I?m hoping you lovely ladies can give me some advice.
I suffered a late loss in July this year and my cycles prior to the loss were quite regular (32-33 days) and I had all the typical symptoms of ovulation so could pinpoint my ?ripe? time down to the minute. It took the second month of trying to fall pregnant.
After my loss, my cycles have been totally off the planet. DH and I started TTC again in September and my past 3 cycles have been anywhere between 40-45 days. Needless to say, I got excited each time AF was late, only to crash when the witch reared her ugly head each time.
Earlier this month, I went to see a FS as I was very concerned damaged could have been done after requiring two D&C?s in July due to retained placenta products ? with the second D&C causing an enormous amount of bleeding to the point of nearly hemorrhaging. The FS assures me all looks good with my uterus and lining now but he decided to put me on 50mg of Clomid days 2-6 to help regulate my cycle and speed things along a little due to my age (almost 38). He stated I would ovulate on day 14 on Clomid and we should DTD regularly from CD7 until day CD15. DTD like crazy from CD 8 to CD15 but to be on the safe side, continued every second day until CD 19.
I had no noticeable CM on Clomid (which I know is a side effect) so don?t know when I ovulated this month. He advised not to use OPKs on Clomid as you can get false positives. Did use Preseed to help with the dryness after reading a lot of good stuff about it on the internet.
Today I went for my 21 day progesterone test and I asked the nurse about lack of CM and the detrimental effect it has on sperm surviving, and she said I probably haven?t seen EWCM yet as I should be seeing it now and approaching LH surge any day ? today is CD22!! She said a lot of women ovulate late on Clomid and if I don?t ovulate this cycle on 50mg then we should up the dose to 100mg and I will then get more EWCM ? completely contradictory to what I have read about the side effects. So now I?m really confused. My FS put me on Clomid to regulate/shorten my cycle and stated that I will have a 28 day cycle on Clomid and if AF was late, then that would mean I?d be pregnant for sure ? he stated ?there is no such thing as a late period on Clomid, if you?re late you?re pregnant? - but after today?s chat with the nurse, I?m left confused and irritated at the conflicting information.
Okay it is a fallacy that women ovulate "on time" on clomid - I did not - in fact I ovulated later. My obs at the time told me that the clomid hadnt worked as my cd21 test indicated no ovulation. I surged that day (cd22) and conceived that cycle.
With regard to OPK's. If you commence them from cd11 and test daily or twice daily you will see your ovulation. It may be that you get an "almost" positive but you will see approx when you ovulate. If you use opk's too early inthe cycle they may register a false positive. If you go online and purchase opk's from Lullaby Conceptions you can buy a big bulk pack. As an experiment test daily at 2pm from cd1 - continue on and see if the clomid gives you a false positive around cd9... I didn't get this but it does and can happen so therefore you cannot begin using them too early in the cycle or it will give you the illusion of impending ovulation when it is the LH stimulation of the clomid.
You can request (and many obs will do this as par for course) a cd12 u/s to check on follicular development. This will show how many follicles are maturing and at what level of maturity they are. This will also give you an indication on when ovulation is likely to occur.
The nurse is correct you may need more than 50mg to ovulate on day 14. I took 50mg and had unregular cycles of 28, 30, 35 etc, and I tended to ovulate around day 20 on clomid. Thats not true re false positives for OPKs on clomid. My FS said so, I got a OPK positive and it was correct and we were lucky and conceived Julia. We too started DTD from day 8 to day 22 to cover all bases (every 2nd day).
It also depends when you take the Clomid too, I took it on day 2 to day 6 and still ovulated late.
I took clomid to help regulate my cycles and it did bring my O date forward from around cd21 to a more reasonable cd14-16. I had poor folicular recruitment and the clomid was prescribes to encourage more folicles. So I took clomid cd2-6 and was recommended to DTD every second day from cd10-cd20 to try and cover it. I always got a BT on CD21 to check for progesterone, and was always good, indicating o had occurred. I also used OPK's and found them to be reliable, testing daily from CD10 till I got a positive.
Was your BT to check for an LH surge or for p4 levels?
Good luck with it.
Its terribly annoying to get conflicting info isn't it.
My clinic gave me clomid and opk kits to test with to ensure we did IUI when the surge occurred - along with a CD10 scan. So you can definitely use OPK's with clomid use.
Sooooooo annoying! I wish he suggested an u/s mid cycle to see what was going on in there. I will ask him to monitor me more closely next month if I don't get my BFP this month
yes.. sorry p4 is the progesterone level, and if this is high enough it would indicate ovulation had occurred. You should have a number somewhere over 20nmol/L to indicate Ovulation had occurred.
I just need to say it DOES happen that clomid can give a false positive opk result. That is absolutely correct. HOWEVER if you leave 3-4 days between last dose and using opk's you should avoid this.
Clomid does not always give you a cd14 ovulation. On 150mgs of clomid I ovulated on cd20. I conceived Imogen on this cycle. Our bodies are individual and will respond differently so what response my body has may not be your experience. There is a very wide variation of normal. For me it didn't matter what days I took the clomid my cycle length was still long. I had a trigger shot with Immy and my follie (the largest) was 28mm.
Fertility clinics usually give you opk's when you have your follie scan.
Thanks for the information ladies. It's so great to hear that you both had luck on Clomid, congratulations. I wonder why my FS was so adamant that I would ovulate on day 14 if it just doesn't seem to be the case. I will try OPKs next month but am obviously praying that I won't need to I can't believe how much conflicting information is out there - as if things aren't hard enough. I will get my blood results tomorrow so will know if I ovulated or not. Think I will have to lure DH back to the boudoir this evening for one last shot, if it's not already too late (last time we DTD was on Friday CD19) so it's quite possible I may have missed ovulation day
Rufalina, my BT today was for progesterone levels to check whether I ovulated - is that what p4 level means? Good to see Clomid helped you ovulate earlier. Prior to my loss I also ovulated around CD21 so was hoping it would help bring it on a little earlier.
Last edited by dd0207; November 17th, 2008 at 11:18 AM.
Calling all Clomid experts!
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