Babies on the Brain
maddaddam
member
BCP - How many times have you ovulated?
maddaddam
member
I've been tossing around the idea of going off of birth control early for a while now. I can't decide if the stress of having limited control over the timing of a potential pregnancy is worth it or not.
There's already a thread about that, though, and what I'm curious to find out is how many times you guys have actually ovulated. I know it may be a rough number for some/most people.
I'm especially interested because I went on the pill immediately after having my first period and have been on some type of hormonal birth control ever since, so presumably I have only ovulated once ever. I have zero idea of what my "normal" cycle looks like so I have no real data to guess whether or not going off of the pill early will be useful. Anyone else been in this sort of boat?
There's already a thread about that, though, and what I'm curious to find out is how many times you guys have actually ovulated. I know it may be a rough number for some/most people.
I'm especially interested because I went on the pill immediately after having my first period and have been on some type of hormonal birth control ever since, so presumably I have only ovulated once ever. I have zero idea of what my "normal" cycle looks like so I have no real data to guess whether or not going off of the pill early will be useful. Anyone else been in this sort of boat?
Re: BCP - How many times have you ovulated?
1.) As a teen, my pre-BC periods were painful enough to keep me home from school or work at least on the first day, and I wanted to limit the # of times I have to deal with this again (hoping it's totally different this time around though!)
2.) We would be trying to avoid until due dates were solidly into May 2017, at least 2-3 weeks after my graduation to minimize the chances of me having a baby while still in grad school.
Because there is no changing my grad date, there was no changing our TTC date. I also am fairly unfamiliar with my cycles and haven't ovulated since I was a teenager.
Our first month off I don't think I'm going to do anything extra like temping, charting, OPKs. We have a vacation planned that month, which is my break between summer & fall semester, and I just want to relax.
If it weren't for my graduation date, I'd have gone off BC sooner and not cared if I happened to get pregnant. Without a firm date like that we never would have set a firm date to TTC and probably would have had the typical "maybe I should stop my BC this month?" less planned type of experience. My SIL used condoms for more than a year before TTC because she felt like HBC exacerbated her anxiety & depression. It sounds like your reasons are primarily to learn your cycle... So it just depends on your comfort level and your partners comfort level with getting pregnant early or other methods of TTA. It's hard to predict who will bounce back to their normal cycles quickly and who won't, but most research shows no difference in pregnancy rates after a year of trying between women who went off the pill and women who weren't using HBC.
Met 4/2010+Married 8/2014
TTC #1 August 2016. BFP 10/2016= DD Born 6.23.17
@aboxofchocolates I agree that I really want to be able to get a feel for my cycles, but I am the primary breadwinner in our house and my job is very demanding, so the idea of leaving anything up to chance is stressful enough to give me pause at the moment. We also (maybe TMI) are pretty frequent sex-havers, so if we turn out to be relatively fertile the timing will probably be frequent enough that it could definitely happen early. Then again, who knows? My cycles could be wonky AF and I may end up spending a year just trying to figure out what's going on. I guess I'm trying to decide whether it would be more stressful to let the possibility of early pregnancy exist, or to wait and be annoyed if it doesn't happen when we are ready for it. (Insert control freak comment here.)
@PolarBear517 On the upside, I hear the process of having a kid can alleviate some of the common nasty side effects you have had with your period in the past! I mean, it can go the other way, too, but I'm hoping for the best.
Anyway, I really appreciate the input from both of you. I think my biggest sticking point is that I have never been one to just let something happen and see how it goes, which seems to be the advice I get from my friends and family. Hubs is way ready whenever, so he would say to just go for it, but I'm totally freaked out. It's such a big change!