TTC - always had irregular periods

[choufleur]

Bit of background. I have always had very irregular periods. had to take progesterone and clomid to conceive ds. I stopped taking the pill last week. I'm having a 'period', well end of taking the pill bleed.

Anyone got any guesses when i could start donig ovulation tests? or should i just go with peeing on a stick every day?

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

choufleur,

Were you given any diagnosis previously?.

Would not be using any sort of ovulation predictor kit in your particular circumstances. These will be a waste of time and effort. Such problems as you describe are often caused by hormonal imbalances; if thyroid problems are ruled out another common cause is a condition called polycystic ovaries.

What you could have done instead are blood tests to see what your hormone levels are like. These can be done according to calendar days - you can have a day 3 test to compare the level of LH against that of FSH and a day 21 to measure progesterone. LH and FSH are two very important hormones as they kickstart the ovulation process. If these are awry then ovulation will be affected.

OPK's actually work on two misleading principles; namely that women only have one rise in LH every month and that such a rise is immediately followed by ovulation. Both of these are simply not true. With PCO as well there is often an imbalance of LH to FSH; if an OPK is used the kit could very well read that excess and give a false positive result. You can also get multiple positive results which will just confuse things further.

If you had to use clomid previously the chances are you will need some medical assistance in order to conceive again.

[choufleur]

yes thing is despite previous problems getting pregnant (I apparently had low progesterone levels - no PCOS or thyroid problems) got pregnant over christmas whilst i had a coil fitted (chance about 1 in 900 according to GP) and then miscarried.

I'm hoping that because that happened that i might have a decentish chance of conceiving without intervention.

[chosenone]

My periods always varied from 30 days to about 64! Had blood tests all fine, So conceived DS after a year of trying by BD ing every other day from day 12 until day 60 and hit the mark! With DD first cycle trying but POS every day until I knew I was OV ing! good luck