Sunday, December 21, 2008

Cycle 41

I've now completed cycle 41, my seventh Lunaception cycle.

This was our first cycle trying to conceive, and as you can see, it didn't really work out as hoped, though not through the fault of Lunaception, which worked quite beautifully this cycle as I attempted to ovulate a bit earlier than my average 22 days.

From CD1-17, I slept with my eyemask on before switching to my night lighting for CD18-20. I planned on using the night lighting during the weekend, since I tend not to sleep as well without my eye mask, plus it would help with our timing, since the weekdays tend to be quite busy. I was thrilled with my sharp, definite temperature shift and the plentiful eggwhite mucus that accompanied it right on schedule -- ovulation on CD19: mission accomplished!

My luteal phase was definitely out of the ordinary this month. Besides having a horrible cold (and taking Tylenol cold daily for it), I also decided (with the switch to TTC) to cut out all caffeine (cold turkey - yikes!), as well as many of my herbal teas that I often enjoy -- including red raspberry leaf. Add onto that the pre-Christmas stress and work stress, and I guess it's not too big of a surprise that it was kind of wacky this month.

After days of higher-than-usual luteal phase temperatures, on 10DPO I had very, very light spotting. This was quite perplexing for me, since I'm not known to spot often. Then, two days later I had more spotting with cramping -- not at all like my regular cycle day 1. The day after I took a pregnancy test and got a very disappointing negative, but decided to count the previous day (12DPO) as day 1 of a new cycle.

So, on to a new cycle and more Lunaception experimentation! Wish us luck!