Oh yeah.... I'm ovulating. Big time.

I got my period on September 16th, so today is day 10 of my cycle.  I figured I was probably ovulating because yesterday (day 9 of my cycle) I went to use the ladies' room at Costco and there was a HUGE glob of eggwhite cervical mucus on the toilet paper (ironically I was in the same stall where I took a pregnancy test that confirmed I was pregnant about 4 years ago... what's with me and Costco)?

I can always tell when I'm ovulating because I start to smell different during that time. it's like the cervical mucus has a different scent... and it's one I've grown to appreciate. My husband has commented that he loves that smell. It's funny, he can be such a sweet and sensitive guy, I remember thinking a bunch of times when I first met him, this guy is too good not to be gay. My first boyfriend turned out to be gay so I've always been slightly paranoid that a guy is going to switch teams on me. Anyway... I remember that when my hubby said that he loves how I smell (down there), I thought... ok... maybe he's not gay. We recently celebrated 8 years together so... so far so good : )

Anyway... I've been having mittelschmerz "pangs" on BOTH ovaries for I think about 4 days now. No kidding. And they were strong. It's pretty weird that they were on both sides, too. Usually it's just one or the other.

Last month I got a few pangs but not like this. This month, it was to the point where it was almost annoying because it was slightly painful (more like a little "zing" here and there). Nothing unbearable, but if it got any worse I'd have had to have some ibuprofen.

Last month I think I ovulated during the first week of my cycle... it's been like that the last couple of months.

But I did something different this month....  I gave up sugar (at least, the excessive amount I was used to having).


I can't help thinking that has made a huge difference. One reason is this... I've been drinking this special water that is known to help the body quickly remove toxins and bring the body back into balance, and I heard that it isn't nearly as effective, when you add sugar to it. Well, I had been in the really bad habit of adding sugary powdered drink mixes to the water. Like Tang and iced tea. I went through a lot of stress in the last couple of years, and sugar became my drug of choice.

It makes me kind of sick now, to think of how much extra sugar I was consuming on a regular basis... day after day after day, for years, I was ingesting SEVERAL TABLESPOONS of excessive sugar (in the form of sugary drinks)... and wondering why I couldn't still figure out some way to get rid of candida. It's like someone eating a whole cheesecake every day and hoping to wipe out the fat by popping a couple of fat burning pills. It just doesn't work that way. You have to eliminate the SOURCE if you want to see real results.

But I will admit...the only reason I eliminated the source (sugar) was because I was just too busy to get to Costco and pick up more of the sugary iced tea mix I was used to drinking. So, I just made a bunch of tea, with lipton tea bags, and started drinking sugarless iced tea instead.  I found that it gave me a really good buzz, so eventually I just got used to it.  I was drinking iced tea, without sugar, for about a month, and then for the last 2 weeks I was too busy to even make tea, so I just started drinking this special water, with nothing else in it.

Not only did my period last an entire week (instead of the 5 days I've grown used to) but omg.... over the last month, my candida seemed to VANISH.

For years I have struggled with candida, in the form of athlete's foot. I've written about that before. And this is the first time that I've really just had almost no symptoms... for like a month! The water I've been drinking did help the candida to some degree, but nothing was able to TAKE IT AWAY like simply ELIMINATING THE PROBLEM. I am so happy!!!! Now, even if I have one of my usual "trigger foods" I can skip having a reaction, because my body isn't in "overload mode." It's awesome.

I have heard some women report that the water helps them with female issues, and a good friend of mine swears this reversed menopause for her, by about 5 years... actually she may have said 7, I forget. But it was a long time! She had been going through menopause and then when she started drinking the water, it stopped, and she got her periods again, for another 5-7 years.

Anyway, the other thing I wonder is if it really could have the power to unblock fallopian tubes. The reason I wonder this is, I am not used to ovulating on my right side. It is almost always on my left. When I did a hysterosalpingogram a few years ago, to see if anything was blocked, you could see that my right fallopian tube was slightly blocked.  Not completely, but slightly. It took longer for the dye to go through that one, than the other. So I always figured this is why I almost never feel any ovarian "pangs" on my right side.

Anyway, I have heard that there are ways to unblock fallopian tubes. If there is a lot of scarring, believe it or not there are things that have been shown to reverse the damage. And I can't help thinking there is a good chance that this water has reversed some of that damage, because this water has a lot of the same properties as those things that can get rid of scar tissue. Because I don't remember EVER feeling that many pangs in my right ovaries. Like I said, it was almost getting annoying! So I couldn't believe it when I could feel it on my left side, too, on the same day as my right. How many eggs is this body trying to drop on me at once?

Oh and by the way, about a week ago I did the candida spit test, and DIDN'T FLUNK, for the first time. I was so happy to see my spit actually floating in a glob at the top of the glass. After a while a few small "strings" appeared, but... it was MINOR compared to what I've seen in the past. My previous tests I did about 9 months ago looked like a giant jellyfish : D

Anyway... I just had to share that.  Ladies... if I keep mentioning the water and giving up sugar... you know why : )

EB

Pregnant at 47? Hmmm....

For the last three days I've been experiencing many of the same symptoms as I had, just before I found out I was pregnant in 2012.  These symptoms (which are rare and unusual for me) include:

-REALLY bad lower back pain
-Fatigue
-Irritability
-Headache
-Diarrhea first thing in the morning

In addition, I felt nauseous in the morning, about 5 days after what I think could have been a possible conception date. I know, it seems way too early but a bunch of women said they felt nausea at that time, and also went on to have successful pregnancies. And I also had a really rapid heart rate, something I also googled and it seems a lot of women report this as a symptom of pregnancy.

Whatever the case, I took a pregnancy test and it's negative. And I took another and another and another and they're all negative (I thought maybe cause it was a cheap test from the dollar store maybe it wouldn't work but... I'm thinking it's probably accurate).

I'm not sure what would cause me to have those same crazy symptoms and can't help but wondering if it's possible for the body to become pregnant, but it has to go through a "waiting period" to determine if that little zygote is going to be viable or not.

UPDATE (an hour later): OK so I got my period this morning so I can forget the idea that those pregnancy tests could have been inaccurate since they were from the dollar store, or that they weren't working since they were a few years old.

But I still think it's funny that I had so many symptoms that were just like the time I got pregnant. I know there are some people who might say all those symptoms I had are just PMS symptoms, but for me, that is highly unusual. It's just not like me to get any of those things. I haven't had back pain for years (though it seems like I had it pretty bad when I was in the throes of all my TTC stuff).

I'm going to write about this later but... I have gotten to a place where I feel pretty OK with not having kids. I'm like... 90 percent ok with it. I think this is because I feel strongly that I still could get pregnant, if I wanted to. I realized that, for me, getting pregnant wasn't so much about NEEDING to have a baby, and needing someone to take care of and love me, as it was about wanting to know my body was functioning properly.

When you are unable to get pregnant, you feel really "left out" from this big group of women in the Mother's Club. But I just want to say to all the women out there, who have been struggling with TTC... I really think just about all of us COULD get pregnant if we really wanted to. But... how much would that change our lives? I realized, I'm pretty happy with my life the way it is now. I don't feel like I'm "missing anything."

I suppose I also have Facebook to thank for the fact that I feel that I've been able to live vicariously through other peoples' baby experiences, over the last 5 years.

Me and a friend of mine were trying to get pregnant at the same time, years ago. She spent thousands of dollars on fertility treatments and finally she and her husband decided to adopt. This friend of mine, whom I'll call Judy, is the PERFECT Mom. She is the kind of Mom who would ENJOY spending ALL DAY with her baby. And I have always imagined that I would NOT be that kind of Mom. That's not to say I wouldn't be a good Mom (my Mom was like the opposite of Judy, but I still consider her to have been a great Mom). It truly warms my heart to see Judy having so much fun with her daughter. She recently announced she was thinking of adopting another baby and I gasped out loud, joyfully, "Oh My God!" I was so excited for her. And not jealous in the least. I guess it's because I really feel like I could have had a baby if I wanted to, and a strong part of me feels like I still could.

I know some women might be reading this and say, Yeah Right! You're 47. But I have felt more fertile than I have in years. I've been drinking antioxidant water like my friend who swears it helped her turn back the clock on her menopause for 5 years, and am getting regular periods, a good amount of cervical mucus, and I feel like I'm ovulating normally. I recently also cut back on about 3/4 of the sugar I normally consume, so...I feel like my body is in a better position than ever, to have a baby, if I wanted one. And no, we are not using any birth control. So I really feel like it could still happen. But I'm kind of leaving this one up to fate.

I learned I really do value my "alone time." Because I like to write. And I like to spend 12 hours a day on my computer. I realize my entire life would change if I had a kid. I think the whole point of having a baby is to try to bring a good person into the world and do what you can to make it a better place. So if I did have a baby, I would do what I could, to ensure that this person was a good little human, who cared about this planet, was kind to others, and tried to make the world a better place. And if I don't end up having one of those little humans, it will give ME more time to do what I can to make the world a better place, and I plan to continue doing that by writing as much as I can (I know I haven't been doing much here on this blog but there are other projects I've been working on).

I can't help wondering if the fact that I gave up sugar was somehow causing some kind of detox reaction. I should probably write a separate post about this but I'll just try to say quickly that... I think I... no, I KNOW I had major issues with Candida, and that is DANGEROUS for a pregnancy, and can make it just about impossible to conceive. I was completely addicted to sugar. I'd have it every day, all day, in the form of powdered drinks. And it was causing really bad candida in my system. How do I know this? Because it gave me athlete's foot. Whenever I have too much sugar or yeast, my feet itch. If I  had beer, soda, a doughnut, bagel... you name it. My feet itched. But now that I've given up the daily sugar consumption... my athlete's foot has pretty much VANISHED.

There were things that would help alleviate it temporarily. The antioxidant water helped somewhat, and the acidic water our machine makes was able to wipe it out externally... but I could still feel the tingling on the INSIDE. Because its seemed that this is where the yeast or candida was somehow settling, and thriving.

An interesting thing happened when I stopped consuming sugar. My feet got WARMER. Like the blood in them was circulating better. I didn't think the circulation was that bad before, especially because I was consuming antioxidant water, but... there is only so much the water can do when a person is unwilling to take away the SOURCE of the problem!!

I read up on some of the side effects of giving up sugar and people can feel nausea, headaches and more. So maybe this is what I was experiencing... who knows.

Anyway, I took a bunch of Vitamin D (10K usually keeps back pain away but I bumped it up to 50K today). I also took Turmeric, B vitamins and a bunch of other vitamins, and the pain doesn't seem to be an issue right now. Knock wood. It was just killing me yesterday so I am relieved that it seems to be gone now.

Hopefully this will keep up!

EB