(15 DPO) - AF is officially late.

But I'm not pregnant. Hmm.

I'm choosing to ignore this for now. I took my last First Signal test - BFN, as expected. AF is late, but I do fluctuate between 28 and 30 days. She'll likely be here sometime today or tomorrow. I hope. Since I'm not pregnant, I just want her to come so I can deal with her needy ass.

I'm choosing not to do Clomid for this next cycle. I'm going to take a break from it and focus on losing weight again. Oh, this sucks.

It's currently 5:00pm as I type this and I haven't gone over 20 carbs today. That's a major success for me, considering I can eat 100 carbs for breakfast alone. I know low-carb works for me and I will do it again. 

In the meantime, I had to go clothes shopping. Yes, had to. It's not something I ever volunteer for. Tomorrow starts the first day of our new uniform at work. I had to spend all my tip money from today's shift on two shirts and a pair of jeans and I am NOT happy about it. Fucking bullshit.

The tops are button-up, a busty lady's sworn enemy. I had to buy size 18, something I'm not happy about but I'll manage. The jeans were an issue, though. My boss said we needed boot cut style but it doesn't say anything about it on the official document from corporate. Me and boot cut don't mix. I always need a size 16-20 but they're tight around my middle and baggy in the ass and legs area. It sucks when you're apple-shaped. I have all my weight in my middle with absolutely NO ass and then skinny chicken legs. It's weird. And it's a very hard shape to dress.

So I bought skinny jeans, the only kind of jeans I can truly wear.

My boss can suck it.

(14 DPO) - My eggo is not prego.

I woke up this morning and took two tests - a FRER and a Clearblue Digi. The FRER gave me the exact same result yesterday gave me. The digi gave me a nice slice of "I-already-know".

Well fuck you very much, Clearblue.

My moods have been all over the place. I'm annoyed, weepy and ready to move past this.

I did take a First Signal with SMU and got, you guessed it, a ridiculously faint line. Jesus, take the wheel here, man - no more super faint "is it there?" lines. Either give me a full-blown line or nothing at all. Sheesh.

Remember how I said I wasn't spotting? Well, now I am. Just a tiny, tiny bit. So I assume AF is rearing her ugly head sometime tomorrow. 

In the mean time, I enjoyed a day out with my husband and daughter. We went to get ice cream and then to the park. I took my camera, like I always do, and snapped a million shots of the two of them. My husband took the camera from me and said I needed to be in some too or I would regret it. 

And I regretted it.

Ugh, beached whale alert.

I decided I would no longer put off the inevitable. I've known for a while now that my weight-loss success from a few months ago had gone the wrong direction. So after seeing the hideous full-body shots of me, I dug out our scale from the back of the closet. The poor thing used to get stepped on daily when I was obsessing over my weight loss. Today was the first time it had seen the light of day in a long time. So I stepped on it ... mind you, this was at 9:30pm so I realize I'll weigh a bit more than I would have this morning ... and goddamnit, I've put 25 pounds back on. Disgusting.

PCOS is a bitch. There, I said it. I can literally eat a fourth of what my average-sized husband eats and I'll still weigh 30 pounds more than him. There was a time last year when we were only 4 pounds apart and I was *this close* to being less than him.... then the weight loss started creeping back up. Oh so slowly. The only reason I noticed it was because I weighed myself every morning after I peed.

Oh but you're not supposed to weigh yourself every day, you silly goose!

When it's super fucking easy for you to put on weight due to a horrible hormone imbalance, yes, you need to weigh every day to stay on top of it.

 I estimate my highest weight was around 250 pounds, around 5 years ago. If you read my original post, you know I used to be 140 pounds in high school. And I'm pretty tall... 5'8'' in fact. So 140 was healthy. I had an hourglass shape and I looked damn good. Too bad I didn't know it at the time... like all melodramatic teenage girls, I thought I was a fat whore. A fat ... virgin ... whore. I don't know.

Anyway, after months and months of extreme dieting and exercise, I got myself down to 205 pounds and then became pregnant. My weight fluctuated quite a bit in my first trimester due to the fact I had hyperemesis gravidarum, meaning I was throwing up so bad I couldn't hold down water. 

I actually kept it up until about six months, but don't worry, my baby made sure to absorb absolutely everything I didn't throw up. I was the hangry-est pregnant lady in the history of hangry pregnant ladies. Hangry.

The day I gave birth, I weighed 224 pounds. 7.5 pounds of that was baby. And I'm pretty pleased to admit I wore my regular shorts the whole summer. I was all baby (and boobs). A few days after having her, I was about 210. I let it go for about a year because I had to go right back to working full-time and I was stressed. New baby, no sleep, you know the drill. Anyway, I got back up to 220 without doing much eating at all. I then went back on a strict diet and exercise plan, along with getting prescribed Metformin from my doctor. During the fall last year, I tried out the no-carb diet, thinking it was a sham. I lost 9 pounds in a week, mostly water weight... but god, it was hard. I stopped that diet (why? I love carbs too much) and I busted my ass at the gym and got all the way down to 190 pounds. I plateaued. I couldn't get to 189.9. I was so aggravated.

That's when the pounds started coming back, like they always have.

And I've been eating poorly ever since, because fuck it. I also had a desk job for the past six months. I quit because working for a bank sucks when you have to refer products to angry old ladies and expect to keep those numbers up all day. So now I'm back to working full-time as a waitress. I'm so glad I kept that job on the weekends... it feels so much better walking again. When I was at the desk job, I could feel myself getting fatter just staring at my screen. However, I walk about 2-3 miles per shift at the restaurant.

After seeing the pictures tonight, I'm ready to try again. I stepped on the scale and saw 215 staring back at me. I know it's bad, my god, but I honestly, truly thought it would be worse. I thought I would see 235 staring back at me. 

And I need to remind myself that my doctor said it was the weight loss and the abrupt stopping of the birth control pills that likely caused me to get pregnant. I'm going to start focusing on my weight again and getting healthy. I have to.

Maybe I will do the no-carb thing again .... it worked the first time and it's really good for women with PCOS due to our insulin resistance. 

I'll keep you updated. Whether you like it or not.

(13 DPO) - Ready to throw in the towel.

UPDATE: SMU FRER with a real squinter later down the post.

 

None of my real-life friends know I'm a POAS-addict. In fact, none of my real-life friends are trying to have kids. My best friend is pregnant after loosely trying for one month. She doesn't know what DPO or FRER mean. She doesn't need to. Pregnancy comes naturally for her. The same thing happened with her first kiddo.

My other friends are all party animals who are too busy getting drunk after work to worry about kids. My close friend said to me the other day, and I quote, "Jeez, I couldn't imagine trying to get pregnant. That sounds like a damn nightmare."

Yeah, I guess it would be.... the poor fetus would die of alcohol poisoning at 12DPO.

Heh. Bad humor.

But really. Sometimes it's lonely here in TTC land. That's why I heavily rely on the encouragement of strangers - other women out there who are in the same boat as me. It can take the edge off.

There is one woman I know who kinda knows what's up. She's young and married, like me, and she also has PCOS - but the skinny kind (I hate her). She's a beautiful bean pole who struggles with infertility. Her and her hubby have been NT/NP for a few years now and she sometimes complains to me about it. She once joked about her husband's cluelessness. She was late for her period and hadn't tested yet. She told him she was late and he said "But ... we haven't had sex for like two weeks! If you're pregnant, it's not mine!" to which she replied, "Honey, you can have sex with someone and a week later be pregnant by them. It happens."

"What? Women are g-damn witches. I tell ya what. Always trying to get their eggo preggo."

Silliness.

So today, I went to her with a photo I took of my SMU test from this morning. I told her I had a friend online who had posted the image and wanted opinions. I hope she didn't see right through that.

She squinted hard and said, "So your friend thinks she sees a line? She's imagining things."

I pointed out where the line was. She said, "Uh, when you told me it was faint, I thought you meant still visible. There's nothing there."

My heart sank. I had women on two different boards tell me they saw the line, yet my real-life friend broke my heart. 

Here's the test in question. It was taken after 5 minutes in natural light, SMU of course. I felt like it gave a better result than my FMU.

If this is a real pregnancy, it's not likely a viable one. When I Google 13DPO faint, super light lines, the lines I see are 100x darker than mine.

Sigh.

The only good news is that I haven't spotted yet. My boobs are still swollen and veiny. My nipples are a little dark, which is new. 

AF is due tomorrow .... ish. Tomorrow or Tuesday. I kinda just wish this was over already so I can move on. Ugh.

On a final note, I think I need to join Peesticks Anonymous. I'm ashamed to admit how many HPTs I've taken over the past five days... only I and my dumpster know for sure. I'll never tell.

(13 DPO) - Is there still hope?

So I was less-than-eager to get up this morning and pee. For one, I had stayed up until 2:30am this morning reading blogs and I know I went to the bathroom at some point but I don't know when. Point being, I woke up this morning around 8:30am and had no idea if it had been 8 hours or 5 hours since my last wee. (I'm not British, by the way, but I do love their word usage!)

I peed in my faithful Oreo cup and dipped my FRER. That was when my husband, of course, came tromping down the hallway, demanding to have the bathroom because he was "running late" (yeah okay) so I had to very quickly dump my pee cup in the toilet and stuff my just-dipped FRER in my sports bra and bolt out of there.

Being the clumsy one that I am, I stubbed my toe on the door and yelled out in agony.

I'm still trying to keep it a secret from him if you can't tell. Here's to a Fathers Day surprise! (crossing fingers)

I'm unsure if the immediate movement would affect the test, but I checked it anyway. I put it up to the living room lamp and swore I could see the faintest of second lines.

 

But I'm probably imagining it. I'm so over this. I've been getting the same result for at least three days now.

What is it they say? hCG doubles every 24-36 hours? I think someone tacked on the 36 just to make women feel better when it's clear nothing is really working out for them. All I usually see are beautiful progressions, starting from 9DPO with a very faint line, getting beautifully darker as each day passes.

It's such bullshit.

If I'm pregnant, why can't I just get a nice fat bold line? I'm so tired of this game.

Time for a pity party.

(12 DPO) - I'm peeved.

I love First Signal tests. They're only $1.00 at Dollar General or $0.88 at Wal-mart. They showed me lines at 8 and 9DPO with my previous chemicals.

I sure hope that's not the case here.

This one was taken this morning with FMU. The line was there in person, but I had to squint to see it. You can see it in the photo if you squint hard enough. I swear I'm the queen of seeing super super super faint lines, especially when I'm looking at pregnancy board members' "can you see it?" posts. I'm usually the only person responding who can see a line. It must be a gift.

Or a curse.

  

Yes, my daughter insists on being in the bathroom with me at all costs. It's something we're working on.

But really, I'm feeling pretty jaded today. I swear if this is another chemical pregnancy, I'm done ... forever.

Okay, that's pretty dramatic. But seriously. I'm so jealous! This past month, I've seen two-three pregnancy announcements among my friends on Facebook per week. I just can't handle it any more. It's hard enough my best friend is pregnant and due when I was due (Halloween). She told me the day after I realized my pregnancy wasn't viable. She didn't know, of course.

My heart can't handle much more of this.

(11 DPO) - Ugh. That's all I have to say.

So I'm getting aggravated.

Shouldn't the lines be darker?

The following two tests were taken with SMU. I set them on the window ledge to get a natural-light photo. The lines were visable in person but oh so light. I'm getting worried about another chemical pregnancy.

I just hope they get darker... I don't know if I can handle more heartache.

(10 DPO) - Can you see it?

I took a FRER this afternoon with a three-hour hold and got this.

Some ladies on a board I frequent seemed to think they see a very, very faint line.

I'm so excited!

My lower back is killing me and I'm crampy. Yes, these are AF symptoms, but they're also pregnancy symptoms.

Oh I hope I don't get my hopes up...