the success women have had with this method. I will only douche once per cycle though....Thanks again! If I get preggers the cycle I try it I'm sending you something special in the mail!

If it actually works, knowing I got someone out of this TTC hell will be reward enough. Good luck!!

Tiko99 · October 2014

Ann612 said:

Tiko99 said:

@Ann612 thanks again for the secret potion recipe! I know I should be doing it under a doctors order, but I have a gut feeling my CM is the culprit of our issues. Every since your initial post I researched the shit out of it and was very surprised at all the success women have had with this method. I will only douche once per cycle though....Thanks again! If I get preggers the cycle I try it I'm sending you something special in the mail!

If it actually works, knowing I got someone out of this TTC hell will be reward enough. Good luck!!

We decided to wait for the baking soda until November just in case it works....and I also am a loser and ordered a douche from amazon because I didn't want to be observed buying one in the grocery store

I'll let ya know the outcome in late November early December!

Ann612 · October 2014

Tiko99 said:

Ann612 said:

Tiko99 said:

@Ann612 thanks again for the secret potion recipe! I know I should be doing it under a doctors order, but I have a gut feeling my CM is the culprit of our issues. Every since your initial post I researched the shit out of it and was very surprised at all the success women have had with this method. I will only douche once per cycle though....Thanks again! If I get preggers the cycle I try it I'm sending you something special in the mail!

If it actually works, knowing I got someone out of this TTC hell will be reward enough. Good luck!!

We decided to wait for the baking soda until November just in case it works....and I also am a loser and ordered a douche from amazon because I didn't want to be observed buying one in the grocery store I'll let ya know the outcome in late November early December!

I didn't even care, but did purchase at the pharmacy, and was happy that a woman rung me up! DH and I got a kick from the fact that I had to buy a douche bag. I suppose if we can't laugh at it in some way, we'll lose our minds. Anyway - good luck in November

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