cycle 5, day 24

once again this month i had a lot to distract me from the waiting game... i've been totally consumed with getting settled in our new house. we have a lot to do and a long time before the house won't be our big project, but it's all so very exciting. and it does, in the back of my mind, make hoping that i'm pregnant even more wonderful, as it's just better to imagine having a baby and an eventual kid when i'm living in a place where we can actually go outside and live in more than 600 square feet.

it's pretty incredible.

and yet here we are in the midst of the final countdown of cycle 5 of TTC. it's our last true summer attempt... if i'm not pregnant this time, our next try will be the week i go back to work. which isn't ideal. i know i'm going to be upset if this cycle has been another bust, but i don't think i'm at the point of despair... yet.

so today's day 24 (14 days post-ovulation), which means in a normal short cycle month (as it seems this will be, given the ovulation monitor said days 9 and 10 were my peak days) i should get my period in two days -- on tuesday. i have felt totally normal until the past couple of days, when i've started having symptoms of something going on down there.

on friday (day 21, 12 dpo) i had a 24-hour headache. nothing helped. i also felt a bit dizzy and light-headed. but again, these can always be pre-period symptoms, too... though this headache was worse than my typical "here comes the period!" headache, and also a little early.

day 22 i stupidly took a pregnancy test (WHEN will i stop throwing money down the toilet on these things???), which was negative but had a few spots and speckles above the center line, which i've never seen before. i've also had a lot of discharge, not typical of this part of my cycle.

then yesterday (day 23, 13 dpo) i had a small amount of what looked like dark blood. a few months ago i would have been convinced this was implantation bleeding, but a similar thing happened to me a couple of months ago (a bit earlier in the cycle, though) and i clearly wasn't pregnant. so.

in general i just feel like there's something brewing, which could be my period, but maybe not. usually i don't have much (if any) PMS in my short-cycle months, and i don't exactly feel like my period's coming. i just feel a bit... weird. i'll try to keep myself distracted for the next couple of days...