What is going on at the moment with me???

I'm so confused about what is happening to me at the moment.

I suffer from PCOS and have never had a standard cycle, my cycles have been as long as 8 mths between AF (not including pregnancies) but on average it is normally anything from 2 1/2 - 4 mths apart.

So my last 6 cycles were: 41 days, 73 days, 48 days, 64 days, 101 days and then 43 days - so it seems I have shorter cycles amongst some really long ones.

But on the 26th July, I had some dark brown (almost black) spotting which was 3 days after DTD, the next day nothing and then the following day it started again for 3 days and as I said it was almost black. The flow wasn't heavy enough to use a pad a liner was enough but it was gross. On day 4 it then became dark red for 2 days (still not heavy) and then 2 more days of dark brown. This occurred 30 days after my previous cycle finished and I have never ever had a cycle this short.

At the beginning of the 101 day cycle, for the first day I had serious pains and cramping - so much so I had to go to bed with pain killers and a hot water bottle - so really thought I was going to get a very heavy AF like when I was a teenager and would suffer the same pains - but it only lasted 4 days and wasn't as heavy as expected. Then next cycle was the usual week long and then came the cycle I just wrote about.

So would you consider the freak one off incident to be AF but a really light one hence the slow flow and the discharge being almost black, or could it be something else. I'm now 3 days since everything stopped and exhaustion has set in BIG time, so might pay a visit to the GP to have my iron levels checked out. Maybe it is a sign of being pre menopausal as I'm 40 and there is a history in my family.

Oh, both my pregnancies were through IVF so really hard to know how/if/when ovulation may have occurred during any of these cycles so really have no idea if this last 'cycle' was a text book monthly cycle or not.

Anyone had something similar happen or any ideas.