How to count the days in your cycle???
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How to count the days in your cycle???
| Tue, 03-30-2004 - 1:12am |
Hi, I was hoping someone could help me out. I am on birth control pills (Desogen). I originally got on them for irregular periods. And I have been very good about taking them for 8 months...always the same time every morning and I never forget. Even though I wasn't having sex so it wasn't really an issue of making sure it would work properly. But now me and this guy have been fooling around, and while we don't actually have intercourse, there are a few things we do where pre-cum (and possible someday cum) may be near my vagina (outside). Anyway, my biggest nightmare is getting pregnant (I'm a college student), so I was hoping someone could tell me how to count the 28 day menstrual cycle to find out when I WOULD be ovulating IF I weren't on birth control (I know I'm not supposed to at all being on BC). Like I said its my worst nightmare so I kind of want to learn to count it and be extra safe and not fool around on those days. Any info anyone can give me would be really appreciated.
Thanks,
Angel

No matter what the length of your cycle, you should count back 14 days from when your period starts and that would be the day you ovulated(give or take a day or two Im sure). Yes, that is an after-the-fact thing. On the pill you "shouldnt" ovulate. Many posters here, will take their temp(first thing in the morning) for a cycle or two to see if they are ovulating. If you are, your temp will suddenly rise right after ovulation. If not, you will have a steady temp during that cycle. You seem to take your pills perfectly so you should be fine.
Josie
The book I have heard reccomended on this board (though I haven't read it) is "Taking Charge of your Fertility", by Tony Wechsler (sp?). Apparently it includes a lot of good information about tracking your fertility, both for trying to conceive and trying to avoid.
And no, when you are taking hormonal contraceptives, you shouldn't be ovulating, so there should be no *more risky* time in your cycle.
You should not be ovulating while on the pill... however, if you were NOT on the pill, it is true that women tend to ovulate at different times - all depends on the woman and her cycle.
ALSO, keep in mind that it has been shown that some women ovulate more than once a month.
Again, this should not be a concern for you as you are on the pill and it seems that you even take it about the same time every day. Don't sweat it! :-)
Just to clarify....
They say this has actual back up for those women carrying fraternal twins who are weeks apart in development. Here, have a look. Check for more on google too. :-)
Women may ovulate more than once a month, study says
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Last Updated: 2003-07-08 17:00:20 -0400 (Reuters Health)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - No wonder the rhythm method does not work so well for birth control -- scientists in Canada said on Tuesday they had found women sometimes ovulate several times in a single month.
Their finding, if verified, would overturn the traditional wisdom that women produce an egg cell once a month. It would also help explain why "natural" methods of birth control, based on the idea that ovulation can be predicted, often fail.
"We are literally going to have to re-write medical textbooks," said Dr. Roger Pierson, director of the Reproductive Biology Research Unit at the University of Saskatchewan, who led the study.
"It's exactly why the rhythm method doesn't work."
Scientists have long known that humans have unique cycles of ovulation. Many animals come into heat -- a time when all the males around know through smells and visual signals that a female is ovulating and ready to conceive.
Not so with humans, who have "concealed" ovulation.
Standard medical science says a woman has a cycle running roughly 28 days in which an egg ripens, is released by the follicle, drops into the fallopian tube, and then is either fertilized or shed during menstruation.
Writing in the journal Fertility and Sterility, Pierson and colleagues found this did not always happen.
"We weren't expecting this. We really weren't," Pierson said in a telephone interview.
DAILY ULTRASOUND SCANS
In the study, Pierson, veterinarian Gregg Adams and graduate student Angela Baerwald did daily, high-resolution ultrasound scans on 63 women for a month, which allowed them to see the follicles very clearly.
"We had 63 women with normal menstrual cycles. Of those 63, only 50 had normal ovarian cycles," Pierson said.
Thirteen of the women ovulated multiple times, in various different ways. And of the other 50, 40 percent had up to three waves of activity by the follicles, any one of which could result in the production of an egg.
The women's hormone levels did not match this activity, Pierson said. "Hopefully this will help women explain how they got pregnant when they really didn't want to be pregnant, and it certainly will help us design better fertility therapies."
Apparently, measuring hormones in the blood is not enough to predict what a woman's reproductive system is up to.
"The hormones do what they are going to do and the ovaries just follow their merry path," Pierson said.
"We always thought that menstrual cycles and ovarian cycles were one and the same. It turns out they are just like two political parties -- sometimes they go along hand in hand for the good of the country and sometimes they go along their separate ways."
Pierson's team plans longer-term studies to see if the women's patterns are consistent from month to month.
"We don't know what's causing it -- we don't know if it is the weather or exposure to men or grapefruit juice or what," Pierson said.
The findings, which were first seen in cattle and horses, help explain some things that have puzzled obstetricians, Pierson said.
"It really explains how we get fraternal twins wi
th different conception days," Pierson said. "Clinically, we see this all the time. We see women come in with twins and when we do an ultrasound we see one is at one 10 weeks development and another at seven."
Yep, it’s same article that Judie is talking about. See the discussion from July of 2003:
http://messageboards.ivillage.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=iv-bhcontracept&msg=8991.1&ctx=4096 The reporter got a bit carried away. In the discussion there are links to other versions and rebuttals.
Jill