How That Doesn't Happen or My Totally Geeked Out Cycle

 Seemingly clever people, upon hearing how many children we have, will often exclaim with a perverse grin on (usually) his face,  "Don't you know how that happens?!"  My stock response is "Yes, we do.  We like it very much and we are apparently much better at it than you.  Would you like some instruction?"  So just to set the record straight, we do, indeed, know how that happens.  Our current struggle is in figuring out how to make it not happen.

Long ago when we had only a handful of children Tad and I threw around some numbers that sounded like a nice robust number of children to raise.  All along I thought 16 was nice and Tad's standing answer was that he would get to 12 and see how he feels.  I was ok with 12 as a working number but that 16 has always been lurking in the back of my mind.  Anyway, 12 seemed like such a big number and it seemed so far away that I wouldn't have to think anymore about it for a long time to come.  Well, wouldn't you know it, this summer we placed number 11 with us in July.  Then in August number 12 was born.  Shortly afterwards, Tad and I looked at each other and said....huh....

Tad decided he wanted to stick to his guns.  He loves our twelve but they are a lot of work, he is the provider and he's, well, tired.  Pregnancy is an especially tiring time for him as he is the one who picks up all my slack when I simply can't do what I can usually do.  I understand that, I respect that.  I'm tired too.  A rest would be nice.  But this is where it gets complicated.  We are committed to living this all-natural life-style, to leaving room for God to work where He will, to not try to "fix" what isn't broken and yet my cycle doesn't cooperate with the various sympto-thermal methods out there.  I've explained that dilemma in detail here.

So what's a tired couple to do?  In true engineer form, Tad researched technology that would help us solve this problem.  In the end, he purchased two different electronic monitors to follow my cycle and help us determine the days when that can happen and the days when that isn't likely to happen.  We've started this month tracking things on the OvaCue

  which monitors the electrolyte levels in the saliva.  Next month we add in the ClearBlue monitor

which tracks LH in the urine.  In the meantime we're also adding in the extra precaution of old fashioned mucus observation.  I am beginning to feel as if no other woman has a cycle so completely geeked out as my own.  Only my husband could accomplish that.  I believe he has my cycle covered on every front - not much chance of that happening any time soon - especially since my only responsibility is to report to the monitors each day while reading and "interpreting" the data rests in his capable hands.

So the real kicker here is that if and/or when we ever do conceive again (yes, it's still open for discussion) number 13 will be our first planned pregnancy.