The moment of truth

DH and I are just finishing up a three-week course of antibiotics to treat the infection found on the semen culture.  We started them on peak day last cycle.  We would have started them earlier in the cycle but there was some mix up at the pharmacy that delayed things.  I was bummed that we wouldn't be able to take advantage of the mucus-enhancing side effects of ampicillin.  My mucus is usually pretty good, but more of the good stuff wouldn't hurt.  ;)

Once AF arrived, I started to get a bit nervous.  Would there be TEBB?  Waiting for AF to taper off was like the final days of a 2WW where there is some chance of pregnancy.  I just wanted to fast forward a few days to find out what would happen.  During the heavy and moderate days, I tried to observe if the color of the bleeding was different in any way, which might give me a clue as to whether the antibiotic had successfully eliminated my TEBB.  Nothing was different as far as I could tell.  I tried to be patient.

First day of light bleeding--no brown.  That's typical for me.  I sometimes have two days of light or very light before the brown starts.

Second day of light bleeding--no brown.  No need to get excited yet.  This is still normal for me.

Third day.  Now it's very light, and the color is bright red.  Every time I went to the bathroom, this was me:

Is there brown?   (source)

What?  No brown??   (source)

Surely this was a fluke and the brown was coming.

Fourth day.  Pinkish red.  No sign of brown.  Now every bathroom trip looked like this:

Still no brown!!!  (source)

Now it seems like AF is done except for some pink. This is me now:

There was no TEBB!!!  (source)

The one other cycle where I didn't have any TEBB was right after the IV antibiotics over a year ago.  That happiness lasted all of one cycle because DH wasn't treated simultaneously and the TEBB came back the next cycle.  (I also suspect that my endo had already returned at that point.)

But this time DH has been treated too.  And I am free of endo.

You know what this means?

This might be our first real chance of conceiving.  Ever.  This is the first time all of my known issues have been fixed or treated at the same time.  We've been TTC for more than four years.

We're going to try to make the most of this time.  Since my uterus had a lot of inflammation at the time of my surgery in February, I'm doing what I can to try to decrease inflammation in case it was not caused by the infection (but I'm hoping that it WAS caused by the infection...).  I'm not eating sugar in any form (or any substitutes like honey) along with the rest of an anti-inflammatory diet that I've been doing for a long time.  A couple ladies have told me about a possible (anecdotal) link between TEBB and tampons, so I haven't used tampons since my surgery.

I don't know how long the TEBB will stay away.   I doubt it will be permanent.  At the NaPro conference a few weeks ago, Dr. H said that even when both spouses are treated, the infection usually comes back eventually.

But for now, we begin counting effective cycles; essentially our TTC clock has been reset to zero.  An effective cycle is one that looks normal (and presumes or knows ovulation occurred), has a good mucus cycle, has normal P+7 estrogen and progesterone levels, and has all known medical issues addressed (including appropriate management of stress).  There also should be more than one act of intercourse during the fertile time.  NaPro usually recommends TTC for 12-18 effective cycles.

This is cycle 1.  I think I might be ovulating early this month because I've had some decent looking mucus during these last few days of spotting.

St. Jude, pray for us.