General chatter while we wait (and commentary on the "pull out method")

[pacificlove]

Covid cleaning.. hmm. I have started to tackle our backyard again. However it's supposed to snow this weekend.. like WTF! We already had our annual snow fall at Christmas time!

Did I mention we moved in October/November? Essentially we live in my parents legal suit now with the intent to buy their house in 2-3 years when they are ready to downsize. We love the neighborhood and schools here. So with that we are doing some of the maintenance and upkeep of the house now... Spent a few hours ripping out invasive ivy today to get my frustrations out.. and taking the shears to overgrown bushes.
So frustrated with this hole covid shit because now thanks to restrictions I may not be able to get our pup.. I just want to cry.

 

[shaescott]

PL I’m surprised, I thought it would snow more often in Canada. It’s snowed several times already here in New England, though only 2 big storms. Is it a west coast thing? Also were you the one who lived on an island and had to take the ferry to the mainland? If so, did you move to the mainland to live at this new place?

I’m glad you were able to get lots of maintenance done. Our house is never not cluttered, but my mom has been on a cleaning/organizing frenzy this month. She’s been cleaning all the junk out of bathrooms and reorganizing the kitchen. She had me go through our giant food cabinet and get rid of everything expired. It was overflowing before, and now it’s not. The oldest I found was expiring in 2016 on the top shelf we always ignored. SO jokes that our house could be on Hoarders because of how cluttered it is. It’s not actually on that level, of course. We don’t have piles of junk and it’s not like we can’t walk around our living room, kitchen, dining room, etc. The only place you can’t really walk through is my bedroom, I really need to clean it lol. It’s just boxes of college stuff on my floor.

What happened with the restrictions? I’m so sorry, I hope you can still get your puppy, I know how much you’ve wanted her.

 

[DobbyForever]

Oh man I clean every day and it's a mess. And I can never keep up on the laundry or dishes! I don't even understand. It's just the two of us!

PL that's really cool that you're going to buy from them! I agree with Shae, what happened with the pup? I can't say I am well versed in rules about dogs and quarantines. Is the breeder local enough that you can physically go get her with a contactless situation? Or like minimal contact even? Hope it works out!

Shae so sorry he missed his appointment. That's really hard. I wish I had something amazing to say to make it better.

Sorry for not being more detailed. Been up since 3:30, stepped in poo, A broke the humidifier (which I just filled last night so water EVERYWHERE and the carpet is soaked)... so I'm in a mood lol. In boy news, he didn't outright ask me out for V-day. But he did drop the V word. Which like why bring up giving me a valentine if you don't have V-day on the brain and intention to spend it with me? In any case, I have secured a babysitter just in case hahaha.

 

[DobbyForever]

Finally putting date 3 on the books *happy dance*

oh and A finally said mommy and his name for the first time!!!!

 

[shaescott]

Dobs yay for date 3 and go A! That’s awesome! Sorry about the dehumidifier and the poop though.

Yesterday SO and I BD’d at like 3 am and in the morning I went to put in my temp and he sees my app and goes “uh oh, it says use protection!” And I was like “yeah? It’s said that for a week, I told you last week ‘today is the last green Day until after I ovulate’. We used the diaphragm, that’s protection” and he was like “why didn’t you remind me?” And I was like “uh I figured you’d remember?” And he was like “no, if I knew I would’ve used a condom” soooo oops, sorry babe. Not my fault he didn’t pay attention though, I’d been telling him regularly “I still haven’t ovulated” so that’s not on me.

On a similar note, yesterday afternoon I was frustrated that it was taking so long to O and thought maybe it’s taking too long for my estrogen to rise, so I bought an herbal supplement on Amazon that’s supposed to help that... and this morning my LH starts to rise It’s not positive yet but the ratio is over 0.5 and last cycle once I got above 0.5 it kept going up from there and I got a + the next morning. So maybe + LH late tonight or early tomorrow? We’ll see. That would put my BD at O-3 but there’s only a 6% chance of the diaphragm failing so I shouldn’t get my hopes up.

I was at target with my best friend yesterday evening (I moved back to school yesterday afternoon and she goes there too) and we were going through the baby section looking at all the adorable newborn clothes and the swings and cribs and ahhhhh so cute and little! I sat on a glider I really liked the feel of but for some reason it had no tag on it so no clue what brand it even was. I discovered I’m not a huge fan of the swivel thing, it’s cool to be able to turn and all but when I sat down it immediately started to swivel and it was like whoooaa there. Unfortunately it seems most gliders are also swivel ones so I’m just gonna have to deal.

 

[shaescott]

My app is having trouble telling if this test is positive or not, it’s giving me a range of numbers from like 0.80 to 1.24 for the ratio each time I try, so I’m enlisting the BnB line readers for my OPK lol. This is all the same test, just multiple pics of it. Do you guys think it’s positive or just barely not quite there?


Also clearly I was wrong about my surge not being until tonight or tomorrow morning cuz either way it’s happening now or in the next few hours lol

 

[pacificlove]

Shae, that looks positive to me..

Dobs, Yay on next date!
pups are doing well! 2 weeks old now and I have word from the breeder I will get one. There is still a good chance I won't be able to get it due to distance and closed borders though... I never had anxiety issues, but mine is through the roof! Definitely hoping for the best!!

 

[DobbyForever]

Looks positive to me. Early positive but positive.

I mean you told him you hadn’t Oed. And you had your diaphragm like you said so it wasn’t unprotected. It happens.

PL hopefully it works out. I know CA just lifted some major restrictions despite numbers being crazy. Fxed

I just cried for 20m over stupid crap. Hugs. I think the hormones in my bcp are messing with my mood

 

[shaescott]

PL oh boy I didn’t know they were doing strict border closings in Canada. Here they have guidelines and say you have to quarantine if you’re coming from certain states, except commuters to surrounding states, but I haven’t seen like a checkpoint or anything, I go from MA to NH and back weekly for school. It’s just not enforced. To be fair, our COVID numbers are terrible, so it’s not like our method is working. Luckily, I get my first vaccine in 2 days since through my school I’m considered a front line healthcare worker in NH. Anyway, hopefully you’re still able to get the puppy despite any COVID stuff.
I can understand being very anxious, I would be too. I have anxiety at my baseline (I didn’t even realize for years, I thought it was normal) but it’s totally functional etc at baseline (which is how I didn’t realize). I don’t have difficulty functioning unless I’m having acute anxiety due to some stressor, and me not functioning mostly just consists of frequent crying episodes and having a hard time thinking about anything but the stressor. Sometimes the stressor isn’t just one thing though, it can be a culmination of things leading me to be living in a state of constant anxiety (higher than baseline). But anyway, basically everyone experiences some form of acute anxiety at some point, and it just plain sucks. I’m sorry you’re dealing with that (and that I basically type every thought that comes into my head, my responses are so long I’m so sorry )

Dobs I’m sorry about the hormone troubles. My first 2 weeks off the IUD were rough. I think a lot of it is just the change in hormones itself, no matter what the change is (though of course different changes can have different issues associated with them). This could be totally wrong but I thought the pill basically tricked your body into thinking it was pregnant with the hormones, so I wonder if that causes mood problems since pregnancy is known to have that issue. But that could be way off base.

The OPK didn’t get darker from there, just lighter. Last cycle I only had one positive OPK as well and it wasn’t a giant positive, it was just slightly darker than the control. I wonder if that’s just how my LH surges work

SO isn’t mad or anything, he said he just forgot cuz he’s never had to worry about that before. He’s acting not very worried, unlike me. I’m going back and forth from being stressed about maybe getting pregnant and praying to get pregnant oh, hormones. Gotta love them.

 

[shaescott]

My temp spiked this morning so I’m officially in the TWW. Idk whether to consider my ovulation day as today or yesterday, because I don’t know if it happened before or after midnight. More likely to be after since I had my positive LH at noon yesterday but idk.

I know it’s way too early to be symptom spotting (although some people claim they’ve had pre-implantation symptoms) but my God was I thirsty this morning. Normally when I get up in the morning I’m not thirsty, I just want my cup of coffee because it’s my routine. I got to the dining hall and I suddenly felt like if I didn’t get water in me ASAP I was gonna pass out, so I surprised the drink lady when I asked for ice water instead of my usual coffee with cream and 10 sugars my overanalyzing brain is like “your body is demanding more fluid because pregnant women have an additional 2 L of blood volume” which I’m sure would not be a thing the day of conception, so I need to chill tf out.

 

[DobbyForever]

Lol we’ve all been there. I’m sure once I’m active again I’ll start flipping the eff out with symptom spotting even though my bcp has only failed me once and that was my own fault for ignoring a drug interaction warning. Glad you got your temp spike! Could be your surge is more efficient that mine is lol. I do tech have pcos so my lh doesn’t always cooperate and can drag lol

 

[shaescott]

Dobs oh yeah, I was worse with symptom spotting when on BCPs and the first few years of having my IUD. I think I had like two times in those first few years where I for sure thought I was 100% pregnant (obviously I was not), usually it was more like “could I be pregnant? Oh geez maybe I’m pregnant...”. But most cycles have been the latter. I’ve had more in the past few years where I’ve been fairly confident I was not pregnant, so that’s an improvement, but that was with the IUD which I had grown to trust. I think unless condoms are used with the diaphragm I’m always going to be symptom spotting like crazy.

According to Dr. Google, there’s a wide range of what’s normal for LH surges. They can be super quick or across multiple days, they can have one peak, two peaks, or plateau. The normal level at the peak is also a wide range, and since OPKs are set to a specific threshold, some people won’t get strong positives or in some cases any positives at all because their peak value wasn’t high enough. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything’s wrong. So I wouldn’t necessarily say my surge was more efficient, it’s possible but both short and long surges are normal, so Although of course your PCOS makes it more likely that it’s less efficient than mine.

I do think my estrogen was low this cycle. I got very very little EWCM, far less than usual. I’m probably still going to use that pro-estrogen herbal supplement I got next cycle (if I’m not pregnant), it can make your estrogen rise more efficiently and make ovulation earlier (not abnormally so, but like day 14 instead of 20 like I’ve been having), if it does what it claims, that is. Hopefully that would give me more EWCM (at least like a normal level).

I had a slightly wild day. I smuggled a guinea pig into my dorm room and back out again a few hours later because my best friend’s guinea pig has a URI and is on antibiotics and needed a dose at noon, and my friend had a nursing sim lab that made her unable to give the dose even close to on time. It went smoothly though, and I wasn’t caught, so it all worked out.

 

[shaescott]

This is what I did today!



I have a headache which could be unrelated or from the vaccine. Otherwise I’m doing fine.

I wasn’t excessively thirsty today, so I think yesterday was just a fluke.

 

[DobbyForever]

Glad you were able to get your vaccine! Also glad things worked out with the guinea pig. I had a friend once smuggle a puppy to a fairly small lecture once. She was like we have to sit in the back today then started bottle feeding it in her purse. I guess it was having trouble nursing, so her parents tasked her with bottle feeding.

I’m super tired so I read your post but long a** day. That’s all I got

 

[shaescott]

Dobs oh wow, a puppy in lecture, that’s crazy. I hope she wasn’t noisy? I was worried the guinea pig would wheek a bunch but she actually didn’t at all, my friend said she didn’t expect her to wheek because she was away from her 3 guinea pig friends/adopted siblings which made her sad, and she’s quiet when she’s sad. Thank goodness, because I didn’t need my suitemate hearing pig noises coming from my room, especially when I wasn’t there (since she didn’t need supervision at all in her playpen). That would’ve been less than ideal.

No worries, it was a long ass post to respond to, especially when tired. I hope you get good sleep tonight

 

[DobbyForever]

Talked to my usual gyn. And yup the hormones in my current bcp are totally different from the one I requested. I’m low key pissed at the gyn who put in the order. I did get new pills today thankfully my gyn was all over it. Just not sure how to go about switching from one to the other. She wants me to immediately stop the ones I am on cuz honestly it’s really f*ed up how I’m feeling. I feel out of body. My moods are extreme with no valid triggers. But I’m worried if I just up and switch mid pack I’ll have annoying breakthrough bleeding vs if I just wait to Sunday, go on inactive week, then start the new one.

 

[pacificlove]

Dobs I'd be pissed too.. hope you have an easy transition to the correct BCP!

Shae, lol on the guinea pig and I am super happy for you to get the vaccine! Our rollout here is slow and thanks to my age I'll be near the tail end of it.. I won't expect to receive my first shot until Late August!
Canada has strict border restrictions, we haven't let anyone in but Canadians, permanent residents, or their immediate family for a very very long time now.. on arrival 14 days quarantine! Other countries you can do a covid test 5 days into quarantine to cut it short.. well not here and it sucks.

 

[shaescott]

Dobs yikes, that’s awful about the bcp switch. I’m glad your usual gyn is fixing it. I’d say it depends on just how much it’s f*ing you up. Your mental health is more important than a little breakthrough bleeding, so you have to decide if you really need off this ASAP for your own stability or if you can wait until Sunday. Personally, I’d side with your gyn on stopping them immediately.

PL that’s rough with the restrictions. I understand why they’re there of course, but it still sucks.
I only got the vaccine because I’m considered a frontline healthcare worker since I do clinicals in the hospital. For some reason there’s zero appts until April and I need my second dose in 3 weeks... I’m hoping it’s just because they’re low on stock and they’ll get more appointments soon when more doses are shipped in.
My arm was a little sore before I went to bed but when I woke up the soreness was gone, so it was actually less painful than a flu shot by a lot (in my experience). I hope they’re able to speed up the rollout up in Canada.

AFM I finally got my capstone placement/preceptor! It’s super close to my school and it’s a med/surg floor at the same hospital I was at last semester. Unfortunately, my preceptor works night shift, 7p-7a. RIP to my sleep schedule

 

[DobbyForever]

PL yeah that’s rough. I assume general rules apply to animals as well?

Shae dang hope you get that appointment. I’m surprised they didn’t just book it and cross their fingers. That’s what’s happening here congrats on the placement! Sorry about the schedule!

Thanks ladies. As long as I take a deep breath and tell myself it’s just the pills, I’m ok. I haven’t had any harmful thoughts, it’s just I feel honestly disconnected to my physical body. And things that should make me feel something, I feel numb. And then things that shouldn’t make me feel anything send me into a tizzy. I think I’ll be ok the couple more days, but if it gets super out of hand I’ll just stop sooner than Sunday. Hugs.

 

[DobbyForever]

I’m just gonna switch tom cuz I’m losing my damn mind.