Today is cycle day 26. I believe that I likely ovulated on cycle day 21 based on having an even higher LH level on cycle day 20 reaching 2, than I had on cycle day 19. Then cycle day 21, my LH was still high(1.42), but lower than day 20. Cycle day 22, my LH was back down to 0.42. Cycle day 23, it was down to 0.32. I stopped testing after that because I don't think it does any benefit, this late in the cycle and I have been having glue textured cervical mucus. Which is consistent for the luteal phase.
My husband and I did the baby dance 3 times during this fertile window now. The night of ovulation, the morning of the day before ovulation, and on cycle day 17, 4 days before ovulation. If we conceived this cycle, then we have. If not, there's next cycle. And it is hard for me to accept that even if we did everything right, it still could just not be the right time, we only have a max of 42% chance of conceiving in any cycle. I always feel like we must have timed incorrectly or ate the wrong foods.
Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do. Doctors suggest intercourse every 2-3 days during the fertile window and we met that.
Saturday night, my mom called me and told me that her friend spent 3 years trying to conceive and her doctor told her to let go of all the monitoring and offer it up to God and then go on a vacation and get drunk. She ended up pregnant after that. I am guessing this has a lot more to do with relaxing and just letting it happen rather than trying to make it happen, which is the key to conception for some couples.
Yes, we conceived our twins the month I gave up on following the symptoms and tracking ovulation. I did that because the month before I had a 37 day cycle, so I was convinced that I was infertile and babies would not be happening for us soon. We just had intercourse before work one morning that was the day before ovulation and sperm count is highest in mornings, so we were so lucky! But since this cycle and likely last cycle I didn't ovulate until cycle day 21, I would definitely miss the window if I had not been testing LH. I have never ovulated this late in my cycle before. I usually ovulated early in the cycle. My most common day was cycle day 13. I still didn't have a longer cycle last month, even with likely not ovulating until cycle day 20-22. We had intercourse the day of ovulation last cycle if I ovulated on cycle day 21, but that was the only day of that fertile window we had intercourse.
My husband and I were having a date night Saturday anyway, I drank two glasses of wine and let myself get a little tipsy. An hour after going to bed I was awake throwing up for an hour and then the following day was such a waste of a day. I felt like crap, like I was constantly going to throw up and I kept having to run to the bathroom. I barely moved from the couch outside of trips to the bathroom. NOPE. Alcohol to relax is not for me. I get sick too often when I drink. The last time I drank was in July for a girls' night with friends and I drank slightly less than this time and I did not get sick that night.
Now I have been working on the balance of testing LH and trying to find ovulation and also knowing that we have nearly no control of if a pregnancy results for us just because we had intercourse at the correct times. I am doing this mostly by keeping my mind off of it outside of blogging. I have been exercising, trying to eat healthy, cooking soups and fall meals, baking carrot cake and breads, enjoying reading, and watching spooky Halloween movies.
I have done Halloween nails and been watching only Halloween themed and scary movies and tv shows. This week I watched The Haunting of Bly Manor. I read the book, The Turn of the Screw over the summer to prepare for this season. It is incomparable to The Haunting of Hill House.
It is nice because the show required full attention and that made it all consuming and I couldn't let my mind wander when I watched it or I would miss all the hidden ghosts in the background. Which is the only thing that made the series remotely creepy. It wasn't a Halloween themed series. The series is a love story, not a ghost story, but as they say in the series, they are the same. Which, that, I can agree with.
I watched the first couple episodes while distracted, and I was incredibly bored. Then I started paying closer attention, and now I feel that I received the full grasp of the storyline. I am a fan of Victoria Pedretti; I loved her character in The Haunting of Hill House and then got to see her in a very different role in season 2 of You. She is beautiful and so talented!
I watched The Haunting of Hill House with my husband when that came out, then I watched it two more times by myself; it was the most genius show I have ever seen, scary, and I can sob and sob while watching it.
The Haunting of Bly Manor also had a great deal of crying for me. So much of the storyline centers on loss and forgetting. The closest things to my heart at all times.
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