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."

A PCOS Miracle & Meal Plan for 5/17 to 5/24

Okay, so the PCOS miracle I'm really looking for is pregnancy, obviously. But today my period started and that's pretty amazing. It is day 30 of my cycle!

A 30 day cycle is just incredible. Absolutely perfect. Just what I need. Once I keep this up I just need to figure out if I'm ovulating. Plus a shorter cycle makes it a lot easier to time sex effectively.

This is great news and I'm excited that the diet is really working. (And you can tell from my last post that I really am going dramatically up and down between hope and despair each day!)

I have been struggling to keep up with my meal plans. I wanted to use up the food I had to not waste but trying to work from leftovers and what I had on hand is tricky when I can't depend on my usual go-to meals (grilled cheese and tuna fish sandwiches). I need some new go-tos! But I also need new go-tos for each cycle phase. That should be a post soon.

But I'm going to try to get back to having a plan for each day so I know what to make for myself and my husband and I'm not struggling to get him enough food.

Sunday (today)
Snack: kale chips
Dinner: yam and black bean soup with orange (afr)

Monday
Breakfast: chocolate peanut butter chia seed parfait
Lunch: wild rice with cranberries and mushrooms
Snack: cranberry DIY larabar
Dinner: black bean soup

Tuesday
Breakfast: parfait
Lunch: stir fry with kale, mushrooms, carrots, onion over brown and wild rice blend
Snack: watermelon pieces
Dinner: miso soup and  almond butter banana popsicles

Wednesday
Breakfast: graham cracker with nut butter and cranberries
Lunch: rajma with brown and wild rice
Snack: lara bar
Dinner: miso soup and sticky rice cakes with red bean paste

Follicular Phase Switch
Thursday
Breakfast: graham crackers with nut butter and clementine
Lunch: sweet potato and avocado onigiri
Snack: avocado wontons
Dinner: Going out with father-in-law

Friday
Breakfast:
Lunch: creamy mushroom fettuccine (afr)
Snack: cashew cookie dough lara bar
Dinner: boca burger with lots of toppings

Saturday (Husband out on boat)
leftovers

Grocery List:
(for monday)
bananas
wild rice
cranberries
mushrooms
dates
almonds

(for rest of week)
miso
peanut butter
clementines or orange
wonton wrappers
avocado
cachews
chocolate chips
whole wheat flour
portabello soup
nori

Asian market:
red bean paste
glutinous/sweet rice flour from long grain

Meals Last Week

I've been mostly cooking leftovers this week. I made this amazing stir fry and I had forgotten how much I love mushrooms. Sweet carrots, flavorful mushrooms, singed broccoli...it was perfection. I ate it with some brown rice.

This is a pumpkin and coconut cream parfait. Yes, it is as amazing as it looks. I'm not the biggest fan of pumpkin taste but this is good. Would have been better if I had done two things better. One, I didn't freeze the pumpkin ahead of time as the recipe recommends. Two, I didn't realize I had Coconut Milk and not Coconut Cream as the recipe calls for. So I was using my hand mixer on it for about twenty minutes before I realized that it was never going to thicken up and turn into whipped cream. Such a shame! But it was still good as a liquidy mess :)

The graham cracker with toppings has become such a great go-to meal for me whether for breakfast or lunch. I spread peanut butter on it and then add things like applesauce, fruit, granola, and nuts. Delicious!

I also made some nacho spinach chips for my lunchbox here. They didn't stay crispy in with the other stuff so next time I need to put a lid on their compartment, I think.

I tried the vegan crepes with asparagus and mushrooms but my asparagus had gone bad so it was just mushrooms. And I tried to substitute Urad flour for the all purpose white and it tasted kind of weird. The crepes were easy to make, though, and I think with normal flour they would taste great.

Today is day 28 of my cycle. My temperature is still high. I'm waiting anxiously to see what news the next week or so might bring me.

My weight is down another couple of pounds. I'm at 144.5 now, which is 28.5 lbs below my heaviest weight.

Cycle Day 27

Well, here we are at last. Poised on the day before the end of a two week wait. Tomorrow will be day 28 of the cycle that started when I began this diet.

Of course not all women have a normal cycle of 28 days, so it could still be fine if I don't get my period for another week.

I'm trying so hard not to get my hopes up, but it's not working. I'm super anxious and hopeful that I'll see my period tomorrow. (Or that if I don't it means I'm pregnant!)

My temperatures have remained high (for me) and I've never seen that before. Every other time I've tracked my temp would go up about the right time and then a few days later crash back down. This is a good sign. Although now I'm worried about the batteries in the thermometer and if it is giving me an accurate reading. I guess it's just another example of me being afraid to be too hopeful.

In terms of eating I've been saving money this week and mostly making things from what I have on hand. I thought I had asparagus because it was in the freezer but when I went to make my asparagus meals I discovered that it had gone bad (I'd probably had those bags for a couple of years!)

So I haven't been eating the proper foods for this cycle, though I have still been eating healthy. I do have a pile of sweet potatoes in the pantry and that is a food for this cycle so I think I'll see what I can make with those for today.

Healthy-ish Desserts

I have a raging sweet tooth. Melty ice cream is one of my favorite things in the world. And I've been really craving the sweets lately. So I've experimented with some Pinterest recipes.

At first I just wanted to pick up some So Delicious Coconut ice cream from the grocery store but I went to two stores and could not find it! :(

Eventually I tried this recipe at home and it tastes a whole lot like it. Thumbs up to this one. The only issue is that I did get some ice crystals even though I bought and used xanthan gum just as the recipe called for (I did some research and despite its weird name and process, it sounds like it's actually good for people with insulin-resistant conditions). I didn't put the brownies in it either since I had such a bad experience with black bean brownies.

I'd like to get an ice cream maker since that would make it a lot easier than opening the freezer every half hour and stirring, which I did for about five or six hours last night!

Today I went for a "Blizzard" knock off. This recipe got the texture exactly right. I wasn't crazy about the amount of banana taste in it, though. Still, I ate the whole thing because that creamy, melty texture was so exactly what I love.

(For sweetener in these I've been using agave nectar, which rates 15 GI (as opposed to 65 for regular white sugar).

Instead of the cookie dough bites, because I was down to my last few dates, I made this Samoa Girl Scout Cookie bar instead and put that in the Blizzard.

The taste got pretty drowned out, though, and I discovered that they are incredibly delicious by themselves. They taste a whole lot like samoas, which were always my favorite cookies!

Now I just have to be careful not to fall into the pattern that I've had most of my life of choosing these sweet and dessert foods over real meals. Even though I ate that Blizzard knock off, I made sure to saute myself some carrots, broccoli, and mushrooms for lunch.