Nancy Drew & The Mystery of the Sore Boobs

My breasts hurt.

For most women, this would be cause for pulling out the pee sticks and going to town, but in crazy-upside-down Stickles world, it's just a reminder to stop obsessing and prepare for AF.

Let me back up here just a bit.

Sore breasts used be a once-in-a-blue moon thing for me. I certainly never got them when I was taking the pill, and during those wasted years when I was off the pill and actually "trying-to-avoid" I'd have one or at most two cycles a year where I'd get tender breasts.

Naturally, during these rare occasions, I'd freak out a little that we had an "accident" (more so about the fact that I was probably drinking alcohol and caffeine during my cycle moreso than the reality of being pregnant), but those worries all came to moot.

So the really, really crazy thing is that since we started actively TTC, I get sore boobs during every cycle. Every cycle. This has wreaked severe havoc in my head. Those first few months of TTC, every time my girls started getting tender, I'd whip out the pee sticks only to see a BFN and a visit from AF within 48 hours.

I have asked my OB, my RE, and my acupuncturists about this, and no one can give me a satisfactory answer. The docs think I'm just more sensitive to the changes in my body (which, I don't think so, because those few times I got tenderness in the past *really* stood out - I have notes in my charts to back me up) while acupuncturists seem very pleased by this information because it means that my body is producing good progesterone.

So I am left to wonder if I am really creating my own version of a "hysterical pregnancy" towards the end of the 2ww or if this is an indication that something strange is going on in my body. Like maybe I could actually be conceiving, but something goes wrong at the end of the implantation stage, and no one seems to be catching it.

Oh, and just to throw another curveball...

I've also noticed that these three cycles of Clomid I've been on, I get the sore boobs later in my cycle. In a normal cycle, I start getting sore at 7 dpo and get AF about 4-5 days later. While on Clomid, I'm getting sore at about 10 dpo and getting AF about 2-3 days later. I really don't know what to make of this.

So this is all just to say that although I could obsess over the strange little things that have happened this cycle, like the acne breakout from hell a few days ago, or my need to take a nap yesterday afternoon, the fact that my boobs are sore in exactly the way they've always been sore these past oh...26 months...I'm not having a whole lot of optimism right now.