My temp dropped today, not below baseline, but close enough, and I'm cramping like mad, so pretty sure I'm out this cycle and AF will be showing up in the next 24 hours or so. Still, I'm glad I recorded everything this cycle, so I do have it for a reference for next cycle. Lots of things happened that weren't normal for me, I think the triphasic temps were possibly caused by a bug, which would also explain the dry heaving and nausea. I'm sad of course, and will spend the next day or so sad, this isn't as easy emotionally as I had hoped it would be, but deep down I knew it wouldn't be. I did test today, and it was negative, really negative. So we move onto the next cycle, I will be monitored better this next cycle with ultrasound at day 15, and an hCG trigger as long as everything is good to go, and I will make sure my sperm is here ahead of time this round.. so if all goes well I will know one way or another by New Years.
It's 1 a.m. right now, and I want to be in bed sleeping... looked forward to sleeping since about 5 p.m. Why am I up? Well first there was the 9:30 call from a friend, her husband had a seizure and she needed me to meet her at the clinic to help with the babies so she could be with him.. of course I said, pulling snow pants over my jammies and telling hubby to unplug the car and warm it up...we were back home about an hour later and I headed to bed, sweet dreams were calling my name. I snuggled down and waited to drift off... then my hips started hurting, so I flipped over on my belly.. that made my heartburn worse and my stomach start cramping, so over onto my side, still have heartburn issues and now my hip is hurting even worse. About midnight Dh came to bed to find me still awake tossing and turning, he asked if he could do anything to help and I asked for some tums, the heartburn was getting worse even on my back now, partly propped up. So he brought be some, I chewed, swallowed, and sighed.. surely now I'll get that sleep I want...then I realized, I have to fricken pee!!!! I try to ignore it, but as I lay there I realize the heartburn is also returning, so decide to kill two birds with one stone. Up to empty my bladder (no I'm not frequently urinating, at least I wasn't.. this may or may not be a thing?) and then take another couple of tums... heart burn gone, check, bladder empty, check..maybe I can finally get some sleep.. settle in and feel myself drifting, and then a new uncomfortable sensation starts to replace the heartburn.. nausea.. try to ignore it, but it's not easing up, it's getting worse.. then Dh turns over in bed.. and that was all she wrote.. up to the bathroom where I spent the last 10 minutes hunched over the toilet dry heaving into it... note to self, if one must throw up, please at least make sure there is something in there to throw up! So now here I sit.. belly seems to feel better, and I've decided I won't be returning to bed.. the couch looks much more inviting tonight...I told Baby Mine, tonight as I lay in bed, he could make himself known any time...if this is his doing.. well all I can say is he got his humor from me!
We live in a fishing village, fish and caribou are the main staples of most people's diet here, supplemented with moose, various types of fowl, and the occasional beaver. Of course none of this comes in pretty supermarket packages, you have to do the dirty work. When it comes to dealing with fish that is my job, I clean them and cook them generally. Until today. A gentleman brought us 3 beautiful lush fish (same family as catfish) some of my family's favorite fish, yum! I have been dealing with feeling dizzy since yesterday and today nausea has set in...so I suggested that maybe Dh should deal with filleting the fish, problem was, he had no idea how to go about it, and Lush have an odd kind of skin (its slipper kind of like an eel) and an odd body shape, so he was really lost. I finally jumped in to help, fearful of ruining all that yummy fish meat (never mind that at the moment the thought of cooking that meat was making my stomach roll)....handled that fine, showed him how, handed the controls back over, planning to supervise...and then the smell hit me, and I ended up bent over a toilet...never has butchering anything made me gag or even a little nauseous...so a good sign, I dare hope! Did I mention I have also been super dizzy the last two days, and umm a bit gassy...boobies are still sore and I am biting my nails until testing day! Got to go for now, stomach is rolling again...am I crazy that this nausea makes me smile just a bit?
I'm not feeling extremely negative about things, yet.. but woke up today and without going into details you don't I'm having a pre menstrual symptom...not happy! My breasts were killing me yesterday, today so far not as much, still tender but not as bad as they were yesterday... however not to strip all hope away, I am quite dizzy this morning, and a bit queasy (which probably is due to being dizzy). Officially in the last week of my TWW so still trying to stay positive about it all but I think mentally I'm starting to gear up for a let down!
My daughter gave me a hug last night, I pulled away startled, her hug was a bit uncomfortable... because my boobies were a little sore... fast forward to this morning, they are definitely sore today.. not horribly sore, just tender and sensitive...this is not a PMS symptom...and I am becoming more optimistic and less cautious!!! Stuffy nose is still here...and I have become a bit impatient and irritable, I catch myself snipping and it upsets me, my boys and Dh don't deserve to be snipped at, it's just me...but none the less, I keep doing it, and only after the fact do I realize I did it again...sigh..of course that could be PMS.
Ok so this post might be a bit much for some people, if you have a sensitive tummy, can't handle bodily functions, or just don't want to even think of me that way... please skip! This is for my records, if I am pregnant, its so I can remember those early days when all I had was hope, and if I'm not, I want to remember what I felt like so I can compare it the next cycle.
I've been off and on crampy for most of this cycle, but on 4 DPI the cramps became very menstrual like wrapping around to my back and making me extremely uncomfortable. They were gone by morning, only to return, just not as bad, last night 5DPI. This morning is 6 DPI and I went to bed last night with a stuffy nose, got up this morning with same stuffy nose, despite my breath right strips I tried out, feel like I have an attack of allergies coming on. Cramping is mild this morning. I had a short lived severe headache hit me last night..what was that all about? I don't know but it was followed a little later by a dizzy spell that lasted only a second or two.. felt like my brain shook inside my head...weird! No breast tenderness, not overly emotional, not frequently peeing, and not overly tired...
My cervix was putting off quite a bit of mucus yesterday, it was a mixture of kind of stringy and creamy...was quite a large amount of it! Cervix also rose back up yesterday, it had dropped low, now it is more medium. Ok that's it.. enough analyzing.. but really it is for my future sanity LOL!
Just a little over a week now before I am finished with my first two week wait. I had a day yesterday, it felt like the waiting would never end, I wanted to do something so badly I even contemplated taking a test, any test would do.. just so I could do something, anything to pass this time. Of course I realize how incredibly silly this would be, no test would show anything yet and would just be a waste. Interesting but probably of no significance.. none the less I am noting it here, just in case I have to do this again next month. I want to remember. I have been cramping since starting Clomid, but sometime late yesterday the cramping stopped, and stayed away until this afternoon while I was on the phone with my friend, A.. then wham it started up again, and now I feel like I am days away from starting the dreaded period...and in reality I could be, I usually do within 11 days of Ovulation...I hope I'm not though, I still believe Aunt Flo won't show her nasty face this month.. and instead the cramping will be followed by 9 months of bloating!
Today marks the first day of the TWW, I wonder how well I will deal with it? So far I am doing ok, although I find myself already looking up early signs and other questions related to pregnancy. It's been an amazing journey this month and we are still staying with positive thoughts. I asked Dh last night if he thought he would be comfortable doing an at home IUI next time, and he just calmly said, there isn't going to be a next time. Friends you must understand how unlike him that is. Always he has been the voice of sanity when we have tried before, reminding me not to get my hopes up, reminding me that there is a good chance it won't happen. He has never dreamed of a future child (He dreamed that he was visiting family with his son, only to quote him, "It wasn't any of my current sons." He said he was about five years old and looked like us) I have to restate, this is not like my DH at all...Now we wait, and according to DH until we are told otherwise, I'm pregnant as far as he's concerned LOL! Did I mention his first words to me today was asking me how I felt, and if I was doing ok.. so sweet.. too soon, but soooo sweet!
My body was so cooperative it held off ovulating until this morning, unfortunately the swimmers hadn't arrived still.. and then we got the call.. they were waiting at the post office, just a few hours (about 4) after I had felt the ovulation pains...and not only were they waiting, so was my preseed so I had approved lubricant for the speculum (sorry if that TMI) and to put up in the syringe to help get all the sperm out! So I am no officially in my TWW (two week wait) and am still feeling very positive about it all despite the bumps along the way!
I'm in a lot of pain today, but it's a good pain, even though I got the positive OPK yesterday morning my body still hasn't ovulated, which is very very good...because my swimmers have still not arrived! Deep breathing is very helpful for dealing with the discomfort and while I will be glad for my ovaries to return to normal, I am just as thankful right now that they are holding their precious cargo in another day...hopefully tomorrow everything will be a go! So glad I temped this month so I know what's going on, otherwise I would be completely devastated thinking my window of opportunity had passed...but as long as my temps stay down there's still hope!
I got a positive OPK today, that normally would be fantastic news.. happy happy joy joy.. except my swimmers aren't here, and probably won't be here until tomorrow at the earliest. I want to cry right now, I feel like somehow my body failed again, even though I know that my body isn't failing at all, it's doing exactly what it's suppose to do...I just failed on the timing part of things. I need those positive thoughts, I need my swimmers... I need this month not to be a total bust, again. Positive thoughts please come back!
Well legal or not it's a possibility gotta love life in the bush! My swimmers have finally shipped and with any luck should arrive by no later then Friday. Assuming they arrive on time they will be delivered by our local UPS/FedEx pickup guy who always takes any packages addressed to me or Dh straight to his classroom....so there will be swimmers in the school.. more then there is normally...sitting next to my husband's desk while he teaches.. Awkward! LOL! Now I just have to hang in there for 3 more days and hopefully we will have everything we need and I can finally breath a sigh of relief! I told my friend A, that I'm not really sure why I keep getting upset and stressed, if it's meant to be everything will work out. She laughed and said "Yeah Right!" oh how I love her ability to understand and make me laugh! Intellectual meet heart, and guess what heart wins! Intellectually I know that if it's really meant to be it will all go ok, but that doesn't stop my heart from worrying that something will mess it all up! Hurry up swimmers and get here so we can make a baby together!
So clomid sucks but like I said before sooo worth it if my little one is coming from this! I am in pain everyday and I am staying away from drugs, with the exception of benedryl (my allergies love me for that!) which means I'm not taking any pain meds.. and it takes a lot of will power to stay away from pain pills by the end of the day! I've been substitute teaching this week, fourth grade which includes my two youngest boys and by the end of the day I just want to curl up on the couch! My swimmers are suppose to ship on Monday but apparently I gave NW the wrong credit card and so it didn't go through.. this means I have to get up at about 4 a.m. my time to call them Monday with the right number and hope they are still able to ship Monday! Still even with the little bumps it seems the stars are lining up for our baby to finally come home.
So having said all that how exactly do I believe the stars may finally be lining up for our sweet baby?
Reason #1: The extra pain of clomid seems to be nothing but good news that my ovaries are working hard to produce some beautiful eggs and that makes me very happy.
Reason #2: Early this cycle I had a dream and while most of my dreams are just that, dreams occasionally I have one that seems to actually mean something. Case in point 10 years ago one October morning I woke up and informed my husband I saw our baby, could see his sweet smiling face...we had tried that month to get pregnant so I thought that meant I was, when aunt flow showed her ugly face I decided the dream meant nothing, 2 weeks later Family Services called and asked if we would foster 4 children, 3 of them in diapers still. We said yes and the end of that week we went to the office to pick up the youngest of the four, a 6 week old little boy. When I pulled back the blanket I gasped and whispered to my husband, that is the baby I dreamed about! Now mind you they were suppose to be just foster children so I was very confused.. that little dream is now my ten year old very active son. He was born around the time I had the dream.
So back to present day, and why this dream was so different then the million other odd dreams I have been having lately. I dreamed I was in labor, everyone that was suppose to be there was and we were waiting for the big event, but nothing was progressing so we decided to go walking and me being a chick suggested we go to the Mall...while we were at the mall I began to freak out because my mom was with us, and she was a Sabbath keeper ( a Sabbath keeper keeps Saturday as a holy day). The dream very much focused on her being a Sabbath keeper (my mom is not a Sabbath keeper so that part made me really chuckle) . Why was this important, obviously the dream was trying to tell me that Saturday was an important day...flash forward to relating the dream to my mom.. I looked up what my due would be if I conceived this cycle...August 11th, 2012 which happens to fall on a Saturday! My mom got chills and I did too...
Reason #3: I couldn't really get that dream out of my head and it happened that a board I visited began a discussion on TTC psychics so I decided what the heck I'll give this lady (Cheri22) a try. She wrote me back and said she saw November as being either the month our son would be born in, the month he was conceived in, or the month we would find out. Ok so that confirmed my dream and the description she gave of our son was amazing! I wrote her back and told her how much our son sounded like us and how many genetic traits she had described when talking about him. I ended the letter with a request, I told her I didn't know how this all works, but if she happened to see him again, please tell him to hurry home and his name is M. She wrote me back and told me when she read his name, chills ran through her and that almost always meant our child was on his way immediately!
Reason #4: Things miraculously lined up for my friend. A and I have been friends since my youngest was not quite a year old. She has been there for me through the ups and down roller coaster that we rode to adopting them, she was there through our many failed attempts to get pregnant, and she was there when we decided it wasn't time anymore. We drifted apart, but somehow we found each other again and our friendship is stronger and better then it ever has been. Now we are both at a point in our lives where we are ready to try again, and while we have been at that point for over a year for various reasons it just kept not happening for either of us, we planned and talked, gave up and recommitted...and then we knew this month was going to be it for me and thought she would have to wait a couple more months due to a nasty evil cyst.. and then she found out the cyst was gone and she could try this month.. and because of how both our cycles run we will be just days apart in our insemination dates and our testing dates. It's so nice not to be walking this road alone and to know that someone is there, just a phone call away that gets it all and won't yell at me for complaining to much or crying too much, or not crying enough. Friends that last are such a rare find, and I have no doubt that this is a friendship that will last until we are both old grannies! I can't quite decide who I'm more excited for myself or her... I can't wait to hear that she has a BFP!
Having said all that, how am I gearing up for failure.. well honestly I'm not I am surrounding myself with positive energy and if somehow it ends up not being I will deal with that then. I know from experience everything has a reason and a time.. but I also am certain that this is our time, both of us...we are going to go through this journey together as only friends who have both struggled with TTC can!
Day 9 of the cycle has come and almost gone and a few odd things have occurred. I feel fat, as in my jeans are barely fitting, they are tight and uncomfortable..and since we haven't even gotten our little swimmers yet I know exactly what isn't the problem...which leaves me blaming clomid. I don't remember having this issue before when I was on clomid so it tends to make me a little nervous. Along with not hardly fitting my jeans (and I've actually lost a pound in the last 3 weeks..I checked today so it's not weight gain) I am also feeling quite crampy...that's not pleasant at all.. again don't remember this problem last time.. but I was quite a bit younger at the time so maybe that's it. Oh and yes I took gas pills just in case that was the issue.. it isn't! Then I did my pee on the OPK stick ritual.. and was shocked to find a smiley face staring back at me.. WTH? No way I am ovulating on day 9 of my cycle, a frantic call to a friend later and a cervical check and I'm fairly certain it's a false positive, I don't want false anything, I don't want false positives, false symptoms I want only the real thing is that really too much to ask? So here I sit, bloated, and crampy and freaked out and nothing to do about any of it but wait.. ewww
This post isn't for those lucky ladies who blink and get pregnant...you know like the one who conceived me, or the sisters that I am blessed to be surrounded by. It's nothing against you, in fact I am positively green with envy at your unique ability to accidentally get knocked up, I wish I were you! If you haven't had to try to get pregnant you can't imagine the mental games it plays with you! Right now I am watching time crawl by...I swear every day feels like a week right now...and when the clock is finished playing with me and we finally get to put the swimmers in, then my mind really gets to go into over drive...wake up feeling a bit nauseous... might be pregnant, feel a little extra sleepy.. might be a sign, have the sniffles, yep that could be it you might be pregnant.. heck even a fart could be that one little sign you are anxiously awaiting for... I swear I won't do it.. but deep down there is a little wicked voice laughing at my declarations, because it knows...when it comes to ttc we all go a little crazy! Waiting sucks, guessing sucks...trying to get pregnant really sucks...why couldn't I be like my sisters or mom and get pregnant from a wink!
After all the frustration of having to wait, the waiting is finally over....kind of... We are doing an at home insemination this month (my doctor is going to be out of town so he decided to just do another test run...we decided to make it a bit more then a test)! The swimmers are paid for and will arrive around November 18th..which is day 18 of my cycle, I ovulate on day 20-22...so lets just pray mother nature cooperates. Now we wait for me to ovulate, and for the swimmers to arrive in Akiak.. then we wait for them to make it to the egg and for that big beautiful positive sign to show up on the pregnancy test! I am surrounding myself with positive energy, no negative thoughts allowed, this is our month we will get pregnant this month! I bought a shirt for my youngest today, that felt amazing, especially after watching him with a little 10 month old that I babysat last week, all week.. He is going to be an awesome big brother and I can't wait to give him his shirt and tell him he is finally getting what he has been praying for since he was little! I won't reveal too many details about the shirt, but I look forward to showing him wearing it very soon....
