I've had a lot of thoughts and feelings going on over the past few days. 

For one thing, this month feels momentous to me, even though it's not actually different from any before or after.  The reason it feels momentous is because it is cycle #18.  I think I've mentioned before, two couples that I am friends with needed an extended period of time to conceive with nothing being wrong with them.  Both of those couples conceived at 18 months.  I know that the chances of me conceiving this month are the same as they are any other month, but I almost just wrote that I know the chances are infinitesimal, because that's how I feel.  I also know that it is possible that there is nothing wrong and it to still take over 18 months, even if the chances of that are about half a percent.  Still, emotionally it feels important even if objectively it's not.  I'm REALLY glad I'm going to be around a lot of my closest friend in the days after I find I didn't conceive again.

I was talking to my friend J yesterday (who doesn't read this blog because he hears every detail from me anyway), and he said again that I'm thinking about this all too much.  J said that when he sees me at that time of the month, I might as well have a tattoo on my forehead that says "I was a failure again, as usual."  He's right about that, I'm sure.  However, unlike other times when he's been concerned about how much I'm thinking about it, this time he had a couple of ideas about HOW to stop thinking about it quite so much given that I can't stop being surrounded by pregnancy and babies. 

J pointed out, for one thing, that because I'm tracking my BBT and, depending on the week, doing OPKs in the morning, pregnancy is literally the first thing I think about as I wake up every morning.  I said that it was to find the patterns and trends, and J replied that after 17 months, I know what the patterns and trends are.  He does have a point...I do know when the BBT is going to change, especially since (despite what my OB/GYN seems to think) I don't have irregular cycles.  So I'm going to try just checking my BBT for a couple days at a time when I expect it to change.  Maybe that will help keep IF from being the first thing I think about every morning as well as the last thing I think about every night (which is when I pray, even if I've prayed other times in the day).

I've also been thinking over the past day about calling my time of the month something other than my Proof of Failure.  I don't know if I can do that or not, because that's what it is to me, and at this point I can't think of it any other way.  But we'll see.