New cycle update

Hello! :)

Life is zipping by as usual. My lovely baby girly is now 8 months old! She has her next developmental check and weigh-in tomorrow. She started crawling last night, and I can't remember if this had happened last time I updated, but she has her two bottom teeth, and then cut her first top tooth just over a week ago. The second top tooth is about to come through. She hasn't been cranky or symptomatic at all. She is such a smiley happy baby, with tons of attention all the time, and adored by all her siblings, and her mummy and daddy, of course! :) She pretty much snuffles down whatever food we give her, enthusiastically. :) She had her first experience in the paddling pool when the weather got hot recently, and she has become especially fond of her daddy lately too, crying when he leaves the room, and flapping and squealing with excitement when he comes into the room! Bless her! :) Here are a couple of recent pics of her - paddling pool, and pizza crust. :)

 

 

It has been a busy month. I had a UTI diagnosed and had antibiotics, then had those changed after my urine culture grew a strain of bacteria that needed a different antibiotic. I called the doctor again after I finished the course of treatment because I still had the occasional soreness when I wee, and also the same side pain, but it feels weirdly muscular, or perhaps even closer to the surface, and it radiates deep sometimes. It's definitely not feeling like a kidney stone. I even wondered about an ovarian cyst, but there's zero pain during intercourse (which is a common symptom), and it radiated up to my ribs which I would think is a bit high?? Anyway, they took another urine sample to be sure it's all cleared up, and I'm waiting for those results right now. I feel better in myself though. Waiting for the scan referral to come through.

 

The children are all busy and happy, NOISY and active. We changed our curriculum choices this summer, re-evaluating what is and isn't working. We subscribed to Reading Eggs and Mathseeds for most of them, and they love it so much that they are queuing for turns at two laptops every single day, including Saturday and Sunday!! :) Elijah is 4 and would be starting school next month (gasp!!!), and he's reading short sentences now thanks to Reading Eggs. :) He is also potty training (somewhat reluctantly!) at the moment, and doing great. He's so like Nathan, and did not want anything to do with it, but I've put my foot down now. ;) Two of his brothers were 4 as well. Lydia will be 3 in two months (!!!!) and has decided she wants to potty train as well due to the chocolate rewards she's seeing her brother enjoy, lol! She won't have the hand-me-down Thomas the Tank Engine pants, and has asked me to buy her pink Peppa Pig pants, lol! So I'll buy those for her when I get the chance. :)

 

Neil got head-hunted and offered a new job with a different company, with a massive pay increase and car allowance! It's still a long commute, but it should be a slightly easier one using the train as it's more direct than his current work location. SUCH a blessing and an answer to prayer, we are so so grateful! :) He will start that in roughly 6 weeks, no specific start date yet.

 

As far as this month's cycle goes - it's the first time in what feels like MY LIFE that I've ever suggested to Neil that maybe we prevent pregnancy this month. Just because of the scans coming up - I am not sure if they would want to do X-ray and I can't have that if I am pregnant, so... We just really... contraception just does not sit right with us, even so. So we chose to abstain when I was most fertile. Except that I had some maybe/maybe-not fertile CM for several days that I wondered about - it wasn't EWCM, but it was the "precursor" that I often chart as EWCM for my own reference, because it's not any of the other types and I know it means the proper EWCM is coming. But I know that I have many days after the "precursor" stuff starts, before I'm fertile and ovulate - if I even do ovulate that time around. And it was WAY early in my cycle for me to be fertile - like CD11 or something. So we figured it was still okay for the parsnips. ;)

 

Fast forward a week or something, and I've ovulated. I counted a 5 day cut-off between the last parsnips and ovulation, which I figured was close but "safe" - it feels really weird talking like this about avoiding pregnancy! :/ Who would want to prevent such a blessing?! Or at least, that's how I feel about it. It feels strange to be making that choice, after all these years. Just for this month though.

 

Well, I was merrily going about my business, temping to be sure of my ovulation and charting to see it nicely, when my sweet friend Rebecca pointed out that it was a 4-day cut-off, not 5 days. I went back and counted again, and lo and behold, she was right! I can't believe I looked at a chart and counted wrong, haha! I guess I counted the day of the parsnips as day 1, instead of counting up to ovulation day from the day after parsnips.

 

Suddenly I felt kind of panicky - again WEIRD for me because the very chance of pregnancy is a thrill and a great excitement, God's timing - a blessing! But because I had had the mindset of preventing, I felt a bit thrown. So I am 6 days past ovulation today. Yesterday, 5DPO, my temp dropped like a STONE, right down to the coverline, like a pre-ovulation temp. That's really odd for me. At the time I thought, oh it's like an implantation dip, haha! ;) Little did I know that maybe it IS one!

 

I checked all my previous charts for evidence of pregnancies that I've had from the exact timing of parsnips to ovulation, 4 days before, in the past. Guess what I came up with? Matthew, Nathan, Lydia and one chemical pregnancy. All of them one incidence of parsnips 4 days before ovulation. Hmmm! ;) So I guess we wait and see. It feels surreal that there could be a chance, and I'm thinking surely NOT?! I mean, I can't just EVERY SINGLE CYCLE go "Oh! I might be pregnant!" lol! But usually, bizarrely, I might. Even this time. :)

 

I haven't really got any really obvious early symptoms. Well, I tell a lie - maybe I just don't want to imagine there are any? I have had bad cramps this morning. Proper ones with radiating back ache. Never happens unless I'm pregnant. Also a weird... sensation which is too personal to ever explain here (even in my previous pregnancies I've mentioned it in about the same detail as this) in my... nether regions (!) which again, I have only ever had in very early pregnancy. Not every time, but most of them. I am irritable and tired, but sometimes that's just normal tiredness when I've been woken a lot in the night like I often am. I am gassy, and to be honest very similar to early pregnancy gassiness, but I'm not making anything of it because it could easily be nothing to do with potential pregnancy. I have been having quite a lot of back ache and the odd bit of pelvic pain - I had pain in my tailbone when I got out of bed yesterday morning and I remember it really grabbed my attention (had no idea at that point that there was any chance of conception) because I hadn't had pain in that area since I was last pregnant. It just aches occasionally when I'm pregnant, but for whatever reason, it doesn't really bother me outside of pregnancy, except in the early weeks I guess when there's still relaxin or whatever it is in my system.

 

Anyway, that's it really. I am feeling sluggish and like I just want to eat junk and drink Coke, ha! I don't normally do that, but it could easily be a pre-period thing, so...

 

If I am not pregnant then I don't know what to expect of my luteal phase length. Maybe it could finish tomorrow even, shorter than the last 2 cycles but I am sure I conceived those cycles and that lengthened my LP to a day or two longer than it would otherwise have been.

 

I mentioned it to Neil, and it's like our roles are reversed! :) Normally I am the one all thrilled with the possibility and he's cautiously happy but anxious about providing (financially, that's his main concern). Now he has this new job coming up, he is so much less anxious. *I* was slightly anxious because what if, for thorough investigation, I need some diagnostics done that I can't get if I'm pregnant? What if they are annoyed with me for becoming pregnant when I knew those tests were upcoming? I did mean to prevent for that reason, but... Anyway. Neil was happy and even congratulated me and told me to test in the morning, lol! WAY premature for all that at only 6DPO when I still might get my period. He reassured me over the worries I had, and moved on to thinking about moving house again to somewhere bigger with even more space for our growing family. :) And you know the children will be THRILLED - so so happy to have another baby in the family. :)

 

I will see what my temp does from now, and just wait. When I was feeling very crampy today, I had a really full heavy feel in the pit of my abdomen, almost in my groin, and I also felt very "leaky". I kept going to the loo to see if my period was starting early, but (of course) nothing was there except my usual suspiciously "pregnant" CM. Which I'm trying not to get too focused on. It's way too surreal, for some reason. And it could all just be for nothing, if I end up with my period anyway.

 

My temp went up again this morning, after yesterday's big dip, and I'll see about tomorrow's. Will update again soon. Thanks for the supportive comments. :) Someone asked at my other blog if I could update there again - it has been YEARS since I updated there, I think! Or it feels that way, anyway. I would love to keep up with my other blog, and record all the lovely stuff about my children growing up and my thoughts and memories, etc. But I just can't. I haven't got time, what with being Mummy to them all, at all hours of every day. I can keep my pregnancy blog updated, barely, so that I don't miss recording any pregnancy I might be blessed to have, but my updates are now restricted to Facebook. I do record EVERYTHING there, and I can't do it in two places - I thought I would just copy and paste to my blog at one time, just so it was recorded there too, but I can't. I can't force the time into my waking hours. Right now it's 11.35pm and I'm so tired. I would have gone to bed when I brushed my teeth and checked on all the sleeping children 45 minutes ago, but I remembered my blog and wanted to update it, so here I am instead. I feel sad that the old blog is stuck - suspended in time, before my little girls were even a part of it. But it can't be helped. :/ I don't accept friends easily on FB, as my personal information is there, and if I don't know you... I'm sorry that my little ones' lives aren't available to read about any more, but I can assure you they're doing fine, as loved as they ever were when I used to write about them, happy and growing fast. :) When I can, I'll put a bit about them here when I update about the things that this diary is meant for. I hope that'll do. :)