Tired, crampy, defeated...

Best laid plans...

AF came to visit around 2 p.m. today. I was completely expecting it, as I have been crampy all day and spotting for several days, but that doesn't make it any easier.

Already "scheduling" this next cycle. *Sigh* Makes it all seem like so much work.

Pregnant or not Pregnant, that is the question...

Took a pregnancy test this morning. Roughly 15 dpo. Negative. Still no real signs of menstruation. Have had brown spotting for something like 5 days and (weird) two separate incidences of red spotting (two days apart). Thought...maybe...it would be implantation bleeding. So I just don't know if it's too early to test positive or if my menstruation is just slow in coming.

Aaauughh!! This is so exahausting. I just want to KNOW, you know?

I've been thinking more and more about adoption lately, but don't know when is the "right time" to step into that arena. Technically, we could get pregnant at any time, but we could also NEVER get pregnant.

Still waiting...

When it rains...

Well, on June 6th, I had some INTENSE ovulation cramping...first on the right side, and then, later in the afternoon, I'm SURE I had some left side pain as well. Hmm... Anyway, I had some extremely good mucus that day as well, so we're hoping...

So far so good. My progesterone levels will be drawn tomorrow (to evaluate the Clomid, not to check on pregnancy or anything), and then I have another week until I can test. So far, I have not had any spotting or anything, and I haven't had any real pregnancy symptoms either, but it's probably way to early for that anyway.

In the meantime, today a coworker at my office (which handles occasional adoptions) mentioned a recent referral of a pregnant woman with some very specific requests for adoptive parents that she wanted to consider for placing her baby. This co-worker said she thought of us first because we fit the profile perfectly (both Catholic, both devout and involved, both educated), but she wasn't sure if we were interested since we haven't yet pursued a homestudy. We've discussed it a lot, but we kind of set our minds on waiting until we give Clomid a chance to work before we'd hop on the adoption bandwagon.

On the other hand, this just ripped at my heart. If someone approached us today and said "I'm having a baby, and I want you to be the parents of my baby", we'd jump on the homestudy right away without thinking twice. I think it's the prospect of paying for the homestudy and going through all the paperwork and mess just to be put on hold and WAITING for a referral. That just seems so hard in my mind.

Anyway, this coworker also mentioned a local pregnancy center that has been facilitating several in-house adoptions lately. Maybe I should find out what their process is.

Or maybe I should just continue to hope and pray for pregnancy success. We seem to be on the right track for that, but who knows?

Oh, pray that we have some patience and wisdom in this whole thing. It's very hard.

More improvement

Today, my CM is not only present, but it looks much more like what I'm used to instead of the thin stuff I've been having the last couple of days. Much more abundant today. I'm just amazed at this stark contrast from the almost-completely-dry cycle I had last month with the first round of Clomid. Still no ovulation pains, and today is cycle day 14, but there's still time, and perhaps the ovulation pain, for me, isn't a good sign (I mean, it's never correlated with actual achievement of pregnancy, so who cares about ovulation pain anyway).

So there has been lots of opportunity this cycle to try to conceive. Unfortunately, TTC has become more of a chore than a pleasurable experience. I HATE that...everything is so scheduled, and we hate to miss out on an opportunity to TTC when the CM shows up because it's impossible to know if this day is THE day or just a day leading up to ovulation, and we also want to do whatever it takes to improve our chances of conceiving. I hate looking back at previous cycles (hindsight being an irritating reminder that our best efforts aren't always timed best). I always look and think "well maybe if we'd tried on this day or this day it would have been better than these days that we did try". And again, you can't know what the cycle will end up looking like until after the fact. But it's not a turn-on when your husband looks at the chart and says "again...when are you going to actually peak?". Like I know the answer to that question.

Enough complaining. For today, I'm happy that my body is at least cooperating by giving me a normal CM cycle.

Well, whaddaya know...

Just when I started to despair that Clomid was going to completely cripple my mucus cycle in any circumstance...it came back!

A little explanation...I started this cycle with some pretty pitiful CM right at the end of my period, then a dry day, then some more encouraging CM, then THREE DRY DAYS IN A ROW! This was even worse than last cycle, because it looked very much like I would peak on cycle day 7 (last cycle was day 8), which is way too early, especially since my whole cycle went long enough last time for that to mean 22 post-peak days. I'm convinced that ovulation didn't occur until WAY after peak day, so I was hoping and praying for mucus to last longer in this cycle.

Well, just when I thought there was no hope, it came back! I almost didn't believe it, but after those three dry days, I've had two days of CM. Granted, it is thinner, less abundant and only showed up once each day, but I have to count that as improvement at least. If it hangs around for another day or so, I can feel confident that I had CM and ovulation on the same day, which is promising for the potential of pregnancy, so YAY!

This weekend, I attended a family celebration where several of my cousins-with-kids attended, so I got a lot of baby-face time. It was a beautiful and fun weekend!