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2008-09-14 - 11.19pm��previous entry��next entry
Chart frustrations!!
Hello, hello, I'm back! :) Which means I must be getting to a more interesting part of my cycle again, hehe! Thanks for alllll the lovely comments after my last entry at the end of what looked like a chemical pregnancy. I did end up feeling a little sad about it for a few days, even though I kind of felt silly for that. I was surprised at it really, but there we go. Anyway! I am happy that God is in control! I just get so excited to watch the process as closely as possible, hehe! :)
Thanks to the girls who have signed my guestbook recently, saying they're watching my cycle (and wondering why I haven't updated yet!)!
The reason I haven't updated yet, despite having just ovulated, with parsnips right before it (just in case I have any new readers lately who are wondering what amazing fertile powers come from eating parsnips around ovulation time, "parsnips" is a word I have used in my diary for yeeears now, as a sort of code word to deter perverted googlers!), is that I have been busy having the heck confused out of me by my chart! Tsk! I wanted to update a couple of days ago, but then my temps have been weird and I haven't been sure of the timing of ovulation. Now, a few days later, I AM sure of the timing (pretty sure, anyway), and so I have entered the data on my chart. I was withholding it till today so as not to confuse everyone watching it, haha! ;) But anyway, I entered the temps and CM and symptoms, etc. tonight and straight away the chart said I ovulated on the day of the parsnips! What?! I DID NOT ovulate that day. I have tried all manner of "tweaking" things on my chart this evening but it still insists that I ovulated that day. It's annoying me no end for some reason! The link to my Fertility Friend chart is over there on the left if you scroll down, if you haven't really read me for long (unless this is highly DULL to you, in which case it's nice of you to drop by! And I hope you have a nice evening/day after you close this page in a hurry, hehe!).
Soooo I ended up over-riding the software and putting my own coverline in for the day AFTER parsnips. I really find it irksome seeing blue coverlines on people's charts for some reason (the over-ride ones, as opposed to the red lines that FF places), especially my own! I don't want people thinking, "Ohhh, she thinks she ovulated that day when she's obviously wrong - look at the CM/temps/cervix data! No wonder FF don't agree with her!" I know it doesn't matter a jot what anybody else thinks, but it does bug me a little all the same.
So, here are my thoughts:
I have had THREE days of ovulation pain this cycle!! Three! I even googled to see if that was possible, and it is, but it's not common at all. I nearly always have ovulation pain, which is a handy thing! Often it covers two days next to each other, but I can usually feel ovulation as a sharper pain, and then a duller crampy pain for a day afterwards. Sometimes (rarely) I don't feel ovulation pain, or only feel mildly crampy around that time and so don't chart ovulation pain. With all three of my boys, I know which ovary I ovulated from! I love that! I am heavily dominant with my left ovary - I almost ALWAYS ovulate from that side. Nathan is my only baby to come from my right ovary, and I remember that was unusual at the time, to feel right-sided ovulation pain.
Anyway. I have had very obvious fertile CM this cycle, which is a relief because it used to be my norm and last cycle it really didn't happen as I expected it to! So I'm glad to be back to normal. I can barely remember the days before Arthur was born when I didn't have ANY useful CM (and I'm absolutely sure that's why he wasn't conceived more quickly (we used a fertile CM replacement the cycle he was conceived) - I have had good fertile CM since having my first baby and conceived quickly since then, so I'm kind of putting 2 and 2 together).
So the day of the parsnips (CD18) I obviously had EWCM and knew I was fertile. We're still happy to have parsnips as and when (though my charts give away the fact that we really aren't much more than a once-a-month couple! *ahem* The rest of the month is just a combination of exhaustion and busy-ness and hormones that are not friendly to the business of parsnips! Exhaustion and busy-ness are juuust about shoveable-asideable when the hormone factor is eliminated (and replaced by, um, quite the opposite hormone!). We are happy with the way it is for us though, so that's fine. Anyway, we're still happy to have parsnips as and when, even knowing I'm fertile at the time, and not preventing pregnancy. It probably looks from my charts like we're TRYING to conceive, because we only ever have parsnips in the fertile window, haha! But we're really not. We always pray before parsnips and commit our family to God. I just LOVE the way we're doing things! :D
That is probably enough of the rather personal stuff! ;)
So anyway, on the day of the parsnips I noticed I felt crampy, but just mainly achy in the normal area for period pain. It seemed a little left-sided, but I really didn't notice much obvious one-sidedness. Then the NEXT day (CD19) I was mildly crampy and felt generally uncomfortable and achy all day, and then at around 5pm I was doing school with the boys at the kitchen table. They were painting and I needed about 10 more hands at the time, hehe! And suddenly I had a sharpish "boring" pain on my left side, a bit like a very dull stitch. It distracted me immediately and hurt more if I leaned forwards over Matthew to help him with some painting and stencilling that he was doing. It wasn't unbearable at all, but was very distracting and uncomfy. It went right through from a specific point at the front to the same point in my back. It was a couple of inches inside my left hip and a bit lower than hip level. I was immediately sure it was ovulation pain, but I was surprised at how much more sore it was than usual, and how clearly I could time it! It lasted the rest of the evening and was still there the next day, but more dull.
Now, CD19 (the day with the sudden and obvious ovulation pain), I had more EWCM than any day thus far, and I checked my cervix late in the day to find it high, soft and open (ie. very fertile, waiting for ovulation). The NEXT day when I still had a ton of discomfort and pain, my CM was definitely changing and I only noticed a little EWCM. The rest of the day it was definitely not fertile CM. My cervix was oddly still open, but otherwise not so fertile. So that day I felt pretty sure that I had ovulated. I wondered if maayyyybe I might have ovulated earlier in the day or something, but I just couldn't shake the sudden ovulation pain from the day before - it HAD to be that moment that I ovulated, surely?
Then today I am relieved to have proper evidence that I have definitely ovulated :) CM all but gone, and my cervix is low, firm and CLOSED. So, to my mind, I have definitely ovulated by today (CD21), I MAY have ovulated yesterday (CD20) because I still had a few weak fertile signs and ovulation pain, but I KNEW I could not have ovulated as early as (CD18) - the day of the parsnips, because that was before I got the proper ovulation pain, and I had my most obvious fertile signs the next day! Still with me here?! I know I'm rambling boringly.
Okay so that would all have been peachy, except for my temps. *sigh* They have varied a little more than usual this cycle, but all still within my normal pre-ovulation range of temps. My lowest "norm" is 35.6 (I'm practically cold-blooded, haha! 37.0 is "normal"!) and the top of the range for me pre-ovulation is 36.2/36.3 ish. My post-ovulation "norm" is anywhere from 36.3ish up to 37.0 (but I only really get to 37.0 when I'm pregnant usually). My norms remain the same throughout so I can often tell whether I'm pre- or post-ovulatory by my temp. Except this cycle!! Tsk! And, come to think of it, the last one? I can't remember now.
Anyway. So two days before I ovulated I had two really low temps on my normal range - 35.8 and then 35.7. They had been up around 36.1 before that (with some variation). The day of parsnips (CD18) was my lowest temp this cycle - 35.7. The next day, it went up to 36.2 (even though I had NOT ovulated yet, by my signs, as I stated above!). That's still a normal pre-ovulation temp for me, which obviously the FF software doesn't know. So it gave me a coverline with ovulation occurring on CD18. Tsk! Then, to make matters more exasperating, the NEXT day (the day after I'm sure I ovulated) I had another 36.2 - no temp jump at all. It's the only thing that made me doubt that I'd ovulated the day before it, because you're supposed to get a rise in temp the day after ovulation occurs. It's a pretty key sign to confirm ovulation (so long as those temps are sustained up there for 3 days after the rise). Today I DID have a rise in temp, but I really don't think I ovulated as late as yesterday. I was AMAZED when I saw FF's interpretation of when I ovulated, because to me it was a toss-up between CD19 and CD20, definitely not CD18! It frustrates me because can't the software SEE that I have EWCM and HSO cervix the day after they say I've ovulated?!?! Tsk! Not likely.
Anyway. Looking at my two flat temps of 36.2 at ovulation time, I was suddenly reminded of Nathan's pregnancy chart, so I went back to look at it. I had two flat temps at ovulation time then, too, and going by EWCM, I felt sure I had ovulated the second day of those flat temps, because there was a rise right after that, and surely you can't ovulate and the next day get the same low temp as the day before?! I remember Jemma said that she personally thought I had ovulated the day before, but I said something along the lines of, "No, no, I know my body, and I always have a temp rise, blah blah blah..." and she said no more about it. THEN when I had all those early pregnancy scans because of allll the bleeding and spotting, every single one of them dated my pregnancy by Nathan's measurements, exactly one day longer than I had dated it by ovulation (and, incidentally, FF's software had agreed with me, so they were wrong too!). So I must have ovulated the day before, like Jemma thought (wise wise woman, lol!).
So, looking at that chart again made me think that I could have ovulated on CD19 after all, even though I still had a low flat temp the next day. Anyway. So I over-rode the FF software, and thus I am 2 days past ovulation today. We will see what tomorrow's temp is. I'm not convinced they're going to stay up, because last cycle they didn't climb so high as normal and I wondered if that might be the reason I had a chemical pregnancy - my progesterone levels may have been too low or something. I know it is because my cycles are just not quite back-to-normal enough to support a pregnancy, with the short luteal phase and maybe low hormone levels of the type that are needed to sustain a pregnancy, due to breastfeeding. Every cycle is usually an improvement on the previous one though, for me. I usually have a chemical pregnancy followed straight away by a normal pregnancy the next cycle.
Whenever I ovulated, the parsnips were closer to ovulation this time than the last two times we had a baby! So we know the chances are good for conception (even FF tells me so this time, haha! The analyzer didn't even register the parsnips the last two times! ;) ). So now we wait and wonder. Just because we had well-timed parsnips and I'm fertile does NOT mean that we'll conceive, so we have that in mind also. But we do get distracted looking at our track record too! I feel like conception is likely, but I am a little shaky about whether I can keep the little bean sticking well enough. Time will tell! Maybe I'll have NO pregnancy symptoms this cycle, no pregnancy-looking temperature patterns, and get my period about a week from now anyway (or sooner!)? We will see.
I will, of course, now commence updating like a crazy freako woman, because you know how I can't help obsessing once I'm past ovulation and there is even a miniscule chance of pregnancy! :)
I need to make sure I am in the habit of tucking myself into my covers properly when I wake in the night to nurse Nathan, because lately I keep being out of the covers when it's time to temp and get up for the day, or I'm mouth breathing (pray that I do not get the cold that the boys have got! It will be so frustrating to have to mouth-breathe for like a week throughout the whole time I'm obsessing over my chart for temp patterns before my period arrives! Tsk!). Waking up chilly in the morning really skews my temperature, I have discovered. It can make the difference between a GOOD post-ovulation temperature and a PRE-ovulation one, just being warm enough in bed! I have found in the past though, that no amount of boiling myself alive under way-too-thick bedcovers till I'm sweating like crazy and flushed to boot, will make a temperature that has dropped because my period is about to start, turn into a temperature that's still nice and high and carrying the hope that I might be pregnant. So it doesn't work the other way around! Getting too hot doesn't seem to impact my temps at all, but getting too cold or mouth-breathing does. So I'll try to keep warm enough in the wee hours, and get accurate temps! Also, Nathan was up this morning an hour before I usually temp and stayed awake for a while, which means I took my temp later than usual (after a better block of sleep) and so it may have been a higher temp than it would have been at my normal time. It is a good temp jump today, but the temp I charted could be higher than it actually is. I am starting to confuse even myself with my strange ramblings, and it's late, so I think I'll finish this and go to bed!
If you've hung in there this far, you're a real trooper! ;)
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