Both A Success And A Failure

So last cycle ended in a chemical pregnancy, and I wanted to share my experience! This is gonna be super long but you never know who needs this information so...

So last cycle I really kind of halfassed everything? I only took 5 opks, used the syringe method to inseminate at 12 hours past peak ovulation (recommended with frozen sperm is something like 24 hrs), I fell asleep before I could hold my legs up, and I hadn't taken my prenatal or baby aspirin since the day before. A couple days after insemination, I'm still getting positive opks (darker then the control line, for three days past the first positive), I have no cm, and other than a hurricane with the same name I have had picked for my future child for ten years, I have no signs I'm pregnant. So I'm convinced i missed my window and I'm out. I pout for a day or two. Around 5dpo though, my breasts start to ache, even the slightest touch to them (like a shopping cart handle or a seatbelt) and I'm wincing. They also grow exponentially (I actually broke one of my bras, one of the back clasps popped out!). Promising, but no other symptoms show up until 8dpo, when I had a random bout of ewcm, which had turned into really watery white cm (like coffee creamerish?) Which i had never had before. I'm exhausted and starving, and also have sudden sharp pains in my right ovary, and overall and just very aware of my ovaries and uterus- they dont hurt, or even ache, but they make themselves known. After 8dpo, the exhaustion and hunger are every day. I cave to pressure and take a dollar store cheapie test- negative. But I'm not too discouraged as it's way too early to test still. 9dpo, and I have bad, stinging cramps from early morning to about 5pm (implantation I assume, I never bled). 10, 11, 12dpo, no additional symptoms besides the hunger, fatigue, watery white cm (huge amounts, like panties changing amounts) and random cramps, I test each day and get negatives. I start to worry, since af is due the next day. 13dpo and I get my first faint positive! It's a super squinter, but visible in photos. Still not getting my hopes up too much, I dont tell anyone, and symptom spot like all hell because I'm only human. 14dpo I get another faint line, baaaaaaaaarely darker then the first one, but still visible. I have a tiny tiny tiny (literally a speck smaller then a grain of rice) bit of brown cm in the afternoon and my heart drops bc that is how I always start af- two days of brown discharge and spotting, two days of bleeding, one day of spotting. The morning of 15dpo and I have nothing- no blood, no discharge, no ewcm. I take a digital test since I'm late for af and its negative. I go to work feeling sorry for myself and go about my business. At 9am I go to the bathroom and af starts. Only it's not normal at all, because instead of the discharge and light bleeding I normally have, its immediately a heavy flow, with more clotting then I've had before. Like, I wiped once and it looked like spotting. I wiped again and it was heavy. It was that fast. I'm officially cd1. My period is a day longer then normal, and the bleeding and cramps are intense. I take one more strip test just to see what happens and I get another faint line. I test again the next day (cd6) and its negative. pregnancy officially over.

So that's my chemical pregnancy saga! And like, I wasnt really sad about it, or not as sad as I thought I would feel, because I never ~really~ knew for sure if I was pregnant, and now I know I do ovulate, and I can get pregnant, so silver linings. Though I wish someone knew how long before the symptoms of a chemical pregnancy go away? Because I still have the tender, enlarged breasts, the fatigue, the hunger, and now nausea (had to run to the bathroom during dinner on Tuesday to throw up- and i n e v e r throw up) too. I dont want these if i dont get the baby too, darn it!