Day 59 (CD 107)

Tomorrow will be 2 months that I've been sleeping in total darkness. Next full moon a get to start turning on the lights! Woohoo!

I was so excited I had stopped spotting, and then the day after my last post the spotting began again. So, I started taking female harmony again today. Hopefully it'll help again. I think the problem is that this cycle has been going on for too long and probably my endometrium lining is too thick and can't sustain itself anymore because all it's been doing is building up and up since I haven't ovulated in more than 3 months. If I could just ovulate, I'm sure I would stop spotting.

I think another problem is that because I've been sleeping in complete darkness all the time with the exception of a couple of days, my body is actually producing too much melatonin and this in turn is preventing ovulation. I haven't been offsetting sleeping in darkness with spending more time in the sun during the day or turning on the lights at night to balance the melatonin production because I didn't want to introduce a whole bunch of variables at once. But I suspect that all this darkness is screwing with my cycles. I think I'm one of those people who needs the 3 nights of lights. However, I did promise 3 months solid of darkness and I've got one more month to go. I wonder if the 3 days that I did have egg-white cervical mucus (EWCM) and no spotting occurred because I had to keep turning on the lights to take care of my little sister at night. If so, that could be a +1 for Lunaception when I finally do start turning on the lights at night.

3 more comments about my chart above:
1. I've added another category called "Lunaception Not Practiced" to show the days where I didn't sleep in total darkness for one reason or another. I feel like this would give me (and anyone else who reads my blog) a clearer picture of how closely I've been following Lunaception. 2. The full moon was actually yesterday, on Sunday, but you can see on my chart that it's showing up that it's today. I have no idea why. I inputted the data correctly on the TCOYF online software. I suspect it's some sort of glitch. Sometimes using the free charts on TCOYF is so annoying! They can take forever to update and lots of times the functions and options don't work like their supposed to. Hopefully this error will correct itself soon. I'm sure the paid version works better.
3. The cycle day on the chart really only goes up to the first two digits, so since I've hit 100, all you see is 10. I guess you have to start counting if you want to figure out what day I'm on.

Hopefully I'll have better news next week!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Day 53 (CD 101)

What a week! Thursday was my little sister's birthday party, she just turned 6 --- yes there is an enormous gap between her and my older brother and I--- no, she was not an accident---Well, afterward my mom really wanted my husband and I to come over so we did. We hadn't planned at all on sleeping over but my mom had to pack her bags bc her and my dad were going to Brazil the next day to visit my sick grandma :'( and my little sister had to take a bath bc she had sand in her hair...so I stayed to help. My little sis was going to stay with my in-laws bc I'm busy with school, but I felt so bad bc she was so sad about the whole thing that I decided to sleep over my in-laws house too to help out. So that's where I slept from Friday to Tuesday. 4 days in hell. My sis kept my husband and I up at night coughing bc of a cold all 4 days. My little nephew also came over to play with my sis and it was just chaos all weekend. Little kids are cute...but they are exhausting!!! My husband and I would periodically look at each other and just shake our heads as if to say, "Nope...we are definitely not having kids within the next 10 years". I'm glad we're on the same boat. I'm back home now and looking forward to getting a restful full night's sleep.

Unfortunately, Thurday-Tuesday I wasn't able to sleep in pitch black darkness because my mother didn't have thick curtains and at my in-laws I was turning on the lights all the time to give my sister medicine. I did try to use a sleeping mask but halfway through the night I just took it off because I had to keep turning on the lights anyways. Sometimes life happens. Tonight though I am going to put the cardboard back up. You'll notice some of my temps are missing. I didn't have my thermometer one day, and another day I woke up too close to my temping time bc of my sis to consider it accurate.

This Friday I'm going to a bachelorette party and I'll proabaly be out all night...so no cardboard then either. I was actually supposed to go to Canada this coming Thursday - Monday, but unfortunately won't be able to. I had written about my concern of sleeping all those days in a less than pitch black room, but I guess I don't have to worry anymore.

Looks like sleeping 3 months solid in darkness if not as simple as it seems since life is full of unexpected things.

On a brighter note, it does seem like the bleeding finally stopped. Yesterday I had only the slightest tinge of pink but it seems to be all gone today. I'm going to take the female harmony one more day and then stop. I did start seeing some egg-white cervical fluid as you can see from my chart but I don't know if I can attribute it to lunaception, to the female harmony tincture, or to the fact that I wasn't able to sleep in total darkness these past few days. This is exactly what I was trying to avoid when I started lunaception...adding in new variables in so I didn't know which caused what. But like I said, what can you do when life happens? With things getting back to normal now, hopefully I'll be able to tell which did what and hopefully this egg-white means that ovulation is eminent bc I'm already on day 101 of this cycle. Sunday is a full moon--maybe I'll ovulate then? We'll see what happens.

Day 47 (CD 95)

Well...my cycle is still going! I'm almost hitting the 100 day mark. I started taking some herbal tincture called Female Harmony from http://drfosteressentials.com/ I love dr. foster!!! She has a completely natural approach to things and all her products are of excellent quality. I go to her if I have any problems! Well I started taking the tincture mid last week and my flow has decreased to the point that it is now almost nothing. I was hesitant to take the tincture because I didn't want to add any other variables into Lunaception, but I was afraid that the bleeding was going to go on for a long time before it stopped. So I decided to only take it until necessary. I'll probably only take it for another 2 days.

The womens retreat that I went on with my church was great! I went with my mother-in-law and couldn't be happier that I did. I am so thankful to have her in my life and was grateful for out time spent together. We talked for hours about everything under the sun! We definitely do not have the stereo-typical in-law relationship.

During the retreat I slept with an eye-mask on (for the 2 nights I was there) since I couldn't really do anything about the light coming in from the window. If some part of my body was exposed to light, it was definitely only a part of my face because it was so cold there that I was bundled up in a zipped up sleeping bag. I think that could be why on saturday and sunday my temps were kind of low...because I was freezing! I've noticed during the summer if we put the AC on too high my temps seem to be kind of low in the morning too, so I think I'm one of those people were the temp in the temp in the environment affects me, although waking up earlier or later doesn't really seem to. Sunday was daylight savings time and my temps were pretty much the same. However, on Monday I think I woke up earlier then usual and stayed in bed half a sleep and half awake...which gave me that unusually high temperature. I had gone to bed really early and woke up at around 4.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that maybe this cycle I'll ovulate around the full moon! Regardless, like I've said before, I'm still going to be sleeping in darkness for another month and a half, but ovulating around the full moon now would definitely give me some encouragement! I feel though like my body needs the light though to give it an extra boost to bring on ovulation.

That's all for now. 'Til next time!

Day 38 (CD 86)

Today is day 38 of Lunaception. My cycle has pretty much been the same. Still haven't ovulated, still having anovulatory bleeding. The bleeding has gotten heavier and I'd say it's at a medium flow. It's been going on for 16 days now non-stop. If it turns into something like the other times this happened, I'm going to shoot myself. November 2008 and sometime in 2005 I started having this same anovulatory bleeding and it went on NON-STOP for 6 months!! Dr.s did a whole bunch of tests and and all tests came back fine. So they told me to wait it out or take birth control (grrrrrr) I don't see how birth control would have "fixed" my cycle irregularity since you don't actually have a cycle on it. You don't ovulate on it and no ovulation means no REAL period which all means no REAL cycle. That bleeding you get at the end of a pack....it's not your period because again, you didn't ovulate. It's withdrawal bleeding from not taking any hormones that week. When people invented the pill they wanted to make it look as natural as possible and if women didn't get what they thought was their period, they would have hesitated to start taking it, remember the pill was absolutely revolutionary and novel at that time, so they put a week's worth of those sugar pills in there give you that hormone withdrawal bleeding and make you think it was your period. Not cool. Birth control impedes your body's natural rhythm of its reproductive cycles and that just doesn't sit well with me either. Plus putting all those artificial hormones into your body is another negative for me. I'll post some sites when I have the time regarding this information.

As promised here are some links:

How the pill really works:

The fascinating story of the pill:
https://www.seasonique.com/about/the-real-story-of-the-pill/
http://science.jrank.org/pages/63321/The-Pill.html

The "Pill Period"
https://www.seasonique.com/about/what-is-a-pill-period/
http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/7876.html

How do birth control pills work?
http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/0663.html
http://www.wisegeek.com/how-do-birth-control-pills-work.htm

The answer to: Can you have a period without ovulating?
http://www.ivillage.com/ovulation-can-you-have-period-without-ovulating/6-n-145810

* It's useful to note that what applies here to birth control pills, really applies to all hormonal contraceptives because they all have the same job of preventing ovulation.

hmmm....maybe I'll post these to the right too....I feel like a lot of women don't know a whole lot about the pill and nobody explains to them that you're not having a real menstrual cycle

On another note, this weekend I'm going on a women's retreat with my church. I'm really not sure what I'm going to do about the whole sleeping in darkness thing. I think Friday and Saturday I'll just have to sleep with only an eye mask on. Hopefully it won't be too bright in the room and it won't be that big of a deal that my body isn't immersed in darkness like it's supposed to be. I'm going to have the same prob. when I go to Canada in 2 weeks, except it'll be for 3 days then. I'm going with friends and we aren't staying in a hotel (so no black out curtains). Even if I could make my provisions to ensure a dark room, I really don't feel like explaining the whole lunaception thing. Hopefully I'll be able to take my temperature. I normally temp at 5:30 am and my alarm goes off then. I hope my friends don't mind. I'll probably have to explain to them that it's my birth control (I'm anticipating the puzzled looks when they see that I'm equating my thermometer with birth control lol). That would probably lead into a long conversation about FAM. *Sigh*. I love FAM but I've explained it a lot of times and don't feel like doing so again at the moment.