on time

I'm so relieved to get my monthly bill on time. Exactly 28 days since my last one, which is so much better than the 40+ days last cycle. I would hate to have to wait - not just to find out if February had more love than I thought, but also to get started on my March luck.
So bring on the luck of the Irish...

yet again

Back in August, Andrew had our first real conversation where we agreed kids should be in our near future. Not immediate, just near.
By November, we decided near was now. But the time had passed for that month.
So when December came, it was our first real shot and Andrew and I took turns fighting off colds instead.
January was going to be our month... but I had a freak-out session about not being ready that lasted all month.
It's all good - February is the month of love anyway. We'll have a Valentine's baby and call her Val (just kidding)...

...except looking ahead to summer plans, we realized we didn't want to be entering my third trimester in August.

At this point, plans are still up in the air, but the possibility of an international mission trip is really too tempting to resist. I hate to put off the future of my family for a trip - it seems so selfish. But this is my last chance to be selfish.
This is my last chance, at least, for now, to take an international mission trip. Andrew may be able to run off most of the time in the future, but realistically, I probably cannot. I can't put this off because my next chance may be never.

So March might be the month the luck of the Irish is on our side. Which might be just as well since I'm already hoping to have an Irish child.
We'll just see how baby Conan feels about Spring Break...

P.S. I'm kidding about the name Conan.

Valentine's Day

I just wanted to share, on Valentine's Day, that I'm grateful for my husband. I am excited about this journey with him. I know he'll make a great dad - that's understated. But I also know he'll continue to be a great husband to a pregnant wife and new mother. Even when I'm afraid, confused and tired, I know he'll be there to calm me down, help me figure things out and pick up the slack.

I couldn't ask for a better companion in life. The chapters in our marriage that have already been written give me confidence that the chapters to come are going to be exciting, hilarious,and ultimately full of hope and love, even with pages full of tears, pain and heartache.

He always makes me smile.

estimating

Another frustrating part of the whacked up cycle is that now I have no clue when I'm actually ovulating. Most of the online calendars say I need to see a doctor cause my cycle was greater than 35 days. I did find ONE that would at least estimate something for me so I had some idea of what I was doing. If I regularly had 40 day cycles, then the estimate would be helpful. But let's face it - everything's messed up here.

I'm just going to have it to get this whole conception thing my best shot throughout the month and assume I'll ALWAYS fertile! ;)


P.S. Premature as it may be, today I printed out a list of the top baby names in Ireland in 2006. I thought it might be a good place to start. Ok, start over. Cause I'm pretty sure there's another list somewhere of names I like that I created like 18 months ago just for fun - most of them were Irish names, for the record.

moving on

Now I know...

and I get my chance to do it right from the very beginning this time.
A 41 day cycle is a BIT long, but I guess I'll take it. After all, I didn't REALLY want to be pregnant just yet, but after 10 days late, I started looking forward to it.

So let's make a toast (cause, well I can! ha!) to starting over.
After all, everybody deserves a second chance to make up for their ignorances.

expectations

By now, I've really come to accept the fact that I could be pregnant. Despite the persistant test-taking that indicates otherwise, it's the most logical explanation that I can think of for my various symptoms.

And because I've come to terms with that possibility, I've also come to expect it as true. If it's true, it means I'm already on Week 5 of my pregnancy and only have 35 to go. That's a pretty good deal. I've been healthy enough that I don't have to necessarily freak out about some of the bad choices made in the last 5 months. My symptoms have been so tolerable that I can't actually pin them down as pregnancy symptoms at all (which could be a clue that I'm not in fact pregnant).

By the way, God - what's the deal with having pregnancy symptoms be the same as PMS symptoms? I mean, I get that it's all sort of the same basic genre and all, but one means I'm NOT pregnant, and one means I AM... shouldn't there be a difference???
Not to mention the fact that they all correlate with stress - which is pretty much 24/7 with me...
so not only could my symptoms be pregnancy or PMS, but it could very well just be stress that I'm finally letting get to me in a major way.

The cold sore in my mouth says I need to chill out, one way or the other.

waiting

I guess officially I'm on day 36 of this month's cycle since no new period has begun.

I did try again Saturday night and successfully got a negative. I say successful because I was just glad to see that it worked. I'm still not the best at working on those things, but I got a result!

But I thought I'd try again in the morning since morning pee has higher levels of HcG in it (see how much I'm learning?) ... still negative.

Which is fine by me, because as I mentioned, I was looking forward to a fresh start.
However, I still have no period - no new cycle - no fresh start.

So I'm going to test again Wednesday and see what happens. Heck, I may even test tomorrow because I'm tired of not knowing anything...