People falling pregnant first month!?

[NervyBee]

I feel like this is more common than we're led to believe

Among my friends, all late 20s early 30s, about 9 of them conceived first month and 3 others month 2 after saying they think they hadn't time their ovulation dates right. So, accounting for the ovulation dating mistake, it's really still the first 'proper' try.

My best friend also just fell pregnant first month. She feels unprepared, said she was expecting it to take 6 months or so, as that's what lots of relatives told her, so she started trying earlier to account for that.

It can be deflating if you're the only one that's been trying for a while!

Ds1 was a surprised as i was on the pill but had been unwell. Ds2 I had my coil taken out, was told it could take a year to conceive but was back at the doctors 6 weeks later 5 weeks pregnant. That’s was a shock as we hadn’t expected it so fast.

In my experience, people rewrite history. I've had friends crying that it's taking too long to conceive. Fast forward to them having a baby and then they'll laughingly say "oh, my partner just has to look at me, and I'm pregnant".

Interesting - I haven't mis remember but pill and bf probably played a role - I suspect pill delayed and was surprised me still bf hadn't delayed conception with later pg.

I have noticed couple who announce TTC do seem to take much longer - I started to assumed it was all the additional stress from people constantly asking if they were pg yet.

I was 27 and 29 and conceived first month each time.

I remember getting caught up over the statistic that most couples will conceive within 2 years. It is true, I've naturally conceived twice within the last two years, neither of them made it to term. If the statistic was "Most couples who have unprotected sex every month for two years will conceive AND carry to term", then it can be said that it's a load of baloney.

I conceived the first month of trying (the first month from stopping the pill). It did end up being a missed miscarriage. Then once that was all resolved it was the third month when I conceived again and that was a successful pregnancy. I say third month and we did dtd that first month after the surgery but my ovulation signs and my period were both very different to normal.

That first time being pregnant I didn’t really track it, I just looked for natural signs of ovulation and took the relaxed approach thinking it could take a while. The second time the second and third month after the miscarriage/surgery I used ovulation tests, partly to make sure I was still ovulating after the worrying signs (no cm, incredibly light periods). However it was also nice to know we had dtd before ovulation occurred.

I do have friends who took 8 months and 4.5 years to conceive though. So I do realise how lucky we are for the conceiving part. Although going through a long winded miscarriage and the worry of it happening again wasn’t nice.

Really interesting thread. I'm in the pregnant first try bucket (first pregnancy, albeit early days) and genuinely wasn't anticipating this at all, was very anxious that it would take a year, etc. Lovely problems to have but it has caused a bit of logistical difficulty due to the unexpectedness.

@NervyBee I tend to agree, I think the messaging of "it's normal to take a year" is maybe not up-to-date, especially these days when many women track ovulation, do SMEP etc vs just randomly having sex a few times a month. I think there's something to the "bimodal distribution" thing - maybe the guidelines on when you can access fertility scans etc should be decreased.

Some maths. If you have a 20% chance of conceiving every month, that means 80% chance of NOT conceiving. So your chance of NOT conceiving after 2 months is 80% x 80% (not conceiving in month 1 AND not conceiving in month 2), after 3 months is 80% x 80% x 80%, etc.

So

After 3mo, ~50% of couples would be pregnant
After 6mo, ~75%
After 9mo, ~87%
After 12mo, ~93%

Note that it's not linear. So if you had 12 friends who all started trying on 1 Jan, the default tendency is to expect that 1 falls pregnant each month, i.e. 3 by the end of March, 6 by Jun, etc. But actually, you would expect 6 (50%) to be pregnant by March, 9 (75%) by Jun, etc.

This adds up to quite a lot of extra women falling pregnant "unexpectedly soon" :)

We were told we would definitely struggle due to my PCOS and very long cycles and went home deflated from a consultant appointment. Stopped using contraception as thought it was pointless anyway, but sure enough fell pregnant within a month! Just goes to show, there is so much we don't understand about fertility and there is definitely a randomness to it all...

I always did- ovulation day without fail, but had 5 miscarriage. Getting one to stick was the tricky part for me. My daughter was from once on ovulation day as well.