Lunaception Day 1

Stardate: December 20, 2010
Morning Temp: 97.18
CD 8
CM: dry this morning but lo and behold!? CM is now eggwhite/wet.
Helpers: 100mg B6, 400mg folic acid, 1 Prenate DHA 

Condition: Mildly amused. Looking forward to my first night of lunaception. Planning on BD tonight, tomorrow (full moon) and the day after with full moonlight being let into room. This is hilarious. I usually sleep in complete and utter darkness (light blocking window coverings) all the time. The *only* light that is in the room is the little green light from the smoke alarm that seems to blink on and off every 2 minutes. Annoying. Wonder if that has done anything to mess with my cycle?

Background info: I am 35. I am 5'3 and weigh 148 pounds. I have an hourglass shape. This is the heaviest I have ever been in my life. I feel heavy. :( I look great. But feel heavy. At my peak I was 116lbs when I was 27 years old. Of course, I was exercising twice a day (90 minutes of cardio daily) 6 days a week and living on celery sticks, raw spinach, and plain tuna. I had a body fat % of 14... I looked incredible. Then I had to get a full-time job. Boo hoo. I was working part-time and going to grad school full-time when I looked like a rock star. Full-time job plus befriending my boss who liked to go to lunch every day and out for dinner every night = a LOT of restaurant food for Laney and no gym time = a weight gain up to 135. Which was great. I still looked smokin. I was around 135-140 when I got married a few years ago. Felt good. Looked good. But now a few years later after no gym at all... ugh... I'm at 148. And I'm not liking this. I feel heavy. I'm little! 5'3 should not weigh 148-152 on a daily basis. Too much weight for a little person like me. My thighs are huge. And that's ok. I like my sexy thighs. But now I can see my little tummy is gaining weight too and that's not cool. Not to mention the turkey waddle that's doubling as a chin. Bah. So I'm trying to walk every day for at least 40 minutes about 2 miles around the house. Whoopie du. I know- what I need to do is to sweat. Can't loose pounds if you aren't sweating. Gotta find a way to do that.

So that's the background on the weight story. I struggle with getting down to about 125 or 130 sounds realistic. It's going to take a long time- but I need to get there. I'd like to get there in about 2 months. But I know I have to work hard at it and I'm not going the semi-starvation route again. That backfires. Ok, moving on...

The reason I bring up the weight is because I do believe that weight has something to do with fertility. I don't have PCOS that I know of, though I have always had a problem with having slightly more facial and body hair than the average feline. My OBGYN told me this was because I am of mediterannian decent. Ok. Dually noted. However, having dark hairs popping out around your navel, breasts, chin, and side burns is not fun no matter which side of Europe your ancestry hails from. If I had the money I would laser those spiky bastards off my body faster than cool hand Luke. Alas, a poor girl can only make do with her home-waxer (ouch and ugh) and a set of Tweezerman tweezers (thank god for portable chia pet control). Of course my age has a lot to do with fertility too. I started TTC when I was 34. Got pregnant right away. Miscarried at about 10 weeks  (blighted ovum). Waited 3-4 cycle as instructed (dumb) and got pregnant again right away. Miscarried again at 6 weeks. Waited another couple of cycles. Got pregnant again right away. Miscarried again at 6 weeks. And here we are. My last miscarriage was September 2010. Three months later we're still hopeful to see if the 4th time's a charm.

Other facts:
I've never had a D/C. All of my m/c have been natural. That first one from the 10 week pregnancy was a doozy. Talk about painful and harrowing. What a way to handle a first pregnancy. I believe this first one was what was called a missed abortion which means my body miscarried, but my body didn't realize it until several weeks later. Passed a lot of placental tissue. Labor pains were intense. It was a strange and unfortunate series of events. Very disturbing.

I ovulate late into my cycle. I've figured out through charting that I ovulate around CD 21. That's pretty late considering that most of my cycles are around 27-32 days long. I haven't had a 32 day cycle in a long time. In fact my last cycle was only 24 days long with an ovulation occurring around CD 21. Yeah. That's right. That's a 3 day luteal phase. Not good.

I had all the fertility blood work done. Everything is 'normal.' My prolactin is normal. My fsh, my lh, all of the regular blood work, thyroids, all of it- normal. The only thing that showed as slightly low was my progesterone level that was taken 7 days after my LH surge - which showed at 9.1. Which means I ovulated (anything over a 5 means ovulation occurred) but you need to have at least a 10-15 to maintain a pregnancy. So there you go. My luteal phase is screwy apparently. My FSH is only a 9.1 - which is pretty good from what I hear. My estrodoil is also 'normal'.

What else. I've never used progesterone or any other drug DURING pregnancy yet. There have been a couple cycles in the past few months where I believed that I had ovulated and began taking the progesterone suppositories 3 days after ovulation but no pregnancy resulted and my period came through on its own the first time and the second time I just stopped taking the progesterone on cd 32 because of negative hpt.

So there we have it. Also, I'm not interested in IVF. It's not covered and it costs too much for us and even if it was covered it's not an option I'm willing to explore. I'm not interested in taking clomid or other fertility drugs that may cause cancer or dry up my cervical fluid. I'm trying to do this au natureal and I have no regrets about that. This is what my husband and I are comfortable doing. We will not be 'undone' if we don't have children. God willing, we would be so blessed if we did, but it won't break us if we don't. We are artists. We create together. Children would be another beautiful creation for us - a by product of love if it's in the big plan of things to come. If it happens, great! If not, that's ok too.

So here we are. I'm going on 36 and considering our non-scientific approach to baby making the prospects look slim, but not so slim that I have given up hope! I've read Inconceivable and I've read Coming to Term and both books have given me hope that nature will find a way if that's what is in the plan for nature to do.

We'll see. Here goes our first shot at lunaception. Bring on the baby making!