got guilt?

i know logically that it is irrational, but do you ever feel guilty for not ttc earlier?

i guess i could give a little background story. my husband & i have been married for only a little over 2 &1/2 years; however, we've been together since we were 14 years old. yes, there were times when we broke up & dated other people, but we basically grew up together. there was a time when we were in high school, 16 years old probably, & we thought i could be pregnant. we prayed & prayed that i wouldn't be. i wasn't. (looking back, i probably wasn't really even late but the idea of getting pregnant was so terrifying back then.)

in college, i was doing what college kids do, & was in no way ready to think about getting married, let alone have kids.. in medical school, i was so busy just trying to survive that i hardly had time to take care of myself & it never even occurred to me to think about having kids then. plus, i also wasn't married yet. my intern year of residency, we finally got married. i wanted to enjoy being a newlywed. we had been long distance for the majority of our relationship, up until this point, and i just couldn't get enough of "us" time. i wanted to travel, go to nice dinners, be able to go out on the town with friends. and we did all of that. we have seen some amazing places and have made great memories.

in may 2009, we went on a vacation to go scuba diving & enjoy some fun in the sun. at that time, i was on the patch because i couldn't remember to take the pill everyday even though i had religiously took it in college & med school. i didn't want to have a patch tan line, so that month i tried the ring. it was fine, except during sex. well, that's a problem during vacation! so we threw it out and from then on, i was pretty much BCP free. (there was a month in nov 2009 that i was on the patch again b/c i didn't want to have a baby around the time of starting a new job/studying for my boards.)

we did the whole, "whatever happens, happens" approach. nothing happened.

in jun 2010, so over a year after i had stopped regularly taking birth control(7 months after i had stopped completely), we had another trip planned. it was 2 weeks in the sun by the beach. we had sex every day. the timing was perfect!

we didn't get pregnant.

later that month, we move to a new city, start new jobs. its stressful. i'm studying for boards, learning a new system. we continue to try. i pee on stick which tell me i'm ovulating. my cm is telling me that i am. i start lurking on thebump.com.

nada.

so here we are, 7 cycles of "really trying". while i'm still hopeful for this cycle, (i'm 11dpo), part of me wonders if i was being selfish waiting all of these years. whatif we would have started trying right away when we got married, would we have a baby now? whatif we got married earlier? whatif, whatif...

the whatifs and the guilt is bearing down on me.

i know that 7 cycles may not be that long to some but to this type A personality it definitely is. i am a doctor. i know my body. i know how the hormones work. i memorized that stupid graph in med school. our timing for the most part has been really good, yet so far, no baby.

why is it that all of these babies in my NICU are being born to crackheads & crazy people, "by accident" but in over 20 months, i have never "accidentally" gotten pregnant?

statistically speaking, even if only 20 percent of people with perfect timing get pregnant, we should be pregnant by now!

if i would have known it was going to take this long,
i woulda, shoulda, coulda....