Just off the pill and tracking ovulation

[Hayley94]

Hi,

I have just come off the pill and started tracking my ovulation straight away to see where I am and what my body is doing.

I haven't had a withdrawal bleed just yet. Is it worth my carrying on tracking ovulation or am I wasting my time? X

I would say it's a little early. It would be quite unusual to ovulate within a week of your period starting.

I understand you want to get cracking but it could be sensible to just have a month of seeing how many days your natural cycle is and track signs such as EWCM. You can then have a rough idea of when you ovulate and when your period usually starts.

I would probably wait a little. After I stopped the pill I didn't ovulate for 6 weeks, for some people it's longer.

I’d keep going as you have nothing to lose. I tracked mine from my pill withdrawal bleed. I was able to see when I was due to ovulate and timed sex as a result, and conceived within the first month of trying.

Wouldn’t count on using it as data to track your cycle long term as this month may not be representative of coming months if it takes a while to regulate your cycle, but you can keep the data and you’ll see as months progress what your natural cycle settles into. But good luck for this month! It’s actually useful to use OPKs straight after finishing the pill as even if your cycle isn’t regular you can see when you’re about to ovulate and TTC right away instead of wasting a month. Whereas if your cycle isn’t regular yet and you just go by the typical ‘two weeks after cycle day one’ you may miss whenever ovulation happens.

Wouldn’t stick the OPKs down on paper though as they change colour over time so they’re not accurate to look back on days and weeks after you assessed them. I’d take a photo on your phone at the time you analyse them and go by that rather than a sheet of paper with the actual stick on that might change colour over time.