The unexpected

I'm still not a very frequent blogger, and even less so when I don't have much going on. But I did think that perhaps taking a break from trying to get pregnant would make things a little different. I just wasn't prepared for exactly how it would make things different.

I think I thought we'd have quite a different sex life - either more evenly distributed through the month, or avoiding the Persona red days entirely as neither of us like using condoms. But in fact, I guess our sex life is more driven by either a) weekends or b) my hormones as it was more or less the same as it is other months.

I didn't particularly think I'd be successful in getting fit and losing weight - but I have. I have lost 8lb in the last approximately 90 days, and I've started running again (and I've surprised myself by being able to pick up the number of minutes for which I can run much more rapidly than in the past) and I've lost 2in off my waist. I have also been able to fit into clothes I haven't worn for over 10 years. I have weighed this little a couple of times in the last couple of years (and even a bit less) but I think perhaps it's been in the winter and these were summer clothes.

I didn't think I'd notice anything new about my body - I thought I knew everything - but I've also noticed (look away now if squeamish, but hey, you are all fertility readers really aren't you? Well, sorry if not...) a much more regular pattern of CM than I thought I had. Both months I had some thick EWCM at a point which I thought was about 4-5 days before I would normally get a positive OPK. So far, so expected. However, I think normally my mucus is, er, obscured after that point. The first month I then got some really fluid but definitely stretchy CM about 5 days after that - which normally I tend to discount, or be a bit confused by. Not thick EWCM, but definitely egg-white-ish. This was about 5 days later and I had previously thought my body had given up on EWCM by about 4-5 days before ovulation.
The second month I then got my OPK-equivalent on the Persona, er, the next day. So a short cycle this month.

Finally I wasn't expecting migraines. I think I may have fallen into the common pattern of regular migraines just before my period. Previously they were much more stress-related - usually a stress hangover, a classic situation being the day after a stressful week at work, when I hadn't been out the night before or drunk anything. I've had a couple of those in the last year, but I think two out of the previous three months I've had a migraine. Fortunately my regular Imigran works OK premenstrually too.

One thing I was expecting - the social worker we met before (the second one, who was a bit new to the field, rather than the mad, about-to-retire one we met first) rang me back about our going away. She wasn't completely sure she'd be our social worker when we got back, but she didn't think it was worth starting any of our home study before we go away. I guess I'll just have to try and remember what we did on the course.

Three weeks till we go to the US - it still seems slightly unreal.