TMI Alert - Cervical Mucus Analysis

Hi all, hope you are all enjoying the first day of the year.
DH and I are keeping it quite chilled today, and it got me thinking a bit about the things I want to improve on for this year. One of those things is analysing my cervical mucus. Some women seem to be so on top of this, but I really do struggle. I think I don't produce a lot of it to begin with so it is hard for me to monitor it without making a conscious effort to do so.

The three primary fertility signs are-
1.basal body temp
2.cervical mucus
3.cervical position

I generally suck at the other two, so I am going to try and focus on noting my cervical fluid. "Cervical fluid is to a woman what seminal fluid is to the man." Since men are always fertile, they continuously produce seminal fluid. Women on the other hand are only fertile the few days around ovulation, and therefore only produce the substance necessary for sperm nourishment and mobility during that time. Basically, sperm can only survive the fertile cervical mucus that is present around a woman's ovulation.. So the pattern is supposed to go like this-

• after AF there is generally no CM present, 
• then after some days you should start to notice sticky CM that could also be describes as pasty, tacky, crumbly. gummy, springy, or even cement like - its also usually white or yellowish.
• it then becomes more creamy, like a lotion, it may feel milky and smooth. It is usually quite wet, moist, gooey, or cold.
• soon after it should become slimy and slippery and resemble egg whites - it will stretch a few inches between your fingers, also it will be wet, lubricative, or even humid.
• immediately after ovulation you may notice nothing at all or a dry sticky CM

Some of you may have seen this already, but if not this will help.

So in my case, I have been trying to be more aware of these transitions, and I am planning to focus more on this, this year.I have heard somewhere that if you have PCOS it may not be so simple to read, as you notice eggwhite CM and do not eventually go on to ovulate (why does everything seem to be so difficult with PCOS?) In my last post I mentioned that I had notice a more fertile CM and was hoping that it means I ovulated - but who knows, at cd64 i'm clutching at straws here.

If any of you have any experience of this, I would love to hear about it, please let me know if this helped you in your journey at all. I have read about women who said they woke up swimming in eggwhites, they BD'd and a few weeks later, they were preggers.

Take care, and baby dust to all.

..........Part 2

Hi there, I hope my first post was not to boring for you - not that anyone has read it yet, I will be so excited when I get my first subscriber as I have not told any friends or colleagues, just my mother-in-law (she's amazing).

So let me continue. About 1 month after my doctor appointment I went to have an ultrasound and some blood tests. The u/s was a good experience as it was good to actually see the insides of my body and it was actually commented that I had quite a few visible cysts but it could be due to the fact that I am preparing to ovulate. It was not painful, just a bit uncomfortable as my bladder was so full. My blood were tested for LH, FSh, prolactin, and some other stuff I can't remember.

2 weeks later I went back to my doctor for the results. She said my blood work was reasonably normal and the ultrasound came back fine - she was so vague it was annoying. She told me to de-stress and it would probably happen naturally. I forgot to mention in the last post that she told me to get my DH to get a semen analysis done also, so by this time we had the results for this too, and once again, all was fine. In my mind I was thinking "so where does this leave us now" and what will we do now. She told us that she would refer our case further and that we should receive a letter about what to do next. Her advice was that I probably would need something to help me to ovulate.

So I was waiting impatiently for this letter to come - I am not lying when I say I did not receive anything for over a month. The stress and the anxiety was getting to me so much that I just decided to call my doctor and have her withdraw the referral. I had quite a lot of other things going in my life at that time and did not want the added stress. I decided to take the viewpoint of "it's probably not the best time anyway, Gods's time is the best time" that phrase can be so convenient at times.

Fast forward 5 or 6 months and we decided to play the game again with a more prepared mindset. I got my doctor to put in the referral again, to which she obliged, and then we waited patiently for the letter. I decided that I would use the time to learn more about fertility and my body. I read blogs, books and all sorts. I started taking the prenatal vitamins amongst other things ( I will share my experience of such in later posts)and started charting with fertility friend. After about 3wks I got a letter from UCHL from their reproductive medicine unit asking me to book an appointment with a consultant. I called and got an appointment for November 23rd 2011, it was about a 6week wait (thats the Nhs for you, but at least it's free).

In my next post, I will go into details about that appointment, but basically that's where were at now. Sorry if this was so long, I was trying to keep it concise, but I know some of you may want to know the details, I know I did. I read so many blogs trying to find out how my experience with the consultant would be.

What has your journey been like so far? Anything like mine? Also, please feel free to ask me any questions - maybe I did not explain something very well. I am new to this blogging thing and not so tech savvy. If you have any suggestions on how to make this blog a better reading experience,I would be happy to hear them.

Take care and God Bless xx

And so the story begins.........Part 1

Right, I will try to make this as short as possible - so as not to bore the hell out of you on my first post. My DH and I got married almost 2 years ago now and although I always romanticised about conceiving on my honeymoon night, we both knew that would not be ideal (after spending all our money on the wedding). So we just decided we would enjoy our marriage and begin by "not trying, not preventing" if you know what I mean. However I had noticed that for more than a year before the wedding my periods were extremely irregular (once in 3months was pretty usual), so I went to see my doctor and told her the situation. She said it was nothing to worry about. We continued with our strategy.

9 months down the line I decided to go back and this time tell my doctor that I wanted to have a baby, and so my periods need to be checked out - she said that usually I would need to wait for a year of ttc but because of my irregular periodS she would proceed with investigations. She told me it could be polycystic ovarian syndrome (pcos) but tests would need to be done in order to confirm it. She referred me to Royal Free Hospital to get some blood tests and an ultrasound.

Stay tuned for part 2......