(Almost) 41

Tomorrow is my 41st birthday. I'm feeling much more positive about the world than I was a few days ago so I'm facing another birthday in a reasonably good frame of mind. Lovely husband and I will go somewhere very swish and expensive for dinner to celebrate. Its now a year since we started TTC.

We've had a difficult week on account of spending virtually no time at all together. He has been working interstate and only got back late Thursday night, came home and kept on working, then we were out separately at a hen's and buck's night on Friday night, then I was working yesterday while he went to a work function. On top of his working completely crazy hours at the moment, he's also got a bad cold (probably because he isn't getting enough sleep). I was feeling very neglected and struggling to cope with spending hardly any time together.

We had a chat about it last night and I think he has realised that I need a little more attention sometimes. Hopefully he will also try to take better care of himself so that he doesn't keep getting sick. His job is so incredibly demanding and sometimes he gets completely caught up in it. We have always been good and sorting out or problems and I feel fine about this recent crisis now as well.

Thoughts of the next IVF cycle have been ever so slightly pushed to the back of my mind, which is a good thing. Last week I was having to make a huge effort not to think about it constantly and let it take over my every waking moment. I now feel much more calm.

I'm currently on Day 14 of this 'natural' cycle and hopeful as ever that we might have a chance to do it ourselves this month. The absence of lovely husband interstate for most of the week doesn't help but we might manage to fluke it and be in the same place when I do finally ovulate. Back when I was temping and charting using OPKs, I didn't usually ovulate until some time between Day 18 and 21. I started with the OPKs on Friday and all are negative so far. I find them hard to use because I'm never sure whether the positives are really positive - ie. are the two lines the same intensity or not? A few times I've had the second line much stronger than the first, so its obviously positive but most of the time the result seems ambiguous.

I am also trying three 'tricks' to improve my fertile cervical mucous this month - drinking lots of water (was doing that anyway for the IVF cycle so no difference there), a cup of green tea a day and 1mg evening primrose oil. Not sure they will do any good, but they can't do any harm, apart from needing to stop the evening primrose oil after ovulation. Apparently it can cause uterine cramping so definitely don't want that in the luteal phase. My temperature is a bit all over the place so I missed the last few days, also because I had been out drinking and that always pushes the temperature up. I'll get started on it again tomorrow.