Cycle after finishing the pill

[Gego93]

I stopped the Pill in March and have had 2 normal periods in April and May, cycle has been 30&31 days however I’m currently day 36. I’ve never normally had typical period symptoms but have suffered with them for the last 10 days. We are TTC but the 2 pregnancies tests I’ve taken are both negative.

I know it’s fairly common for cycles to be all over the place when stopping the pill but just wondering how I go about tracking my cycle and when is best to TTC this month? Thinking of just taking ovulation tests every day to try and figure it out but any advice would be great! Thanks 😊

I think doing ovulation tests each day is a good idea, get a pack of the cheap ones! That way you'll have a clearer picture of your cycle. Temping is also fab to confirm ovulation and get a great idea of how long your follicular and luteal phases are. Inputting all that info into something like Fertility Friend would be useful.

When I came off the pill I had a couple of shorter cycles and then it settled down into slightly longer ones, so maybe that's what's happening? I was on it for 17 years, I've no idea what my cycles were like before going on it 😅

Definitely get some cheap ovulation tests (I used premom which were cheap, easy and good) and run with them for 1-2 cycles. Usually a cycle is split 14-14 days between pre ovulation (follicular) and post ovulation (luteal) timing, but when I did mine I discovered I was 20-10, so if I hadn't done this I wouldn't have a clue when to correctly time DTD. I am going by memory here, but I think it was that the follicular can change quite easily cycle to cycle, if you are sick, stressed, have other factors etc. The luteal generally will not change by more than 1 day in length, so once you have ovulated, you should more or less know when your cycle ends if you track using the sticks. For the first 1-2 cycles it is recommended that you take 1 ovulation test a day, until your metrics start to peak (2nd line gets darker), then 2 a day until your peak and it drops again. This is as some people peak over 2-3 days, others get a "high" that will last half a day, so it is easy to miss. If nothing else, taking them is kind of interesting, just learning what our bodies are really doing etc. I enjoyed the experience of finding out what was going on! Good luck!

Great thanks so much both!! I find it all so baffling and having taken the pill for so long this is definitely opening my eyes!
I’ve got some of the Premom ones so will start doing them everyday to track what’s going on 😊😊

@Gego93 when the opk start to get darker definitely test more than once a day. According to the booklet that came with my tests 48% of women peak very quickly. I’m one of those. This morning my result was “low” and at 5pm it was “high” but the line is darker than the control line so I think when I test again in the morning the latest one here will be my peak (the app doesn’t change result to peak until you upload a test with a lower result to make sure it’s the peak). I have put a picture of mine below so you can see how quickly mine rises.