Ding dong.

It's 10:02pm on CD #42.

Aunt Flo just arrived.

Hmph.

Well, today is CD #42.

I know I didn't get pregnant this cycle. We've not BDed since the 1st of the month... and, had I actually ovulated around that time to have gotten pregnant, I would have gotten a + HPT by now... which, I naturally have not.

According to FF, the ovulated on CD #30 this cycle. 30. THIRTY. WTF?

It's so incredibly frustrating to have no clue what your body is doing.

Now I'm just wishing to start my next cycle already so I can start using my monitor. I figure that with using my monitor... temping... AND OPK's... I will almost have to figure out something solid and concrete. I never really got any definite ovulation prediction this cycle. The OPK's didn't go COMPLETELY positive... and the temps weren't a HUGE drop/jump. Maybe if I can cross-check over 3 different methods it'll give me a clearer picture of what's going on in there.

Blah.

I'm going to go run some errands. It looks like it might rain again... and I'd like to get them done before that happens.

Calling in the big dogs.

Look what came in the mail today! :)

I wish I had started today so that I could start playing with it tomorrow morning. I mean, don't get me wrong... I'd rather not start because it'd mean I was (most likely) pregnant. But, I pretty much know I'm not... since I don't think I ovulated until today or maybe even tomorrow. Which, brings me to my next point.

Look at these two most recent OPK's:

(No, I have not perfected my ability to travel into the future (yet). This one above, which is marked May 29th, 2010, should actually read May 9, 2010. I'm just too lazy to go back and edit it to the correct date. )

Okay. So. I know they are both technically negative. But. Hear me out. These are the closest ones I've gotten to a positive this cycle. I think, if I had gotten up in the middle of the night to take one, I'd have gotten a positive OPK last night in the wee-morning hours. I think these two were the "in" and "out" of a positive one.

So. I'm going to say I ovulated today.

(In all honesty, I have no clue what is going on with my body this cycle. It's all guesses.)

But it doesn't much matter. Husband is sick... and has been all weekend. So we won't be sexin' it up tonight.

But that's okay. I feel really positive having my new tools. I feel like I'll have a real handle of my cycle next time around... which, if my guess is right, should be showing up around May 24th-ish.

So that's what's wrong!

I ordered a fertility monitor this morning. I've taken two HPT's the last couple of days... both negative. And I just have this feeling that Aunt Flo is right around the corner. So I went ahead and bought my monitor. I hope that it'll arrive before she does... that way I can start using it for my next cycle. If it turns out I don't need it, I can always return it unopened.

But. In attempts on finding a good article about the monitor I bought (Clearblue Easy Fertility Monitor!), I came across this one... clearly written by a non-English speaking person(s). Here's the best part in the entire article:

Not only this, a nutritious diet is needed for generating energy so that body processes keep moving in optimum levels. Use of artificial sprays by the women increases the probability of infertility in many women. For those women, who love the party and hip hop, it is the time to put a formal end to them.

... and here, all this time, I thought it was something else!

My head is swimming.

Okay. So. I've been temping every morning since CD 1 on April 11th. I temp between 7am (most mornings) and 8am. There's been a couple mornings that I've temped around 6:30am.

And I've been taking OPK's since CD 6. I take them in the morning... afternoon... and night. (What can I say? I'm a POAS-aholic... and I found an AMAZING deal where I got 75 OPK's and 25 HPT's for $25. You can't beat that with a stick.

All my OPK's have been negative. Some darker than others... but all negative.

I just assumed I didn't ovulate this cycle. My periods have never made sense. So it makes sense that I didn't ovulate... since I didn't get a positive OPK like I did last month.

But when I keyed in my temp this morning, FF said, according to the temp pattern, I ovulated on the 18th. Which, based on last month, would be about right. But, based on my OPK's, wouldn't be.

So I don't know. I guess it's possible that I could have missed my LH surge by not testing while I'm sleeping. I mean, if I last tested around 6pm... and didn't test again until 8am the following morning... would it be possible to miss the surge and therefore not get a positive OPK...?

Assuming that happened, and I did indeed ovulate on the 18th, then I get into the questions of "Would the sperm still be alive in there from the BD we did on the night of the 14th? I know that professionals say sperm can live 3 - 5 days... with 7 days being the most in supreme and ideal environments. But, taking the lower end of that and going with 3 days... we'd have just missed it by 1 day.

*le sigh*

But. Let's just say I did in fact ovulate on the 18th. Which means today is 6 DPO. And, let's also say that husband's swimmers lived for the middle number of 5 days... which would have put them in there when the egg made her appearance.

So. Maybe I have a chance, after all. I'll test on Mother's Day and see. That'll put me at 11 DPO.

*crosses fingers*

Womb status: Who knows?

I've cleaned all day. I've organized... I've sorted... I've swept... I've thrown out 3 bags of crap. As a result, my body is aching for a soothing shower and to crawl into bed.

In TTC news, I was sure I was going to ovulate around the same CD as last month, but it came and went without any temperature shift or + OPK. The OPK got a bit darker around CD 15... but it's not gotten that dark, dark line I need to call it +. Today is CD 22... and I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for a + OPK tomorrow.

If you've been following my blog, you'll know that we were aiming to get pregnant in March or April so that we could increase our chances of having a girl according to the Chinese Birth Chart... which, call my silly, I believe works. Well, I didn't get pregnant in March... but I still had a chance to get pregnant in April. It was cutting it close, but I was due to ovulate (if I mimicked last cycle's pattern) with a few days to spare. But, my body didn't do as it had last cycle... and, sitting on CD 22 on May 2nd, I still haven't ovulated. So, we're in "boy zone" from May through September.

So, knowing this... I've been doing some soul searching the last couple of weeks.

Maybe we're meant to have a boy.

Maybe, in the book of life, we're suppose to have precious daughter, SJ... and a baby Jack... not a baby Jillian.

I only wanted another girl because we "know" girls. We've been there before. We have stuff for a girl. We've raised SJ to almost 6 years old... knowing nothing but girl.

But I got to thinking. SJ's not a typical girl. She doesn't like baby dolls... or Barbies. She could care less if she's wearing a dress or a pair of jeans. She's not a girly-girl. She's more on the Tomboy side... like me. Who's to say if we had another daughter, that she'd be anything like that? She might be all drama and pink fluff. Which would put us out of our comfort zone just as much as a boy would.

Maybe it's not my place to pick and choose what we have... or to try and force it to be one way or the other. Maybe I'm just suppose to go with the flow... and let Mother Nature do what she intends to do.

So, with that... I turn it over to her. If I'm meant to have my Jillian, I trust that I'll have her... but, if not, I trust that I was suppose to have Jack instead... and that's A-OK with me. :)