Ohhh what a beautiful MORRRNING, Ohh what a beautiful DAY!

So here I am.. after a few days absence. I will catch you up with pictures. First of all, Valentine's Day. Chris' birthday was January 6th, and I know how much he DESPISES planning things so I bought him Blue Man Group tickets that were for Valentine's Day, and my sister bought us a PF Chang's gift certificate for Christmas. HOW PERFECT! I had bought a really adorable dress for the cruise and due to intoxicating circumstances we didn't attend the second formal night and the dress never got worn! We decided we would dress up so I could wear that dress. It was chilly, but I lived. To level off the evening, right outside of Chang's is Coldstone Creamery and for those of you who haven't had their ice cream.. tread lightly, I'm fairly certain they put crack in it. I usually get cake batter ice cream with yellow cake and rainbow jimmies, delish! It was overall an amazing evening.. and here is a picture we took. It's ghetto, in-the-parking-garage, freezing but took my coat off anyway, goofy us, self portrait. but I love it :)

That brings us today, and the main reason for my choice of blog title for today. I blogged recently that I've been a crampy mess since CD1 this cycle, well after a very strange dream last night about be having a baby boy, I awoke to no cramps. My bloating felt gone and my abdomen just felt.. different, I really can't explain it. So I temped, it was down a little bit so I didn't think anything of it. Then I went into the bathroom as usual and peed on the almighty monitor stick. As soon as I went to put it in the monitor I noticed two lines appearing.. trying not to get my hopes up, I grabbed the monitor and went back to bed. It takes a while for the mini scientists to evaluate my pee so I like to relax. Then... it happened.

I almost died. Could it seriously be??? A PEAK READING ON THE FERTILITY MONITOR??? I think SO! We BDed last night/early early this morning so that's a great thing. I laid with my feet up for around 40 minutes. But because I'm me, and I'm OCD.. I went upstairs to grab a digital OPK.. I couldn't be happier to report that......

I'm OVULATING!!!!! I really hope this is it. I'm going to take it easy today and bask in the glory of the fact that I actually ovulated, and take each next day as it comes :) Thanks for reading! xox

Ovulation or Overexposure

Hahaha, just a quick post today. It's CD10 for those of you keeping track. That means today starts a BD fest. Every other day til ovulation. Normally a temperature dip means ovulation, but when I awoke this morning, I realized that Christopher had stripped ALL of the king sized sheets and blankets off my body in the middle of the night. He likes to cocoon himself in every inch of them. My temperature was 97.99, but I'm fairly certain it was due to the fact that my flesh was like ice. I'd been exposed to the fan with the heat only at 60. Either way, I made sure we covered our bases just in case! Hope you all are having a fabulous week... Valentine's Day is coming!!

Cramptastic Voyage

I'm a charting fool first of all. For those of you familiar.. stalk my chart here: http://www.fertilityfriend.com/home/rebeccar
For those of you unfamiliar, let me explain in gory painstaking detail. Every morning at 7:30am my alarm goes off to take my temp. I don't need to be up at that hour, but your basal body temperature needs to be taken when you first wake up, before you pee.. move.. or do anything. So I decided 7:30am was appropriate because it's earlier than I'd normally wake up (this is before hormonal medications.. now I wake up at whacked out hours) so I'd just be waking up.
The oh-so-entertaining part of temping for me is that I am a mouth breather at night a lot of times, which means my temperature can't accurately be obtained in my mouth. Therefore I take my temp vaginally every morning. I must admit to dozing off for a few minutes with the thermometer in there once or twice but it never caused injury ;) On top of temping every morning, I use a clearblue easy fertility monitor. I set it on the first day of my period every cycle, and every day it changes day numbers. According to the previous cycle it will ask me to POAS (Pee On A Stick.. for those of you less informed). I pee on said stick and put the test stick into the monitor. After the microscopic scientists inside evaluate the hormone levels in my urine, it spits out a fertility reading- either low, high, or peak. The *high* reading however sounds misleading. I had a full week of high readings and didn't ovulate one cycle. It just means some hormone increased in your body.
The pretty *peak* reading with the egg symbol is what you're striving for. I've yet to see that symbol. I'm hoping in the next few days I will, however. Maybe for Valentine's Day?? So after I go back to sleep after the battery of morning tests, I wake up (for good this time) and I log onto my chart online and I enter my temperature, my fertility monitor reading, and any symptoms I may be experiencing. This helps the charting software detect if I may be ovulating. The last 9 days have had one thing in common.............. CRAMPS.
I'm a cramp pro. I've battled with endometriosis for 13+ years.. cramps and I are old friends. I've had what's felt like period cramps every day. My bleeding stopped CD4 which is unheard of for me, so I'm hopeful. I've been bloated, crampy, and had major headaches all week, but if this works, it will all be worth it. Normally I'd cramp the day or few days before my period (in the charting world.. it's called AF for Aunt Flo). It feels like I should still be bleeding but I'm not so I can only hope that the cramping is producing a bunch of juicy follicles that will produce eggs and allow us to conceive.
If this doesn't happen we have an appointment with a Reproductive Endocrinologist on February 24th. We finished filling out the lengthy paperwork the other night, and I sent it yesterday. I'm fairly certain the only thing they didn't ask was my shoe size. As I've said before, I'm hopeful, but skeptically so. Please keep your fingers crossed for us.... xox :)

CD4~Clomid day two

Clomid is not exactly up to par with rainbow farting unicorns if you catch my drift. I don't know if it's just an overly uncomfortable cycle, or if this is clomidtastic. I'm crampy, I feel bloated, I just feel... off. A friend of mine who has two blocked tubes and her husband has low motility just got her BFP! I'm so happy for her, and it seems like something is in the water. She's #3 in the online group to get a BFP recently.
I'm doing the pre-ovulational panic. Are we going to BD on the right days? Is this going to be it?? Are we going to have to go through the IUI, or possibly further? I'm trying to stay calm, and positive but you can't help but stress when all the online chatter turns to success.
I guess my big worry is .. great.. clomid will help me ovulate. But what if the only follicles I get are on my right ovary? I don't have a right fallopian tube, so the ovulation will be useless. I guess I just worry too much. The cruise was great for getting my mind off of things but now I'm back to the daily grind. Maybe pictures of the cruise will help? lol.................

orrr.. maybe not. Just reminds me how bitterly cold it is here, and how beautifully warm it was on the islands. I think today is a bubble bath day... I hope tomorrow things feel better. xox

Cruise, Clomid, Cycles, Oh MY!

After spending a blissfull week in the Carribbean, we are back to reality. Our RE appointment is scheduled for February 24th and strangely enough, if I ovulate on time, that would be the first day a HPT would be able to say if I'm pregnant or not. I'm praying that we don't have to go that route, but will take whatever I'm handed.
While on the cruise I was faithful with my OPKs (Ovulation prediction kits) and all returned a negative status which meant I hadn't ovulated. Strangely enough when we returned to solid ground, I missed two days of OPKs (CD20, 21) and started temping again on CD23 and got a CLEARLY post-ovulation temperature of 98.8+ So I did ovulate at some point that cycle and as you might already notice... I made it past day 17 of a cycle!! I had a NORMAL cycle for me this time around. That is 26 days. Now AF is back and I start my first round of clomid tomorrow morning. I hope this is it for us, the misery I've been suffering with the pain is something to write about, but for now I'll save you the horror. Just wanted to update quick, and now that things are back to normal I'll be updating regularly again.... thanks for reading ;)