Well that was unexpected

So I know I haven't been posting in a while but I'll get you up to date with what's been going on. 

So I haven't seen my RE in almost 6 months. I've stopped all artificial treatments and have taken up eastern medicine, aka natural remedies. I've been doing acupuncture and herbal treatments and it has been amazing!

The acupuncturist I go to is an actual doctor and not some person who just specializes in acupuncture. He told me that my BBT was low and have given herbs to raise my temps. Believe it or not, they have worked! The acupuncture is extremely relaxing! Talk about distressing yourself! They say that's a key point to address while trying to conceive! So if you're trying and maybe want to take an alternative, more natural route to conceive, try acupuncture!

My experience with acupuncture is nothing but positive. The needles do not hurt. They're so tiny that your don't even notice them. The acupuncturist pinpoints specific areas on your body and inserts a needle to that area. When I first went, my doctor placed a needle near the arches of both of my feet, on the top of my feet, near my shins, two under my underwire of my bra, one on my sternum, one on each wrist, in between thumb, couple on my ears, and pointer finger, one in the middle of forehead, and one on the top of my head. After that, he focused more on my abdomen, trying to increase blood flow while still placing the needles in the stress areas (feet and hands). 

Other treatments he has done is electoacupuncture which where he places tiny alligator clamps to the needles and delivers small amounts if electricity to specific areas. In my case, it was my abdomen. Another method was infrared laser treatment. This is supposed to focus on the areas where the needles are inserted and to enhance what the acupuncture is trying to accomplish. For me, this was an increase in blood flow to the uterus in order to thicken the walls for conception. The last treatment I've had are basically suction cups on my abdomen. Again, the purpose is to increase blood flow. 

Along with these treatments, I've been taking herbs. These herbs are to help with reproductive health. They also increase blood flow while increasing my BBT. I haven't experienced any side effects which is nice. 

I'm still charting my BBT but I'm also using the Clear Blue Fertility Monitor. It was somewhat confusing to use but I'll try to break it down for you.

When you first get it, you cannot use it unless it is CD1 thru CD5. CD6, don't even bother. Just wait for your next cycle to use it.  There will be an "m" button near the screen. This sets what cycle day you're on. When you set this button, it also sets an internal timer. This timer gives you a 6 hour window. So if you set you "m" button around 12 pm, you can test between 9 am and 3 pm. This works for me personally because I work a graveyard shift, this allows plenty of time to test on my on and off work days. So plan ahead on the time when it's best for you to test. 

Now, this test shows you your low "non fertile" days, your high fertile but not quite  ovulating days, and then your peak ovulating days. Obviously, if you're in the mood on your low days, by all means, go for it. On your high days, take advantage! Then your peak days, that's a no brainer. 

When I first started, I had so many peak days. I think it's maybe just the monitor adjusting to YOUR body? But then it seemed to regulate my 2nd time I used it. Both times it did not indicate I was ovulating. Also, I wasn't doing acupuncture. My third round with the monitor, I had started the acupuncture and herbal treatments. Low and behold, I OVULATED! CD12. I'm very excited but it's very surreal. So hopefully I'll be able to take a pregnancy test in two weeks and I'm praying that we'll have our positive! 

This is what a high date looks like. 

And this is what it looks like when you're ovulating! 

Wish us luck! 

Defining charts and loving apps

So I use two different BBT (basal body temperature) apps for my iPhone.  One is called Kindara (top chart) and the second is called Fertility Friend (bottom chart). I like both but for different reasons.  Kindara to me if very "eye friendly".  It seems to read easier especially if you are also including your cervical mucus.  Fertility Friend will pinpoint your ovulation based on your BBT.  I haven't seen Kindara do it. 

The way you chart your BBT is right when you get up.  They say you shouldn't even get out of bed. You need to have at least 4 hours of sleep and you should be temping around the same time.  Working graveyards and trying to have a normal schedule on my days off doesn't allow me to temp around the same time. So I temp when I get up and it seemed to be ok. 

During your period (the follicular phase), you're temps will set basically the bar of when you could see when you are ovulating. During this time, cysts will be forming which will release the egg during ovulation. When you ovulate, you'll see a spike in your temp and this is when your cervical mucus will be the best for conception.  It'll be consistent to that of egg whites.  I was so oblivious to what EWCM (egg white cervical mucus) was.  Does it really look like raw egg whites?  It sure does. Imagine cracking an egg and looking at the egg white and the yolk before it is cooked.  The egg white is clear and stretchy, almost like something you'd blow out your nose when you're sick.  That, my friends, is EWCM which will help your guy's sperm swim to that egg. So you will learn to love EWCM if you're TTC. Remember, you have 12-48 hours to try and fertilize that egg! Afterwards, your temp will rise because of the increase of progesterone. This is your luteal phase which is basically when the blastocyst (a fertilized egg) attempts to implant itself in the uterine walls.  Progesterone is a hormone needed to help sustain a pregnancy.  If you're pregnant, your BBT will continue to rise. If you're not pregnant, your BBT will drop right before you start a new cycle.

As you can see in my charts, during my follicular phase, my temps were lower than my luteal. Unfortunately, the dotted line on both of the charts indicate that no temperature was recorded. So I can't pinpoint when I ovulated but my best guess is between cycle day 16 thru 19. 

During my luteal phase, my BBT rose a bit but it seems like it was a short phase, at least 11 days. Luteal phases are typically supposed to last 12-14 days. Without all my temperatures being recorded, I can't really tell if I may have a luteal phase defect.  If your luteal phase is shorter than 12 days, there might be a lack of progesterone.  Usually RE's will give progesterone supplements to try and correct this.  Now you can see on CD29 (CD=cycle day) there is a grey dot on the Kindara chart and a lone blue dot on my FF chart. This is showing that there was a drop of temperature indicating that there was no pregnancy.  Sure enough, the next day I started a whole new cycle.

Although it's disappointing, I have to look at the silver lining in all of this.  It looks like I ovulated sometime during this cycle and I can temp everyday. It's a fresh start!

One more app I really like but don't use that much is the What To Expect Fertility app.  The one nice thing about it is when we can see a positive pregnancy test, it will show you your estimated due date which is always exciting!

Happy charting!

The Uncharted Charts and the BFN

So this cycle I decided to chart my basal body temperature. This chart was very screwy. First off, I started tempting late in the game. Second, I missed days. So I had a lot of blanks and I don't exactly know when I may have ovulated. The good news, the way my funky charts look point in the direction that I did ovulate this cycle! You go ovaries! It's about damn time. I just hope I'm not disappointed next cycle. Third, not enough...well....lovin' time. With our screwy schedules, it seems I may have ovulated right around the time I started an 11 day work week. 12 hour shifts and a 2 hour commute round trip, it really doesn't leave much time. So now that my schedule is back to normal, maybe we'll hit a home run this cycle. ;)

So, I had experienced what people describe as pregnancy symptoms. Low back pain, sore boobs, moodiness, abdominal pain, and even spotting. I was so excited. So this morning I took a test. Big. Fat. Negative. I got that annoying phrase "Not Pregnant" on my Clearblue digital test. Ugh. But since my temps look like I ovulated, I'll continue with what I'm doing. In the meantime, I'm going to invest in an ovulation monitor. They're not cheap but hey, we're coming up on a year and eight months of trying. So I think I can spend the money on a monitor to help us out.

Anyways. I'll post my charts and show you what you should NOT do (like not temping everyday)

And yes, this is MY actual test. I even covered the results with my finger and slowly revealed the ugly truth.

"Aim at the sun, and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself." - J. Howes

Oh Lordy!

Well I hope everyone has been doing well!! So from my last post, I have not been back to my RE for any treatments. I've slowly changed my lifestyle as far as diet goes which was our game plan for now. I have to say, it's working! I got the best OPK result thus far! It's not a positive but it's pretty damn close. Unfortunately, our TTC efforts were put on a hold for a bit because of some health issues I was facing.  I experienced severe esophagitis which made me feel miserable and you know what feeling miserable can do to you...not make you feel like you want to be doing any type of "baby dancing". So, we've had some bumps in the road but we're overcoming them.

The game plan for right now is to continue with the progress of weight loss. My work schedule is difficult to schedule workout time at the gym. I work strictly nights and I'm on call everyday I don't work. It's definitely not an excuse but just like changing my diet, I have to start somewhere and just get used to it. I'll contact my RE soon and see if I can start Metformin and Clomid shortly and see how everything turns out!

Thank you everyone for your continuous support!

"If you're going thru hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill

I'm here!

Sorry I've been MIA for a while. With the craziness of the holidays and a small trip with the in-laws, I decided to take a beak from doing OPK's and whatnot. It has actually been somewhat relieving not to chart temps and analyze mucus. Along with that, I am so excited to announce that my husband's cousin and his wife had their first baby! They welcomed their son early Christmas morning and was as healthy as can be.

So I don't really have any new updates. Any OPK's I took were negative for ovulation but then again, I stopped doing them so who knows if I ovulated.  I'm currently on cycle day 46. Cycle days (CD) are basically how long your cycle runs for.  It starts on the first day of a flow from a menstrual cycle.  So the typical cycles are about 28 days. I called my RE and she said that this is pretty typical with someone who has had an HSG.  I'm not worried nor am I stressing about anything. 

I'm still trying to work on gettings those darn pictures of the HSG. If I don't start a new cycle here soon, I'll taking a trip to my RE and I'll get those pictures sent to me. 

I do have to say, the other day I had the urge to go baby outfit shopping. Holy moley! Number one, those onsies are EXPENSIVE! And what kills me is that babies apparently grow fast so they aren't even in those onsies for long! Secondly, when you dont even know what you're having, it's best to buy gender nuetral colors. I bought one for a girl and one for boy. Needless to say, twins would be awesome or at least if we can have a boy and then a girl (vice versa, beggers can't be choosers). Judge me all you want. I loved it and it was fun.  It's those guilty pleasures that keep me sane as far as trying to get pregnant is concerned.

I hope everyone had a great holiday and very a happy New Year!

“We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.”  - Jesse Owens