Game Over?

Another thing that happened? After yet another 35-day cycle, I got my period. Again. And so we're done trying to make another baby. For now, anyway. We're going to be taking a trip to see my sister in France next summer, so this cycle was the cutoff and now I have to figure out how pregnant I am okay with being when we go and figure out what conception date matches and then we can try again, probably in December or January.

I am NOT HAPPY. I went off birth control back in January, and I never imagined it would take this long for me to get pregnant again. I mean, it's partly the fault of crazy schedules and my cycle being all over the place, and it's not that there's any real underlying problem or anything, but still. It's been nine months. This should be easier.

I am mourning the two to three-year age gap that we were planning on that is now impossible and I am upset that my sister won't get to meet her new niece or nephew until who knows when the next time she will be in the states is and I'm not looking forward to having to use contraception because bleh.

Also if I do get pregnant right when we start trying again I will have the least ideal due date for taking maternity leave while working in retail and I will make my boss hate me. Awesome.

Grump grump grump.

I spoke too soon.

Immediately after my last post my period showed up. (As an aside, I so cannot get on board with this whole "Aunt Flo" euphemism.) So now I am crampy and cranky and still nauseous. And I have headache, but that's not likely related. I am happy that I am back to knowing what is going on again, but I am less than thrilled to start another round of the waiting game. I'd like to get this show on the road, and start waiting for new and exciting things, like midwife appointments and heartbeats and you know, a real, live baby. But right now we're in a holding pattern of waiting for ovulation, waiting for period. I'm bored.

What do I win?

I keep my feminine hygiene products in an intricately hand carved South African breadbox.

My flow has slowed to something more bearable, so I am keeping up with things and not surprise! bleeding all over everything. I guess this is manageable, but I hate hate hate it. I feel like I am going through puberty again, and decidedly not in a good way. As if there could be a good way.

It is probably ridiculous, and possibly pathetic that a woman my age is writing at such length about menstruation, but I find it taking over my thoughts in the same way it did when I was barely a teenager, certain that everyone could tell, paranoid about bleeding all over my jeans.

It doesn't help that I'm getting over a cold/flu/monkey Ebola, so that every time I cough or sneeze I can feel a spurt of blood being forced out. Disgusting. I don't want to do this anymore.

Cycle one, day two: please kill me now.

Did I mention that I am on my period? Did I also mention that this is the first period I have experienced that hasn't been induced or mediated or averted by the use of artificial hormones since I was seventeen years old? I know that I am in no position to complain about, well, anything, but what. the. hell? Who decided that bleeding from the vagina was a good idea?

Okay, so, when I was about to start seventh grade and I got my period for the first time, I thought I was an old hand because my mom had already had the talk with me, and I had my own special little stash of junior sized maxi pads in my bathroom, so I just put one in my panties and went about my business and didn't make a fuss about it. Well, little did I know, but apparently one pad all day wasn't going to cut it...

That is how I feel today. Back when I was on the pill my periods were significantly reduced, and I only really ever even had to change a pad because it had been there for a while and that was gross because I never soaked them. And then after I got my IUD inserted my period came, oh, once every never, and I tended to catch it with either the thinnest of panty liners, or just say fuck it and wash my underpants out at the end of the day because it was less of a pain than bothering with feminine hygiene products. Especially when it was only for two days or so.

But what is happening to me now is unholy. I managed to soak through both a tampon and panty liner this morning at work, and my skirt managed to remain unscathed only because my job sucks and I never ever ever get a chance to sit down. And there are cramps! Cramps that are made worse by tampons, which I now remember why I hate, but what I hate more than tampons is that sweaty bloody stinky vag feeling I get from a pad and having to wear unattractive pad-accommodating underpants and WHY ME, GOD?

I suppose I should be happy that I am building up a beefy, embryo-nurturing endometrial lining, and I am, but I would like it to just do it's god damned job and catch a baby so that I don't have to endure this bullshit again for as long as I can manage to extend lactational amenorrhea. Don't you know I will try.

BLOOD!

In my underpants! Huzzah!

Finallyfinallyfinally!!! It's insane to me that I am so excited to be confirmedly not pregnant, but I'm relieved to be in a place where I know where I am in my cycle and what I can expect going forward and when I can ever realistically worry about whether or not I am pregnant. So I guess this is cycle one, day one. I'm going to start charting CM, but BBT I just can't do because of how erratic my schedule is. When you wake up at 3:30am one day, and 8:00 the next... well, it's just not consistent. Maybe I will try anyway. Just to see.

Technically I'm still just spotting, though, so I couldn't help but google "implantation bleeding". Of course.