No period/ovulation/cycle before TTC

[Ente]

Sorry if I've put this under the wrong topic because not TTC yet, I'm not really sure where it should go.

My husband and I are planning to start trying for a baby in early 2024, so I stopped taking the pill in December 2022 to give my body a year to normalise. However, it seems to be doing the opposite. At the start I had a few normal periods, maybe a little bit on the light side and suspiciously painless, about 26 days apart. After a few months, I noticed them getting lighter and the cycles getting shorter and got a bit worried. I also have hypothyroidism, and after a blood test they lowered my dose of levothyroxine in May. The next cycle was a bit longer (31 days), but the bleeding was still getting lighter, there were two more periods after that which were just spotting. The last one was really just a single drop, and that was on the 8th of August.

Since then, I have started tracking my basal body temperature to find out what is going on, but I am even more confused than before. My temperature just randomly jumps around anywhere between 35.9 and 36.4. About a week ago I noticed an increase in cervical mucus, followed by a temperature jump from 36.10 to 36.49. I thought it might be ovulation, the last two days were still over 36.4, but today I'm back at 36.10. I would blame the thermometer, but I could feel my face and arms being cold, I knew it would be low before even measuring.

So it looks like I am not ovulating or having any sort of cycle, it's all just a mess.

Thyroid levels are normal now. I managed to get a phone appointment with the GP last week, and they said I should book another blood test and gave me a referral for some scans, but it will probably be a few months until I can get an appointment for those.

Early 2024 is not that far away now, so I am really starting to panic. Does anyone have any idea what I could do? Either to help my body get back to normal (although that is probably difficult not knowing what is wrong with it), speed up the process of finding out what is going on (without spending ridiculous amounts of money), or even just to stop worrying about it so much. At the moment I can't even concentrate on work or enjoy doing anything like I normally would. The stress and hormone chaos are probably making each other worse, so I'm stuck in a bit of a downward spirale.

Sorry to hear about this OP! I know what you mean, I've been there - came off the pill a bit early to give time for things to settle and in my case period never arrived. Like never.

There are a few things you can do to maybe get things moving, although unfortuantely a lot of them do require a bit of money:

• Get your GP to run blood tests now. They should look at your hormones; progesterone, estrogen, testosterone, LH, ideally also AMH. Make sure you make a note of when in your cycle you are having these tset so you can check the results for where they 'should be' for that stage of your cycle
• Also get your doctor to check your vit D level if they haven't already. Low levels can hinder normal periods
• If your results even hint at PCOS try starting on myo-inisitol from fertility family, it's really good at regulating cycles and hormones etc for pcos women. Give it a go for 3-6 months to see if it'll work for you
• Buy some OPKs to check if you are getting an LH peak, use the premom app to track these and make sure you are testing twice a day towards the middle of your cycle so you catch your peak if there is one
• If you are getting positive OPKs then that's fabulous, you can confirm ovulation at home by ordering a 21 day progesterone test from medichecks online, do it 7 days after a positive opk to check your progesterone is high enough

Thanks for your reply! I think just hearing that there are other people with similar experiences really helped, I have been a lot more positive today.

How do I know wher my hormones should be if I don't really have a cycle? My blood test is booked for the 4th of October, which would be day 58 assuming I'm not getting a period before that and I have never had a cycle this long before, so I have no idea.

I have started taking some multivitamins which include vitamin D, so that should be okay.

have thought about PCOS before because that was the first thing that came up when I looked up missing periods, anovulation and fluctuating body temperatures. I'm not sure if I fit the other symptoms. I think I am hairier than most women, I've had a lot of hair on my arms even as a child, but it's difficult to tell because it's all blond. I had an average amount of acne during puberty, which stopped when I started taking the pill and I have been getting occasional spots since, with no change after coming off the pill. I've always been a healthy weight without making that much effort. I don't own scales so I don't weigh myself often, but I did in July and noticed I had put on about 2.5kg/5lbs since February, so I started counting calories and after 6 weeks I was slightly under my previous weight. I have read somewhere that even those with PCOS with a healthy weight tend to store fat around the waist, but all my weight is in my legs and bum with hardly any belly fat. I can't find information anywhere about myo-inositol having negative effects on people without PCOS, so I will probably try that if the blood test look like it's a possibility.

OPKs sound like a good idea if I had any idea where the middle of my cycle was. Maybe I'll just get some really cheap ones and do one every day until something happens or I get fed up😅

I honestly feel like I could be basically taking to myself from a year ago 🤣 you sound just like me (kinda hairy arms but it's blonde, not much with the teen acne, carrying weight on your bottom half) - I ended up being diagnosed with PCOS and couldn't really believe it. I think what I actually had was post pill syndrome although the NHS don't really recognise it as a thing. My hormone levels were only slightly off but AMH was sky high, and very cystic ovaries.

As you don't know where you are in your cycle, I'd recommend buying easy@home ones from Amazon - you can get them in boxes of 100 which you might find useful if like me you have to do a loooot of testing.

There is hope - be it PCOS, post pill syndrome or something else if things don't level out naturally for you clomid or leteozole seem to get very good results for anovulation.