Bodies are weird

I just got back from a wonderful week on Cape Cod. It was a truly magical and relaxing vacation. Lots of hiking, kayaking, lobster rolls, champagne, late night chats with old friends, and just general loafing. As well as a beautiful, heartfelt wedding ceremony thrown in there. Lots of happy tears were shed. Now I’m back and grateful I have all day Sunday to help ease me back into reality.

I finally heard back from Dr. H Monday! I got caught up in hanging out with my friends when I arrived in Boston and completely forgot to call the clinic. I happened to check my email as I was going to bed that night and saw her message. She told me to schedule a follow-up appointment for this week and to stop the BCP. So Monday night was my last night on the damn pills.  I am not a fan of BCP. I found myself not handling stress very well while on them and I cried at the drop of a hat, which was really annoying. The frustration of finding myself on the verge of tears a lot usually just led to even more tears – talk about a vicious cycle. I still haven’t scheduled a follow-up appointment with Dr. H (I blame it on “Vacation Brain” – I kept losing track of time and just wanted to focus on the trip). I’ll call the clinic first thing Monday and try to get them to squeeze me in this week.

I’m not sure what’s going on with my body right now. So despite being on BCP for 3 weeks, I started my period the day before my hysteroscopy – which was almost 2 weeks ago. Weird. It feels like 2 months ago. Not sure when my period stopped, but the healing of my uterus took awhile. The bed rest last weekend actually worked! I finally stopped bleeding from the procedure Sunday night and was so grateful to not see any blood at all on Monday. But then I got cocky. On Tuesday, I went to a local gym on the Cape and ran on the treadmill (still training for that 5K in late August). I immediately started bleeding afterwards, just a very small amount though and it was definitely old blood. It went away really quickly, so I figured I was in the clear again. Because I bled so much after the procedure, I really wasn’t expecting AF to show up after stopping the BCP. I just figured, there can’t be anything left in there, right? Not the case. Thursday (2 days after stopping the BCP) it looked like AF showed up after all. She stuck around until Friday evening and then disappeared again. Very strange. My periods usually last a solid 5 days, not 2. And this was really light. So my question is: Was that a truncated period? Am I on CD3 right now? Or was that just some residual bleeding from the running on Tuesday and I’m on CD18? Of course, I didn’t have my thermometer with me on the Cape so I have no other reference for this cycle. I guess I’ll find out at my post-op appt.

If all goes well at the appointment, we could either be inseminating in 1 1/2 weeks or in ~4 weeks, depending on what my body is doing. If I’m on CD3 – woo hoo, let the intense ovulation monitoring begin!  If I’m on CD18 – we’ve most likely missed the fertile window and will be waiting for the next cycle. Either way, shit is gettin’ real.