Talk to me about pregnancy testing??

[MeadowHay]

Hello, I'm a total novice, just started ttc. I only came off depo-provera mid December and I know that it may well be many months before I'm even ovulating again. I had a "period" the last week of my depo, as usual. I have no idea what my cycle is like without birth control to be honest, it was a varied mess and was the initial reason I went on the pill in the first place (about 5yrs ago). If I'm going to bleed every 28 days or so from that last bleed, there would be a bleed due at the beginning of next week, again I'm not holding my breath though...

What shall I do about testing? Because I know really you should test after your period is due but I have no idea when that would be for me! I don't know if I have ovulated or not or if it will take months before I will...I know some people do manage to conceive quickly after coming off depo-provera though so I'm just kinda hoping I get lucky... I don't want to get obsessed and test all the type especially considering I know really this could take quite a long time, but at the same time I don't really want to potentially not know I'm pregnant until months later because that would mean sort of assuming I am as far as medication is concerned and that would be a pain for me because of problems with pain and migraines. Any advice?

Have a look at fertility friends website. You can track your cycle and it will show you how to tell when you are most fertile. Normally you expect your period 14 days after you're most fertile (though that varies), so you can test then. There's no harm testing 28 days after your last bleed, you might get lucky! Get some cheap tests on Amazon.

If you don't have a regular cycle then unfortunately (as you know) it's difficult to predict when you're most fertile based on your dates, and therefore hard to know when you should test.

If you want to take a fairly relaxed approach to TTC, then in your situation I'd stock up on cheap pregnancy tests as bonzo suggests (you can get them at the pound shop as well if you have one nearby) and do one every 2/3 weeks.

If you're happy to be a bit more proactive then you can track when you ovulate. As a general rule the number of days between ovulation and getting your period is always pretty much the same (14 days on average, but it varies from person to person) no matter how irregular your cycles are. It's the time between your period and ovulation which can change from one cycle to the next, if you have irregular cycles.

The book "Taking Charge of your Fertility" is very good for explaining how to tell when you're ovulating. To echo bonzo again, the fertility friend website is also good (and free). It's up to you how far you want to take it - temping, ovulation predictor kits and monitoring cervical position and cervical mucus (lovely!) are some of the methods you can use to pinpoint ovulation. Once you've worked out when you ovulated, you know you should expect either a positive pregnancy test or your period around 14 days later.

Hope that helps - good luck!

If I'm just going to test randomly every few weeks or so, is it worth shelling out for those tests that predict when it was that you conceived or is that pointless?

Thanks for the help. I don't think I want to do all the stuff you mentioned (temping and the like), but I do think keeping some kind of calendar to track dates of bleeds and things would be useful.

If it were me I probably wouldn't bother just because they're so expensive! But I think some women test with a cheaper pregnancy test first and then use one of those if they get a positive with the cheaper test.

In my area if you go to the GP after you get a positive pregnancy test and tell them you are unsure when you conceived due to very irregular cycles, you are offered an early dating scan in addition to the usual 12 and 20 week scans.

By the way, you can use the fertility friend website (and various others, like ovia) to keep track of bleeds even if you don't bother with the rest of the charting stuff.

I am currently living in France so I'm not sure whether they would offer that service or not. That's a good idea though about only doing a more expensive one after a cheapo one! Think I will get myself a few cheap ones tomorrow then.

Thanks for all your help, I've registered for an account on that website too. :)

You can order cheapie tests from amazon. I just bought 20 for about £5. If I were you I'd test every other week on a cheapie test.