Conceiving while breastfeeding - a babes' story

Where do I begin on this one?  I suppose with the decision to try and get pregnant again while still breastfeeding and in my case not even ovulating.  Well my first port of call was to research how to go about encouraging my ovulation to come back.  It was 9 months after the birth of my daughter and I still had not ovulated.  So I logged onto Kellymom.com – it gives loads of super advice about kick starting the whole ovulation process.

In the end though what seemed to have worked for me was taking iron supplements. If I can recall now I took them because I was feeling a bit run down, but not specifically to get the old AF back. (Please if anyone does want to try this check with your doctor first.  If your iron levels are already good and take even more I’m sure it can cause problems and I am no doctor!) 28 days after starting the iron supplements I got my first AF back, very light but back.  In all honesty I really don’t think I ovulated at all thought that month.  Nor the next either.  It was not until my third cycle that I am sure I ovulated. 

Then suddenly my periods got really long (13 or so days) and where the first 3 were very very light, these next few were unbelievable.  So I stopped taking the iron. But the ovulation was back to stay which was great.

The of course when everything was up and running I decided to go to college for a couple of months and so everything was put on hold (bar me checking my ovulation!). But there was no way I was going to try and go to college and deal with morning sickness while being in another country away from my husband with my baby and au pair.  It was hard enough doing my degree finals while suffering morning sickness on my first.  So we waited. 

As I say I was checking my ovulation.  Although my cycle became very short (25 days) my ovulation seemed to be delayed in the cycle, where before I gave birth to my daughter I was an early ovulator.  I was not sure if this would mean that it would be difficult to implant any egg that had been fertilised.  I had read somewhere that late ovulation can lead to bleeding before the fertilised egg has enough time to implant.  Well apparently in my cases no.  As soon as we started to try (the week before my exams in college when my hubbie came to stay with us for a weekend... well sure no one get pregnant on the first time they try do they? I certainly did not on baby number 1! So we had some unprotected fun trying). Poor hubbie, despite delayed ovulation (day 17), short cycles and breastfeeding up to 3 times a night, we were pregnant.  And that meant morning sickness and no nukkie for him for a long while...

The odd thing was although I checked for pregnancy when my period was due (day 25) it came up negative.  In fact 3 tests came up negative. I presumed I was late due to exam stress.  Well day 34 I think still no AF and a full bottle of white wine sitting before me just about to be opened and something told me to do one more test – even thought after 3 negative tests I knew it too would be negative.  I was practically handing out my glass to be filled (my mate and I both knew we were going to try again very soon – so a last blow out was required) the test came back positive!  Well blow me down with a feather!!

So when they say that you can’t get pregnant while breastfeed or implantation can be hampered just think of me... we did the deed 6 days before I ovulated, I am certain as we were then in different countries and I was using the ovulator kits in preparation for the real attempts- so much for the billings method the nuns taught us in school!... and I had a short cycles... and exam stress.  Well this baby was very determined.

thanks to Cita for sharing her story :)