3DP3DTPanicking Over Temperature (TMI Alert)

Last night I went beyond the call of hydration duty and drank quite a bit of water...reading how important good hydration is for an IVF cycle. Makes sense that they're in a nice, cozy moist environment. I put in my progesterone capsule and went to bed only to be awoken three times during the night to pee. After one rather forceful pee, I felt that I'd pushed out my progesterone capsule so I put another in. Then I laid in bed panicking that maybe that was the wrong thing to do. Maybe a huge surge in progesterone would screw up the lining I reasoned? Ugh. Why isn't it ever easy. Third pee, I removed as much as I could, worried that I'd overdone it and might have compromised my lining. I doubt it though...Dr. S said that 200mg is the MINIMUM and I'm sure that some women do loads more.

I awoke about 7am to take the BF to NYC to catch the LIRR and get to JFK, and my task being done, I then checked out an Indian Spice Shop over in Murray Hill. (I've found the mecca of all spice shops by the way). All the while I could feel cramping going on down under, progesterone or otherwise. It's silly but the cramping, from whatever source, is oddly comforting. It's as though you know something is going on down there.

I headed home, exhausted, and surfed a bit then decided to nap for an hour or so and get up to do my taxes. (This is ONE THING I procrastinate on). I should have undressed first as I woke up a few hours later and I was hot and clammy. I remembered what the clinic said about not letting your core body temperature get elevated and I just panicked. I took my oral temperature. 98.7. But I felt so hot. What to do? I stripped off my clothes and hopped into a fairly cold shower...trying with desperation to get my body temperature down. Of course, that being done, I envisioned my acupuncturist freaking out that I'd immersed myself in the cold water...telling me how bad it would be for my Qi, my yin/yang balance, whatever.

I took my oral temp again: 98.7. But not trusting the number as my mouth felt fine, it was my body that was the problem, I dared to take my nether region temperature...much like one would do with a toddler...and it was 99.9 or so. Now sheer panic set in. I sulked that I'd again killed off my embryos by cooking them to death. But reason set in, thank god, and I went and consulted Dr. Google on the matter. Apparently we're rather efficient creatures at thermoregulation and our nether region temperatures are 0.5 to 1.0 degrees F higher than our oral temps are. Likewise, axillary or armpit temperatures are about 0.5 degrees F lower than are oral temperatures. So unless you have a nether region temperature of 100.4 or above, you most certainly don't have a fever or anything to worry about. 99.9 is just fine.

While I feel that this means that I shouldn't have anything to worry about, my panic was pretty intense all the same. This isn't the first cycle that this has happened to me. I tend to get really cold at night and want loads of covers on top of me when I go to sleep but I routinely wake in the middle of the night sweating and hot. I know a bit of this is due to the progesterone that I'm taking (and perhaps the steroids as well) but it's just a total mind fuck during an IVF cycle.

What is really eating at me right now though, is that ever since I woke up I've had nary a cramp. It's as though I went to bed all crampy and hopeful, and awoke with an empty uterus. I know I'm probably over-reacting but I can't help but think I've fucked up my cycle by not being much more cautious. I was just so tired, and that bed looked so warm and cozy considering that it was in the low 50s when I'd returned home.

But I keep trying to calm myself down by realizing that our cores are very hard to heat up above that 99.9F as our hypothalamus ensures that we're at a constant 98.6 or so. Otherwise we'd be baking our eggs, our sperm, and no one would ever be conceived under a toasty warm down blanket. Just to be certain, I took the nether region temp one more time about 10 hours later. 99.9F again. So it's been consistent since my inferno embryo-cooking episode earlier today.

Sigh of relief. And wasn't that a small cramp that I just felt?

The embryos should be hatching today...fingers, toes, and everything I have crossed.