Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things...

After a fantastic reunion weekend in my university town, and two days into a restorative week off work, I find myself in the unfamiliar position of feeling quite good.

The weekend comprised lots of reminiscing, lots of good food, a decent amount of gin (but not so much that the days were blighted by hangovers), and a healthy dose of proper laughing. The fact I've returned home to a week's holiday rather than to the usual routine means I've held on to the happy hormones, too, instead of going back to my ranty, miserable self immediately.

As a result, things have been calm between hubby and me, and I find myself in this weirdly positive frame of mind. I can't really put it into words other than that I feel we've turned a corner of some sort.

Which is daft, as we haven't - still no HSG summons or other correspondence from the hospital, so we're no further forward. It's looking like we'll have to cancel our April follow-up at the clinic, since they told me not to darken their door again till I'd had the HSG.

So why the optimism? I'm stupidly trying to over-analyse what's probably just a serotonin hangover from a fun weekend. But the Thing - the Thing I'm thinking all the time but have avoided saying for four paragraphs of drivel because I'm scared to voice it - is that I feel really, properly hopeful this month, for the first time in ages.

What I mean is that I feel genuine excitement that it might have worked. I obviously feel what you could broadly label as "hope" every month, but usually it's competing with my own deep-down knowledge that my period's on its way. This cycle feels different, and I want to believe so much that it feels different because I feel different, and that I feel different because, actually, I'm pregnant.

God, typing those words is so amazing... if only it were true.

OK, so the logistics. Right now I'm 23 days into my cycle. Were I following a 28-day pattern, my period would be due on Easter Sunday. (What IS it with my cycle and big calendar events, by the way? Luckily I'm not religious so Easter Sunday means little to me other than an excuse for a roast dinner at my mum's and some chocolate. But even so, that's Christmas Day, my birthday and Easter that have coincided with cycle day 28 so far this year. I daren't count forward to our June wedding anniversary...)

Have I ovulated? No idea. TMI alert: I did notice, about 10 days ago, some suspiciously egg-whitey stuff that COULD have been the "cervical mucus" they tell you is a sign. But I symptom spot so dementedly often that it's hard to recall with any degree of accuracy what was real, what was imagined and what was simply dreamt. I found an old ovulation test yesterday and peed on it out of interest - it came up with a faint line to show I had some luteinising hormone, but it wasn't darker than the control line.

Have we tried enough? Well, we've not been as rampant as last month - basically because we're both still knackered - but we've managed it every three/four days or so between my period drying up and now. However, last week, we did it on Thursday night and then, with me being away, not again till last night, so there's a good chance we missed ovulation altogether.

So what next? I have zero symptoms except for vaguely tingly boobs, but that's about normal for this point in the month. It's way too early for symptoms anyway. What I need to do is decide whether I should use either of the early-response pregnancy tests sitting in my bathroom any time soon.

I don't want to do them and lose this nice feeling. I haven't felt upbeat for so very long. But equally, it seems somehow horribly foolish and embarrassing to walk about the place feeling all jaunty and hopeful if there's no reason to.

Does that make sense anywhere other than in my own head?!