5 DPIUI

Today is my last day as an unemployed! Woot woot! My new job is a contract position, but here's hoping they like me so much they want to hire me full time at the conclusion.

As for being 5 days past IUI... I'm feeling nothing really. Still hopeful though! I felt so much amazing, positive energy following the IUI last Thursday that my plan is to just roll with that until I'm proven otherwise. In fact, one of the nurses in the room with me that day pronounced, "Now you're pregnant!" as soon as we all watched J's sample get injected into my uterus. We all laughed, commenting things like - hope it's that easy!

The only thing I can report right now is feeling some gentle cramping in that sweet little uterus fig. Not anything like a period, just a little action going on there. But every single cycle feels a bit different so I can't read into that at all and it's been going on for the last 3 days so... yeah. I'm back to temp charting again, but at this point in the cycle I can't say that those temps are revealing anything interesting; just elevated, as they should be post-ov.

Eternal Waiting Game

Ah, here we are: the Two Week Wait. The old familiar. Thankfully I'm coming to the end. Well, "thankfully" in that bittersweet way. According to my highly regular cycle, I'll expect CD1 to be on Saturday, smack in the middle of my family visiting. Let's just believe that this aligning of the period stars is a positive - I'll have plenty of distractions during a time that I'm craving love, attention, affection. We've also put together a pretty active itinerary so it will be nice to not feel concerns about heart rate and getting out of breath.

Constantly charting for over a year can play serious mind games with you. Meaning? I've come to learn, much to my surprise, that I have a very regular 28 or 29 day cycle. This has caused two issues for me. 

• #1 - Imagine the gut wrenching shock of finding out I'm not actually preggers after my uber-regular cycle went an extra 5 days <dammit> Anyone who has thought she was pregnant for 5 days knows what happens in your brain in that short time.

• #2 - Despite the regularity of my period and ovulation days every month, nothing else seems to come into a pattern. The pre-period cramps I keep getting always show up on different day patterns prior to CD1 and always feel different. Naturally, that keeps me thinking each and every month that "this one is different, I know it!" <motherhecker> My boobs get super sore in different patterns and then I get some weird things, like dizziness, that will happen some months but not others. Man it's a total mindfuck.

Leading me to my chart focus of the moment: I had this wicked BBT drop on 10DPO which usually signals CD1 is right around the corner. Although that happened about a week early :/ When it swung back up the next day I got overexcited that it had been an implantation dip, woooooo! And then the next morning? Dropped again. Rahr. Sadnesses. But of course, this morning, this little body of mine was hot again! This game will likely continue for the next 3 days, keeping my heart in my throat. Puke.

Just trying to stay distracted, busy, centered. Enjoying yoga and bought myself a cute new mat as a special treat. It'll be great to have family here. They'll be our first visitors from the east coast since we moved out in April!

13dpiui and Preparing

Not a happy day.

Symptoms:

CM is starting to dry up

Period-like cramps, not at all like what I was feeling right after the IUI.

Temperature dropped precipitously this morning to 97.9 and I'm never in the 97 range during a luteal phase.

PMS-y moodiness.

So that's that. I need to start planning now for the next cycle. My temp drop is about 3 days earlier than normal so I'm wondering if bleeding will start sooner. Bring it on! If my cycles are gonna keep failing, the least they can do is be shorter...

Cycle Day 3 (start of Clomid) would typically be this coming Sunday, but I'll hope that it starts sooner than that. I'd expect IUI to be scheduled Wednesday morning, Aug 6. But again, a couple days earlier than that would be just fine with me. My family is coming for a visit on August 20 and I'd spent the last two or three weeks so hopeful that we might be able to share tentatively exciting news with them when they were here!

No dice.

I really thought I could better control my emotions this time around knowing that we have a plan in place and we are working with such a great practice. I guess that was silly of me. What really has me down right now is the knowledge that I know nothing. There is no answer for what didn't work well in this cycle. I responded well to the medications, had a great lining prepared, followed all of the rules about no caffeine and no alcohol (well, till yesterday. just had to have myself half a beer). So what can I do next time to give myself a better chance?

9dpiui

Morning of the 9th day after our IUI. Things have been weird. Like... in my body, not life in general ;)

Life in General
I started volunteering at a cool non-profit this week. It was awesome to find an opportunity that actually aligns with my industry of event planning. Since they are a non-profit they put on several fundraisers each year so I am helping out with parts of an upcoming event. Right now there is a lot out of my comfort zone because we're cold-calling business asking for donations. That is relatively awkward for me and I haven't had a ton of success the last 3 days, but it will get better and I'm spending the days with a friend I met in the running group. We commiserate a lot about getting shot down repeatedly! Lotta laughs.

J has us doing another crazy fourteener hike tomorrow. I'm a little nervous about it because of A) the heart rate issue, B) the fact that he invited a friend to join, C) this is a double peak and we have to get up so incredibly early, like 3am (?!) or D) my new hiking boots haven't yet arrived and I'd need to wear light little sneakers. So if you're assuming it is all four, you would be correct. Oy!

Yesterday I got a couple interesting leads on the job front so I'll spend some time with that today.

Feelings
There is still a lot of hope in me - and J! - that this is our cycle. He asks me every day "When will we know?" He's never been this in-tune! It's a nice change even if it does feel like the line of questioning you get from a 4 year old rather than a sophisticated 32 year old financial analyst :-D
Mom calls frequently and asks in this veiled manner, "Anything new?" or "Sooooo, what's new?" This happens several times in one phone call so I have to give her credit where it's due for not flat-out asking me for updates everyday. I told her about the Clomid and then our plans to do the IUI, but wanted to save a few of the specific details of the whole situation to keep between just J and me. After all, if we were still doing it the of-fashioned way, I wouldn't be reporting that!!
I'm also feeling a small amount of anxiety. The root of it is this: I'm fully aware that this cycle may not be ours and we'd start the clock over again next weekend, but I'm anxious about how I would take it if that truly is the outcome in 7 or 8 days. What I want to avoid is shrouding myself in so much hope and positivity that if I do end up with a period in a week, my soul isn't crushed. I know we've got a couple more tries with Clomid/IUI planned and that protocol seems to fit us very well and it's so reasonably priced. The uncovered portion comes out to under $400 for us I think. So I'd like to think that I can keep my head above water next week if I get news I'm unhappy with. There is still time for us on this clock!

Body/Symptoms
For days 5-8 I was feeling some intense kind of cramping only on the right side of my lower abdomen/uterus. Every once in a while the feeling would jump to the left or be more centralized, but it was very focused on the right. Eventually, after 2 full days of it (5 and 6 dpiui) and then having it intensify the morning of the 3rd day (7dpiui), I was a little scared of an ectopic and called Elizabeth at CCRM. She said some ibuprofen is ok but if the discomfort comes through the ibuprofen, or if I have a fever, bleeding, or something else, call back immediately. So for the rest of 7dpiui, it was a discomfort I could handle (but pretty intense later at night) and I did some yoga and stretching before bed. When I woke up 8dpiui, I was almost worried that the feeling had subsided! It poked its head back in a little in the evening, but that's been it. So... who knows?! It could just be my right ovary normalizing itself after having to deal with being super stimulated by Clomid or being psyched out by the HCG trigger shot I took.
Breasts are a little on the heavy/tender side of things, but that's been somewhat standard in my cycle this past year so I'm not too excited about it. Also a good bit of watery/creamy CM, but you could easily chalk that up to me staying super hydrated.
My BBT hit a higher point than average this morning, 98.6, but I woke up just feeling so hot, it could just be an environmental influence. I've hit 98.6 a few times throughout the last year so it isn't completely unheard of during my tww. My chart is a little unusual looking though in that it appears as a steady climb up since ovulation. Once again, I'm trying to not read into it because it could just as easily start stair-stepping it's way down at any point and also my body had been introduced to a lot of chemicals it's never dealt with before which could easily influence BBT readings.


On the forums I've been visiting, there are a few ladies who got a positive HPT on their 10th day past IUI. I don't know if I'm totally crazy to try that tomorrow, but I'm tempted! Just unsure if there is a chance that the HCG trigger shot is still even a little in my system. Getting a false positive would in fact be a soul crusher.... I'll think a little more about it. Maybe wait till Sunday, 11dpiui.