My Body, The Betrayer

I want to trust my body. I really do. I wish that I could be one of those women who understood her body and trusted that it was going to do what I expected it to. Instead, I feel like I've been at war with my body for the past 14 years. Infertility is just another one of those things that sometimes makes me wish I could trade bodies with someone else.

Here we are, one month away from starting stims for our first round of IVF, and my period is two days late. That could be a good thing, right? I mean, at least five people have told me happy little stories about their friends or family or whoever who got pregnant right before they started IVF. "I think it's because they were focused on IVF and not thinking about timing and they were just relaxed!" one friend says to me. You know what I say? Bullshit. Honestly, anyone who thinks a woman that is one month away from IVF is 'relaxed' is delusional. No matter how much I try to trust the process and believe that I'm going to get pregnant and all will be well, my brain is crowded with doubts and I'm pretty much never relaxed. AT ALL.

Anyway, back to the late period. According to fertility friend, I ovulated on day 18 of my cycle, which also happened to be the 18th of August. My average luteal phase is 12 days, so I should have started AF yesterday at the latest. In all my 13 months of charting, I have NEVER still had a high temperature at 13 DPO. Usually, I see my temp fall around 10DPO and then AF shows up the day after or 12DPO at the latest. Currently, I'm 14 DPO with a high temperature still this morning.

But I'm not pregnant.

Trust me. I've taken 3 FRER's (starting 11DPO), a dollar store test, and this morning, a clearblue digital. All BFN's. I just don't see any way that those tests wouldn't be picking anything up by now. There's no chance. This is just another way my body seems to betray me by not wanting to follow any patterns. Granted, I made a lot of changes this past month. My diet changed. I started acupuncture. I had that saline u/s with the bubbles. I've been exercising 5-6 times a week. I'm guessing all that combined has thrown my body into some kind of weird holding pattern. It sucks because I've done all those things trying to get healthy. Not trying to screw things up even more as far as my cycle goes.

What sucks most about that is I had it all planned out in my little head that we would be starting stims now on the first of October. Maybe as late as October 3rd or 4th. Now, with AF being late, I feel like things are even more up in the air than ever. I don't know when my period is going to start. I don't know how long next month's cycle will last. And therefore, I don't know when my IVF cycle will begin. Some random date in October, I guess. It's so frustrating.

I'm going to go lay down with my fertility meditation CD playing and try to find a place of calm and comfort.