# BFP! 18dpo. first pregnancy, my story. Irregular cycles!



## babymonkey18

Hello there everyone! I wanted to find a good forum to take part in, and I found this site to be extremely helpful over the past few months. Today I decided to join, after getting my BFP yesterday and wanting to share my story. There is nothing extremely special about it, but for me, reading many people's stories has helped me think through my own process and questions! So here we go. First I will give a little history/background on my cycles and what not, and then going into the TTC process. It will be detailed, as I feel like all information is helpful when TTC, so read or not, I just wanted to through it out there! Just fyi, I had no symptoms except slightly sore bbs and bleeding gums once (heh). 


Background/History
-I am currently 26 years old.
-I had my first period when I was 16 (closer to 17, even)
-Ive always had very irregular periods. I never started keeping track how long they were until about 3 three years ago. Sometimes I would go months without any sign of a period. 
-I never had any symptoms of an impending AF until the past year or two (turns out these dont help too much in determining pregnancy, at least for me haha).
-I have always had irregular cycles. I used to go months upon months without one, which the dr attributed to the first few years of menstruation could take a while to regulate. I was also always very lean/athletic and I think low body fat is a big reason why I was a late bloomer and had irregular cycles for a while (well, I still do, just not AS bad most of the time). I have spoken to my doctor about the large gaps between cycles, and she has told me that unless I go longer than 3 months without one, I dont need to contact her about any issues. &#8759;shrug&#8759;, alright! I have been keeping track since I have been married (since July 2011, 1 year 8 months), and my cycles have ranged roughly between 28-40 days. Thats a pretty big difference, but when sometimes (like this time last year) you get outliers of 81 day cyclesfor no apparent reason (took lots of tests and got BFN after BFN, so I dont even think it was an early m/c) it can be nice! I also have more body fat as I have gotten older, and I think that helps. If I lose a few lbs it seems like it affects/delays things (but I havent taken the time to do any real studies on my weight vs period length)
-I have never taken any form of birth control. My husband and I were virgins until we were married and decided that if we got pregnant early on (even though that wasnt exactly our ideal) it would be a gift from God, and a blessing. We did, however, try out condoms for the first few months (that didnt last, LOL). We decided we would just not prevent, not try for a while. However, many of my friends have done this and got pregnant right away! I started to wonder if something was wrong with me because we have had this mentality for over a year and I was still not pregnant.
-I never had any education in any type of fertility awareness methodsuntil two of my friends (one who was pregnant) told me about being able to detect ovulation and fertility with basal body temperature (bbt) and cervical mucus (cm) before I got married. How cool! I bought the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility (TCOYF) off of amazon and I think it was one of the greatest purchases I could get (in terms of this aspect of my life). 
-I read through most of the book and started charting bbt and taking note of cm stages for only about 2 months, to familiarize myself and have an idea what my cycles were like. Before this I had no idea about what cm could tell you. So if you are someone who is new to this concept dont feel stupid! Its not common knowledge (which is silly! We should be teaching this to our girls) because its such a cool and natural way to understand your own body. Anyway, I digress, haha.

TTC
-We decided in Jan 2013 we would try (CD1=Dec31). The only thing we did this month was try to be more intentional about BDing. The past few months I had been pretty consistently 32-36 day cycles, so I figured I was in a groove of regularity. About a week after my period ended, we BDd every other day for over 2 weeks. Well, turns out my guess at ovulation was wrong, and this cycle decided it was going to be 50 days instead of 34ish. 
My normal pre-AF symptoms are sore bbs 2-3 days before and a migraine 12-24 hours before AF arrives, no cramps. Well, this month, I had had sore bbs for 2 WEEKS (still no explanation for that), and stomach cramps (I think it was prenatal vitamins, just started taking them)...and a longer cycle. Many HPTs (BFN after BFN) later, I was confused. Finally, I got the dreaded migraine, and AF arrived hours later (at CD51).
-The big lesson for me was that since I am not a woman who has clock-work cycles, I really needed to put more time and effort into charting and paying attention to my body. Another thing to note that could have affecting things (although I think the main reason we didnt get preg was because my thoughts on ovulation were off)we like to use lubricant and the one we had been using was KY liquid. It works well (gets a little sticky) but I found out it can kill sperm. I figured it was just neutral, but after reading around on forums I discovered the only real lubricant that is sperm-friendly is Pre-Seed.
-So the next month (CD1=Feb 18), I would start charting bbt and paying better attention to cm. I also went out and bought Pre-Seed (expensive, but well worth it. It is very nice. Not sticky or messy at all!). BBT might not tell me fertile phase (until its too late) but at least I could get a better idea if I was even ovulating, I could know days past ovulation (dpo) in terms of luteal phase length, etc. It just seemed like a good idea to chart for so many reasons.
-I feel like the month went poorlywe only BDd a few times this cycle (notably CD14sticky cm in morning, but ended up having a wet sensation and what seemed like EWCM that evening. Used Pre-Seed only externally), because I ended up getting a migraine CD17-19 (I get migraines a lot, even though unrelated to AF, weather and stress cause them a lot, too). Anyway, I was bummed because I feel like that was the week to try. I didnt temp those days I was sick because my sleep was so messed up AND I was sick, so I feel like they wouldnt have been accurate. Well, CD20 my temperature was UP and stayed up. I broke down and cried because I knew we had missed our chanceand considering my funky cycles, I felt like it would take forever to get preg, since I dont seem to ovulate the standard 12 times a year (once a month). I felt defeated, but knew it was in Gods control and knew if it wasnt our time, it wasnt our time. I kept temping. I knew it was technically POSSIBLE to get pregnant from BDing 5 days before ovulation, but figured it was a ridiculously slim margin and didnt really consider it actually something that would happen.
-I started feeling sore bbs the day after my migraine went away, but didnt think anything of it since I had had them the previous month and it meant nothing. I just attributed it to increase progesterone. I have had sore bbs since. I have had no other symptoms, except for one maybe. I floss often and never have bleeding gums. Late last week (say, 14dpo) I had noticed a little gum tenderness and the next day a little bit of bleeding. I had seen (rarely) on threads pregnant women talking about sore or bleeding gums. I also thought that its not difficult to irritate a mouth or gums, so I took note, but didnt read too much into it.
-10 days after ovulation, I noticed a second increase in my temp, and it remained that way. I remembered reading about having a triphasic chart, and looked into it more. Turns out triphasic is 3 times as likely to be pregnant (according to TCOYF and fertility friend sites), but that likelihood is still only 12% (vs 4) so I wasnt reading too much into it. It just caught my attention a bit. Since I had a general idea when ovulation occurred (I missed CD18/19, I guessed CD19 as the day), I could at least count dpo and if I got to 18 days, I would take a test. The previous month we had bought a handful of tests from Dollar Tree, so I had a nice little stock ready ;).
-Well, dpo 17 rolled around and still high temps. I am not sure what my regular luteal phase length is since I never really kept track, but I do know those months years ago when I did chart, one month was 17 days. They say to go longer than your longest luteal phase before testingbut that day, for some reason, I decided to go to fertility friend and update my online chart (I had just been charting on a printed paper by hand near my bedstand). Accuracy is off for me and the chart online considering I was missing a few key days of temps near ovulation, but the site predicted I ovulated two days earlier than I had guessed. If correct, that would have put me 19dpo AND meant I would have BDd closer to ovulationincreasing my chances. It made me feel like I wanted to take a test. I had no sign of a migraine coming. I looked on some forums and implantation should have happened long enough ago, so I figured I should have enough HCG (if I was pregnant) to show up on a test. So even though it was the afternoon, I lost my patience and just went for it. I used the little dropper and even though you are to wait 3 minutes, the 2 lines showed up right away! And they stayedit was just jaw dropping because I really went into it with a little hope, but expectations to be a negative since we had BDd too early (presumably)&#8252;! This was 17-19dpo (still not sure whats right), yesterday.
-I took another test this morning (First Response) and it was also positiveso Im pretty sure I am! If you count back from my last CD1, That makes me 5 weeks and 2 days (gestational), but I think I can accurately say Im ~ 2 weeks 6 days embryonic development (so most drs would just say 4 weeks 6 days).
-I know this is still super early and no way am I in the clearso I would appreciate prayers! I am glad I know, so I will stop taking any medicines or having an occasional beer, haha.
-next step is looking into getting a midwife and scheduling an appointment, likely for the 8 week mark.

Success!
I know that my husband and I are extremely blessed to get a BFP at only our 2nd month (and only 1st month charting). If you have trouble, dont give up! I definitely recommend charting bbt and cm. I also recommend Pre-Seed. We only used it ONCE and that was the time the men made it to where they need to be. There is no doubt that they had to wait for me to ovulate, and that is anywhere between 3-5 days after we BDd. That being said, I didnt notice fertile cm the day or two before I ovulated, so I would stress importance of your vaginal sensation (wet) and egg white cm, since I definitely experienced both the days we BDd and it worked out for us this time. I have had no major symptomsnot tired, not peeing a lotpretty much just sore bbs (and maybe the sensitive gums?). The past few days I have had back pain (today it was really bad) in the middle of my back (where my bra clasps). Ive read online it could be due to softening ligaments getting ready for the growth that will take place! But who knows, it also could just be that I did something weird to my back. Its not the usual lower back pain that Ive read many women get.

Please feel free to ask any questions (although I feel like I was annoyingly thorough). Congrats to all the new expecting moms. Doesnt this all feel so unreal?!


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## greeneyes0279

Congrats and welcome to bnb!


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## Xxenssial

Congrats


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## angel2010

Congrats!!!


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## Chris77

Congrats!


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## Lovn.sunshine

Wow!! Awesome!! Congratulations!! :dance:


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## Tbee0493

This definitely gives me hope. My story is pretty similar. I am so irregular.. I can go months without having my period.. or sometimes I have it for 2-3 days most. Which is annoying. I am testing tomorrow. Hopefully this is it. Congrats to you. I know this is an old thread.


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## Bevziibubble

Congratulations!


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## babymonkey18

Yes, old thread, but I'm glad it brought you hope :) it can be done!

I went on to have a healthy boy and two cycles then got pregnant Again and Now have another ds :) praying you get a sticky bean <3


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