Rejecting Predictability

I've determined that my body has been influenced by my husband. I'm a creature of habit in most areas of life. I like to find a routine that works and keep doing it. I know it works, so why rethink it? So I eat generally the same thing for lunch every day (, I have a pattern for what I eat for breakfast (cereal , and I have a routine for what kind of exercise I do and when. My husband, on the other hand, hates any form of routine. From my perspective, he goes out of his way to make sure he doesn't fall into routine. From his perspective, "falling" into routine takes effort and he'd rather not think about it. I guess we're just wired differently.

I think my body has decided to take its cue from him. Routine? Predictability? How boring. Why would I want to ovulate on the same day each cycle? Or have temperatures that give me a clue about what's coming next? Or have periods that are of the same length and heaviness? That would just be silly.

I wrote about my last ovulation, and how dodgy it was, a few weeks ago. And then it turned out to be even dodgier than expected, of course. My latest surprise has been my period this time around. I was quite pleased with how heavy it was the first couple of days. Not super heavy--I could have left the same tampon in all day and been fine--but still heavier than last time. It started Wednesday afternoon and was flowing pretty nicely through Friday, tapering off a little Friday but still going.

I had my acupuncture appointment on Friday, and KB (my acupuncturist) said she stimulated points and gave me an herbal decoction that would help my period to be really effective, cleansing out the old blood and all, to give this cycle a good start. I noticed that my cramps subsided quite a bit after the session. And I wasn't too surprised to wake up in the middle of the night that night to find quite a bit of blood flowing, although it's very unusual for me to have much going on at night. I thought maybe the acupuncture really had gotten things going.

However, I was surprised when essentially nothing happened Saturday or Sunday. No blood. No brown, red, or pink on the pads or tampons. (I know this is a bit graphic, but if you're reading infertility blogs, you should know what you're in for.) So I thought I had just had my first three-day period ever. I've always had basically five-day periods, ever since I was 12 years old and got my first one. On the pill and off, always five days. But hey, I'm not going to complain about three days. I was a little concerned that a short and not-too-heavy period might indicate a thin lining, but that's why I'm doing acupuncture--to fix things like that.

I was all ready to skip on the pad and go for a pantiliner this morning. But guess what? She's back! After two days, I guess my uterus decided it had a little more lining to shed. Today being CD 6, when I'm usually done bleeding. And might as well add some cramps to that just for good measure. More cramps than are warranted with the amount of blood, which is hardly more than spotting. I guess I'm glad that what's coming out is coming out. But couldn't we have done this Saturday morning? Did we need to stretch it out?

Of course I can't help but wonder if the acupuncture and crazy herb decoction I'm drinking twice a day have encouraged my body to get a little more out than usual. In which case I should be happy that it's working.

Speaking of the traditional chinese medicine, I came across one practitioner's website (after googling "traditional chinese medicine fertility statistics") that claimed his clinic had about a 60% pregnancy rate for infertile women who came for treatment. But, for women who were willing to drink cooked herb decoctions, that rate was 75% within three months! Impressive. I'm just hoping not to defy any statistics in this case. Just to let you know, dear body of mine, statistical predictability is different than routine predictability. So go ahead and defy routine. But we don't need to defy statistics, okay?