Hello. Long time lurker, first time poster. This will be a little long for my first post and I'll work on being less verbose in those that follow.
I'm 38, never been pregnant, TTC. I could have posted this in the over-35 thread but in reading the messages in the two week wait, I felt like my little post would be happy here just as well.
Now, being 38 and very guilty of overthinking/overanalysing on a regular day, those who can relate can just imagine the tizzy I can work myself into.
I have a question re: spotting/implantation/breakthrough/period??
I've been charting my period since May and have discovered that I'm actually quite predictable and regular. I seem to ovulate on the day my little app tells me I should, and my periods seem to start on the day it tells me as well.
It was in June that my partner and I actually started to have sex for reasons other than just because he looked at me the right way. I tracked our intimacy officially starting in June and we covered every single day of my fertile time, sometimes twice that day (I know, I know).
(A little bit of history: I had gone through a bunch of fertility tests a year earlier when I had discussed my age and my fertility with my doctor at a regular physical. In Canada, fertility screening is covered by our healthcare so she sent me away for all the regular preliminary tests just to get a better sense of where I was at. At that time I wasn't ready to begin TTC but given my age, we decided that it would be good to have a good picture of where I was at. I sent away for the AMH which was just find, all the blood tests, STI tests, vaginal ultrasounds, hormone levels, etc., were bang on where they needed to be for my body to be able to make a little bebe. I was feeling really good and happy until I had the final test of my fertility which was the HSG. The process was the most heinous pain I'd ever experienced up to that point in my life and I later learned from my FS that intense pain like that signifies tubal blockage - which is exactly what I had. Proximal fallopian tube blockage on both sides. So, off I went for a selective salpingography and tubal catheterization. This seem to have done the trick in terms of unblocking my tubes successfully.)
Fast forward to June. Given that, on paper, I should technically be entirely fertile and that we had been intimate more than once on every day of my fertile period I was hesitantly sure I'd get a BFP because ... well why wouldn't I? Sure enough, I didn't, and AF showed up right on schedule and I became very angry with my uterus on that particular day.
I then decided I would focus in the complete other direction and convince myself it was hopeless (probably a little bit of self-preservation in there). We just continued doing our own thing, which is often anyway, so come July, we were intimate on every day of my fertile time again. I was a little more chill this time but I did notice spotting before AF would normally be due and after briefly self-diagnosing myself with some horrible endocrinological disease -because I have never spotted before my period since the fateful day it first arrived 26 years earlier- I started learning about things like implantation bleeding. So, that's what I told myself it might be. Enter AF right on schedule again (this would be end of July).
Carrying on, we did our thang, and sure enough a week before AF is due (which should be the 23rd of this month) here I am spotting - again. I don't like this spotting business if it's not going to result in something positive because - why all of the sudden now? Is the mind/body connection that powerful that my (over)thoughts can actually change how my entire adrenal system functions?
This spotting week I did notice some new things as compared to last month: 1. headaches (very rarely get them) 2. backaches (sometimes, but not like this) 3. faint nausea (today on my drive home I actually worried I was going to throw up in my purse while on the highway, but I didn't) 4. my sense of smell is very acute, especially today (normally I can't smell a thing unless it's literally inside my nostril) 5. my naturally moist and responsive vagina feels very dry (wiping, foreplay) this whole week
My first day of spotting this week came on Monday when, of all my pees that day, only two times showed some very faint old-looking blood on the TP, nothing came through onto my underwear, same symptoms Tuesday but that's when my back started to hurt and I got some mild cramps. Wednesday was uneventful symptom-wise. Thursday light spotting returned, my breasts were a little more sensitive than usual, as were my nipples but boy did my back ever hurt. Now today, is when things felt much more obvious (ex. my breasts and nipples are definitely more tender, my smell very acute, the nausea). As well, my spotting looks more like the start of my period (which has never arrived early, let alone days early) when I put a tampon in just to see how much blood is "up there." So I took a pregnancy test when I got home and it was a BFN.
I really don't know what to make of all this, and I know the most obvious answer will be to wait until Monday or Tuesday to take a test because that is when my AF would officially be due. Other than that, though, I'm wondering if anyone else who is TTC, or who has successfully conceived, has had the same kind of symptoms? You know, the ones that could very well be a period if it weren't for the fact that your period isn't actually do?
Any thoughts, insight, advice, etc., would be a big relief.
Thanks. Nice to meet you all.
I'm 38, never been pregnant, TTC. I could have posted this in the over-35 thread but in reading the messages in the two week wait, I felt like my little post would be happy here just as well.
Now, being 38 and very guilty of overthinking/overanalysing on a regular day, those who can relate can just imagine the tizzy I can work myself into.
I have a question re: spotting/implantation/breakthrough/period??
I've been charting my period since May and have discovered that I'm actually quite predictable and regular. I seem to ovulate on the day my little app tells me I should, and my periods seem to start on the day it tells me as well.
It was in June that my partner and I actually started to have sex for reasons other than just because he looked at me the right way. I tracked our intimacy officially starting in June and we covered every single day of my fertile time, sometimes twice that day (I know, I know).
(A little bit of history: I had gone through a bunch of fertility tests a year earlier when I had discussed my age and my fertility with my doctor at a regular physical. In Canada, fertility screening is covered by our healthcare so she sent me away for all the regular preliminary tests just to get a better sense of where I was at. At that time I wasn't ready to begin TTC but given my age, we decided that it would be good to have a good picture of where I was at. I sent away for the AMH which was just find, all the blood tests, STI tests, vaginal ultrasounds, hormone levels, etc., were bang on where they needed to be for my body to be able to make a little bebe. I was feeling really good and happy until I had the final test of my fertility which was the HSG. The process was the most heinous pain I'd ever experienced up to that point in my life and I later learned from my FS that intense pain like that signifies tubal blockage - which is exactly what I had. Proximal fallopian tube blockage on both sides. So, off I went for a selective salpingography and tubal catheterization. This seem to have done the trick in terms of unblocking my tubes successfully.)
Fast forward to June. Given that, on paper, I should technically be entirely fertile and that we had been intimate more than once on every day of my fertile period I was hesitantly sure I'd get a BFP because ... well why wouldn't I? Sure enough, I didn't, and AF showed up right on schedule and I became very angry with my uterus on that particular day.
I then decided I would focus in the complete other direction and convince myself it was hopeless (probably a little bit of self-preservation in there). We just continued doing our own thing, which is often anyway, so come July, we were intimate on every day of my fertile time again. I was a little more chill this time but I did notice spotting before AF would normally be due and after briefly self-diagnosing myself with some horrible endocrinological disease -because I have never spotted before my period since the fateful day it first arrived 26 years earlier- I started learning about things like implantation bleeding. So, that's what I told myself it might be. Enter AF right on schedule again (this would be end of July).
Carrying on, we did our thang, and sure enough a week before AF is due (which should be the 23rd of this month) here I am spotting - again. I don't like this spotting business if it's not going to result in something positive because - why all of the sudden now? Is the mind/body connection that powerful that my (over)thoughts can actually change how my entire adrenal system functions?
This spotting week I did notice some new things as compared to last month: 1. headaches (very rarely get them) 2. backaches (sometimes, but not like this) 3. faint nausea (today on my drive home I actually worried I was going to throw up in my purse while on the highway, but I didn't) 4. my sense of smell is very acute, especially today (normally I can't smell a thing unless it's literally inside my nostril) 5. my naturally moist and responsive vagina feels very dry (wiping, foreplay) this whole week
My first day of spotting this week came on Monday when, of all my pees that day, only two times showed some very faint old-looking blood on the TP, nothing came through onto my underwear, same symptoms Tuesday but that's when my back started to hurt and I got some mild cramps. Wednesday was uneventful symptom-wise. Thursday light spotting returned, my breasts were a little more sensitive than usual, as were my nipples but boy did my back ever hurt. Now today, is when things felt much more obvious (ex. my breasts and nipples are definitely more tender, my smell very acute, the nausea). As well, my spotting looks more like the start of my period (which has never arrived early, let alone days early) when I put a tampon in just to see how much blood is "up there." So I took a pregnancy test when I got home and it was a BFN.
I really don't know what to make of all this, and I know the most obvious answer will be to wait until Monday or Tuesday to take a test because that is when my AF would officially be due. Other than that, though, I'm wondering if anyone else who is TTC, or who has successfully conceived, has had the same kind of symptoms? You know, the ones that could very well be a period if it weren't for the fact that your period isn't actually do?
Any thoughts, insight, advice, etc., would be a big relief.
Thanks. Nice to meet you all.
