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2008-10-10 - 10:52 p.m.��previous entry��next entry
Ovulating???
Well, I'm on Cycle Day 17 today, and last cycle I ovulated on CD19. Usually I start off my postpartum cycles ovulating late, and then I ovulate a little earlier as each cycle goes by, until I'm nearer to my normal pre-kids ovulation time (usually around CD14 - yes, I'm fairly textbook, or was once, hehe!). So around now I could expect to be ovulating.
BUT! My signs/chart are confusing me a bit. I usually (not always, but usually) get a good few days of obvious fertile signs leading up to ovulation. I had some EWCM 3 days ago (for the first time this cycle) so I thought, "A-ha! Here begins the warm-up for ovulation!" but then then next day, nada, in fact my LEAST fertile CM instead. And on the EWCM day I checked my cervix and it wasn't really fertile. I mean, I had been noticing that my cervix was starting to act a bit like it was thinking of getting fertile sometime in the near future (!) but not yet. So then, yesterday I had some definite good fertile signs - EWCM for sure, and my cervix was also fertile. Then today, both cervix and CM are not fertile. So, did I ovulate?! I'm used to seeing more signs for longer before ovulating, usually at least 3 or 4 days worth, and also I very often have discomfort leading up to ovulation and then experience ovulation pain. Not every cycle, for sure, but most of the time. But nothing this cycle. Today and maybe yesterday I have noticed the mildest of mild cramps. I charted them today just to alert myself to the possible start of warming-up-to-ovulation cramps, because I haven't had the slightest hint of any cramps till now, so these are a change, however mild. But could THOSE have been ovulation?! It seems crazy to me that they might have been!
The only other explanation is that I'm going to have delayed ovulation later in my cycle. That has happened once (or twice?) before during my postpartum cycles (I can't remember after which baby though), where I seemed to start with the fertile signs at the time I expected to see them, and then they faded off and I had a few days before the started back again, but this time DEFINITELY the real thing, and for 5 days or something in a row, and then I finally ovulated somewhere around CD30 I think, or just before. That might have been one of my chemical pregnancies. I can't remember, I'll have to check my chart.
Anyway. But I have also had a cycle since Nathan was born (the cycle before last, actually) where I ovulated despite having very few of my usual fertile signs beforehand, and with no ovulation pain either, and I remember I was feeling really surprised by it then too! So maybe.
I will have to see if tomorrow's temp is up at all. Today's wasn't, although I know that if I have raised temps from now, FF will consider that I ovulated YESTERDAY, the day of the EWCM, not today, because my temp went up a bit this morning (still within my normal pre-ovulatory temp range though). So I will have to wait and see.
The only weird thing (and I do mean weird!) this cycle is the persistant, uhh, friskiness! ;) Girls, I'm talking every DAY since my period finished!! What?! I am not sure if I've ever been like this before! Yes, you will probably have noticed the ONE incidence of parsnips on my chart. That is not for lack of asking (read: begging, haha!), but for once the roles are reversed and Neil is turning me down left, right, and centre! What is up with that?! He does have a "head cold" (what are those?!) and has had a sore throat for a while, so he's under the weather. And a couple of days this week, work was stressy. But whatever. I can't believe it's starting to BOTHER me! *sigh* I do not want to have parsnips with a husband who is not actually interested, either. If I HAVE ovulated, then I'm surprised the interest isn't waning on my part yet! It certainly has been a weird cycle, that's for sure! Everything else has been SUPER quiet though, for me physically. Nothing really happening symptom-wise, leading up to ovulation. This could all change if I am not ready to ovulate yet, but still, I normally have something to report by now! I did chart that it's sore to nurse and I have tender breasts, but again, I just began to notice the miiiilldest of changes in that dept, so I charted it for reference.
So the parsnips we did have were 4 days ago. If I have ovulated, then it will be an exciting wait to see if my period comes, but if I haven't ovulated yet then unless hubby gets his groove back on the wait will be uninteresting! ;) A pregnancy this cycle would give us an 18-month age gap (already?! How has this much time passed?!) and so NEXT cycle would be the 19-month age gap that we're used to, hehe! Or the one after. Next cycle I would actually probably end up due 1-2 weeks before Nathan turns 19 months. So the one after, he'd be 19.5 months. Anyway. I am not supposed to be getting hung up on these things! But I am a die-hard obsessee, and it's hard to change! Also I just happen to really want another baby all of a sudden! I'm not quite sure if I'm feeling 100% ready to be pregnant again with juggling the days with the boys, etc - that thought scares me a little sometimes! But otherwise, OH how I miss being pregnant!!! It still feels like I recently WAS, but in other ways it feels like AGES since I felt the first stirrings of a tiny wiggly bean inside me, or took a belly picture. I totally HEART being pregnant! :) The other day I was rushing to get something from a drawer and hurriedly opened the wrong drawer, and spotted my doppler and a bottle of gel at the back there! I just froze, gazing fondly at it for a moment, and had an instant wistful pang, looking forward to when I have reason to use it again with excitement and joy! I don't want to rush into being pregnant again (really and honestly, I know doesn't seem like it from my writings hehe!), but at the same time I am so excited and looking forward to getting to that stage all over again! I feel so happy thinking about it, although I know that it will also be HARD. Scary hard, when I'm thinking about it as realistically as I can make myself!
Jemma, we are indeed thinking and planning for next time. Last pregnancy I made a "Type-A personality" list (haha!) of meals that could be made in bulk for the freezer, and then I went through the freezer with a MEASURING TAPE (I told you it was Type-A!) and figured out how many of my Pyrex boxes with lids would fit in that freezer. And then I distributed my list of 7 different bulk meals into the total number of boxes that I could fit - so 3 meals-worth of one thing, 2 meals-worth of another, etc, whilst also calculating how much space I would need in there for bread, ice-cubes, ice-cream, etc, etc. Anyway, I figured I could get 24 meals in there, portions that would serve the whole family, not just Neil and I. I also listed meals that could supplement the freezer meals to give a bit more variety, that were REALLY simple to cook (like baked potatoes - just bung them in the oven and leave them to cook - and easy toppings, etc). Then I planned to buy and cook, and stock the freezer up in preparation for Nathan's birth, but as you know he came 5 weeks early and so there was nothing prepared at all in the end! ;) So, I have planned that the MOMENT I find out I'm pregnant - I guess I would be 3 weeks and 4 or 5 days if I test positive when I normally do - I will have almost exactly 2 weeks before morning sickness kicks in (I always get it (so far!) at 5 weeks and 6 days exactly), so that meal plan would immediately kick in, and I'd buy and cook and stock the freezer up in those two weeks before I get too queasy to do it. I worked out before Nathan was born, that those meals, along with the supplemental easy-prep meals, would feed us for about 6-8 weeks, with super minimal effort at food prep on my part! That would take me to 12-14 weeks pregnant, which is probably when things would start to get much more manageable (Matthew's morning sickness completely went in that window, but with the others it became WAY better at that point, even if it didn't go for another few weeks). So it would be a great thing to do, and I'll definitely do it! It is all written out (including diagrams of the inside of the freezer with not-quite-to-scale boxes drawn in, haha! I MUST have been in the last trimester of pregnancy when I worked on that project, lol!) in my somewhat neglected FlyLady control journal, so it will be easy to implement when the time comes! :)
I think a house-move smack dab in the middle of morning sickness with 3 kids aged 4 and under would be NO FUN, and even very hard to contemplate, but I will basically trust God to either time the baby or the move so that they don't co-incide, or else provide me with what I need to get through it! The entry that Jemma linked in her comment was one that I was writing in reference to really, in my last entry, when I was saying I was anxious about bleeding in pregnancy again. I'm anxious about the bleeding just as it is, but extra nervous about how I'll manage my responsibilities with the little ones if I have a heavy (or heck, even light) bleed again. I read those entries around the heavy bleed I had last pregnancy, before I wrote my last entry, so that's where I was coming from really.
If I bleed like that again, I honestly don't know what I'll do to prepare in terms of managing. What can you do? I hope I WON'T bleed again like that, but given my history, maybe it IS likely that I could? But even knowing that, I am not sure how I can make it any easier (or possible, because how can it be possible?!) to care properly for my children whilst dealing with a heavy bleed in pregnancy. It's nothing that would be changed by delaying getting pregnant, because even later down the line, there would still be children to care for! A cleaner would be a great help, and help with the kids on a daily basis would be too, but that didn't happen last time (hence the stress of those few entries!) so I presume it wouldn't "just happen" again another time - we'd have to put a plan into action I guess, like HIRE help, or ASK purposely at church or something.
I don't know how to plan re. moving house and a pregnancy, since we're trusting God on both those counts and don't want to control the timing, even if that might make things easier to manage if we did! I'm sure I'll be here writing similarly stressed-out diary entries again around those times, but just as I'm here on the other side all happy with my precious baby and looking forward to doing it all again, I know that "this too shall pass" if it happens again, and however hard it is to cope, it'll all come out in the wash, if you see what I mean?! :) You know I'll be in the depths of despair on the actual hard days, of course! But it'll be okay. There is no other choice but for it to all be okay in the end. God is for us, and not against us. Hoorah! :)
Well, it's getting late so I think I will see if I can get some photos starting to upload for a long-overdue diary entry at my arthursmummy diary. Don't hold your breath though, I have FOUR HUNDRED recent photos on my camera and my aim is just to get something posted at my diary this weekend, by hook or by crook! Hopefully more than just one photo and one sentence, hehe! I'll also be back here soon to update on the ovulation mystery! ;)
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