How it Happened

I feel like people are always like "it was an accident" and then don't elaborate, leaving the rest of us wondering how making a kid just "happened." Well I am an open book.

If you've talked to me in the last 2.5 years, you probably know how much I hate brith control. Right before Josh and I got married I went on Nexplanon. Nexplanon is the arm stick, it's a progesterone heavy hormonal birth control that primarily effects ovulation. Within months of having it inserted in my arm, I started therapy. I was a mess. I would cry uncontrollably between my college classes, I would cry myself to sleep each night. I was perpetually angry and found it hard to control my emotions when I was upset. Up until this point in my life, I was quite a "water off the ducks back" type of person. But I quickly became someone who was offended, overwhelmed and angry at every situation I had been thrown into. 

Therapy was okay, I didn't love my therapist but it helped having someone to vent to about all my "issues." Though, a year after being on Nexplanon, my therapist suggested I got see a psychiatrist to begin some sort of medication. I walked over to the psych office (it was next door) and made an appointment. But just as I was leaving I felt a very distinct feeling that I should get off the birth control and just practice cycle tracking. 

Now, I knew that I could do this. After my extensive semester of Women's Health Issues class (hardest but best class of my entire undergrad), I knew that my cycle was regular enough that I could track my period/ovulation and not get pregnant. I went home and talked to Josh. He was ALL for it, haha. He knew that the birth control was most likely the root of my dramatic personality and mood changes in the last year and promised that we would do everything possible to keep me from getting pregnant. 

Later that week I called my OB/GYN and made an appointment to get it removed. Within a month my mood had dramatically improved and my period had started again. We were extra careful the first few months and I made sure to pay close attention to my body. My period was a little off that first year and of course I was always worried I was pregnant but it was worth not being on brith control anymore. I was much happier. 

Since getting off, I've had a few really late periods but I soon realized it was always when I dramatically increased or decreased my marathon training. So each year around April or May, my period was usually 7-10 days late. Likewise, after I took a 2 week break following each marathon, my ovulation and period were also a few days late. So I knew what to expect. 

This was the pattern we followed for two and a half years. It worked great. I was happy, Josh was happy and my period each month became a silent celebration for surviving another 30 days without getting pregnant. 

I realize that not every woman has this luxury. I am lucky to have a consistent period and I am lucky that I've been so well educated on my ovulation cycle.  However, I will advocate until I die for a world where women are educated well enough to be off birth control and regulate their bodies on their own, period regularity pending haha. 

So how did I get here? Two and a half years of flawless practice and some how I got pregnant? Well I got injured. I don't ever get injured. I have been VERY lucky/blessed/fortunate, however you want to say it, for most of my life. My only other "major injury" was when I pulled my groin in high school. 

My last period was July 21st. I pulled my hamstring running up the Provo Canyon Indian Trail Head push on July 28th. I was supposed to ovulate 3 days later. Well, I think my dramatic decrease in running and the pain my body was dealing with, pushed back my ovulation a few days and I hadn't realized. I ovulated on the 5th and we had unprotected sex that day. So yeah, kind of cool, I can tell you exactly when I got pregnant. Even the hour (I'll spare you those details). But I simply wasn't thinking about how an injury would effect my body. Again, I have't been seriously injured since high school when I pulled my groin. 

So that is how my "accident" happened. Now, I know that some people forget to take their pill, or IUDs fail but that is how a non-birth control using woman got pregnant after practicing cycle tracking for 2.5 years. I'm sure this is the best timing for something I won't realized until many years down the road but in many ways, I knew it would always happen this way. (Gross that sounds so cliche, I am SORRY!) It's better this way too, I think I wouldn't have been ready to have kids until I was in my late 30's and that is just something Josh never wanted.