The Thermometer Incident of 2014

     I remember the day when my own battle with infertility finally caught up with me and my ability to think rationally. It will go down in history as The Great Thermometer Incident of 2014. Scholars will study, analyze and debate it's delicate nuances, school children will sing spirited songs about it on long bus rides. It is the day when I officially lost my shit.

     Around the two year mark of trying to have a baby I absolutely lost my mind. I cried at the drop of a hat. When I could make it the whole day without crying I would sob through my evening shower. I dreaded getting onto Facebook out of fear of another pregnancy announcement from my friends. Everywhere I looked I saw pregnant bellies. They were on television, in my office at work, across the table while I was eating my lunch. They were everywhere. I was a woman obsessed and I felt completely out of control. It's an uncomfortable sensation to feel so disconnected from your body but that's exactly what happens. Your own body starts to seem like a total stranger. A stranger who is kind of an asshole and doesn't care what you think or want them to do because they are doing their own thing. You start looking for ways to regain some sense of control over the situation, over yourself. So, you start fixating and obsessing on things that feel within your control. These things vary from new vitamins to creams to techniques in the bedroom. Anything that makes you feel like you have some say in how things play out. Some small control over your future. A common fixation that I became obsessed with is charting. It's an easy target because it is a visual representation of your failure as a woman and human being and it's usually in an app or a binder of some kind so it's pretty convenient. Charting is serious business. I've read blogs written by women who can't accept that they are not pregnant because their chart is absolutely perfect on a given month. I found myself feeling jealous of these women who had nice charts even when they didn't result in a pregnancy because mine was always such a cluster-f. I thought it must be some kind of comfort to at least have a pretty chart rather than this Rorschach test that I was carrying around.

     My temps were usually all over the place. I had spikes where there should be none and perfectly straight lines where there should be hills and valleys. If I had too many days with the same temperature that was also a huge problem because that could indicate da, da, daaaaa... A failing battery in my thermometer. The kryptonite of any charter. The dreaded low thermometer battery. Difficult to detect and poison to even the healthiest chart.

     This is when I began a new and exciting fixation, a spin off of the chart fixation... Thermometers. I couldn't get enough of them. It started after a particularly hard to decipher chart. I was using an app at the time and even it couldn't detect when or if I had ovulated because my temps were overly consistent for a few days then would spike or drop for a day before returning back to the previous day's straight line level. This, as with everything else in my life at the time, led to an extensive, obsessive online research bonanza. Blogs, chat rooms, clinical documents. Oh my!!! I devoured them and in the end decided that it was a faulty thermometer. Possibly a low battery but also old, and not a basal body thermometer, the gold standard of thermometers for women trying to conceive.

     This just wouldn't do. This was the problem. This thermometer was the reason that I wasn't holding a crying baby in my arms yet. I already suspected a Luteal phase disorder. I couldn't possibly battle both a Luteal phase defect AND a crappy thermometer. This was madness. So I ran out that night after work to Walgreen’s to get a new thermometer. That defective thermometer would not last one more day in my house. I studied each thermometer in the aisle. I read the front of each package, I read the back of each package. I read the tiny print. You would have thought I was purchasing an actual baby. Finally, I decided on the brand that I wanted, although not a basal body thermometer (which are not usually stocked in regular stores) it was the best that Walgreen’s could offer. I was sure of it. I paid for it and left the store with confidence that NOW we are on the right track.

     I got home, opened the package, sat down to test my new thermometer against my old one and bam! Completely different temperatures. That's it! That was the problem! Mommy hood, here I come! I used my trusty new thermometer the next morning and I was feeling good! It's a new day! I got to work and my first client of the day was a no show so just on a whim I looked up reviews on my new thermometer. And... It's crap. Absolute garbage. Everyone hates it. “Not accurate.” First review. “Not accurate.” Second review. “Least accurate thermometer I've ever owned.” Perfect. Well, that's it. New thermometer is now dead to me. I hate it. I'll never get pregnant with this piece of junk.

     This results in my next few hours being tied up obsessively and compulsively reading thermometer reviews. I don't mean one or two reviews for each. I mean EVERY single review for EVERY single thermometer on Amazon. I mean asking in chat rooms, “which thermometer is the best?!?!” This means every review on Target and Walmart. Screw you Walgreen’s and your shit thermometers. I read it ALL. And then I bought and bought and bought. I bought seven thermometers that day... Seven. Not even counting my old thermometers. I could lose six thermometers and STILL have a new one to use. The government could come and try to take my thermometers but even they couldn't get all of them. I was good to go.

     It just so happened, 3 of them showed up to the house on the same day. I was like a kid on Christmas morning. I was throwing boxes and packing materials everywhere. It was a thermometer frenzy! My poor husband watched me with a mix of pity and fear. “What are you going to do with all of those?” He asked with all the patience he could muster. “I'm going to use them to chart” I said, feeling like I was answering a very silly question. “How many do you need to chart?” he asked quietly.

     “Well,” I said “You can actually temp in your mouth and in your vagina, and I'm thinking that I can also temp in my butt and then compare all three results to get the most accurate chart.” Completely straight face. Totally logical. What? “If I just had one more hole to temp in, I could use all of the top picks at once and really see which one is the most accurate.” Yep. That was the moment. The moment that I realized I had officially lost my mind.

     We stood looking at each other in silence; me because I was in my head trying to figure out how I could make this work, him because he was in his head trying to figure out how to commit me since I wasn't suicidal, just nuts.

     I am happy to say that sanity kicked in before I made a human cactus out of myself, and not a moment too soon, I must add. I decided to just go with my basal body thermometer and call it a day and it is the thermometer that eventually gave me the nod to take my only successful home pregnancy test ever just a few months later.

     I share this moment in time not because it is a time in my life that I am particularly proud of, or because of the lovely visual that I'm sure I gave all of you on this crisp, winter Monday. I share it because I want anyone who is in the midst of their own breakdown to know that you are not alone in your insanity, nor does it mean that you will never be back to the land of the rational. There is never a more justified time to go a little nuts than when it comes to family and especially when it comes to your children. There is absolutely no shame in that. Someday children will tell stories of you and your last stand as a rational person, when all seemed lost and the only thing that made sense were the small victories that you clung to for some whisper of control. But know that someday, you will look back on this time in your life with compassion and possibly even humor for the lengths to which you were willing to go to start your own little family. And you will know that it was all worth it regardless of how many holes it took to get an accurate temperature.