On the whole, my habits are quite healthy. I eat organic food whenever I can. I never drink soda. I exercise regularly. And I have been good about giving up things that could be damaging while trying to conceive. I eat very little sugar. I stopped drinking coffee and drink only one cup of green tea in the morning. I limit my fish intake, especially during the 2ww (which is hard because I love fish.) I avoid stinky cheeses during this time as well. I stay safely protected from toxic fumes and kitty litter. These are all mildly aggravating disruptions, but not really that big a deal. Yet I do have my Achilles heel. For getupgrrl and others, living without the rousing energy of caffeine is the greatest challenge. For me, it's the succulent goodness of le vin.
I have always been what you might call, um, an enthusiastic drinker. Mostly of wine. Yes-sir-ee, I love me some wine. White or red, both are equally tasty. Because I was blessed (or cursed) with an impressive tolerance level, I've never been one of those girls who needs to stop after a glass or two. One glass of wine has always had about the same effect on me as a glass of water. Whether this means I'm genetically predisposed to being an alcoholic or just that I have an admirably strong constitution, who knows. Suffice it to say, I'm a lushy lobster.
When we started trying to conceive last summer, I went for a preconception checkup, where I was given a pamphlet that said I should have stopped drinking completely at least three months before trying to conceive. "Ha, right! Too late for that," I snorted. I was skeptical that total abstention was really necessary, so off I went to search the web. This led me to sites which confirmed that all alcohol is forbidden the moment you start trying to conceive. "One must behave during preconception as if one is already pregnant." I could practically see the fingers wagging at me through my screen.
"Women in Europe drink while they're pregnant, not to mention while they're trying," I thought. But I certainly didn't want to do anything to hurt my baby (yes, back then, I still believed confidently that there would be a baby soon.) And so I stopped drinking. I grumbled and sulked, but I did it.
As my mania for searching the internet for all things TTC-related escalated, I began to find more and more contradictory information about whether alcohol is permissable while trying to get pregnant and, if so, how much. It turned out that drinking during the two weeks before ovulation couldn't possibly hurt an as yet unconceived child, so I went back to drinking my much-missed wine in the pre-ovulatory phase of my cycles. Yum. But alcohol was still strictly verboten during the 2ww, lest I produce a poor child burdened by alcohol-related defects. That would not be good. So no wine during the 2ww for me.
Eventually I discovered that the fetus doesn't share nutrients with the mother until the embryo has attached to the uterine wall, and that doesn't happen until 7-10 days post ovulation. So technically, no harm would really come to the baby if I had wine during the two week wait either. Hmmm, tempting. Still, the thought of drinking during the two weeks in which something could really be happening down there just didn't seem right to me. So mostly I abstained, as a matter of good faith if nothing else. And certainly there was no wine to be had in the last few days of the eternal 2ww, when I lived cleaner than Mother Theresa herself.
The months dragged on, the negative HPT's piled up, and my morale began to wane. Why wasn't it working? What were we doing wrong? Back to the internet. And time to buy some infertility books. Turns out that alcohol consumption can decrease your chances of getting pregnant and hamper the quality of your eggs. One source suggested no more than one glass a day. But another book said that weekly alcohol consumption should be kept down to 2 glasses a week! 2 GLASSES A WEEK! "That's crazy talk," I mumbled to myself irritably. And yet another suggested four glasses per week. That seemed like a reasonable compromise. So I entered the next stage: 3-4 glasses per week during the first half of my cycle, one or no glasses per week during the last half of the cycle.
Time crept by. My frustration level climbed higher and higher. My emotions began to get the better of me. I started to feel scared, sad, isolated, angry, confused, etc. Which brings us to the present. It seems particularly irksome to me that, at precisely a time in my life when I need to find pleasure in the face of all this fearful uncertainty, I have to carefully patrol something which brings me just that. Not to mention the fact that sipping on a nice glass of Syrah is one of my most effective coping mechanisms. But now, when I have so much to cope with, that glass is mostly off limits.
So, like Jo, lately I've just been in a "fuck it" mode. (Though my idea of "fuck it" is a good deal more licentious than the Leery Polyp's admirably modest intake, I must say.) For almost two weeks, I've had at least a glass of wine a day, usually two. And these are not stingy portions, mind you, but nice regularly sized glasses of juicy fine wine. A couple of times, I even tipped over into the three glasses category. Good grief, I'm going to hell for sure.
Yes, I feel guilty and conflicted. Believe me. But am I really doing that much damage? Jen recently posted about a study that suggests that moderate drinking (up to 14 glasses a week) has no effect on fertility. In fact, even more than 14 glasses a week didn't seem to cause trouble for women trying to conceive for the first time. Even so, if I never manage to get pregnant, will I blame myself for having these drinks now? Will I wonder if I could have conceived had I been more abstemious? I could just give up the wine altogether, and that would remove the guilt factor entirely, but is that really the wisest thing? Given my shaky emotional status these days, is it better to find a balance? To let myself indulge for the sake of my sanity? And how much is too much? How much condemns me to a barren future? Or does it even matter?
LG, how the heck did you get inside my brain? I was definitely of the mindset of doing everything oh-so-carefully as we began trying. No drinking (I actually don't drink much, but the occasional wine or good beer is nice), no artificial sweeteners, and no caffeine (the last one about killed me). I waned a bit as I kept getting my period every month, and then I went right back to being good as we began fertility treatments.
Well, I'm off the "Mother Teresa" wagon again, although I suppose I'll be good when we start IVF (if we can get there, another saga in itself...). But right now, even though there is always the remote possiblity that something in the cosmos will align and I'll get knocked up all on my own (we have unexplained IF), I'm having my drink with dinner, I'm eating whatever cheese I like, and I'm having my coffee. And until my period goes missing, I'll continue to do so. It's bad enough to be infertile, do we really have to add deprivation on top of everything? Sorry for the rant...you really hit a chord. We're all so stressed from this and then we have to be restrictive. It just sucks.
Posted by: dish | July 06, 2004 at 02:55 PM
I was a 'nun' when it came to eating habits and swore off everything and then the bfn's kept piling up.
I'm good most days, but now, before I pee on a stick, I make a ritual out of it -- I buy something that I'm forbiden and make sure it's something really bad like a hostess cupcake and then I pee on the stick, eat my cupcake and feel no guilt because, um, like what? That bfn will then suddenly change to a bfp? I think not. I'm most careful during the ovulation phase, but during the luteal phase when it's obvious it ain't working (again), I just don't have the tolerance to deny myself everything. It's like a hell no one can understand unless you've been there.
Posted by: Emily | July 06, 2004 at 11:20 PM
Amazing post - exactly what I struggle with.
I have a friend who when she was pregnant her OB told her she could have a glass of wine everyday if she wanted. Almost enough to make me want to pick him as my OB, oh but wait, I don't need an OB.
Posted by: beaver girl | July 07, 2004 at 12:02 PM
thank you, thank you, bless you
wine for you, beer for me, well, more like mikes hard lemonade, cranberry flavored at the moment.
its summer and im drinkin away, alcohol and caffeinated beverages included, once stims start for IVF #1 i'll swear off but im beginning to think that nothing i do is gonna have an effect, either in a positive or negative way, unexplained IF is a real bitch and drinkin at the end of the day sure helps some, sometimes
Posted by: Doodle | July 07, 2004 at 06:14 PM
You guys could possibly be my long lost BEST friends...I'm smack dab in the middle of my 2ww after my 5th IUI, I've been so amazingly good (for me). I'm pretty much a glass of a good cabernet with dinner kind of gal, but 2nights before the IUI I started gagging down non-alcoholic beverages with my dinner (yeah I know sucks right?)well my husband and I just went up north and stopped at the tax free liquor store and restocked our wine cooler with all kinds of tasty, juicy,just the right temp. red vinhos!!! I'm almost to the last sip of a glass of delicious merlot. Beta on Sat. wish me luck!
Posted by: Sam | August 23, 2004 at 05:57 PM
I'm so with you guys! I'm English and if you so much as mention a craving for the red (or white) stuff during your ttc time, you get fingers wagging and people tutting like you've announced you're going to sell your baby or something! we've been ttc for about 5 mths now and I too jumped on the abstinence band wagon at the start, but then I kept reading about people who'd got pg on drunken one night stands or at xmas parties etc (basically lots of alcohol-fuelled occasions). So it occurred to me that people DO manage to conceive whilst doing all the wrong stuff. I just have to walk down my road to see teenage mums with cigaretts hanging out of their mouths and cream cakes in their hands, pushing a buggy to the off licence (liquor store for you guys!) to make me realise that THEY manage to get pregnant without even trying (and sadly, without even wanting to probably...).
So I say go for it! I'm on day 5 of my 2ww and have a large glass of shiraz keeping me company beside my computer. i tell my man to lay off just before bd-ing incase it affects his "little men", but i don't see the harm in indulging up until 7-1o dpo, when i might be implanting. for me, this will be tues through fri so i have just tomorrow night left to enjoy the vino ;-)
So remember - if alcohol was really a infertility inducer, how come so many babies are conceived when the parents are pissed...?!!
neat x
Posted by: Neat | April 30, 2006 at 02:33 PM
So mostly I abstained, as a matter of good faith if nothing else. And certainly there was no wine to be had in the last few days of the eternal 2ww, when I lived cleaner than Mother Theresa herself.
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