But, the first doctor I saw just wasn’t helpful. She kept saying “it just takes time for some people” and to “just relax and not think about it”. She didn’t seem to understand my concern that sometimes my cycles were as short as 26 days and others as long as 65- that couldn’t be right!
That’s when I was recommended by a friend a fantastic book “Taking charge of your fertility” by Toni Weschler www.tcoyf.com .
I found a copy on ebay and found it really empowering to understand that your body is actually giving you signs when you are fertile. I started the whole palaver of charting my temperatures and learnt that, to my surprise, my body gears up for ovulation at pretty much the same time every month around day 20. However, when I failed to ovulate at that time I could always relate it to something stressful that was going on over those crucial few days. All was not lost on those cycles as my body would always have a second attempt a few weeks later around day 40. This was a revelation for me and completely explained why I had irregular cycles – stress!!
Anyway, I digress from talking about doctors. After a few more trips to the same doctor over the months she was still adamant that it wasn’t an issue. I had given up on my doctor as I felt I was just wasting her time. It was only when my hubby volunteered to go and get himself checked that his doctors asked why hadn’t I gone along too as she should be running some standard tests on me! So off I went and the tests included the day 21 progesterone tests. This tests measure progesterone to see if you are ovulating. It is based on the assumption that you have a 28 day cycle, that you ovulate on day 14, and therefore your progesterone peaks at day 21. That’s all fine and dandy but I knew I ovulate around day 20 (if im lucky) so to test on day 21 is a waste of time. She wouldn’t listen and told me to forget about ovulation; the only way to tell I ovulated was when I got my period which would mean I ovulated 14 days earlier. I had also already shown her on my charts that I had never gone longer than 12 days after ovulation as I was concerned that may have been an issue. I couldn’t understand why she was ignoring all the information I collected over the last year!!!!
We argued and I gave in and tested on day 21. For the first time in my LIFE, I had a 28 day cycle and ovulated on day 16. How do these things happen!
Needless to say, this just added to my frustration with GPs who want you to fit nicely into a box to make their life easier.
Anyway, I digress from talking about doctors. After a few more trips to the same doctor over the months she was still adamant that it wasn’t an issue. I had given up on my doctor as I felt I was just wasting her time. It was only when my hubby volunteered to go and get himself checked that his doctors asked why hadn’t I gone along too as she should be running some standard tests on me! So off I went and the tests included the day 21 progesterone tests. This tests measure progesterone to see if you are ovulating. It is based on the assumption that you have a 28 day cycle, that you ovulate on day 14, and therefore your progesterone peaks at day 21. That’s all fine and dandy but I knew I ovulate around day 20 (if im lucky) so to test on day 21 is a waste of time. She wouldn’t listen and told me to forget about ovulation; the only way to tell I ovulated was when I got my period which would mean I ovulated 14 days earlier. I had also already shown her on my charts that I had never gone longer than 12 days after ovulation as I was concerned that may have been an issue. I couldn’t understand why she was ignoring all the information I collected over the last year!!!!
We argued and I gave in and tested on day 21. For the first time in my LIFE, I had a 28 day cycle and ovulated on day 16. How do these things happen!
Needless to say, this just added to my frustration with GPs who want you to fit nicely into a box to make their life easier.
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