LH Surge & Pregnancy FAQs

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

Logically, if you’re testing that many times a day you should have caught your surge. However, if your urine was too diluted, it’s still possible you missed it. It’s also possible you haven’t ovulated yet. From your other signs, it sounds like you did ovulate recently. This is where charting your temps is helpful. Charting will confirm when ovulation took place.

Good luck.

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

I have tried the online ovulation predictors for so long that I should have 2 kids by now….what i’m saying is that not every womans body is the same. They say the “Typical” woman ovulates 14 days after her period (That “Typical” woman is on a 28 day cycle). I would suggest using the store ovulation tests. You may need to buy 2 packages the first month to decide when you ovulate. Good Luck!

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

It didn’t work with me, but I ended up pregnant soon after anyways. I also tried the gender prediction test, and it said girl… Guess what… It’s a boy.. Big waste of 30.00.

I’m sure they work on some people though. I hope it works for you. Usually the first 7-14 days after your period is the best time. I know thats a long time to go at it, but there it is.

Good Luck and Congrats if you are. Don’t forget to take the test with your first morning pee. It has the best hormones for prediction.

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

Ovulation tests will show a positive if you are both ovulating and/or pregnant. IIt is becuase the hormones LH and HGC are almost identical…but take a pregnancy test to find out if you are truly pregnant. Your symptoms sound like you may be preggo:) !!!!

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

You have a really long cycle. That would be the right time to start if you consistantly have that long of a cycle. The reason you are supposed to use morning urine is because you need to test after having not gone to the bathroom for at least 4 hours. If you are able to do that during the day then you can test at any time.

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

It is possible to get pregnant if you have sex a few days before or a few days after you ovulate because of the short life cycle of the egg and the longer life cycle of the sperm. Sperm can live 3-5 days so if you have sex in the 5 days before your ovulation then you can get pregnant. An egg lives 1-2 days so you also possibly have 2 more days after ovulation actually occurs. So, you have roughly one week each month that you can pregnant – if you do indeed ovulate, that is – and if your cervical fluid is the fertile type of fluid. Some months you may not release an egg and therefore have 0% chance of getting pregnant even if you have sex every single day.

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

How are you guessing ovulation? Is it only through an ovulation calculator? Those were always wrong for me. It’s critical to be sure of ovulation as that only occurs one day a month and the egg is only viable for 12-24 hours. Sperm can live in your body for 3-5 days so it’s best to start having sex 3-5 days before ovulation and on ovulation day to get your best odds. Those odds each month are 20-25%. I used over the counter ovulation predictor kits and they worked really well in helping me figure out when I ovulated.

Labor and delivery hurts. No one exaggerates it. It’s not pleasant, but worth it.

You can eat seafood as long as it’s cooked but stay away from fish that contain high mercury levels.

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

Hi,
Pl. Do the regular sex during the mid cycle as woman is most fertile during mid cycle. Ovulation generally occurs 14 days before the start of the next period. To successfully conceive, it is best to have intercourse in the fertile window of opportunity starting at about 2-3 days before ovulation. Usually, the fertile period in a woman, with a 28 days cycle, extends from day 11 to day 18. It is important to keep a track of your periods. Mark the calendar on the day you get your period. This is Day One. Count each day until your next period arrives. You may need to do this for three or four months to get an accurate measure of the length and regularity of your cycle.

If your cycles are very regular, you may be able to determine when you ovulate: in the average menstrual cycle, ovulation occurs 14 days before the menstrual period arrives – or on day 14 of a 28-day cycle. So if you subtract 14 days from the length of your cycle, you’ll get an idea of when you ovulate.

Use the Ovulation calculator in the pregnancy section to determine the most likely date of your ovulation.

If your cycles are not very regular, or you’d like a more accurate picture of your ovulation then:

1. Track your temperature: One of the indications that ovulation has occurred is that a woman’s basal body temperature increases slightly during ovulation. You can detect this ‘thermal shift’ by taking your temperature every morning at the same time before you get out of bed. If you chart your temperature each day for a few months, you’ll begin to see a pattern that will help you predict when you are about to ovulate. Most women’s temperature increases about a half a degree 24 to 48 hours after ovulation.

2. Watch for changes in your cervical mucus: This method does not exactly pinpoint but gives you some indication of whether you’re in a fertile period or not. As your body prepares to ovulate, it produces larger quantities of thin, clear cervical mucus, a substance that smoothes the way for the sperm to meet the egg. On your most fertile days, just before ovulation, the mucus will appear clear, stretchy, and slippery. After ovulation, when your fertile days are past, the mucus usually becomes thicker and then gradually dries up.

Tips to help a woman conceive

Being healthy and having regular menstrual cycles increases the chances of conceiving a healthy baby and carrying the baby to full term.
Basic health tips include

Don’t smoke

Avoid alcohol

Reduce coffee consumption

Eat a healthy and nourishing diet

Manage stress levels

Exercise regularly

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

Lack of CM might be an indication that you are not ovulating. If your monthly temps are showing that you are, though, then you might not have to worry. Just keep tracking your temps. The dip today might be the one characteristically seen right before ovulation – but you can’t be sure until you see consistently higher temps over the next few days. My advice for this month would be to have sex daily over the next 3 days, using Preseed and while charting temps. Have you tried ovulation strips? They might also be helpful. The cheapest ones are found on ebay. The single best source for trying to conceive, temp tracking, etc is fertilityfriend.com Definately check it out. Good luck to you.

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

Ovulation tests are accurate…if you use them correctly. The test line MUST be darker than the control line for you to have a true positive…a true positive means that the LH hormone has been detected in ure body and you should ovulate within 24-36 hrs. Ovulation calculators work very well too. But if you are really serious about ttc, you should consider signing up for fertility friend. The site offers a free trial session for a month, but i would pay the small fee to have it so you can use their tools to help you. One thing you need to do is to start charting your temperature. Your basal body temperature is your ‘resting tempature’. Keep a thermometer by your bedside and as soon as you wake up in the morning, take your temp. Dont get up and go to the bathroom. Dont get something to drink or anything else. This will only work if you take your temp as soon as you wake up every morning. The fertility friend site will help you make sense of your tempatures and when you can expect ovulation. Its all about ovulation….timing is the key. You have about a 5-7 day window of fertility.

Don’t give up yet!! You know how people say when you want it really bad it doesn’t happen but then it happens when you least expect it. Charting your tempature is a sure way to see what’s going on in your body. My normal temp before ovulation is 97.6. Right before ovulation your temp. Always dips slightly (mine to about 97.3) and then about 2 days after ovulation, your tempature will rise about .4 of a degree. My temp after ovulation is now about 98.3. When you see the dip and then the rise, it usually means conception is too late at that point. That’s why you want to chart closely to catch the ‘dip’ in a future cycle.

Theres many things to think about also….having sex too often can lower a man’s sperm count. If you reason that you will BD every day for a week before and after a possible ovulation, you will only do more harm than good. The best way to do it is chart for a month or 2 and BD right before you expect the ‘dip’. Then wait a day or 2 and BD again. Then wait another day or 2 and BD again. Keep up with the every 2-3 day deal. That way at least your man’s sperm count can ‘recharge’ before your next attempt.

I know alllll of this sounds too much, but in the past i was really anxious on becoming pregnant and i spent countless hours researching all possibilities. Fertility friend really does help and i know if you start charting your temps, it will eventually happen when you least expect it. TRUST ME. I charted with fertility friend for about 6 months before i became pregnant. I had given up to. I was convinced that something was wrong but then out of the blue…i got the pink line.

Don’t stress about it either. I know thats easier said than done but stress will affect you ttc. You need to stay as relaxed and stress-free as possible, and also start taking prenatals if you havent already.

~~***baby dust to you***~~

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

No. It means that your LH (luteinizing hormone) is surging. Depending on when you catch this hormone surges, it usually means you will ovulate within 12-36 hours, but it does not guarantee that you will. Other things could be going wrong inhibiting ovulation.

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

PCOS sucks! I absolutely hate it!

That said, lots of people conceive with PCOS. Some have been able to get the disease under control enough to do it without fertility drugs, others have turned to the ovarian crack (that’d be me) but lots of us have made it to conception and the vast majority to an actual baybee. I have not made it to baybee-land, yet, but I have more problems than just PCOS.

Here is a PCOS crash course. I hope it is helpful and hopeful… All of these things come with the “if you aren’t already”/”in case you didn’t know” disclaimer:

1) Chart. You need to know if you’re ovulating. With PCOS you can get the LH surge (ie test positive on an ovulation predictor strip), but not ovulate. The best way to determine if you ovulated is your basal body temperature. If it goes up and stays up you O’d (not the fun kind, but the important kind).

2) Insulin is the devil. Especially for you, because PCOS and Insulin Resistance are twin sisters and they hate you. If your insulin resistance is fair to normal, you can control it with diet. Lower carb, no sugar/flour, lots of fruits and veggies. Good book to check out is Fertility Foods by Jeremy Groll. Designed for PCOS.

3) If your insulin resistance is pretty bad and diet isn’t doing the trick, you may need some drugs to help out Metformin/Glucophage is a big helper. If that doesn’t do the trick Actos can be brought to the party.

4) Did I mention charting? You really need to know if you’re ovulating or not. Because if not, you may need some ovarian stimulation ala Clomid. It’s dirt cheap as these things go and is pretty effective with the PCOS set. I personally have gotten pregnant with Clomid.

5) Take your vitamins. Start your prenatals now. They help. And they do wonders for your hair and nails.

6) Exercise. I know it sucks, but it really helps with the insulin resistance. You need 150 minutes of exercise a week, preferably 100 minutes of cardio and 50 of strength training. Muscles are good for fighting insulin resistance. This is the area where I really suck at meeting my goals.

7) If you’re overweight, lose some weight. A loss of just 5% can have a tremendous impact on your insulin resistance.

It really can and does and will happen. You may not need any of the above, you may need all of it or just some of it. But there is hope for you. Get the book, it will help you understand the disease better so you can fight it better.

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

Well there are still a couple of options, you can use non-latex condoms made from polyurethane these aren’t quite as effective as latex but it’s a start. Also why can’t you use hormones? My doctor told me no hormones because i have hypertension so he put me on the Depo shot because it has progesterone in it and doesn’t effect b/p the way estrogen does so if this is your problem you might consider that. We need a little more info about why you cant use hormonal b/c in order to give you a good answer. Also there is a fertility kit you can buy at any wal-greens,rite aide ect.. That is for women with irregular cycles. It comes with 20 ovulation sticks and you simply pee in a cup once a day dip the stick in at the same time everyday and it will tell you when your about to have an LH surge which means your fixing to ovulate and then on those 2 days a month when that’s happening you can avoid sex. The kits run about 17$ for 20 strips so that’s a lil pricey but i have paid up to 30$ a pack for b/c pills when my insurance wasn’t covering them so think about it. But your best bet is to consult with your Ob/Gyn thay can give you the best options since your breast feeding and have so many restrictions..

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

Best proven way to do it is to have 1 IUI per cycle 24 hrs post LH surge or hCG injection. From what I’ve read doing 2 IUIs is not really beneficial. All the baby dust to you.

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

You begin with many follicular (regardless if you are fertility meds or not) each containing an egg and competing for dominating position and hormones. Around cycle day 8, one becomes the dominating follicular and will be the one that ovulates. Most of the other follicular have dies or are too small in size to have a chance to ovulate. These remaining small follicular stay around to support the dominating follie by producing hormones for it and the lining.
An dominating follicular sends signals to the brain (when its around 18-22 mm) to lh surge. The lh surge finishes the egg maturity and causes the follicular sac to burst and the egg released. The follicular sac can measure around 20 to 29 mm at ovulation. Natural cycles (without fertility meds) tend to release eggs at a smaller size (22-24 mm). RE’s try to mimic that with their IVF patients. Clomid causes follicular to grow and release at a larger size (25-29 mm). Follicular grow about 2mm a day. Final size depends on the eggs response to fsh (and other hormones) and it’s rate of growth and development. The egg inside the follicular sac it always the same. It’s the fluid and cells surrounding it that cause the enlarging size of the sac.

Fertility meds work by giving your body the extra fsh it needs to get the other follicular a chance. So instead of just having one dominating and the others die, you get several of them to keep growing into eggs. Human’s have the most wasteful reproductive systems. Baby girls are born with about 1 million eggs, which drops to about 300,000 in adolescence and near zero at menopause. We only ovulate 1 egg a month on average.

The 21 has a good chance. The 18mm might have a chance but the other two are way to small.

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

Hi hun im really sorry to hear what your going through i hear what your saying as i have had a miscarriage before and as time go’s by it does get easier hun it really does but i now them words dont get easier for you now but in time they will as for trying to conceive straight away hun if your ready then go for it they say your much more fertile after a miscarriage because you carry the hormone for some weeks after wards so best thing to do is baby dance at every other day and i wish you all the best hun with hugs and sticky baby dust please keep in touch let me now how you get on xx

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

It sounds like you are pregnant again. Blood tests usually take upwards of a week to come in. The HCG levels are usually highest during the morning portion, so you would want to go for your blood test in the morning time.

You could also test using a home pregnancy test, but if you would want to do this first thing in the morning when your urine is the most concentrated.

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

I know this is not the answer you were looking for but your going to have to wait 9 days and do a test. Even though its a little heavy it still may be implantation.

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

Yes, some women have cramping and spotting with implantation. There’s a good chance that’s what you are experiencing, but you won’t know for sure until you can take a pregnancy test. Good luck!

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

Sounds like you know what you are doing, you more than likely timed things right and that’s good so best of luck and baby dust, just remember to send it back, lol

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

First of all, no online “calculator” can tell you when you ovulate. Some women have 28 day cycles every single month like clockwork, but some of them ovulate on day 8 and some of them ovulate on day 16. Both are normal, but the reality is, every women is different. These calculators are simply a myth.

And many many women ovulate on a different day each cycle, so there is tremendous variation. To learn when YOU ovulate you must chart your fertility signs by taking your basal body temperatue each morning or by using OPK strips or by using the clearblueeasy fertility monitor.

Up to 94 percent of pregnancies occur as the result of intercourse ON THE DAY you ovulate (the day your egg is released) or up to 2 days prior.

To get pregnant, your body must release an egg, which is called ovulation. Sperm must reach this egg while it is still viable, (meaning it can still be fertilized by sperm). From the moment the egg is released, your egg is viable for anywhere from 6 hours to 24 hours at the very very most.

Sperm can live inside your fallopian tubes and reproductive tract in fertile-quality cervical fluid for up to 72 hours, which is why having sex up to 2 days before you ovulate is very effective.

So in other words, just remember that you can’t tell by counting the days of your cycle when you ovulate. And remember that you are fertile for abourt 3 days of every cycle, the day of ovulation and the two days before.

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

I think it would be hard to say seeing as you dont have a normal cycle at the moment.
Try these sites:

http://www.ovulation-calculator.org/

http://www.menstruation.com.au/periodpages/irregular.html

http://www.menstruation.com.au/periodpages/couldibepregnant.html

theres also tests available that test for ovulation and pregnancy which you could also use.

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

It depends on the typical length of your cycle. An online ovulation calculator can give you a rough indication of when you can expect ovulation to occur, but to maximize your chances of conceiving you should learn how to identify your body’s own fertility signs (see link for some tips).

Good luck!

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

You can, because ovulation happens before your period. Your period is the result of a failed pregnancy. Your body ovulates and if the egg does not get fertilized, the uterine lining sheds (because no baby has implanted) in preparation for the next try.

However, it can take some time for your cycles to return to normal after coming off birth control. It would not be unusual to have no cycle at all for a couple months, or to be irregular for several months. Some women’s cycles regulate very quickly, others take a while longer.

All you can do is wait it out and have fun trying in the meantime. Try not to think about it too much before you get that first post-birth control period because there is no way to know where in your cycle you are. Once you get your first period, then you can be a little more scientific about ttc with ovulation prediction kits, charting your temperatures, ovulation calculators, monitoring cervical mucus, or whatever.

Good luck!

Pregnancy Advisor’s answers:

I just got pregnant after only having 1 period off birth control.

I used the pill for about 5 years, then switched to the patch (which I loved!!!!) for about the last year. Took off the patch and tracked when my first period came being off the patch (10/23). My first cycle off the patch was 28 days. I counted 14 days after the first day of my last period, which was 10/23/06 + 14 days = 11/6/06.

We pretty much tried for a whole week, from 11/3/06 – 11/9/06. And that’s all we had time for for that month because we were busy moving, etc. Well, it worked! I’d estimated my next period to start 11/20/06. I took the First Response test on 11/16/06 and actually was able to get a very very very faint positive even that early.

But everyone’s different. I can’t vouch for those who tried for longer than 1 month because I don’t know how often they were trying or if they were counting days to determine their ovulation. There are ovulation calculator calendars on a lot of baby sites that are very helpful, especially if your cycle is more than 28 days. Most my friends seemed to take a little longer. Even the OB called me Fertile Mertil. Good luck and HAVE FUN! If you know what I mean. Enjoy “trying” while it lasts.

Oh and who knows if this helped or not, but after “the act” I’d lay there on my back curled up in the fetal position for about 10-15 minutes before getting up. You just never know if it works and what do you have to lose but 10-15 minutes. Nice to wind down anyways.