Joy and Pain

What a very rough journey this all is. I try to remind myself that life is about struggle. What would be the point if we never had any problems and everything always went smoothly? We exist, I think, to overcome challenges. But damn this is hard.

Two days ago I was super thrilled. I used my new digital ovulation kit and got a positive OPK result for the first time ever in my life! It had a smiley face. I had never seen a positive. I squeeled and jumped up and down (and then jumped on my husband).

Along with the enormous amounts of good cervical mucus I had an LH surge. We had sex three times in three days, sure that this cycle was finally our time.

The day after the smiley face I eagerly woke up to check my temperature and it was still low. I thought that's okay because it can take 48 hours after LH surge for ovulation to occur.

So today I woke up again like a kid on Christmas morning, super excited to see my temperature and to know that all my hard work was paying off.

Still no temperature rise. More than 48 hours from positive OPK result. It was like a Christmas morning with zero presents. Devastating.

In the previous two cycles I've had the temp rise and not the other symptoms. This cycle I have the CM and ovulation test but so far no temp rise. What is going on?! I'm beyond frustrated.

I wonder what I'm doing wrong. I'm eating really healthy meals but slipping up in the snacking (tempted to cookies or other desserts at times and occasionally using white bread or tortillas in recipes). I'm getting lots of my target fruits, veggies, nuts, and beans. Do I need to get harsher with myself again and focus on not giving in to sugar temptation? (not to mention those free cookies at work are definitely not vegan).

I was so sure that I was finally healed.

I have heard that people with PCOS don't get accurate readings from OPK testers because they tend to always have higher levels of LH (a hormone that surges before ovulation) and so get false positives. I was certain that wasn't me because of never having a positive result ever before. But maybe it is me. Maybe I can never rely on ovulation tests to tell me when ovulation is coming up.

I'm on day 17 of my cycle and still hoping for a temp rise. And still forcing my husband to have sex with me every single day just in case.

I hate my body so much right now. I want to hurt it back the way it is hurting me.

I want to go to sleep and not wake up for about two weeks. I want a way to knock myself out so I can spend some time away from this pain.

A couple days ago I had lunch with some girl friends and they encouraged me to think about doing a GoFundMe/crowd funding type thing for infertility. I'm super uncomfortable about the idea of asking friends for money for my own selfish desire, but maybe it's worth trying. I can't imagine any other way we'd ever be able to afford to do IVF. Would it be too snarky to do the intro: "This is for all you people who said 'Why don't you just do IVF?' Here's your opportunity to put your money where your mouth is."