Spotting before AF - when do you start counting CD1

[lookatthemoon]

Hi ladies, for the past couple of cycles, I have been spotting for a couple of days before AF actually starts. Cycle also seems to be getting shorter. If you also spot, when do you start counting CD1?

Am stressing as we are TTC and DH is away. If this is CD1, then DH won't be back until CD15 and I usually get positive OPK on CD14!

Apparently you are supposed to start counting from first day of full flow. Also if you get a positive opk you will ovulate 12-36 hours later and egg will live for another 12-24 hours after that so just dtd as soon as he walks through the door!!

In Taking Charge of Your Fertility, it says that you should consider CD1 as the first day of a 'true red menstrual flow'.

This would occasionally happen to me when I had the copper coil (hoping it won't anymore now that it's out!). It could be hard to tell at the time of the spotting whether I was actually getting my period or not. As above, if there was a significant amount of bleeding, or it was bright red, I would usually know it was CD1. If I wasn't sure, I would wait until I'd had three continuous days of bleeding before I classed it as AF. I used to think I sometimes had 26 day cycles (as opposed to my usual 28), with random breaks from the bleeding in the middle of my period! Eventually twigged that it was in fact always 28 days, it was just that I occasionally spotted a couple of days before.

Wow, I was just going to ask the same question. Thanks 😄

Hi lookatthemoon

I actuallly googled this yesterday as I'm in the same boat.

I came off the pill in August after approx 10 years and since then I've had no period! So I went to the docs last Monday to see what's up. Coincidentally I then had brown spotting Monday - Fri and thought oh good - my periods are coming back and I'll be able to predict when I'm ovulating!! I expected then to have a full period but it has just stopped. I've taken pregnancy and ovulation tests and both negative...

Any words of wisdom for me?

P

Thanks everyone! Just brown spotting today (tmi) so hopefully cd1 doesn't happen for another couple of days! Hopefully my smiley face is still 15 days away!!

No advice for you popcorn but hoping everything settles soon for you!