Ovulation

ETA: I realized that I already wrote about some of this, so it's repeated but more detailed here. No one except me reads this anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

So I think we caught it this time. I've been trying to be really good about using the ovulation tests and checking my mucus and just being aware of how I feel. I haven't gone back to temping yet; that was just annoying and got skewed each weekend when I didn't get up at 6AM. But the OPK was almost positive on Thursday afternoon. I know, I know, if it wasn't positive, it doesn't matter what it was, but I've read at a lot of sites that there is often a fade-in pattern where the strip will get progressively darker as it gets closer. All I know is it was the first time that it had been anything other than a faint line, so I'm taking that as a good sign. I also had some weird symptoms yesterday that point to ovulation. Weird in the sense that I've never noticed them before and to have them coincide with a darker OPK seemed too coincidental. I actually woke up in the morning from having sore breasts and around 11AM, I had this weird pinching sensation (it hurt!) on my left side followed by some cramping for about an hour or so. My CM has also been plentiful (annoyingly so) and of that sticky consistency that it's supposed to have right about this time. So all of the signs are there....

Matt and I were both too tired Thursday which is really when we should have had sex, but we had sex last night and I'm planning to do it again tonight.

I felt a little run down yesterday after our miserable failure of a field trip on Thursday, but overall I felt really positive. I'm not sure why. We talked with the doc on the way home, and while yes, the results of the SA came back abnormal, she doesn't think that they were all that bad. Everything was normal except for the shape of the sperm, and according to her, that's not a barrier to them being effective. A very different message from the one we received on Tuesday. Now the plan is for Matt to get a second opinion on the SA, and if that comes back with an all-clear OK, we'll start Clomid on the next cycle. Although, if I've actually detected ovulation, I'm not sure she'll put me on Clomid; we'll have to see how this goes. If I wait out the two week wait until I should approximately get my period and I get it, then two things are true: 1. Yeah! I detected ovulation accurately. and 2. Boo! I'm not pregnant. As much as I'd be bummed to not be pregnant, I'd be excited that I did ovulate and that I was able to tell when I ovulated, a victory unto itself. But if we do Clomid for three cycles or so and are unsuccessful, we move on to IUI.

At this point, our path can go one of two ways. We will either be pregnant in the next six months or working on a way to come up with the money for IUI. As much as I'm hoping and praying that we can do this naturally without resorting to a procedure, I'm just happy that we have a short-term and a long-term plan.