Cool pics!

This morning I thought it might be interesting to take some photos of my saliva microscope results. I know, I'm a complete nerd! Anyway, here they are. If you look very closely you can see some small areas of ferning (they're in the red ovals). I took the photos with my phone camera so the ferns are hard to see, and most of the sample has no ferning. I recorded it as partial ferning after consulting some websites. I'm only on CD7 so I won't be ovulating for quite some time yet, but I find the microscope interesting!

I should charge my camera and see if I can get better photos!

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I'm quite excited today, because it's been confirmed that I will be in charge of the new pug rescue event I wrote about yesterday! Yay! I called the store manager this morning to schedule the first three events. [This will sound so bizarre, but I really hate calling people I don't know! Since I moved here I've had this silly hang-up about using the phone, because of my accent and I guess I'm worried I won't be able to make myself understood! Anyway, the call went well - I really need to get over the whole phone thing, I never had a problem in England!] The first event will be 7/15. That will give me some time to gather up everything I'll need. I've been making lists of things I need to have, since I seem to love writing lists. I guess I really am a nerd! Anyway, it's an exciting opportunity for me to become more involved in the pug rescue organization. I'm sure it'll be quite a lot of work, but I'm really looking forward to it!  :)

In other news, I decided to ignore my SIL with the Facebook thing. I don't need any drama, and I can't see a way of responding without some kind of drama ensuing. If she wants to get in touch with my husband (her half-brother) then she can email or call him. I don't need to be her go-between!

We're going to the gym again today. We went yesterday and I pushed myself much harder than usual. For some reason I don't like the elliptical trainer (whenever I use it my legs end up being like jelly!). Since we started going to the gym, about 6 weeks ago, I've used it all of one time and that was for only 10 minutes! Well, yesterday I did 20 minutes on the treadmill (walking fast on an incline), then 45 minutes on the elliptical. Granted, I had it set on a relatively easy setting, but it was still an achievement for me! I burned 545 calories in total, so it was a pretty good workout. I wish I could run on the treadmill but I find it hard, and if I was going to run I'd definitely need a better sports bra...

Big temp spike today (CD19)

My temp went up to 97.8 today, from 97.1 yesterday. I'm trying not to get my hopes up but maybe I ovulated yesterday! That would be awesome for a number of reasons:

1. my period won't come while we're on vacation
2. we've been having lots of sex (6 days in a row up to and including yesterday) so maybe we'll conceive this time
3. it would be a CD18 ovulation, so my cycle would be about 31 days which is much better than 35!
4. it would bring us one step closer to getting my testing done (HSG, glucose test)

I really hope I did ovulate yesterday, but I know it won't be confirmed on my chart unless the next 2 days temps are also high. Fingers crossed!!! :)

Oh, I almost forgot: this morning my microscope showed partial ferning. Huh. I don't know how much I trust it, I guess we'll have to see what my chart shows. I was really hoping the microscope would be accurate, but if I did ovulate yesterday then I'm not sure how accurate it can really be. I mean, the last ferning was CD13 so if I ovulated CD18 shouldn't the ferning have continued beyond CD13? I'll keep up with it anyway, I've got nothing to lose after all!

So I posted the other day that I didn't know how to respond to my cousin's email about their new baby etc. Well, I emailed him back after getting advice online, on how to write a non-bitchy reply. I wanted to convey that I'm happy for them but that we're struggling. This is what I wrote regarding the baby stuff:

I'm so happy to hear everything's going well with you all. It must have been very exciting to feel the new baby kick for the first time! :-)  We can't wait to experience all of those things too, but unfortunately we're having a really hard time getting pregnant. We haven't told anyone but we're going through infertility testing at the moment, it sucks. 

He replied, saying that they know exactly how we feel because they had some testing done before conceiving their first. If what his wife told me back then is true, though, they tried for maybe 6 months before she went and got Clomid (she'd had PCOS for years) and before she started taking it she got her BFP. Now their first is 2 and they're expecting their second. I appreciate the sentiment of what he wrote, but I don't think they really do know how we feel. To try for a year - knowing you're ovulating, charting your cycles and timing everything well - with no pregnancy to show for it. They're going to have 2 kids and possibly more in the future, while we have no idea if a baby is on the cards for us. It's kind of easy for them to say this stuff, right? Oh, and he said to relax and it'll happen. Yeah... I wish! The fact of the matter is that nobody can really say anything that will make me feel any better, so I'm just glad that he responded and doesn't think I'm being horrible. That's a relief, anyway.

With regards to testing: we're hoping to get the semen analysis results soon. The doctor said it typically takes 5-7 days, so hopefully by the end of this week we'll know if there are any issues there. I'm a little anxious about it, because if his tests come back bad our hopes will be dashed. I'm more concerned that I'll be the 'defective' one though - I really don't expect my hubby to have any issues. My mom has an underactive thyroid and that puts me at greater risk of having the same, so that could be the issue. Or my other hormones. Or anything, really. Hopefully we'll know more soon, anyway  :)

Still partial ferning (CD13)

Today my ovulation microscope was still showing partial ferning, so hopefully in the next day or two it might become full ferning!

I'm really trying not to stress about the results of our testing, but at the moment it's proving to be difficult! I know that it's pointless to stress, because it won't change anything (and there's a chance everything will be fine!) but knowing it and feeling it are two different things I guess. I don't think we'll get any of my hubby's results for a week or so, and the blood tests I had were supposed to take a couple of weeks to come back. I think because I know they have his semen sample at the lab, I'm anxious to know if it's good or not!

This is a weird place to be in. I don't want anything to be wrong with either of us, but at the same time I'd like to know why I haven't gotten pregnant yet. If there is something wrong, I hope it's something that's easy to fix. I don't know what my gynecologist will suggest if all our results come back fine - will she send us off to try for longer, or refer us to a specialist? I didn't ask that question - I guess it didn't occur to me at the time. If everything's fine, maybe we'll conceive naturally given more time.

All this speculating is a waste of time, I know that. Isn't it ironic that I'm barely even thinking about the results from my pap smear, and only really bothered about the fertility stuff? I don't anticipate getting an abnormal result from my pap smear, but I'm scared as hell that I could be infertile. Damn, that makes my priorities seem completely messed up!

Some drama at the lab!

Hubby fasted from last night, and called the lab this morning to verify the instructions for collecting his semen sample. They said he could either get the sample at home or at the lab - as long as we got it to them within an hour it would be fine. OK. He collected the sample at home and we rushed over to the lab (which is almost 30 miles away). After some old woman almost got us into an accident by cutting us off, we arrived a little over 30 minutes after he'd collected the sample. The guy at the reception desk promptly told us they wouldn't be able to test it because it was too old by that point. What?!?!?! OMG, I just about lost it. Well, I didn't but I really wanted to. I told the guy he'd called before obtaining the sample and was told to get it there within an hour. He said he'd check with someone, anyway. Well, it turns out that everything was fine - the guy at the desk was wrong. Thank goodness! So my hubby got his blood drawn for his tests (testosterone, thyroid levels and cholesterol) and handed over the little plastic container holding his "boys", LOL. His results should be available in around a week, so they'll be back well before I even get my HSG and glucose test done. We both feel better now that we've done everything we can for the time being. We went to IHOP for a late breakfast (brunch, really) because we were both really hungry.

I used my ovulation saliva microscope for the first time this morning - it's so interesting! I got partial ferning, which means I should be ovulating soon. The leaflet says you normally get partial ferning for a couple of days and then full ferning for around 4 days (after that it goes back to partial ferning for a day or 2, I think). I don't have fertile looking CM yet, but I think I will soon. I'm really glad I bought the microscope, it's definitely interesting and hopefully it'll be accurate too. I think it's going to be useful because I ovulate on different cycle days every month and this should give me a heads up so we don't miss my most fertile days. We always seem to time it well anyway, but last month I was surprised to ovulate on CD17 and there's a chance we wouldn't have timed it well because of that. As it happened, we timed it perfectly anyway, but who knows if that would be the case every time? Anyway, for $27.95, it was definitely worth it  :)