Fertility friendly painkillers for painful periods?

[Lindley]

Here's the problem in little bits:

Staying on the pill is the only thing that stops me having evil endometriosis periods of doom.

I can't conceive on the pill (duh.)

Only NSAID painkillers - heavy-duty suppositories for preference, ibuprofen if all else fails - stop me curling up, crying, shaking, throwing up with pain.

I've been told that NSAIDs negatively affect chances of conceiving. I checked it out on the Cochrane library, seems to be true. And I already have endo counting against me.

So the question is - can anyone recommend anything that will touch the pain, without causing fertility problems? I gave in last month, I simply couldn't bear it, and I can't go month to month like this.

[Izzy]

I'm really curious about whether quinine would help but no idea whether the doctor would be likely to prescribe it and that would be the only way to get it.

[juniper76]

I have no idea, but I'd love to hear if someone else knows. As far as I'm aware, the only fertility friendly pain meds are paracetamol, codeine and opiate-based analgesics (I think).

Since panadeine forte does absolutely nothing to relieve my period pain I've just been stuck sweating it out with a heat pack and no sleep... I've never asked a doctor for a stronger prescription so I don't know what they'd say?

[butterfly_warrior]

The only thoughts I have are that if you have your period, then you obviously aren't pregnant and it shouldn't matter what you take then. It's during the rest of the cycle that NSAIDs become a problem.

I have severe rheumatoid arthritis and was fairly dependent on NSAIDs when we started TTC. As much as possible, I just restricted my use of them to be only during AF so that I knew I wasn't doing any damage... Turns out my fertility issues were much greaters than what could be caused by NSAIDs, so that was probably a bit of a waste of time.

By the time I'd started IVF, the naprosyn that I was using for my arthritis had stopped working for me at all (one of the joys of RA - it seems that most drugs will eventually lose their usefulness over time) so I never really bothered with trying to find a new one to use and I was given prednisone - not sure that it would have any impact on period pain, however.

Another thing - my IVF doctor was quite happy to prescribe NSAIDs for me at various different times. Mainly for use during AF, where he recommended ponstan to deal with the excruciating pain of a period that in reality was actually an early miscarriage. He also prescribed indocid at another time. I suspect that if it's only during AF and not the rest of your cycle that you won't be doing any damage.

BW

[chris]

Hi ladies,
When I found out I was pregnant with Miss D it was a huge shock as we had not long stopped TTC. I was taking a mixture of painkillers that includes strong NSAIDs at the time for my pain that was around all month. I was told that the baby will be fine as in the first few weeks of gestation the embryo is kept alive by the progesterone the corpus luteum provides. It is not until the plasenta is formed that the baby takes from the mother. The NSAIDs should be out of your system by that time.

I now use endone that was prescribed by my Gyn for my AF pain and pan forte for during the month for the not so bad pain.

Hope I have helped.
Take care
Chris

[Lulu]

I found Black Cohosh helped with the pain really well, but I'm not sure on the TTC thing - I can't see that it would be a problem though.

xoxoxo