Short cycle (24-25 days) and TTC - any advice?

[MrsGingerbread]

Hello everyone,

I have just joined, so hope this is okay to ask!

We are just starting TTC baby #1. I use the MyDays app to track my cycles - but they are shorter than average at around 24 days.

Does anyone have any advice on how this may affect ovulation times and also when I could POAS with a fair amount of certainty for a reliable result? Would first day of missed period still apply in my situation? Or best to wait a bit longer?

Also, does cycle length have any bearing on pregnancy duration?

Thank you :)

[CatsCantFlyFast]

Short cycles generally mean either an earlier ovulation, a shorter luteal phase (from ovulation to your period) or a combination of both. So it is difficult to predict when you will ovulate as in your case it could be any one of the above.
In a 28 day cycle, women on average ovulate about half way through... on day 14. (However this differs wildly for some women). Therefore on a 25 day cycle you could apply the same logic and guess that you will ovulate around day 12. However it is equally possible you are ovulating as early as day 9 or as late as day 16. You could perhaps try using OPKs or temping to understand your cycle and ovulation dates better

You should still be able to get an accurate pregnancy test result on the first day of your missed period. The pregnancy hormones need to be high enough to stop your period happening, which would also result in them being strong enough to give you a positive test if that happened

Pregnancy is calculated as 40 weeks from the first day of your last period. Therefore if you and somebody else with a longer cycle both got pregnant and the first day of your last period was the same then your due date would be the same. Some online calculators for due date take cycle length into account but I think the NHS ignore that

[MrsGingerbread]

That's great, thank you so much. :)

[Eletheomel]

I had a 26 day cycle and conceived DS2 on day 9. I had thought that I would be ovulating about day 13, but I'd bought a clear blue fertility monitor and discovered I was actually ovulating between day 9 and 11. I think it's definitely worth doing temping or getting some OPK's to find out when in your cycle your actually ovulating, as you find it's different from when you thought.

I waited 3 days (so 29 days) before testing just in case I was just having a longer period (every now and again I'd be 28/29 days).

In terms of pregnancy length, the length is the same but I found that when they worked out my EDT according to the charts, it was a week later than i had thought (based on when I knew I had conceived) and when I had my 12 wk scan they adjusted my EDT to be a week earlier (as the baby was measuring a week bigger than their chart calculations).

[MrsGingerbread]

Thank you Eletheomel :)