My brain is bleeding, too

So: Dr. Data's assistant told me, when I called a few months ago, that they wanted "two normal cycles, after you stop nursing," before anything got underway.

My first cycle entirely post-nursing: 24 days.

Let me repeat that, louder: 24 DAYS.

Now, I was on the short side before. 26 was normal, back in the day, which was a while ago. And the two cycles while I was still nursing were both 26 days. But!

First of all, is it gonna be that often for the rest of my "fertile" years? Every three-and-a-half weeks?! Crap!

Second of all, wait, I am going to be trying to actually be fertile again, trying very expensively, and I really don't need any scary potentially perimenopausal symptoms like this going on now, okay?

I have a hard time voluntarily collecting quantitative data that might burst bubbles of denial. (For example, I haven't weighed myself since about March 2006.) Yet I'm going to have to start doing OPK's again^*. Before my short cycles were all about an abbreviated luteal phase; I clung to my late ovulations as a sign that I wasn't yet out of the game. I don't want to find out otherwise.

Not to mention that I've never heard an honest day 3 FSH number. The local clinic didn't do them; Cornell gave me a number on some funny scale that they said was good enough, and which I promptly forgot. The do-it-yourself "am I in menopause?" test kits at the drugstore are much scarier than the Target maternity section ever was (and is becoming again).

^* Why? Because they'll need to know when I ovulate in order to schedule the co-culture biopsy, and I am hoping to get that done fairly soon.

Comments

[Elizabeth]

I think it's got something to do with exposure to the clinic - it gives you perimenopausal symptoms all by itself. Every nonmedicated cycle I've had since I darkened the RE's door has been short.

Do you do BBT, or just OPKs? Another thing that's happened since I started at the clinic is that I ovulate in response to an LH surge that is not big enough for a positive readout on the OPK. But my temperature rise is still pretty clear.

Good luck!

[Jody]

Ah, the JOYS of plunging back into this whole thing.

I have no idea about the perimenopausal thing but I'd go with occams razor and assume it's just post-weaning funkiness, combined with past history, myself.

No need to bleed your brain borrowing trouble, right?

Right?!

Good luck. I so want this to work for you.

[luolin]

Good luck with Cornell.

In my 20s, my cycle was 25 days, like clockwork (until antidepressants made it go all irregular). It was discouraging to think of all the extra cycles I was having over the long term. I wasn't trying to breed then, though, so I never checked ovulation.