LH Surge & Pregnancy FAQs

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.