Congratulations!

Congrats!!

I think the marquette study is still going on, they give you a monitor and a stipend for strips. Google the study “marquette university nfp study” You just have to give them access to your charting, but if you are a special case I am sure they would love you and you would be a help to many other special NFP cases. Praying for you too!

Hi Deanna, I got my monitor and strips from Amazon. While I wouldn’t call it “inexpensive”, its still the cheapest way to go that I’ve found so far. My parents helped us out with the cost..would your parents maybe be willing to do the same? (even maybe as an early Christmas gift or something? )

no advice, but still praying for you!  I hope it really helps!

I am pretty sure that Marquette has closed the study, as I looked into it a while back for the same reason. However, a friend just informed me that Costco is selling the monitor and first box of 30 test strips for $129 - that is the best deal out there I think.  It still might be too expensive, but in the long run, it may be worth the sacrifice in return for the peace of mind this method brings, if you can manage to scrape together the pennies (or dollars).

Deanna…  I know several who have bought the monitor from Craigslist for much less.  A friend I know actually got it for $40 recently.  Although it is an expensive investment at first, it is far more inexpensive than another baby. 

Although it’s not going to be a recommended way to do it, after you’ve tested for a few cycles and get a pattern down, I know of people who just test for about 3-5 days.  They start testing closer to when they usually detect peak rather than from the first day the monitor asks (which is usually around day 6-9).  So, If you typically peak around day 15-17, start testing day 12 or 13 until peak.  I would definitely not do that until you have about 6 cycles or more down… but know it’s something you can do.

If you have a flexible spending account, they are flex spending approved items as well. I bought my more recent box of strips on Amazon (subscribe and save is cheapest) and I just received my check in the mail from my flex spending company to reimburse me.

Just some ways to save money for you and still use the monitor.  I know you will be happy with it.  It’s so worth it just for the confidence it gives you in knowing your fertility.

Amazon/Walmart are definitely the cheapest.  I got my monitor for 45$ from Walmart and I get my strips on Amazon.  If you click the option for “automatic renewal,” you get 15% off your purchase, bringing it down to 24$ for a 3 mo supply, so just 8 dollars per month for strips.  Not bad once you get your monitor!

Also, I the Marquette study doesn’t usually pay for supplies (I’m part of it), but as someone else said, they may provide assistance for someone in need.

AbigalesMom: Here’s an article I found online regarding this topic. http://www.fox59.com/news/wxin-yoga-and-the-vatican-vatican-priest-declares-yoga-the-work-of-the-devil-20111129,0,5682027.column
My husband has met Fr.Amorth and he is the real thing. However, I also question the intent of a person doing yoga. I’ve done it before and I used the meditation time to focus on God. I think it is a great exercise to stretch and tone the body. But that’s me. I would love if someone could give more info regarding Yoga and the teachings of the church.

This discussion has come up here at least twice before that I can remember. I’m pretty sure there’s never been a consensus in those discussions. It’s also important to note that in the article cited here, the statement is from the Vatican’s chief exorcist NOT from the Vatican. There’s a huge difference there, and it’s misleading to suggest that this is official teaching. Personally, I think the exercises of yoga are not harmful in themselves (any more than Pilates is), but that practicing yoga could veer into harmful territory if the chanting/attention to Hindu beliefs became the focus and was a detraction from Catholic spirituality. I’m totally comfortable using yoga as a form of exercise, but not as a form of spirituality.

I’m with AnonToday—as a form of exercise, it’s just an exercise.  Really.  There are so many forms and modifications of it these days that I doubt what a lot of us do at the YMCA class would even be recognizable to a Hindu using it as a form of spiritual activity. 

And there are a lot of orthodox Catholics whose opinions I value and respect that take Fr. Amorth’s writings with a pretty hefty grain of salt, fwiw…

http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/cdfmed.htm

Just came across this on EWTN, signed by Cardinal Ratzinger.  Hope this helps!

I agree with AnonToday and Margaret. I’ve used yoga (and still do) as a form of exercise. I believe that doing the chants and hand signs for various meditations during the exercises could open you up to some evil, so I just avoid those and use the positions for some great stretching and toning exercises! I used to belong to a yoga class before i ever had kids and every so often they would include a chant and when everyone else was doing it, I just stuck with the position

A Benedictine once explained it to me like this: using yoga as “just exercise” would be like someone saying they were using the sign of the cross as “just exercise.”  The yoga poses are used as postures for a certain type of religion’s meditation.  Even if you do YOUR (Catholic) meditation, you are still in a sense honoring and bowing to a non-Catholic, non-Christian religion by using their prayer postures (which are *part of* their prayer) for your prayers.  Again, it is like saying you can use the sign of the cross for exercise or the rosary to say prayers contrary to Catholicism.  It’s just not proper or appropriate.  And its not “harmless” to do so.

Sarah, I’m not very good at answering actual questions about fertile and infertile times, but I can say the Marquette Method and fertility monitor were and are amazingly helpful in the post-partum period. My youngest (of four) is almost 18 months old, which is the longest I’ve gone without getting pregnant in over six years. I really needed a break. My cycles are still not regular (and I was predictable enough to use the rhythm method before my first and between the first two). What I love most about it is how objective the algorithm (if you chart online) and the monitor are. I never have to make a judgment call (knowing my husband or both of us will be disappointed). It was also significantly easier for us than CCL’s method. I hope you find something useful.

If you have nodules, this isn’t an “undetected” thyroid issue!  Basal temps elevated would indicate *hyper* thyroid, where depression and weight gain would be *hypo* thyroid.  It is possible that you could swing back and forth, depending on what the nodules are actually doing, so testing more than once to see if the numbers are consistent might be helpful.  Please check that your lab uses the up-to-date ranges for normal, which are narrower than they used to be.  Also, TSH is not sufficient; T3, T4, and antibodies are all important parts of the picture.  There is a ton of good info at thyroid.about.com A helpful, flexible doctor you trust will be an invaluable ally!

Good advice above, though i’d recommend also looking into adrenal fatigue. http://Www.adrenal fatigue.org. My thyroid tested fine, but i knew something wasn’t right. Feel free to contact me through my blog if you’d like to chat about it! The pharmacist i work with does phone consults and mail order on the supplements.

Oops, http://www.adrenalfatigue.org

Another possibility for your cycle changes is polycystic ovarian syndrome.  You mentioned weight gain, and sometimes that alone can lead to this syndrome; losing weight can straighten your cycles out and lead to normal fertility again (not always, but it is very possible).  Definitely keep looking into the thyroid issues, but if that becomes a dead end, look into PCOS or someother hormonal issue that could be caused by the weight gain.

Thank you all for the suggestions, I will be contacting the doctor to be retested, they used the outdated thyroid ranges and I will be bringing in the research that I have found.  I live on a small island in Alaska, so they don’t know a whole lot about thyroid problems here, I have to have a problem before they can recommend an endocrinologist in Anchorage.

Andrea, I’m trying to lose weight like there is no tomorrow and am actually gaining weight, so the weight has become a symptom.  Thank you for the suggestion and I will ask about it.  You never know, maybe I have both a thyroid issue and because of the weight gain now have another problem.

Duh!  That’s “change” myself!

I have experienced low libido from hormone problems. I found it helpful to have my husband wake me during the night with some gentle caresses. This helped my body just respond, without my mind getting in the way. Some good, honest prayer asking God to help you in that area might be something to try. Good luck!

SoSad, if you can’t discuss your sex life with your husband maybe you could read a book together and write notes about it to each other? HolySex is supposed to be a great book, although I haven’t read it yet. Also, is there a priest your husband could talk to? Or you could both go to talk to a priest about it? Then there’s the Holy Spirit! As the previous poster suggested, prayer is a powerful tool and the Holy Spirit can accomplish amazing things:) Good luck!! This area of your life is worth fighting to make it better!!

SoSad, I could have written your post word for word. I have been working for several years (at least 3, maybe more) to change myself in this area. I read all the books I could get my hands on, asked for advice here, and tried to will myself into a mindset that would allow for the physical intimacy my husband desired. It did not work. In fact, focusing on this as if it were a sexual problem, MY sexual problem, made it much, much worse. I finally went to a counselor and she has helped me see that it is a relationship problem and he must be involved in changing the relationship. If it is uncomfortable for you to have relations without feeling emotionally intimate first, then it is important that he makes SURE that you are feeling emotionally intimate. Your feelings matter! I am being very blunt but I only do so because I feel your pain and even the humiliation of the experience (at least I felt humiliated) and I don’t want you to go through what I did: years of ignoring my own needs. Doing so will not make you more attracted to your husband and it runs a risk of actually making you less attracted to him. I wish I had some resource to which I could direct you but unfortunately all the advice I could find was of the grin-and-bear-it variety. All I can say is please don’t think that this is your problem to bear alone. It is very much a two-way street. My best to you…..

Thanks a million, ladies.  I persevere and keep searching for answers!  I’ve heard of Holy Sex and will definitely check it out!  It’s always best to take our problems to Jesus first, so I will do that as well.  And you’re right, it’s a relationship problem.  We’re both so busy and stressed out with our lives—men need sex to decompress, women need to decompress first!  Why did Our Lord fill His world with ironies?

Sorry, this was meant to go above for the person asking about how to afford the Clear Blue Monitor.

Monica, I’d be glad to pray for your friend. I know the kind of stress she must be feeling.

While I’m so sorry to hear that you are pregnant unexpectedly again.  I do know that it is unusual that you had a false peak in your 3rd cycle post partum.  It is about 1-2/100 women in the first 6 months post partum with cycle “0”  will experience a false peak, but it makes me wonder if there are some other things to consider with the false peak.  Such as… did you dip the stick and not test it right away?  Maybe it wasn’t in your testing window so you dipped the stick and waited until it was.  I do know that will cause a false peak- I had that happen but based on my mucus signs I was able to know it wasn’t and started using the LH sticks to catch my true peak. That may not be the case, but I thought I’d share that.  As a teacher of the method I always encourage my clients to be sure mucus peak coincides with the monitor peak, although I know this method is supposed to be fool proof with the monitor… I still think it’s important to have that second thing to correlate the monitor peak with- after all it is a monitor.  Dr. Fehring does encourage a second LH check in those first few cycles post partum.  Just some thoughts.  I know this baby is part of God’s plan, but though when the monitor fails you like this.  God Bless

That’s supposed to be “tough when the monitor fails you like this.”

Interesting…  what probably happened was you had a true LH surge…meaning the monitor picked up a doubling of the LH hormone, but it clearly did not release the egg and you had another surge which did release the egg.  It is very uncommon and I hope you do share your story with Dr. Fehring in the forum on the marquette website.  This information is very useful to them.  He does recommend a second check especially in this phase of the game… there is a high unintended pregnancy rate during the return to fertility.  So he’ll suggest using an OPK in the evening for the first 3 -4 cycles (at least) post partum. 

I do hope you don’t give up on the monitor all together, but use a second check- mucus peak or LH sticks or even temps- which I don’t doubt you will.  Blessings.