Cycle Day 20 (already!)

Just keeping tabs on things by updating here.

I continued to feel pregnant for a while this cycle. It was really weird. Neil kept being SURE I was pregnant, which isn't like him (unless I am), but I really really wasn't. I was going to test yet again, to be sure, because Neil wanted me to, but I temped again and convinced him that a low temp meant I wasn't pregnant!

My temps have been unusually stable this cycle so far, pretty much ALL 36.1-something! That's really really stable, even for me. I can't help but think of Arthur's conception, because I had never seen my pre-ovulatory temps so steady and samey before. I haven't temped every day for most of my cycle - just every other day or every few days, to keep track until getting nearer to ovulation. I'm charting parsnips when it occurs at a "relevant" time in my cycle. Right now I'm on CD20 and my 5th consecutive day of EWCM. I had a huge temp dip yesterday and it's still low today, although it's come up a bit. I wondered if I would even ovulate yesterday because of the huge dip, but I don't very often have such a thing as an ovulation dip with my temps - though I know others who do. It's just weird to see it against all the very samey temps beforehand!

I sometimes have obvious signs that ovulation is about to occur, even including ovulation pain, at around this stage of my cycle in the first 8 months PP, but then it's like a failed attempt, the fertile signs go away and my temps remain low. Then a couple of weeks later, I get another attempt and ovulate. I think that happened the cycle Elijah was conceived, if I remember rightly. I didn't ovulate until CD40 in the end because of it! So I will wait and see, this cycle. I have had ovulation pain. I am noticing that I am finding ovulation more painful as I get older - or maybe it's just a "more babies" thing? I don't know. But either way, I am feeling ovulation more, and the run-up to it as well. I feel achy and heavy, usually on one side, for days before I ovulate, and the discomfort intensifies over the days until I have the more familiar sharper crampy pain of actual ovulation. That can actually last me a couple of days now, instead of being quite brief. It lingers, dulls down, and fades off.

So I have had some very strong fertile signs this past week. Lots of EWCM. Yesterday was Neil's birthday, and parsnips did occur. ;) So I have charted that, because it's in a fertile window. It is very very difficult to find time and energy for such pursuits when you have six children including a baby! ;) Typically we can have several interruptions from tiny people, and yesterday was no exception!

Hmmm, I'm never sure quite how personal I should be with blogs any more... I used to write like this allllll the time, and now I am... out of the habit, maybe? Or more wary/paranoid?! Who knows!

Another thing I'm never sure about whether to write in my blogs these days is deeply personal thoughts and feelings, like I used to, on certain things. Neil and I are far more contraversial with each baby that we add and each year that passes, than we ever were before, and MANY people disagree very strongly with our choices. Some act as though they even feel threatened by our own choices, in some way, and it's not all that fun to be on the receiving end from such people. So it's becoming easier, and maybe less stressful, just to keep things related to that stuff to myself more and more. Except for special forums, made for mamas who know and are in the same boat. There I can open up without fear of criticism or ridicule, and receive advice, love and support. I do get wonderful support from friends who strongly disagree with me here though, I know that! :) Thank you, if that is you!! xxx

So, some of you know that life has been mightily stressful these past 5 or 6 months. We have had... unwanted, and unmitigated intrusion from social services. I haven't blogged about it. Their concerns are unwarranted, and they now tell me that my children are healthy, happy, and lovely, and that I am a great mother. But the intrusion, people. The feeling of harrassment. The panic attacks! The overwhelmingness of it all, it has been hard to bear. My eldest two children have been almost impossible to manage, and the wheels are turning at last for assessment for Autistic Spectrum Disorder (Asperger's syndrome, particularly, in Arthur's case). Their behaviour is so difficult. Homeschool is going well at the moment. Elijah has been discharged (this week!) from the osteopath, fine and dandy at last. He wakes 3-5 times from bedtime to morning, always, since birth. Bad patches mean 5-8 (or more) wakings, and I am one exhaustulated mama. He's happy and healthy. He started sitting before 5 months old, and crawling before 6 months. He is 8 months old tomorrow, and has been cruising the furniture for a couple of weeks. He cut his first toothie a week ago (a bottom middley - my earliest teether so far! Well, tied with Matthew, anyway), and he has that tell-tale eroded dark line on his gum over his first top middle tooth tonight. From the look of his poor bulgy gums, I think he will probably have two at the top and two at the bottom within a week or two.

Elijah had his 8 month check last week with a new health visitor who came to my house and weighed and measured him. He weighed 14lbs 15oz - just about at the 2nd percentile! So weeny! And he's 67.5cm (26.5 inches) tall - just under the 9th percentile. My tiny precious peanut!!! I love him sooooooooooooooooooooo. Sorry about all the 'o's. Each and every one was necessary!

Elijah isn't babbling at all yet (da-da-da-da-da, ma-ma-ma-ma, etc), which is "late" for my babies, and for development in general, I think. But I think he's been focusing on motor skills and not interested in a THING else, therefore. He shouts, squawks and does a funny loud cough to get our attention (both Neil and I, and his brothers!), which is right on target for his age, so that's good. He is also still exclusively breastfed. He just doesn't really want to eat food. I am going with what we always do, baby-led weaning (no purees), and he is interested in what we're doing, and he grabs food from our plates or hands, but he's horrified when he puts it to his mouth, lol! He seems extremely texture-sensitive, and even an individual crumb on the tip of his tongue causes his mouth and eyes to water, and then the gagging starts. I started to wonder about trying him on purees because of that, but he has gagged and retched on tiny tastes of yoghurt (maybe the cold temperature?) and things like that. He just isn't ready for solids yet, even though he's 8 months old. He isn't moving food to the back of his mouth. BUT, I did find out the other day that he likes to hold solid food, and likes the taste of rusks! He managed to cope with the texture because it just melts away, and he ended up eating about a quarter of a rusk in one sitting on Thursday, by just sucking on it! So that was his first real proper intake of any food! :)

Samuel turned 2 last month, and he is still breastfeeding on demand (to some degree) through the day. He asks a LOT! I probably sit down on the sofa and snuggle with him and let him breastfeed maybe between 3 and 5 times from getting up in the morning to before bedtime. I say no several times a day as well, but only really because I can't stop to nurse at that moment. Some days he nurses to sleep like that around lunch time, or mid-afternoon. I let him nap for a bit and then wake him up, or else bedtime drags on. At bedtime, he always has his milky in bed ("miggy-bed!") as an absolute set-in-stone routine. I don't breastfeed him overnight unless he wakes from a bad dream or something, and then I always do.

Benjamin is 3-and-a-half this month, and still breastfeeding. I am sure he will be like the two eldest boys and stop at age 4. He still loves his milky, and usually if he sees Samuel nursing then he will want to as well, so I usually tandem nurse during the day. Elijah is just reaching the stage where he will take a quick feed sitting up next to me on the sofa, so sometimes I tandem nurse Elijah and Samuel together, and Benjamin has to wait (rather pitifully, lol!)! Oh for three breasts! ;) I LOVE tandem nursing, and particularly, I love extended breastfeeding. I stop loving it quite so much by age 4 (hence nobody nursing longer than that - just personal preference), but breastfeeding a 1, 2, or 3-year-old is just a wonderful experience. Benjamin takes very quick nursing sessions, not like Samuel. And he still has his bedtime milky in his bed, but always after Samuel has nursed to sleep, by which time Benjamin is sometimes asleep already, so on those nights he doesn't have any.

It's bizarre to me that I am nursing a 3-year-old, a 2-year-old, and exclusively breastfeeding an 8-month-old baby, and yet ovulating, charting, temping, having periods and a chemical pregnancy, etc., lol! My body isn't textbook, that's for sure.

So. Not the easiest of times. We are STILL in our tiny home. We sold our house in the autumn, and lost our buyer because we didn't find a place to move to in time for them. We sold again a couple of weeks later, before Christmas, and our buyer is still hanging in there while we spend most Saturdays driving all over the place viewing properties, with our van-full of complaining mini travellers. They are less-than-impressed that we're trekking around ("This is so boring!!") and then Neil and I take turns to go into houses with the estate agents while the other sits in the van with the children. I know it's not fun, but hey ho, it has to be done! We can't afford to live here if we need a bigger house, and we need to find somewhere else that we CAN afford. We just have nooooo idea where that somewhere is. We're working on it! But the weeks are passing.

And in the midst of all this chaos....

Are we crazy? Are we absolutely out of our MINDS?! For Neil particularly, the pull has been very strong, to prevent pregnancy. He isn't very focused on God most of the time, which I find really hard, as his wife and as a mummy trying to raise her children to know God. :( When it's time for decision making though, it does come back to God, and we talk about it, read about it, pray about it. We both have varying degrees of anxiety over continuing to have babies, but ultimately we end up feeling confident that this is the way forward.

We are coping with a LOT, and sometimes it's overwhelming. I know the whole world, the whole world thinks we're crackers not to. That makes it even harder to stand where we stand, and practise what we preach, if you know what I mean. If I trusted God to be in control - to know what is best for our family, to know which children (and how many of them) to add to our family, and when.... then that should not change. Even when it's hard. Even when it seems like we surely know better than He does, what's right and wrong, and what's best for us at this particular season in our lives. I mean, it's obvious, isn't it?! More babies right now? Craaaazy, right? Not good for our health, maybe? Not good for the wellbeing of the children we already have? Lots of things have been running through our thoughts and conversations, and prayers.

But two verses keep on coming back to me, and they sit with me like they're stuck to me - way more sticky than post-it notes. My attitude sometimes shakes them off, but then I look down and oh, there they still are, stuck to my side. They uplift me and point me to the truth, so I cling to these verses in difficult seasons when I am BLESSED enough to still be a woman in her fertile childbearing years:

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight." (Proverbs 3:5-6)

"In all your ways" to me, includes reproduction.

""For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."" (Jeremiah 29:11)

No matter how things seem to me, I must must MUST trust that God knows best. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. This is not some blind laughable step-in-the-dark faith. This is GOD - the Creator of the universe and the ends of the earth, who gives and sustains life, who sent His own son to die so that I could live. This same God has most definitely got the ability, not to mention the absolute right, to control the adding of new people to this little family submitting themselves to Him. I also know that God desires to oversee the growth of our family. It doesn't make sense that He wouldn't. Do I believe that, and then decide that - okay, God is to be in charge, but then maybe He just doesn't realise how difficult things have been? Or maybe God can't understand that someone like me who is by nature impatient and disorganised, could surely not manage to be even a semi-efficient mother of 7 or 8 children under the age of 10! SURELY?!!

No. God knows me through and through, like nobody reading this could, nor my own husband or parents. I don't even know myself and my own needs and weaknesses (and strengths) like God does. He KNOWS me. And that verse from Jeremiah is for me, for me. He knows me, and yet He plans only good things for me. So I have to conclude that if I become pregnant, it's because God knows that I have a special need for practice in the ways of patience and organisation, lol! He knows that He has placed in me a special gift of the loving and nurturing of children. He knows that children are a joy and a blessing, even though there are difficult patches, and He LOVES to give His children (that's me!) good gifts because He is a generous and loving Father. For all those reasons, and many more than I don't even know or understand yet, He sees fit to bless me by sending me presents from heaven in the form of babies, genetically mine and Neil's. I still pray (and I know this is Neil's heart too) that one day God will be pleased to also send us children who aren't genetically ours, but who have been predestined to be our own children from the beginning of time.

The semi-efficient thing is irrelevant - and clearly I will need to re-read this entry many times over the years to come, lol! I struggle with confidence in this area a lot and need to hear what I'm writing now, pretty much daily. It's irrelevant because "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me", and because I am not supposed to be able to do these things in my own strength. When I do it in His strength, He gets the glory, and that's how it should be.

Anyway. This is all stuff that I really wish I would get around to posting at my main blog! Maybe I will just copy and paste the updatey (non-EWCM-related, lol!) stuff to my main blog, then it's THERE. It's late now so I need to go to bed, but I just wanted to waffle about those thoughts here for a bit. I wanted to explain. I know I don't need to. But I wanted to. So when (if) I were ever to share that I spend the best part of a week completely overwhelmed, wade through Saturday and spiritually stagger into church on Sunday with my heart weighed down with heaviness, head to the ministry team to be prayed for at the end and just say through tears, "My heart is just heavy. I don't know how to do everything. I just feel so overwhelmed right now. Please pray for me.".... then I come here and say, "Woohoo, looking good for conception this cycle!!! :D" - please don't jump on me saying that I'm nuts, and can't I see that I obviously need a break and shouldn't be doing this right now! ;) I know the temptation will be strong. I DO have those moments. The above example was from the week before last, and it's not an unusual example. But you know? They did pray for me, and I did leave church refreshed for the week ahead. Not every week is that bad. But in any case, having babies isn't just a negative, another burden to add, to an intense season with strong emotions and a major life challenge. It is also a blessing, and a joyful focus, a relief of some burdens, and a physical boost (in many ways, as well as being physically draining in others, lol!). It's another PERSON, who lives! *I* will settle down, life will soothe back to a steady hum eventually anyway, more babies or not, but this way another person lives! How will God use their life? Which people will they touch and change with their existence? Which children will they bear and how will their lives impact the world and those around them? On and on the blessings go. I count it all joy - I've read that somewhere in the Bible, can't think where off the top of my head - I count it all JOY, because wow. What a privilege. I don't want to cut off that opportunity, because I'm having a bad day (well, slight under-exaggeration, but you know what I mean!). My bad "day" will pass. My fertility will too. I don't want to miss any opportunity for God to bless us and open my womb again. I'm a bit scared in some ways, but not when I focus on all the stuff I have written here today.

Elijah is waking so I have to go, but I'll be back soon to update on whether or not I ovulate! :)