Ouch

This cycle has been weird.  CD 1 started off with about 15 minutes of pretty heavy bleeding, but then went done to pretty light flow.  CD 2-5 were light flow too and it's only been the past two days (CD 6 & 7) that I've had my normal medium flow.  I'm also having some pretty sharp pains that come and go (and have only happened really in the evening the past three days or so) in the area of my right ovary.  Since it's not consistent and hadn't really bothered me during the day, I haven't called PPVI but I'll call if it continues into tomorrow.

My youngest brother stopped in for the night yesterday on his way "home" (since my parents are living overseas, he doesn't really have a home) on the way home from college.  It was good to see him since I hadn't seen him since Christmas.  I'll see him again in August on his way back up to school.  He's working at a Catholic teen camp this summer and then going to Ghana for a mission trip in July.  Please keep him and the group he's going with in your prayers.

There has been so much wonderful news in the Catholic IF blogger world lately.  Congratulations to Sew, Jeremiah, and Thankful.

I need to work on hope in the Lord for myself like TCIE and Kaitlin talked about.  I've been feeling a bit down, like it's never going to happen for us (even with my FCP and Dr. H saying we have good odds).

An email should be going out about the Southern blogger get-together soon.

Frustration

In the last few months, my cycle had been looking pretty nice.  I had decent peak type CM, ovulation around CD 15, and a 14-15 day LP, with no irregular bleeding.  However, my body has completely freaked out this cycle.  I had weird peak type CM with a break in between the day. I think that I ovulated last Thursday (CD 13), but I had Peak type CM on Sunday, so I'm going to do my P+7 bloodwork on Sunday.  I had spotting/light bleeding last Friday that stopped after a day or so, but I had some more when I work up this morning.  I temped this morning and yesterday, so based on past post-peak temps, I'm pretty sure I ovulated sometime.  However I wasn't temping on the days I might have ovulated on, so I'm not completely sure.


If I did ovulate on last Thursday, we had decent timing (P-1 and P).  If it was Sunday, timing not so great (P-3).  However, since my body has gone wacky (and why won't it when the bloodwork starts back up) and I have bleeding, the odds are probably not very good for this cycle anyways.  I'll be starting on the Pain and Brain Supplement today (assuming the UPS site is correct about it being delivered today). 


I told D about the craziness of my body, and low and behold, he's been researching and reading about what to expect after the surgery (he hasn't taken much interest in how everything works in past almost three years).  He said that it'll probably take a couple months to get back to normal and since I hadn't gotten pregnant then we don't know that anything my body was doing was normal (specifically multiple days of lots of peak type CM...I like that).  For those who've had a laparotomy, how long did it take for your cycles to get back to "normal"?   


I've been feeling a bit down recently.  I'm feeling overwhelmed seeing or hearing about pregnancies.  I was sitting in our young adult bible study and I realized out of about 15-17 people, two couples and I are the one ones without kids and there are a couple of pregnant women in the group and one couple had their very young baby in the room instead of the nursery.  I'm going to D's best friend's wife's baby shower on Saturday, and I saw a couple more pregnancy announcements on FB.  


Keep Calm and Carry On and I are going to soon (as soon as we can talk) post some details/tentative plans for the Southern girls get-together.  

Cycle Update

I'm on CD 13 today, and I had 10C/KL starting yesterday.  We used yesterday and hopefully we can use tomorrow.  It looks like I should ovulate soon, so that's good.  I was a bit concerned about my mucus last cycle, but it's already better so it was probably just from ovulating soon after surgery and still not being able to eat well at that point.

I put in my call to PPVI for my 6 week post surgery follow-up, since I'm off today and I'll be dealing with all three kids that I nanny tomorrow and Monday (the twins go to Mother's Day Out Tuesday and Wednesday). The nurse called and check that everything was going ok healing-wise, but she still need to talk to Dr. Hilgers, who was unavailable for most of the day. I'll post when I've hear back from them, which will hopefully be tomorrow.

I found out yesterday that another cousin is pregnant with her third child.  She sent me a message on Facebook, and after an hour or so to process it, I called to congratulate her.  She knows about the surgery (pretty much everyone who knows us does), and that we've been trying for a while so she was very considerate about it.  Hopefully she will have an easier time with this pregnancy, she ended up in the hospital during both of her previous pregnancies due to extreme morning sickness.

Next weekend is my husband's best friend's wife's baby shower.  I'm looking forward to seeing people that I don't get to see often, but I'm not looking forward to the talk about babies for hours straight.  I'm really hoping to not get peppered with question about when we are going to have kids, since they all know we've been married 3 years now.  I'll be only P+7 to 9 at best, so there's no chance of a miracle BFP before the shower.

If you are interested in the Southern girls meetup (most likely taking place in Northern Louisiana, possibly at my house...but you don't have to be from the South to come), let Keep Calm and Carry On, Ann, or me know.  We'll probably try to work on picking out a date soon, and suggestions are welcome.

302nd post ***Updated***

Update: I really should know better than to talk about my body improving.  It then immediately does exactly what I said it wasn't.  I have some light bleeding.  My body is crazy.

managed to miss noting my 300th post, so I thought I'd mention it now.

I had a seven day period, so that was very exciting.  It may still sound long, but I usually have 10 to 12 days or more of bleeding, so seven day is a huge improvement.  I'm on day 11, but I'm not having any peak type mucus yet, so I still probably have a little while before I ovulate (just as long as it's by Feb. 21 so we don't have to not use days of fertility this cycle).

I'm working my way into doing the Endo Diet (no dairy, no wheat/gluten-free as much as possible, no red meat, no soy, no eggs, no caffeine, no sugar).  Fertile Thoughts has been a big help on figuring resource and recipes.  I'm slowly trying to switch over and start planning for dinners.  I'll be adding Endo Diet recipes to my recipe blog and I'll also go back and tag the endo diet friendly recipes.  I'm not sure how well I'm going to be able to do it while we are in Omaha for my laparatomy, since I'll be in the hospital for 2-3 days.  We'll be staying at R.eside.nce Inn, so we'll have a kitchen; I just need to come up with a plan on what to get for while we are at the hotel.  I also need to cook a few things for the first week we are home or come up with stuff for my mom to make while she's here.  If anyone has any suggestions on meal ideas that fit the Endo Diet and are easy to make or can be frozen for later, I'd really appreciate it.  Surgery is in just over 3 weeks.

Another family member is pregnant.  However, this time it's my aunt (which is weird to say since she's 27, 2 years younger than me), my mom's youngest brother's (who's is 43) wife, and she's due in August. so I'll be have a cousin who is almost 30 years younger than me and will be closer in age to my kids (hopefully) than even my youngest cousin who is 13 (17 years younger than me).  I'm very happy for them especially since my uncle is in his 40s, plus my aunt had a miscarriage previously.  My grandparents will have a new grandchild when they are 83 years old.

It's snow here in NW Louisiana, and has been for the past 2 1/2 hours.  We are supposed to get about 4-6 inches of snow (it probably won't stick much though) in the next 24 hours.  It's nothing compared to what you East Coasters have dealt with in the past couple weeks, but it's a lot of snow for here and this is about the 4th time it has snow this winter, and we usually get one time with about 1/2 inch of snow at most.

Quick stuff

My brother is going to the Divine Mercy Shrine in Poland this weekend and he is going to put in a special intention for all Catholic infertility bloggers.

D's best friend's wife (that we went to the wedding for recently) is pregnant. I'm happy for them, especially since she's a year older than me, but I wish that I wasn't still here in IF land.

Another first cousin once removed

My cousin and his wife are having there third child. They have a 2 1/2 year old and a 8 month old. It's great for them, but I'm so jealous. They'll have had 2 kids since we started trying and we can't even have one. They live on the other side of the country, but it's still going to be hard to see online.

The good news on this cycle is no spotting so far and I'm at 9DPO, but I'm not pregnant since we didn't use any of the days of fertility. I'm ready for it to be December and surgery time.

Random Bleeding...Round 2 and other stuff

I'll start off with the fun. We went to the July 4th/cousin's birthday, etc. party yesterday. We hung out and had some drinks and talked. It was a good time for the most part. My uncle somehow knew that we have been trying, and we hear a couple of interesting stories. My 19-year-old (unmarried) pregnant cousin was there with the baby's daddy. I don't think that we are supposed to know that she's pregnant, but everyone (except my grandparents) knows. It was frustrating for me, since it will be the first great-grandchild on that side. Also, she has never really hung out with the family even at family gatherings, so I'm not close to her. I had a few times that I got upset with baby/pregnancy talk and had to leave the room.

I should hopefully be o'ing today, so we had intercourse this morning. Afterwards, I was bleeding for no apparent reason, which is always awesome. D will be out of town again this coming week, so if I don't o today (or tomorrow) then it would be best if I didn't until next Saturday. I haven't gotten a positive OPK yet, but yesterday's was darker than the day before's. I haven't tested yet today. (The line one was positive, but the digital was negative.)

We are going to see my grandparents this afternoon, and then we are driving home. I'll post either later or tomorrow hopefully.