have now decided that my luteal phase doesn't matter

Aftter having freaked myself out this past few months about luteal phases etc etc (inserrt yawn emoticon here)... I have come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter...

Rather than Google Luteal Phase defect, I Googled "Short Luteal Phase Successful Pregnancy" and found this on Baby and Bump- http://www.babyandbump.com/trying-to-conceive/552202-so-upset-short-leutal-phase-11-days-can-do.html.

If you can't be bothered to follow the link, there are loads of ladies with LPs of 10-11 days (some less) who have successfully conceived... I feel so much better having found this (I was worried that IVF would be doomed to failure because of this "defect")... My LP ranges from 9-11 days- was 11 days last month.

I think that this just goes to show that Google is not always your friend and sometimes reassurance can be found by entering something optimisitic rather than pessimistic.

I am one of life's worriers- sometimes the concerns are genuine usually they are over nothing. Yes I have "unexplained infertility" but that doesn't mean that I will never get my sprog. My sprog already has a name. It has to happen one day. It has to.

Meandering

I only tend to blog when something bad happens. When I am feeling OK, I don't really feel the need to write. I mainly use this blog as therapy!

Lately I have been googling "unexplained infertility IVF". I find the whole "unexplained" thingy hard to swallow. I mean, surely if nothing was wrong it would have happened by now. My thoughts are that there is something wrong and it is something that can't be fixed.Googling "unexplained infertility" made me feel better. I found lots of posts on forums from women in the same boat having the same thoughts. What was even better was that the posts were a couple of years old and most of them had successfully conceived (most through IVF, some naturally) and had their babies.


I am looking forward to my first hospital appointment. The clinic I am going to is well regarded and I intend on asking about luteal phase (and getting an expert opinion on whether there is such a thing as a luteal phase defect). If there is a problem, I am hoping IVF will bypass it as my cycles will be artificially controlled (and hopefully I will not have a short LP for my IVF cycle).

I know that the odds of it working for me (resulting in a live birth) are something like 33%- I am 29, healthy, good FSH levels etc etc...Apparently, IVF is a diagnostic tool, so we could go through the process and find something wrong- in a way I would be relieved, if there is a problem there should be a solution.

luteal phase, caffeine and TTC

After a couple of months of TTC I found out that it is beneficial to give up caffeine so I did- I switched to de-caff... around this time I started tracking my cycles and using ovulation predictor kits (OPKs)... I soon discovered that I had a short luteal phase. The women’s cycle is one of two halves, the first half is the body gearing up for ovulation and is dominated by estrogen, the second half is gearing up for implantation and is dominated by progesterone. The part of the cycle following ovulation is called the luteal phase and should be between 10-16 days long. If the luteal phase is not long enough the womb lining starts to break down before the implantation of successfully fertilised egg can take place. In monitoring my cycles, I discovered that my luteal phase is border-line and varies from 9-11 days.

I have been diagnosed with “unexplained fertility”, this means that both myself and my other half have been tested and all seems to be fine. When I asked the doctor about luteal phase defect she looked at me like I was mad. She said that as long as I am producing enough progesterone 7 days post ovulation (I am ) then if an egg were to be fertilised my body would produce extra progesterone to nourish the pregnancy.

I say that perhaps my infertility is not unexplained! I wonder why there has not been more research into this. There is properly done medical research that shows luteal phase defect to be a problem, but NHS doctors don’t seem to accredit it.

There are natural supplements that can be taken for luteal phase defect and I have tried them to no avail (agnus castus, evening primrose, soya isoflavones). The only thing I haven’t tried is progesterone pessaries- these are prescription only. I won’t be able to get a prescription because my doctor doesn’t think I have a problem.

I tell you what I have noticed, my luteal phase is shorter when I eliminate caffeine from my diet. I don’t know what the link is, but I am convinced that there is one. I had no caffeine last month and my luteal phase was 9 days, this month I have had caffeine and I am on 11dpo and counting...