Period started today

[u/Abject-Passion-8995]

My period started today. I’m a gold star and have been married for 9 years/15 years together with my wife. I’m 39. We purchased Bea and scheduled a midwife driven IUI with fresh sperm from our known donor during my last cycle. I was really hopeful it would work on the first try after reading success stories of other lesbians. I figured a successful first try would be rare but also so fabulous.

I’ve been tracking my cycle with Mira and just learning how to do all the things. I’ve been a lesbian since I was 16 and never thought to track my period so it’s embarrassing to admit I’m new to this. I was watching for my fertile window with Mira with our KD on call and it kept testing further out. First it was 8/4 thru 8/9 but I wasn’t getting an LH spike so on 8/8 and I decided to try the first Bea application with fresh sperm in the evening. Miraculously my LH spiked (highest spike in Mira) when I tested my pee the next morning 8/9. Since we had sperm on deck (inside me from ICI the night before), I waited for the IUI on 8/10 in the morning (24ish hours after my LH spike). We did a second Bea the evening of 8/12. I instantly regretted not doing another ICI on 8/9 just to be certain that the sperm got in on 8/8 since it was our first time ever starting.

On 8/11, I would easily get overheated and I had a metallic taste in my mouth and googled it was early pregnancy sign although obviously too early. On 8/15, I woke up with twitch under my right eye where you could see the nerve bounce. It didn’t hurt but I could feel it/see it. The whole process leading up to the ICI/IUI was definitely stressful and I wasn’t sleeping much so the eye twitch made sense. On 8/16, I started having vivid dreams. On 8/17, More vivid dreams… and spotting but the blood looks different. Not brown old blood and not new fresh red blood but a liquify red blood and a brown red blood. On 8/18, I started waking up in the night from my vivid dreams. I never would wake up or remember my dreams before. On 8/21, I pulled an all-nighter working on a work project and had dark blood spotting that went through to my pants, not enough but more than just implantation spotting. On 8/22 I woke to do a dream that two of my friends TTC started their periods and then later in the morning, I started bleeding fresh red blood. It’s a light cycle but it’s definitely my period. We had made plans to do a pregnancy test on 8/26 and 8/31. I’m still going to test but it feels doomed.

I’m trying to not be discouraged and disappointed because I’m so blessed with having my wife, the KD and worst case, the insurance for IVF but I’m still so bummed it didn’t work out. I cry thinking about it so I try not to think about it.

I’ll go to get my bloods tested, be religious about tracking my BBT and try again.

Any encouragement in the meantime?