12 Days of Christmas TTC/Infertility Style

Follow along with me on Twitter as I try to come up with a 12 Days of Christmas song just for us ttcing and/or dealing with infertility.

I have the first day figured out and posted already, but I'm looking for your input and suggestions. Send in those suggestions or follow me on twitter and send an @ttcdreams message with your suggestion(s).

I will update this post as new verses are added:

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a BFP!

On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me two positive OPKs!

On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me ...

Happy Holidays

Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and a very Happy Holiday Season. Be sure to stay tuned for upcoming posts about how to deal with the upcoming holidays as well as some gift giving ideas for yourself and your partner!

Seeing the pattern when charting

All too often we get caught up in looking at individual details and forget or fail to see the whole picture. This is very true when it comes to charting your basal body temperature or bbt. When charting we get so concerned with marking down every little thing from what our waking temperature was to any little strange feelings or symptoms we might have that we forget to step back and look at the chart as a whole.

One odd temperature in a chart is nothing to be overly concerned about. What you need to be looking for is the pattern of lower temps prior to ovulation and higher temps after ovulation. If you see a pattern of temps that are all over the place highs and lows with no shifting pattern, then you either have a bad thermometer (replace the battery or buy a new one) or you are not taking your temp at the same time each day and/or are not getting enough sleep.

In any case, try to step back and look for the pattern of your charts before you start to panic about one temp that looks wrong.

Updated Look

I just played around and have updated the look of the blog. Nothing is set in stone, so if you love it or hate it, I want to know!

Have a suggestion for me, want me to go back to the old pink style, or is this one too much color? I love hearing from you. Post a comment and let me know what you think and what you want to see.

Introduction to Infertility E-Book

The Introduction to Infertility E-Book is official! It has been published through Scribd and can be downloaded for only $2.99!!!

This is the best way to take this very informative e-book with you wherever you go. If you have always been meaning to take the e-course Introduction to Infertility, but just never found the time to sit down at your computer and read through the entire course, you can now! Just download the e-book version for the very low price of just $2.99 and you can read any page you want, whenever you want, wherever you are!

If this e-book is a success more will follow on a variety of topics. If there is a topic you would like to see covered in a future e-book, be sure to let me know.

Most Popular Article on TTC Dreams

I am not sure why, but our most popular article on the website every single month has been "Infertility Procedures and Costs". I didn't write the article to be popular, but to be informative and offer the basic information that I always saw being asked. What is... and how much will it cost? With that in mind, early this year I did some research on state infertility insurance laws and wrote a few articles about them. I really did expect them to be the most popular, but they have not yet surpassed the IFPC pages yet.

The first article I wrote was a general informational article that provided basic information on those states that had laws on the books. I do recommend this article to everyone as starting with some basic information where insurance and infertility is concerned is very important. Educate Yourself About State Mandated Infertility Insurance Coverage was written to guide those that may live in a state that mandates coverage for infertility. But there is more! I did write additional articles about specific states that you might want to read as well. These articles have been published at EZine Articles and are not currently on the TTC Dreams website:

What You Must Know About California's Infertility Insurance Mandates

An Explanation of New York's State Mandated Infertility Insurance Laws

The Difference Between State Mandates to Cover and to Offer Infertility Insurance Coverage

No matter what state you live or work in, you owe it to yourself to read these articles and be as informed as you can be about what your health insurance should cover.

Find us on Twitter!

TTC Dreams has been on twitter for over a year now, and we currently have 68 wonderful followers and 156 tweets. If you are on twitter and post about fertility or infertility be sure to find us and follow us. We are currently following 38 people/businesses and if we follow you, we may retweet you. We are also going to try a weekly "tweet-out" to our followers and those that we are following to say thanks and to encourage others to follow them as well.

If you have never used twitter before, it is much easier than you think. I was nervous when I set up the account and really wasn't sure how it worked, or if anyone would be interested in the 140 characters that I would be sending out. But finding a few people with the same interests helped, and also allowed me to connect with others. There are lots of sites that will help to explain how it works and what you can do with twitter, and I encourage everyone to give it a try. Even if you don't want to share with the rest of the "twitterverse" you can find people that you want to follow and see what they have to say. Who knows, maybe you will find your voice and people will start following you on twitter to see what you have to say?