Ok the story first....

I have a 9 and a half month old DD who I still BF 4 times a day. I have had 5 AF since giving birth and each time it has been 1 day of spotting and 2-3 days of VERY heavy bleeding that stops suddenly. All my cyles have been 32-35 days long. In these cycles I always O after about 2 weeks and have a 3 week luteal phase.

The last AF I had (28 days ago) was different. It was 2 days spotting and 2 days light bleeding. A week after AF finished I got light spotting for an hour. I know I O about day 13-14 because of ovulation pain. As I said I am now on day 28 of my cycle. Today I have started to spot just lightly.

The REALLY weird thing is that I have had little flutter feelings like the first kicks. They have been going on for about 1 week. I know I'm imagining that they are kicks and I'm probably noticing my gas for the first time but....it is freaky anyway!

The other thing is that my nipples have become sore all of a sudden and it is very uncomfortable to BF.

So I caved today and bought a first response HPT. It came back -ive. I would have bet my life I was preg. Obviously not though!!! I would even have bet something smaller on the fact that I was maybe very preg... maybe this was just wishful thinking though.

So the 2 questions are:
1) firstly regarding the spotting. I have a REALLY bad cough. I'm coughing almost constantly. Can a cough cause spotting if I am early in preg.
2) could this just be a really weird cycle? If so how long until they settle do you think?