TTC Myths Exposed!

[CaveMum]

I've been hanging round on the Conception boards for quite a while now (far longer than I ever expected) and have noticed that the same myths/theories/whatever you want to call them, seem to keep cropping up.

As a nation we are useless at talking about fertility issues and as such these myths can perpetuate and end up being taken as fact, so I thought we ought to do a myth busting thread that might help some people better understand things and, hopefully, feel better about the whole process.

So here goes:

Very few women have a 28 day cycle. If your cycle is shorter or longer than this don't panic! It's just a number that Drs like to use.

Most women do not get pregnant straight away. It can take a perfectly healthy couple up to a year to conceive, so again, don'tpanic if it seems to be taking longer than you first expected.

In the same vein, most GPs won't investigate potential fertility issues until you have been trying for 1 year. They really won't be impressed if you make an appointment after only 2 months of trying!

There is very little point in POASing before at least 13dpo. HPTs are only up to 60% accurate before this date, so why waste the money and upset yourself with a potentially false result?

OPKs as HPTs are very unreliable. Just don't go there!

Feel free to add your own

Sigh... look, science doesn't provide absolutes. In fact, if you do a little light research, you'll discover that while HCG and Oestrogen are both suspected of being the morning sickness culprits, that's only because HCG in particular rises rapidly just as women tend to get sick and falls as they tend to start to get better. The causal relationship isn't really understood. Similarly, I had tests for a smaller baby because I have abnormally high HCG in this pregnancy. But while a midwife said to me "x causes y", the consultant said "we don't really understand why but there tends to be a bit of a link, we don't really understand it".

Which is why it's wrong to assume that everything we know here and now, in July 2012 about a woman's body in early pregnancy is all there is to know. There is every possibility that the body is aware it is carrying a fertilised egg in some cases, for example - but it would be a fiendishly difficult thing to carry out a clinical trial to establish.

Sorry - should have said "science doesn't always provide absolutes"!

Your bring extremely confrontational Abody. This is a forum, people are entitled to their own opinions.

If you can show me a woman who can categorically prove she is pregnant before implantation occurs then I'll agree with you. Until then, we'll agree to disagree.

You're

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be confrontational, a bit defensive maybe. I don't really appreciate being belittled for defending a woman's right to have whatever symptoms she has at whatever point she happens to have them. I was just trying to say that 'unlikely' is not the same as impossible & its not very nice to dismiss women as liars because you don't think its likely. Anyway, Longtalljosie has said it all very well.

Oh sorry, I just re-read your last post cave. I think you've misunderstood me, I'm not trying to prove anything, I'm just questioning anyone's ability to prove that you categorically can't have pregnancy symptoms before 5-6 weeks, or even before implantation. Some women on here have clearly explained that they did, and I have no good reason to doubt them. I shouldn't have replied so grumpily, I was in a rush & a bit offended by the snarky comments about scientists & rubber chickens.

I have never been pregnant so I can't speak from experience here but to me it seems logical that you cannot have any symptoms before implantation. Surely your body is not yet pregnant. The zygote is just floating around your body and I can't see how it can have any influence on it. Surely this is why you cannot get a positive pregnancy test until after implantation.
I know that some women say that they have symptoms but correlation is not proof of causation.

Anyway, as I said I have never been pregnant so I just speak from logic not experience.

I've got a positive OPK today so I'm off to think of swinging rubber chickens.

CaveMum I think the 'early pregnancy factor' has already been mentioned on this thread. That seems to be released or triggered by the fertilised egg before it implants and may be responsible for very early symptoms in those (admittedly few) women who experience them. I looked into all this because I was very obviously sick well before implantation in all three pregnancies. This surprised me very much as I was well informed about the chemistry of implantation and assumed this was impossible but found papers on this 'early pregnancy factor' which seemed to offer an explanation. Wiki link here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_pregnancy_factor

I think it is not coincidental that I went on to develop very severe hyperemesis very early on in pregnancy (hospitalised in fifth week). Probably I am over sensitive to these things in general (and my HCG levels were also unusually high). Of course I am not for a minute suggesting that most women have detectable symptoms at that very early stage but I don't think it is unscientific to acknowledge that some may do so.

Good post kalidasa.

Pipbin, I think longtall's point was exactly that too - correlation (between hcg levels & morning sickness) is not proof of causation. Conception is still a mystery in many ways and I don't think we should assume we can know everything about how it works in every woman's body. It's this attitude of "oh these silly emotional women don't know their own bodies & are just getting over-excited and imagining things" that I find a wee bit insulting.

I'm currently down-regging in prep for my first frozen embryo transfer cycle ('fresh' IVF cycle in April was cancelled due to severe OHSS which blew me up like a blimp and put me in hospital). I have a scan on Friday to see how I'm getting on and am tempted to take a rubber chicken along to wave for good luck
Oh, the stuff I tried which made bog-all difference was:

• Chinese herbs
• Agnus castus
• Vitamin B supplementation
• Vitamin D supplementation
• Conceive plus lube
• Legs in air

I'm using Conceive Plus lube but only because I tend to be a bit, er, "dry". I'd rather use lubrication that I know is sperm friendly than a regular one which might have spermicidal tendencies.

Now I'm like an 'otters pocket' Cave but I've taken to using conceive plus just for good measure.

Right, must think of rubber chickens.

Well so much for everything I have said on this thread. I take it all back.

I honestly don't know what is going on. I already have three children and knew I was pregnant again from about a week ago. I've had changes in my breasts, have been feeling sick (especially yesterday - had to leave a work meeting the nausea was so severe), have had period like pains from last Friday, coupled with an intense feeling of an imminent period but with no bleeding. These signs only ever mean one thing for me.

I have even told someone that I was pregnant again because I knew I was - didn't need to do a test as far as I was concerned.

I haven't been TTC, in fact was feeling incredibly ambivalent about being pregnant - very worried about how I might cope with a fourth. So it's not like I was desperately trying to convince myself of the symptoms.

But yesterday I did a test and it was negative. I can't believe it. I thought it was just a formality. I just kept staring at the test thinking, 'but I am, I know I am.'

But I can't be. Yesterday was (I believe although I could be wrong by a day or so) 14 DPO and the day my period was due. I used a First Response test that are supposed to be 60 percent accurate from six days before your period is due. And nothing. Not even the faintest of lines.

Honestly, I am so confused. And a bit bloody embarrassed as well. What on earth am I going to tell the person I told I was pregnant??!

I think if AF hasn't arrived yet, I'd retest in a couple of days. Did you use FMU? If it turns out you're not pregnant just tell the person it was a false alarm!

Gosh Fuckitthatlldo that's a bit disconcerting. Did you use FMU? If you are confident the result is accurate, I hope that you are OK with it: sounds like you not being pregnant would be fine, given the circumstances you mention.

Anyway, you are right - it is a bit of a case in point. I don't for a moment suppose you imagined the symptoms, but if the test result is right, I guess they were caused by something else? I guess keep an eye out for AF and see what happens. Could it have been a CP?

As for the person you told, I'd give it a few days and then either tell them that you got it wrong or that you had a very early loss, I guess.

Actually Havealittlefaith 's suggestion of lightly saying it was a "false alarm" is rather good I think. Allows you to keep it simple and not go down the road of pretending you actually were pregnant, but it didn't work out, which is perhaps unfair to people who really are in that situation.

Switty, are you going for Round Two?

As a relative newcomer, I don't think I can add anything especially helpful (I now know quite a lot about symptoms of not being pregnant but I think that stuff's pretty common knowledge on here!).

I am however whiling away the tww (which my obsessive tendencies have turned into a 3ww) by researching rubber chickens for next month and I think that this might be the one: Egglayingrubberchicken

Fuckitthatlldo - I wonder if you're actually proving everybody right though?

• We kind of all agreed that an egg doesn't implant before 14DPO so up until that point you can't actually 'be pregnant'. So any symptoms you experience are not actually pregnancy symptoms.

• Other posters point out that they have definitely felt symptoms before 14DPO such that they 'knew' each time they were pregnant. We agreed that they couldn't be 'pregnancy' symptoms - as per above - but perhaps it could be 'early pregnancy factor' - i.e. symptoms related to a fertilised egg prior to implantation.

• There are many factors associated with infertility. In some people fertility arises due to failure to fertilise an egg and in others it arises due to a failure to implant a fertilised egg. Perhaps you - and the others who posted about their early symptoms - don't often fertilise an egg, but when you do, it usually implants resulting in a pregnancy. Which is why you thought you were pregnant this time round although - for some reason - implantation didn't occur (or hasn't yet.....)

• For those for whom infertility results from a failure to implant, they may feel the same symptoms relating to a successfully fertilised egg every month but it doesn't actually implant, so there's no pregnancy. Therefore their symptoms are not ascribed to pregnancy, as they would have been if the implantation had been successful.

• Some people don't feel any symptoms at all as a result of getting a fertilised egg, so don't know until they get a BFP whether they're pregnant or not.

I'm putting it altogether in my mind as I type, so feel free to point out any inconsistencies in my theory. But it possibly provides an explanation for the varying experiences on this board?

Akshully the egg starts implanting about 6 ish days post ovulation, this is why first response can give you a bfp at 9dpo. Before implantation takes place it must surely be impossible to have any pg symptoms as your body and the fertilised egg have not yet joined forces.

Read the article on Early Pregnancy Factor properly now. It says that implantation occurs anywhere from 6 to 10 days after ovulation. Which - allowing for a few days to enable the HCG to build up - explains why some pregnancies can be detected earlier than others. Either from symptoms or from HPTs. Most pregnancies can be detected at 14DPO, but a few could be detectable from as early as 9DPO. Which also explains why some people get early symptoms and others don't.

"I don't really appreciate being belittled for defending a woman's right to have whatever symptoms she has at whatever point she happens to have them."

Am I the only person who thought of reading that? (safe link!)

Nop, me too!

Where's the foetus going to gestate? Are you going to keep it in a box?

NOPE not nop.

Everyone is really over analysing this. some women experience symptoms before a positive test and other, the majority, don't. Science speaks tor the rage proportion of women when it says you can't detect any ymotons until implanting, but it's not exhaustive of everyone's experience.

Really I think it's narrow minded to say that NO women at all whatsoever experience very early pg symptoms before a pos test. Clearly it is a small percentage but some, including myself, do/did.