My journey really begins in July 2007 when I started charting. I have always been a practicing Catholic and never wanted to resort to birth control to solve my cycle issues. The pill can cause more damage then good, so I've always stayed away from it, but that is for another post someday. Since I didn't know any pro life doctors, I figured I needed to get a handle on what my body was telling me, so I started charting. The cheapest and most informative thing I could find was
Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler. While this is a secular author, (I skipped the chapters on using it as birth control and the like) she teaches the sympto-thermic method of Natural Family Planning (NFP) and just calls it the Fertility Awareness Method instead. I also bought the
charting software for $40 and it hasn't let me down. The only downside is you have to have a PC to use it, the software doesn't work on a Mac. She has come up with online charting, but I find it to be unreliable with lots of bugs that need working out.
So where does all of this leave me? With a lot of information and no one to share it with! This is one of the reasons I started this blog. I was charting for about a year when I was looking at my charts with some concern. My cycles were about 27 days long. I ovulated around cycle day (CD) 20 and my periods showed up 7 days later. I knew I was dealing with some kind of luteal phase defect. Also, every 3 cycles were anovulatory, meaning I didn't ovulate every cycle. With low temperatures after ovulation ad brown bleeding before and at the end of my periods, I also knew I had low progesterone.
My next step was to go to my doctor. I wasn't married yet, not having sex, but really wanted to see if I could be proactive about my situation. My doctor laughed at me. I tried showing her my charts and asked for a progesterone test, but she said that I was worrying over nothing, and I should wait until I get married to fix my cycles. :(
Well, June 2009, I did get married to the man of my dreams who found me on a
Catholic dating website. We both want a big family so we started trying right away. The cycle we were married turned out to be anovulatory...boo, we were hoping for a honeymoon baby.
My August/September cycle of 2009 was hard because I spotted for 4 days before actually getting my period. I really thought I was pregnant. I went to my new doctor (we were married and in California now) and she also laughed at my charts. But after constant nagging, she said she would do a progesterone test on Peak + 7 of my next cycle. She only ran 3 things but I'm glad she did. My Prolactin was 11. My TSH was 2.38. And my progesterone was 6.1. For anyone who doesn't know, for progesterone after ovulation, that is low. Most doctors say they like to see 10 or above. My wonderful NFP doctor now wants to see 15 or above.
My doctor at the time said progesterone wasn't needed to maintain a pregnancy, but you need it high enough to conceive in the first place. So her solution...clomid. Clomid is a fertility drug that stimulates ovulation. This is okay under Catholic Church teaching because you are not separating the procreative and unitive aspects of the marital act. Because clomid stimulates ovulation, it also raises your progesterone by default. That cycle I was on 50mg of Clomid, CD 3-7. By the grace of God that got things moving enough that we conceived our daughter that cycle and got a positive pregnancy test on October 31st, 2009. We started supplementing with Prometrium to keep my progesterone up until 16 weeks of pregnancy.
January 2010 we switched health insurance and have been going to a very pro life, pro charting, Naprotechnology doctor (Dr. D) ever since.
Miriam Kenny was born on June 19th, 2010 at 36 weeks due to me developing
Cholestasis of Pregnancy, which I will also post about at a later date. I stopped breastfeeding in December 2010 and got my very pretty cycles back in January 2011.
We have been actively trying to conceive our next baby since January 2011. So far 5 beautiful cycles and still no luck. My progesterone is still a little low (11) and my thyroid is a little sluggish.
Here is our current plan of action:
- Low carb, low sugar, high good fats diet (any suggestions would be most welcome)
- Optivite PMT vitamin until confirmed pregnancy, then back to a prenatal
- 800mg Folic Acid
- 500mg vitamin C
- 2000mg Fish Oil
- 5000mg Vitamin D
- 1200mg Calcium
- 400mg Prometrium from Peak +3-12 then test on Peak +16
So overall I think this is a good introduction and I will post again soon.
