Wondering about swaying as someone with lean PCOS

[emilyjo3]

Hello! Sorry in advance for the long post. I’m wondering if anyone has advice for me—I’m trying to decide IF and HOW I should attempt a girl sway. We have three boys. My youngest is 18 months, I’m still breastfeeding, and my body is just starting to think about ovulating again (I can tell by my cervical fluid). We totally would try for another baby if 100% guaranteed a girl, but obviously there are no guarantees. I’m pretty sure I have PCOS with an atypical presentation. I’ve always been small, with a BMI of 19 (5 ft. tall and 100 lbs.) I’ve never been insulin resistant as far as I know, but ovarian ‘cysts’ were found on an abdominal ultrasound prior to getting pregnant, and I have high testosterone. The only way I ovulate seems to be when I’m eating healthy and eating enough. I roughly attempted a girl sway with my youngest boy, but I stopped ovulating when I wasn’t eating enough and ended up conceiving him around the holidays when I was eating more [emoji2370]

Here’s a bit of my history: I’m 37. Prior to going on birth control, I always had infrequent periods and was told it was because I was “underweight.” I was never very concerned with what I ate. After getting off birth control, I went a couple years having 2-3 periods a year. Eventually I started tracking my irregular “cycles”, going to acupuncture, taking supplements and herbs, and cleaning up my diet (healthy fats, nutrient-dense food, grass fed red meat, organic, etc…). Through some combination of these things, I was able to get my cycles somewhat on track, and we conceived our first baby. I know I have issues with hormone balance given my long, all-over-the-place menstrual cycles. I suspect that I am fairly sensitive to endocrine disrupters in the environment such as synthetic hormones. I also suspect that I may have low-ish progesterone.

Here I am, about 8 years after cleaning up my diet, with three healthy boys! I love them more than anything! Since I didn’t know if I could or should (due to potential genetic issues) get pregnant, they are truly my life’s greatest blessings. I love babies and birth, and I can’t stop thinking about another baby.

I’m trying to determine if it’s worth going on the LE diet in case we decide to try for another. I realize that dropping in weight may just prevent pregnancy altogether, but maybe that’s not so bad if we are unsure of another baby. If I am too hungry I get “hangry”, and I’m not a good mother to my boys. We lead a fairly active outdoor lifestyle, but I don’t have dedicated “exercise” time.

My family of boys (and a tall, thin husband with super fast metabolism) eats TONS of food. We have a freezer full of grass fed beef and elk meat because ethically sourced meat is important to us (we eat meat about 3 times/week). We grow our own veggies, potatoes, and beans, we eat lots of healthy fats, try to stick to whole grains, and we eat the eggs of our free range chickens. We are far from perfect, but overall we eat a very healthy, clean, whole-food, and high calorie diet. It is BOY-friendly!

Here are some questions:
What aspects of the PCOS LE diet apply to me as someone who has very little (if any) weight to lose?
Can I balance my hormones to be pro-girl sway (I feel like lowering testosterone would be helpful)?
What major things should I change about my diet, or should I continue to eat pretty much what I eat but just eat less?
What supplements should I be taking? Should I avoid sugar and/or natural sweeteners like honey and maple syrup for the most part?
What about coffee since it is something I drink every morning (though didn’t drink as much with my first two boys)?
(And as a side note - does anyone here have any advice about whether to try for a fourth baby?? How did you decide?)

I do not expect all these questions to be answered. They’re just some of the many things I wonder about when considering a sway. I am trying to determine if it is worth forgoing the healthy diet/lifestyle that works well for my family (and for me) on the off-chance of conceiving a girl…. knowing what to change, given that I don’t fit the typical “PCOS” profile, is confusing to me. Thanks for any input!


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[atomic sagebrush]

Ok. The thing is, you actually CAN disrupt your cycle by being underweight, so we can't just handwave that away. Now, it is entirely possible that you do have tendencies towards PCO (the cysts can happen now and then without the syndrome, but the high testosterone is more of an indicator) and it may be that your lifestyle is just not supportive of you developing the syndrome all the way, because you have healthy eating patterns and a low BMI. But we have to take good care that in assuming you have PCO-tendencies, we aren't actually aggravating cycle disruptions due to low BMI at the same time.

PLEASE no supplements and herbs without my approval. Most of these things are worse than nothing, and if you were seeing cycles disrupted due to being underweight it's very likely that too many of the wrong supplements, and the herbs, simply made it take LONGER for your cycle to normalize. I suspect that things got better because you were eating better and not because of supplements and herbs, but why not give me a brief rundown of what you took at that time and I can tell you if that is something that should be avoided in the future (and I suspect most of it is.)

Why do you think you have low progesterone? And what WAS your testosterone level? Sometimes people assume things that may not be the case so I just want to double check those things rather than operating under them being true.

You can do the LE Diet without losing weight. And whenever there is a situation like the "hangry" issues, we tweak the rules until we get you at a place where you can hang out indefinitely and be comfortable there. The "old school" sway diets where if a person eats "wrong" one time, you're supposed to start all over again - well, we don't do that here (and honestly, does that make ANY sense at all anyway?? No one eats those types of ridick diets that the old school sites promote naturally, so how could it possibly be that you have to eat perfectly every second of every day to get a boy or a girl???)

The LE PCOS-type diet (and even the standard diet in the majority of cases) IS a healthy diet. It's based on the recommendations of the World Health Organization and reproductive endocrinologists as low-normal of a healthy preconception diet. When I talk about "eating less healthy" or whatever it is because in the vast majority of cases, the women with all boys tend to be SUPER into very healthy eating, taking lots of supplements, just really packing in loads of nutrients. Eating somewhat less but still in a safe continuum, there's a lot of wiggle room between those extremes. NO ONE should be eating anything less than a normal pre-conception diet.

What we would have you do is eat what you normally do, just tweak your macros a little. We'll have you start out higher than we think you'll need, and see what happens. If you lose weight at that level, we'll increase, trying to aim at keeping % of carbs slightly higher than that of fat or protein, and focusing more on vegetarian sources of fat and protein vs. animal.

So now to answer your question:

1) I have people in this category (where we're doing the alt. diet, but they have no weight to spare) all the time. We get great results. I would start you off on 1800-2000 cals a day, 60 g protein and fat, and see what happens. We can adjust upwards or downwards as needed. It's best to start off eating more than you think you need, so if you already think you eat more than that, we can start off beyond, 2000-2200 or even 2200-2500 (since you're petite I ~doubt~ you'd be eating more than that, but it's always an option) trying to keep protein and fat to no more than 65 g.

We do not count the protein and fat in fruit and veg (not even potatoes), so this actually gives you even more pro and fat than you think you can have at first. We DO count protein in beans, and fat in anything like avocado where it's mostly fat. But in most fruit and high carb veg, count calories ONLY, not protein or fat. Low carb veg are free and unlimited, have as much as you want, no need to count.

Then, I would suggest having MOSTLY whole grains. We make an exception for pasta in most cases (whole grain pasta is just really hard for some of us to adjust to) and less often, but I think you would certainly fall into this category, white rice instead of brown. This is because both with pasta (which tends to be high in protein) and white rice (because you usually eat it WITH something, either beans or stir fry with some type of protein) it's higher in protein and doesn't cause the "crash and burn" feature you get with empty carbs.

I would also advise cutting out skim and even part skim dairy totally. For reasons we don't fully understand, skim dairy has been the devil for blood sugar and really has aggravated PCO-tendencies. Plus, if you are experiencing cycle issues from thinness as well, the full fat dairy is also great for helping correct that issue. Full fat dairy is my first line for protecting ovulation and restoring it if it's gone missing. 2 servings a day.

As for sugar, I'd keep it in reserves as a brake on weight loss. If you can keep weight on without it, great, but for some of us weight will just fly off without having sugar.

Beans, nuts, grains, legumes, and small amounts of soy (2-3 servings a week is what most people stick with when it comes to soy) all fine within limits.

Regarding eggs, meat, etc with that, all you need to do after that is stick in the limits. While eggs are not an "eat all you can for a girl" the way some people have claimed, within the limits they're ok and are a great way to get a bit of protein and a bit of fat, plus they're very satiating. (shout out to fellow chicken owner here) I have people add in 4-6 eggs a week if they're having issues ovulating or have a short LP because of the good fat in them.
Meat, on the other hand, while it too is ok within limits, has a different problem in that because it's very high in protein (much more so than eggs) and relatively low calorie. So what happens is that people eat a chicken breast or whatever (for some reason people think chicken breast has some sort of mystical pro-fertility quality...but it doesn't), and then they're sitting at 50 g protein and have only eaten like 500 calories. Then, what do they eat the rest of the day? How do they get the rest of their nutritional needs met? Even grains have countable protein in them. This often devolves into this sort of terrible starvation diet where people are eating one huge chicken breast, cucumbers, strawberries, gummy worms, and are getting very low calories and very very low fat (because most sources of fat have protein, and a lot of people refuse to eat avocado because it has the blue sway mythology around it). It's really not good and just makes it harder than it needs to be.

What I often have people do is to add in a serving of salmon every week. This helps them get some micronutrients that may be missing. For people who are really having issues I have them have one serving of salmon and one of red meat. I think it would be for the best if you started off doing that to ensure we don't lose ovulation.

2) Can you go into more detail about what you think you need to do to "balance hormones"? 95% of what is written online about "balancing hormones" is...er...well, crap, basically...and makes people think that normal and natural variations in our individual bodies are signs of terrible health issues that need to be rectified. The majority of the time, the cure is worse than the "disease" (which doesn't exist) and people end up taking supplements and herbs that CAUSE the thing they were trying to stop. So I'd want to a) make sure you've really even GOT PCO tendencies and also b) check everything beforehand. Even some things that seem very harmless and are in wide use have caused a lot of trouble for us.

3)I think I covered most of this above.

4)Folate 1200-1600. I don't want you to take anything else beyond that. We can't have you on fiber as you will likely lose ovulation if you are on that. If we do ultimately decide that you are having PCO-related issues we may want to add in myoinositol but I'm really not feeling that for you, as it can also make weight fly off. No cinnamon or coq10 either please - tho some our members use those things, they'd be disastrous for you because they can really make weight fly off.

Sugar I mentioned above, and honey and maple syrup are considered as "sugar". Best to avoid unless you need it to keep weight on, or occasionally for sanity.

5)Absolutely continue coffee. Tho some of the "old school" sway sites claimed coffee swayed blue, this NEVER made sense (when I was first starting to investigate all these claims after my 3rd son was born, that was one of the first things that jumped out to me - everyone I knew in real life with girls, AND all the blue swayers on the InGender site were all huge coffee junkies. It just made NO SENSE at all! Then when I looked into it I found that the "research" they used to allegedly support this claim had been completely debunked by numerous followup studies, but the old-schoolers just refuse to ever change anything even with new research) We have had great results with coffee as a sway tactic. I myself got my daughter with coffee after all four boys drinking a lot of tea, so carry on with that.

6)I think that most of us who do keep trying, just feel like there is someone missing who is supposed to be there. It's not an easy call to make, because with every kid you're of course spread thinner for the rest, but the truth is that as kids get older, they need you less and less, and "being spread thinner" is not always a bad thing. Older kids don't require or benefit from the kind of constant mom-supervision that younger ones do, and at some point you end up realizing, "oh wow, I really could have handled another child easily" (I have my two older boys, then a long gap before I had my younger three. I have some regrets about that long gap - at the time I felt very overwhelmed, but by the time the older boys were hitting their teens I really felt like I still had mothering left to do and they just didn't want me up in their bizness all the time, understandably!). So when you're making your decision, esp. if your kids are still small, try to keep in mind at some point, surprisingly soon, they're going to be running their own show and you really WILL have more time to spend on other kids and even yourself at times. :)

[emilyjo3]

THANK YOU THANK YOU for your thorough and thoughtful response!! Your perspective is fascinating to me and much more logical and achievable than other “sway methods” I have seen. Thank you for taking the time to help me understand the balance between eating less but not too much less. It’s becoming a little more clear to me I think.

What you said about being underweight and PCO tendencies is so true…perhaps I’ve got more going on due to low BMI than I think. The way my metabolism seems to be, it’s pretty hard for me to gain weight. Even in college when I was not eating healthy, eating tons, and only sort of exercising, I barely gained weight and still had looooooong cycles. Maybe this is just a genetic tendency (my mom is the same way but did not have issues with her cycles like me) combined with PCO tendencies. Hard to say for sure. On a separate note, my husband is this way too - he once spent a summer eating 5000+ calories a day to try to gain weight, and he could not. But I’m just rambling.

Anyway, as for supplements, here is (as best as I can remember or find from notes) what I was taking/doing while TTC for each boy.
Boy #1: prenatals, vitamin C, fish oil, and some TCM herbs recommended by my acupuncturist (I really can’t remember what they were. There’s a chance I wrote them down somewhere, but that was nearly 8 years ago at this point). I was also going to a reproductive endocrinologist who prescribed metforman for me. Not sure it it was coincidence, but after being on metformin for 10 days, I ovulated and conceived after 2.5 years of being off birth control, having only 2-3 periods during that time (and about 1 year of more actively TTC). Buuuuut, I had also changed my diet, was eating more, and had stopped running. Again, maybe there was more to the underweight thing for me than I thought.
Boy #2: I started acupuncture again 13 months pp and decided to try goats rue (rather than metformin) and pretty immediately saw some promising results in how my cycles looked. My cycle came back at 16 months pp, more regular than they had ever been IN MY LIFE but with a short LP (not sure if this was due to breastfeeding or my hormones in general). Here’s what I was doing: goats rue, vit C, seed cycling, vitex, vit B complex (w 50mg b6), prenatals, and fish oil.
Boy #3: this was my sort-of-attempted sway, based on a combo of things I’d read: Cranberry pills (stopped at ovulation), Olive leaf extract, Magnesium 500mg, Calcium citrate 1000mg, goats rue, myo inositol, vitex, vit B complex (after O), and I must have been doing folate rather than prenatals but don’t remember for sure.
Husband was (inconsistently) taking Cranberry, Licorice root, and Olive leaf extract. My Diet: No red meat, tomatoes, potatoes, bananas, mushrooms, or coconut water (no idea why that was there but it’s in my notes haha). Low sodium. Low dairy. Trying to eat instead: Rice, grains, white meat, green beans, corn, bread, berries, melon. Skip breakfast (this strategy did not last long). Peppermint tea. I can’t remember what I had decided about coffee, but I was trying to drink more alcohol.

I assume low-ish progesterone due short LPs while TTC my second two (though this could have been purely due to breastfeeding) and due to measuring very low progesterone early in my first pregnancy and being put on progesterone supplements. I know that progesterone levels in early pregnancy are all over the place, but at that time my gut (to be fair it was my terrified-of-losing-my-pregnancy-after-FINALLY-conceiving gut) told me I should take it just in case. Research indicates benefits of progesterone, particularly after multiple miscarriages, and I didn’t want to chance being in the multiple miscarriage category. Subsequent pregnancies I have done bio-identical progesterone cream (recommended by my midwife) instead, just in case, through first trimester. And I always feel great on progesterone, which has made me wonder if I am naturally low. (But I’ve only ever taken during first trimester of pregnancy…so not exactly a well-rounded sample size.) And, you are totally right…this is an assumption and not something I know for sure. My testosterone levels were considered somewhat high when I got them tested with the reproductive endocrinologist. I also have higher than normal body hair. I had to search my records and found my testosterone levels (tested way back in 2014): Testosterone was 45, free testosterone was 5.4 (no units given; in my brief searching, those appear to be high end of normal and slightly higher than normal respectively). TSH was 2.067, within normal range.

Haha great question about why I think I need to balance my hormones. I guess I have just assumed that with high testosterone and long, irregular cycles, my hormones aren’t exactly in balance or “normal”. Relative to other women I know, I just don’t seem to have the same hormone responses. It’s not all bad though..my pregnancy and PMS symptoms, for example, are quite mild. Overall I don’t feel I have terrible health issues, just that I really benefit from a mostly healthy diet. But perhaps I am overthinking it.

I LOVE your perspective on maintaining a healthy preconception diet, just not one LOADED with nutrients, which is probably what I was doing for my first two boys. My third boy, who knows…. Based on your advice, I will stay off supplements altogether (other than folate) and see what my body does as my cycles come back. I currently am not taking any supplements anyway.

If I am understanding you correctly, an ideal diet (for me) involves eating similarly to how I have been but with a lower percentage of animal proteins, higher percentage of carbs relative to protein and fat, low sugar (we don’t eat tons of sugar in our house, but we do love ice cream, and we have raw honey from our bees that we eat quite a bit of. I can cut down on these), lots of coffee... I have eaten full fat dairy for most of my adult life, usually quite a bit of it. I can try to keep it to two servings a day, probably in the form of (plain full fat) yogurt and cheese, both of which are always plentiful at our house. For breakfast perhaps I can do 4 or so mornings a week eating an egg and toast and then oatmeal or yogurt the other days. It’s so hard not to eat our delicious eggs…I know you understand since you also have chickens! I will need to learn how to track calories and grams of protein - I have no idea even ballpark what I’m getting now. This is not something I have ever done. I’ll look into some apps.

Thank you for your thoughtful and practical response about having more kids. My husband and I are truly confused about this. I keep feeling there could be someone missing, partly because I’d like our youngest to have a buddy since our first two are so close. But then I wonder if it’s intuition or if it’s biology getting the best of me since the oxytocin highs of pregnancy and babies are quite addictive lol! But the sibling relationships, while complicated at times, truly melt my heart.

A couple more questions, if you don’t mind:
What about exercise? Is it something that sways in and of itself, or mainly as a way to keep weight down?
Is alcohol a good thing for my case?
Sugar and simple carbs (rather than whole grains) are avoided primarily to keep blood sugar from spiking and weight down. But in my case it’s more of a blood sugar thing, assuming I may have PCO-tendencies? Am I understanding this correctly?
Is there anything that can be done about the high-ish testosterone, or is this not something to worry about for swaying?

Ok and one more thing..if I decide to actually sway I’m pretty tempted to go ahead and buy a plan so I can have some easy-to-follow advice. Let’s be honest, I’ve got three small boys, I really don’t have time to overthink this. I wanna still be a good mom to them, not obsess over a potential baby girl. Any advice on getting my husband on board? He’s pretty skeptical about “things on the internet”; he is an engineer so very rooted in science. I’ve read enough from you that I trust you are being as evidence-based and reasonable as you can be, but is there a “quick read” type thing you’ve got about your method (sorry if there’s an obvious one I’ve missed)?

Thanks again for everything!!!!! I am learning so much.


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[atomic sagebrush]

I'm so sorry, can you bump this for me??? I'll get back to you ASAP!

[emilyjo3]

Yes of course…bump! No rush :)


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[atomic sagebrush]

I regularly encounter people who are operating under the assumption of PCOS (and are either self-medicating, or receiving medication from a doctor!!!) and not understanding why things aren't getting better.

I get that it's hard to believe because you feel you've seen good results with the herbs and meds, but because the metformin in particular worked so quickly (ovulating 10 days later likely means that it had nothing to do with the metformin because it doesn't usually act immediately like that) and was likely more to do with eating more and stopping running. Metformin certainly lowers blood sugar right away, but your hormonal cycle lasts at minimum a month, eggs take about 3 months to work their way thru an entire cycle from dormant "seed" to ovulation, so if you weren't ovulating and then you did 10 days later, it was probably going to happen anyway. Most sources say 3-6 months for metformin to help with PCOS and ovulation and that's what I've seen as well.

With #2, first of all many people notice their cycle improves after having their first child anyway, and if you were doing a lot of other healthy, higher nutrient things, again, this could have EVERYthing to do with food intake and nutrients overall, and precisely nothing to do with goat's rue. For every ONE person I have seen Vitex help (and virtually all of them were heavyset) I have seen ten people take it and had it cause a lot of trouble for them. Delayed O, short LP, stopping ovulation all together, and then additionally it's gotten poor results for pink, with significantly fewer girls conceived with it than without it (still better than 50-50, but not as good as diet and exercise alone!)

Taking a look at #3, please don't ever take both cranberry and OLE at the same time (neither you nor DH). It isn't safe. The best study ever done on nutrient intake and gender conceived found that women who conceived boys had the highest nutrient intake across the boards, including calcium and magnesium. You were, additionally, on an overly high magnesium intake - most people will experience severe stomach upset on that intake. Goats rue and vitex both should be avoided. Hubby should stay away from licorice root, it's gotten poor results for us. B Complex you didn't need unless you had a proven deficiency. Of course, continue folate. If you would LIKE to keep using myoinositol, that is the ONLY supplement you have taken where we've actually seen benefits to pink sways! I don't think you need it, but if you want to use it, we can try 1000 mg from AF-O and 500 mg from O-AF, and if you get a BFP continue gradually weaning off by spacing doses further and further out till down to one per week, then you can drop it. Also, stay away from Vit. C, seed cycling, fish oil, and anything else unless you have run it past me first.

The reason why you were avoiding coconut water is because of potassium. The old school sway diets have people limit potassium, but their claims make absolutely no sense because dairy (which you're supposed to have a lot of) has loads of potassium, and the difference between the maximum intake for girl swayers and minimum intake for boy swayers was the amount in a small bowl of strawberries. Just makes no sense, so feel free to eat potatoes, tomatoes, and even the dreaded banana. We often have people include coco water in pink sways if they have trouble getting adequate potassium for survival while on LE Diet.

I'm going to go ahead and post this first part, and come back for the rest in a bit!

[atomic sagebrush]

So before I get too far into the weeds, I would like to know how they determined you had a "short LP" and how you were determining ovulation during this time. You sound very knowledgeable but that's one thing I have encountered a fair number of times, people certain they had a short LP when it was never really proven, and upon further examination it often came down to not a lot of info. Misdetermination of ovulation can also alter, quite dramatically, the readings of what your progesterone level is (say, you had it tested a few days before or after where it was "supposed" to be tested) and a good number of people have assumed they had low progesterone on that basis, when they never did.

While there is a small body of data that seemed to find that for those who had recurrent miscarriages, progesterone might have a benefit, a much greater body of data found that for everyone else (and possibly those in the first group as well, as it is a fairly small body of data), it did nothing at all in terms of helping people get and stay pregnant, even in IVF rounds! Additionally, you are reading way too much into that data because it could just as easily be the case that the recurrent miscarriages are what caused the need for progesterone, and not the other way around, so it may be there are no benefits UNTIL someone has had multiple losses. It's just not a good idea to use it without proven medical need, because progesterone has some very unpleasant side effects and may have unforeseen consequences we are as yet unaware of. If everyone went around using medicine "just in case I happen to be in that group", then we'd all be taking a lot of medicine we simply do not need. Now, I am fine with people using progesterone if they want to, even tho I don't think it is of any benefit to most people and it causes side effects, but I like you guys to understand that it's not something to just be added in just out of fear of losses that thankfully for most people, do not materialize.

Additionally, your midwife is either incorrect, or is just playing along giving you something that's a placebo, in claiming that it's a good idea to just use bioidentical progesterone during pregnancy anyway. Bioidentical progesterone is meant for menopausal women and was never meant to sustain a pregnancy. You don't absorb enough thru your skin, even if you were to put on a LOT of it (and please don't.) It needs to be specially formulated for vaginal use to help sustain a pregnancy (if it does anything, which I cannot confirm). Both oral progesterone and the OTC cream are much less effective than the suppositories. Think about it this way - if OTC cream was just as good as the kind of progesterone supplementation you can get from your doctor, they'd just make you use the over the counter kind!!! They'd not continue using prescription strength if that stuff was equally good. That's certainly how they do it with heartburn medication and antihistamines - once they can sell it to you over the counter, your insurance no longer covers it and you have to pay out of pocket. The reason why it's not used by doctors to sustain pregnancies is because it doesn't work.

So you're relying on tests that are many years old, to assume you have an ongoing issue with low progesterone (that can vary wildly month by month) and short LP at some time in the past?? But unless your short LP was 7 days or less, (and you're absolutely right that this can happen due to breastfeeding and tells you nothing about what was happening in months you were not breastfeeding) you can still get pregnant, even with 8-9 day LP, and LP changes over time so an 8 day LP one month can be an 11 day LP the next and a BFP the month after. It just does not, in any way, shape or form, mean any ongoing issue is present. Additionally, we've found that LP that's just a few days short is often caused by low ESTROGEN, not progesterone anyway. While progesterone can keep your period from coming, the real cause of 9-11 day LP has to do with a failing of the secondary estrogen surge, a big rush of estrogen that comes at about 7 DPO (the corpus luteum starts to break down at this time) and helps sustain the lining long enough for a new pregnancy to send a message to your ovaries to keep the CL alive and making progesterone. So while prog supplementation can make you have a 14 day LP, if your estrogen is low (and this is something that definitely happens with too much exercise, too few cals/fat, and being too thin) that's still a problem and it may be complicated or masked by prog supps.

Likewise with a testosterone test from 2014. It doesn't mean anything here in 2022. I don't know what units they were measuring with, but 45 isn't high anyway, it's midrange. By the way, if your testosterone is in normal range, even if it's at the higher end, that is not a marker for PCOS. The free T is a bit higher but again, that was from 2014 and unless you had followup tests including your blood sugar and then the other tests for PCOS that's in no way something you should consider a diagnosis whatsoever.

I also would like to point out that the more messing around you do with the 11 herbs and spices approach, you can actually CREATE what you fear (particularly with short LP). We have seen absolute gobs of people develop delayed or even stopped ovulation, and short LP, when taking Vitex. Being too thin and exercising too much, likewise. And bioidentical progesterone we have witnessed firsthand messing up people's cycles. Since there was a theory that higher than average progesterone = more girls conceived, people started using OTC progesterone cream during various parts of the cycle and they ended up really messing up their cycles completely, stopping O and also just making it so irregular they couldn't know what was even going on. People THOUGHT they'd Oed on CD 14, and then got their "period" on CD 21, but it was never a period and just breakthrough bleeding because their body was so confused, it really muddies the waters. OR people assuming they O CD 14, starting the prog cream assuming they were in the luteal phase, and then stopping the egg in its tracks until they stopped the cream. Not saying that's what happened to you, just that we've seen that happening to others. Unfortunately, while bio-identical prog cream isn't enough to save a pregnancy, it IS enough to mess up your cycle!

What I would LOVE to see is for you to take a short time and see what happens on the alternate LE Diet, being sure you're getting enough calories, without any of this stuff (maybe myoinositol if you'd like.) If we start seeing things go wackadoo, we can always add in some other methods (tho I would be very wary about giving you most of those things you've been taking in the past) and of course you're always welcome to take progesterone supplements from your doctor if you want to once you've conceived.

Ok posting this next part, then onto the final round. :)

[atomic sagebrush]

RE ideal diet, yes, that's absolutely right. You only likely need to alter your macros a bit and possibly cut back on sugar. No need to limit dairy, other than keeping within the limits.

My favorite app is a very old school one called "pen and paper" (no, this is not actually an app!) The apps are all a) very time consuming b) misleading and c) tend to feed control freakishness, as people end up tracking things they don't need to and getting somewhat addicted to recording everything in their diet. If you just take a notepad and a pen, and give it a couple weeks, and roughly jot down the stuff you're eating - use Google to ballpark the nutrients in various things - by the end of a week or two you'll know what you're eating, how much and when, and you'll have the jist. Usually you won't even need to keep tracking after that as long as you're sure you're not cutting back more and more over time.

RE adding more kids, I actually have an odd number of kids (which wasn't my intention really for the reasons you say). My older two sons actually still live together as roommates, but my younger three have an interesting dynamic. In some ways my daughter gets along better with my 3rd son (they're both very outdoorsy) and in other ways with my 4th son. And then the boys have some similarities because they're both boys. So it really isn't so much that there's ever an odd man out; most of the time when one of them isn't hanging with the other two, they are doing something on their own and want it that way!

We do believe that exercise sways on its own, so I'd want you to start off with higher than normal cals and exercise to see what happens.

For people with PCOS and tendencies that way, having higher than average blood sugar can also raise testosterone. So it's a two-fer, because PCOSers both don't tolerate carbs as well, and also have worse effects when they over do them. Whole grains are less prone to elevating blood sugar and keeping it up for longer and higher time periods.

If your testosterone actually is high, we will likely see it lower on the diet anyway. In all honesty, though, I'm not so sure it really IS testosterone swaying anyway as we see some mixed evidence of this. I honestly cannot answer all your questions as we don't know how it all works, but we have gotten good results. I'm happy to elaborate more about why I am no longer convinced about testosterone but it's taken me a while to finish this post so just let me know if you're interested.

The important thing is to do what has worked for most people most of the time, even though I can't (yet) truly explain all the biological mechanisms.

Yes, I have a pretty basic overview here: https://www.genderdreaming.com/forum/gender-swaying-general-discussion/54674-6-things-you-probably-believe-about-natural-gender-swaying-arent-true.html (be sure to access this not from Tapatalk, though, as Tapatalk doesn't always open our links correctly.)

[atomic sagebrush]

Oh and here's a bit longer, more involved one: https://www.genderdreaming.com/forum/swaying-studies-and-scientific-research/32383-defense-swaying-part-1-a.html

[emilyjo3]

Lolol “old school app called pen and paper”… I love that. I actually just this morning before reading your response downloaded one app to try it, got immediately annoyed, downloaded another, got even more annoyed, and decided I should just write down notes. I’m not super tech savvy anyway, don’t like notifications and tracking, and my kids hate when I get on my phone, so it all works out. I’m curious to learn more about what I eat. Out of habit, I have been trying to maximize proteins and healthy fats in my family’s diet for years now, so it is going to feel odd to cut back on these things.

Yep, I realize I’m going off of info from a long time ago which is largely irrelevant. But it’s all I’ve got in terms of numbers. Sorry! I do think I naturally have highish testosterone, though, so I am glad to hear that maybe this doesn’t matter for swaying so much anyway. I have never shown to be insulin resistant or have high blood sugar (again, it’s been a looong time since I’ve tested this, the last time being during my first pregnancy. But I have no reason to believe anything has changed.) So, maybe I don’t have PCOS after all. I’ve never done extensive or follow up testing on this.

RE short LP: It’s also likely irrelevant because it has only been in the context of breastfeeding (I never had enough cycles to track well prior to conceiving the first time). I was tracking using temperature, CM, and cervical height. I got so excited to learn how to do this (if I ever have a daughter, I will certainly empower her with this knowledge) and to find that my body actually did “work” somewhat. Without being able to go off LMP for pregnancy, I have always been able to pinpoint my due date accurately (it matches with scan estimates) within a day or two. So I feel pretty confident in my ability to pinpoint ovulation and then calculate LP from there. To be honest, though, I’m not sure I’m up for tracking all that stuff right now. Maybe if we really start TTC, and if it’s useful for swaying. I’ve just got so much else going on in my life!

I am curious about the “one attempt” and e4d recommendation and if this means I need to be tracking more consistently or if we could just do e4d’s and call it good. I’ve tried searching the site but can’t find where you describe the reasoning as to why this seems to work?

Yeah…..I totally hear you in all the progesterone stuff. People hold a lot of assumptions about how it works when maybe we don’t actually understand it that well. I never took progesterone suppositories or cream until actually pregnant. The progesterone rx was not recommended by my endocrinologist but rather by two of my MD relatives (one is a MFH doc and the other trained in OB)…it was more as a safeguard because my progesterone measured on the very low side for my gestation on two different days. I’m aware of the mixed research on this, though you are clearly much more well-versed than I am! It’s been a while since I’ve even looked at it. I agree, the cream is not enough to sustain pregnancy, and in my case I really just used it as a way to support my hormones...I am willing to admit I probably never needed it, but it’s a fear that was hard for me to let go of (my midwife really just offered it as an option after I asked her. Pretty sure it was more for placebo/peace of mind is you are saying…she never pushed it at all.) My husband’s work as a chemical engineer in the pharmaceutical industry was informative in our understanding how the body absorbs through the skin. All that to say, the progesterone cream is irrelevant to swaying anyway since I don’t use it while TTC. I am fine with operating under the assumption that my hormones are (probably) within range of normal as someone who is low weight rather that being “unbalanced”…I mean, the more simple/minimal I go with supplements the better as far as I’m concerned! I’ve had a lifetime (as in, since I was born) of being told by medical professionals all the ways in which I was “abnormal”, of being considered “high risk”, and of seeing how MDs tend to assume the worst even when things are actually fine. I’ve come a long way in healing from this narrative after three healthy pregnancies. Not saying I’m perfect or that I haven’t needed doctors (they literally saved my life as a baby)…but there’s always a balance, and there’s always more to learn. That’s all a complete tangent, BUT I’d be happy to let the PCOS dx go as well LOL! Not sure where this leaves me with the myo inositol. Does it sway pink regardless or just for PCO-tendencies?

I’d always been set on 2 or 3 kids. But now that I’m here, I just keep wondering about another. And I keep having conversations with people that encourage me in this. But sometimes I look at the chaos of my life with three boys and wonder what in the world I am thinking lol! And then I have a great day with my boys, living our dream, and I think we for sure need another one…and around and around I go. I hold out hope we could have a girl (I have ALWAYS pictured myself with girls) even though at this point I am convinced we’d have another boy. I get scared of how I will feel if I find I am pregnant with another boy. I oscillate between wanting to give my best chance at a girl vs just letting it go and letting fate decide… It is all emotionally complicated!

Coincidentally, my maternal grandfather is one of 4 boys, and my dad is one of four boys, so the 4 boy thing Is prevalent in family lore. My older two boys WANT us to have another baby, and they WANT it to be another brother (which is sweet..they think the brothers they have are so great, why not add another!?). But wow, does my heart long for a girl. If I’m honest, each pregnancy I hoped for a girl. I am so glad we got the boys we did of course (particularly my third one who I swayed for…he is just precious, and I’m so glad he’s a he!), but if we have a fourth boy, I do wonder how I will learn to accept the finality of it. I know I can accept it, I just fear the process of getting to that point.

Thanks so much for including the links. I’ll look them over more soon!!!

Thanks for all your insight. I’m happy, even relieved, to not worry about taking supplements. It’s good for me to rethink my assumptions about my hormones. I’ve got a long way to go in learning my calorie/nutrient intake, but I’ll do what I can.

How much (and what type of) exercise is recommended? I would love to exercise more, but it’s hard to imagine where I’ll find the time. It would be good to have something to aim for though!

Also, what is your recommendation for alcohol? I think I’ve been seeing it as something good for pink sway?


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[atomic sagebrush]

Can you bump this for later?

[emilyjo3]

Bump!

No rush though.. we are going camping and won’t have internet for the next few days


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[atomic sagebrush]

It's actually a really good skill to have, understanding more about the breakdown of your foods. When you get "a certain age" like me LOL it's really hard to balance staying reasonably thin with getting enough nutrients unless you have some understanding of that so it's actually more useful than it might seem at first blush.

No not at all, no need to be sorry! Most people on the site have NO numbers at all so even old numbers can be somewhat useful. I just don't want to rely on them and choose a course of action on that basis when it may not be what is best for you.

Tracking is actually NOT AT ALL useful for swaying and if you aren't already doing it, don't start. Since timing really does not work and has been debunked, you're doing all that for no reason (since cycles change dramatically while swaying anyway) and it serves to feed that "control freakishness" that many of us with all boys are plagued by, which may even sway blue if we let ourselves get too all-consumed with the minutest day to day details of swaying.

You can absolutely start with e4d if you prefer. The truth is we don't know why one attempt works. In the earliest days of the site, because I wanted to avoid the pitfalls and misery that I witnessed when I was back on Ingender, where people went years not conceiving only to end up having an opposite anyway, we put a premium on conception. Since none of us had ever guessed one attempt might sway, we did all the traditional stuff, most of which cut odds of conception hugely, but then added attempts to get pregnant more quickly. It was the WORST results of the site - only 58%. I couldn't understand what we were doing wrong, because the LE Diet was getting better results than the traditional diets, and we were still doing all the stuff, it was so discouraging. But then, we just through sheer dumb luck had tracked the number of attempts. We were shocked to find that one attempt was (at that point) at 70-75%, two attempts was at 60-65%, and then 3 attempts fell all the way down to 40-43%. (the variation in numbers was because we were watching for a few months before we put it all together). These people were doing all sorts of different, strong sways, the only difference seemed to be the number of attempts. We also found that some of the things that we'd assumed worked, like pH, frequency patterns, antihistamines, and herbal supplements did nothing (or were even worse than nothing, getting LOWER results than the site as a whole.) We changed that advice so people dropped the ineffective stuff first while keeping one attempt, and IMMEDIATELY, within three months (because that's the amount of time it takes people to conceive and find out gender) our results did a complete 180. They shot up and have stayed up ever since, and if I purged those early results from our database (which I never would, but if I did) I could make our overall results look even better than they are, since our results subsequent to those first couple years are vastly superior. OUr results on one attempt look less good now than they did, though, because quite a lot of people won't do sway diet and JUST do one attempt. That's at their discretion of course but it does make the numbers look different than they did for quite some time, though.

The e4d is just a low effort way to be in with one attempt no matter where in the cycle that ovulation falls. We can do that in either the 72 hour or 96 hour pattern (NOT that number of hours, that's just how we count the days). Since I do feel that one attempt (because of that inadvertent experiment we did) is more reliable, I have people typically start off with one attempt then go to e4d. But it's totally fine to start off with e4d. Most people who do e4d from the start, start off with the 96 hour pattern and then go to 72 hour pattern. E4d also boosts chances of conception because if people O early or late, and also can help if a person has mistakenly been assuming they can only conceive on a particular cycle day when the day before or after might have been better.

I'll post this now and reply to the rst when I can.

[emilyjo3]

Thanks for this reply! This is so interesting! Do you have any theories as to why the one attempt seems to help sway girl?? I know you don’t know for sure, but your theories are always interesting! Looking back at my charts, both boy #1 and boy #3 had 5-6 days prior to BD during fertile window. For boy #2 it was BD every 2-3 days. What actually is the definition of “one attempt”? One time within _____ number of days?

That being said, I was taking lots of supplements with all three of my boys and on a very boy friendly diet for the first two. I’m thinking avoiding supplements, reducing protein and fat calories, and e4d would probably be a pretty good sway relative to what I did before. I can also keep drinking lots of coffee (I mean, I’m taking care of three boys - that one is a no brainer lol), drinking alcohol (I am still breastfeeding, so I can’t get too crazy with that one), and figure out if I can add some exercise. The exercise feels the least achievable to me. Certainly I can do SOME, but not as much as I’m seeing other swaying women are doing.

Also, maybe by tracking my cycles so closely with my boys (with irregular cycles it felt like the only way to have any clue as to what was going on), I was having some of those control freak tendencies you talk about. I’m very much a type B person, but maybe my desperation to successfully conceive brought out some control freakishness. It will be interesting to see what happens, though, because I won’t really know if and when I ovulate unless I’m tracking my temp. Maybe I can just generally be aware of my cervical fluid and take pregnancy tests a couple weeks after EWCM dries up.. Or, if we really do decide to go for that fourth baby, maybe I’ll track my temp and nothing else, just to have an idea of due date in the event of pregnancy.

I’d love to hear advice about how much/type of alcohol and exercise is needed to make it worth it, or if I just shouldn’t worry about those.

Oh, and that’s really good advice about learning to track nutrients. Definitely a worthwhile skill in the long run!

Thanks again!!


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[atomic sagebrush]

I've speculated that it may be a sheer "sperm numbers at egg" thing, like somehow more sperm = advantage to Y and fewer = advantage to X. But I have come to suspect that the most likely explanation has to do with sperm capacitation. Sperm capacitates in waves, some always "sleeping", some awake, looking to fertilize an egg, and then dying shortly after waking up, and it can somehow communicate between sperm to coordinate that process. It seems very plausible to me that something in the environment may make one or the other stay dormant and never wake up, or one chromosome wake up en masse when the egg shows up (since there are attractants the egg releases at that time).

It's one attempt in the fertile window, and that can vary by person. We are just going off of what we see in terms of when people are conceiving - VERY few people have conceived 4-5 days before O, a handful 3 DPO (probably later in that day), and most people conceive O-1/2 and early on O Day. So we treat our functional fertile window as lasting on average of about three days. Hence the e4d method - the 72 hour pattern will always be about that far apart, and the 96 hour pattern will for sure have that gap covered.

:agree: exactly. It is NEVER just one thing. If you were taking lots of supplements and eating a boy friendly diet that's the first and most important thing to change.

Re exercise, since your tendency is to lose ovulation easily we would ~probably~ be best off skipping that esp. if it doesn't come naturally to you. It's just another thing that may delay or even stop O.

The amount of exercise can vary. People who actually do have PCOS can benefit from smaller amounts of exercise (since the benefits of lowering blood sugar are so great for them). But we're not sure you have that going on. Is there an amount of exercise you do feel you could manage without seeing weight loss?

1 drink a day for alcohol, tho some people have done less than that, that's the amount I feel confident with.

I know I still have some unanswered q's in your other post, I'll try to get through them today.

[emilyjo3]

Hmm I would perhaps go ahead and skip the exercise, or at least not worry about it too much. I used to be a runner back before having kids, but I don’t have time to commit to that right now, maybe a couple days a week but that would be it. Based on what you are saying I’m not convinced it would make or break things for me (and might just prevent ovulation altogether honestly..that may be what was going on when TTC the first time around) so I’m not sure it’s worth prioritizing. We are pretty regularly outside being active, hiking, or climbing, etc., but it’s usually with kids in tow, so pretty slow and not exactly cardio.. I’ll think about if I can add in at least a little more exercise once I get a handle on my nutrient intake.

Very interesting theory about the one attempt! Evolutionarily speaking, I guess living in “time of abundance” would theoretically allow for more sex and favor boys? On the flip side, it seems that more sperm might imply more men, and it would be logical for some mechanism to balance out the ratio in favor of females. So I don’t know, it’s pretty confusing and obviously very multifaceted and mysterious. But it’s promising that you have some data to show that for SOME reason e4d helps to sway! When are you writing a book on all this? ;)


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[atomic sagebrush]

Let me rephrase. Exercise is a fantastic sway tactic, it absolutely can make or break a sway, but the issue is that for people who lose ovulation very easily, we need to do whatever it takes to prevent that from happening. Because if your ovulation stops, we would then have to do all this probably-more-blue-friendly-than-just-not-exercising-to-begin-with stuff. So it makes more sense to me (and this is based on having gone this route with 123,456,789 people by now) to forgo the benefit of exercise to prevent the harm of losing ovulation - in which case we'd have to mess around with diet AND also not exercise to get it going again, if that makes sense.

There really may be more than one thing coming into play here. What I have seen (and this is one of those "not universal, but very VERY strong trends") is that on average, the couples with all boys tend to be more sexual than those with all girls. I quite regularly will have couples with all girls where they have sex only once a week, once a month, or even more like once every few months. Some of these men have health issues or other fertility challenges that either lower their sex drive a lot or make them unable to perform very often. Sometimes the wife has physical issues like vulvodynia, or infections or cysts from actual intercourse so they don't have it very often. Other times they're just busy and not that focused on it. And it's not something I see among couples with boys - my husband would flip his pancakes if we went a week without sex, let alone a month! So that disconnect is definitely tied up in the mystery somehow.

But at the same time, I have what I call an "important minority" of couples with all girls who have sex every single day (about the same number as the amount of people who are going months without having sex at all). The logic with that seems to be, their husbands are making really small batches of sperm so there are fewer sperm to greet the egg - but again, we don't KNOW that, it's just speculation. That's something I ~also~ don't see very often at all among couples with all boys. (and please, no one, try this method of getting a girl. It is too subject to interruption, like people have job situations, or sick kids, and time after time people end up in a blue-friendly pattern when they were trying to do daily BD. Plus, a lot of men with all boys can just shake it off and make more sperm than ever that way.) I don't know what that means (re the daily BD and girls) but the couples who have been in that camp have often not been together very long and/or were very young, less than 25. That may have something to do with it.

Long story short, the logic of the ultimate mechanism is as yet elusive to me but seems to be tied to overall sex drive and possibly the longetivity of the relationship.

I probably should write a book, but I'm honestly in this to help as many people as I can. Me taking time away from helping you guys to get a book to a point of publication (because it takes such a huge time commitment to do that) and promote it, that just doesn't feel like the best use of my time when what I could be doing is helping people. :)
Long story short,

[atomic sagebrush]

Ok I told myself I would not leave work today without finishing replying to your post on page 1!!

RE progesterone, as long as it's medically prescribed then it's your call. I tell people my thinking on it simply because they're not often going to hear that from anyone else, but of all the things people do, that one I completely understand why you guys want to go that route and it's certainly not a bad thing for either safety or sway so it's at your discretion. Do be aware that (and this very well may not have been the case for you, I mention it simply because I've seen it so often) many times getting progesterone tested even just a couple days "off" of where you think you are in the cycle can really lead to a dramatically different result. So people sometimes end up getting prog. tested and told that it is low but they'd ovulated several days later than they thought. just something to keep in mind if you're ever in that boat in future.

I may have already mentioned this so apologies if I'm being repetitive, but I do have people from time to time who will consider swaying, maybe even start doing it for a week or two, and then seem to change their mind and say "what am I thinking, gender doesn't matter, all that matters is a healthy baby". These people nearly always end up with opposites; the people with all boys often treat pregnancy as this huge thing they must prepare for with massive amounts of healthy food and supplements and BD as much as they can to get pregnant quicker, and the people with all girls will stop eating healthy, often lose weight (since they gain some on HE, usually), and will cut back on supplements. And invariably they have big regrets over this, since it was more of an emotional wobble than what they actually, long term, wanted or intended to do. So I always like to point that out whenever anyone brings up the whole "gender doesn't matter" ball o wax - while you're right, and it absolutely doesn't matter, it's only natural to want to experience a child of both genders and if we can help make that happen with a few easy to make changes, well, why not?

Walking is fine! If you could walk for an hour even just 3 days a week I think it could help, but like I said at the start, my gut is for you to skip it all together because I think it carries far more risk to you than it does for the average person.

Alcohol has helped pink sways. 1 drink a day is all you need. Stop at ovulation of course but until you're actively trying you can have that drink all month.

[emilyjo3]

Atomic, thank you so so much for your reply, yet again. Your perspective is very refreshing, especially relative to other sway advice floating around out there. I really wish I would’ve reached out last time I swayed…except for the fact that I can’t imagine life without my perfect, sweet, makes-the-whole-family-smile third baby boy!

Regarding exercise—as the weather is getting warmer and especially this summer, I probably will be walking at least an hour 2-3 days/week. Good to know that I wouldn’t need to do much beyond this anyway.

You said….”the people with all boys often treat pregnancy as this huge thing they must prepare for with massive amounts of healthy food and supplements..” LOLOL. Aaaaaand that is precisely ME. No wonder I have three boys!! That single thing might be what I would change most this time around. Which will be much easier if we are still somewhat undecided if we should have another baby. It’s not as if I’ll be unhealthy, I just don’t need to feel the pressure to eat exceedingly healthy and obsess over supplements. It’s kind of a relief! It’ll be hard to skip ice cream though haha


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[atomic sagebrush]

Exactly! The nice thing about swaying is that there never is a "failed sway" because either way, we get the golden ticket!

We have to keep in mind that there are at least three separate multimillion dollar industries (medicine/wellness, fertility, and the supplement makers - not to mention the media itself which profits from running content, wherever they can find it, even if it comes from advertisers) with a vested interest in selling us health products and they're all willing to go to great lengths in order to do that. So what we actually need and what we're told we need is not always the same at all. We would not have gotten to the point where there are nearly 8 billion human beings on the planet if we truly needed organic powdered rhinoceros toenails just to get pregnant. :)

If you have a healthy lifestyle overall, you just don't NEED any of this stuff prior to BFP. There's time enough to start prenatals and any other supps you think you should be taking when you're looking at a positive pregnancy test.

[emilyjo3]

Hi again! I’m adding this to my previous thread for cohesiveness. We have officially decided to try for a fourth baby!! We’d been undecided for so long, and it feels much better to have decided. It comes with a slew of emotions - excitement, deep longing for a girl, trepidation over the potential of coming to terms with a fourth boy (sometimes I feel we can only make boys haha), middle of the night fear that I’m not worthy/capable of having another child, tremendous gratitude for the kids I have, guilt that I care about gender…maybe one day I will learn to turn my brain off haha. But mostly I am excited, and I have a deep sense that we are meant to have another person in our family.

ANYWAY, I have been doing the LE diet since about May, just a little before getting my first postpartum period (at 21 months PP) which also coincided with having a stomach bug AND Covid at the same time. I lost a ton of weight from being sick. Fast forward to end of summer after a few months of no ovulation, and I have since ovulated three more times, each a little over a month apart which is amazingly regular for me. But my luteal phase has been only 7-9 days. I think myo inositol has been helping me ovulate (can’t say for sure, but it seemed to help in the past too), but I’m not sure why my luteal phase continues to be short. I am still breastfeeding my 26 mo old (1-3x/24hrs.), but I’ve always been able to get pregnant by now in the past. I’m not sure if the LE diet is contributing to short luteal phase. I have been increasing calories somewhat after ovulation, just in case.

But here’s what is also confusing to me. I have been getting sick with the common cold and getting hit WAY WORSE than normal. Normally my immune system is pretty good, but lately my symptoms have been prolonged compared to the rest of my family, and it’s making it hard to function.

I’m not sure if, in a state of “lower health” as demonstrated by my body not fighting sickness as well as usual, I should be hopeful that I’m increasing my odds at having a girl, or if things are so out of wack that I won’t be able to get pregnant altogether. By the way, my weight has held pretty steady at my norm between 98 and 100 lbs (after gaining back the weight I lost when I was sick. I had lost about 10 lbs!) so I’m not drastically underweight or anything. But I certainly have not been eating my normal super-healthy diet.

Perhaps I’m overthinking and just need to be patient. But the gap between our last baby and our potential future baby is getting bigger, and at 37 I’m certainly not getting any younger! My last cycle my husband was gone for a week, we BD when he got back, and I ovulated 2 days later. I was SO HOPEFUL because we’d happened to have one attempt at a good time, I was pretty stressed while he was gone, and I’d kept to the diet really well…it seemed like such a good girl sway. But then my period started 9 days later. So we will try again, going back to e4d.. Assuming I maintain my pattern, I should ovulate at the end of November, but ovulating during the holiday season always feels tricky for sticking to a sway diet.

Should I be concerned and/or do anything about my continued short luteal phase?

Have you noticed others on the LE diet seem to have a less robust immune system, or is that just me? My last period was also quite a bit lighter than usual, and I wondered if that could be related to nutrition.

Should I be worried about egg quality at all? I am taking folate. I am still eating mostly healthy, just not as MUCH or as excessively healthy.

I’m trying to figure out if I should stay the course and be patient, or if there are any changes I should make. Thanks for any input. No rush though - I know you are busy!


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[atomic sagebrush]

Hi! Welcome back!

First, a few quick questions - are you doing the LE Diet as written, tracking your food intake at least somewhat, staying in the macros, eating a variety of many different foods, or are you basically just "eating less than I was" without really knowing how much you're getting? And by staying in the macros, I mean the HIGHER end of the macros because you're breastfeeding - 1800-2000 cals (or even higher if need be to keep weight on), 50-60 g protein and fat not counting the pro and fat in fruit and vegetables.

Why did you start the diet so far in advance? I'm hoping you've been trying part of this time.

Are you exercising?

What else are you taking aside from myoinositol?

My concern is that you may not be eating as much as you think, or that you should be. Too strict a diet plus breastfeeding, myoinositol when you don't need to be taking it (and I don't generally recommend it for anyone as slim as you), exercise - all these things can really muck up your cycle and they work together, so even if in the past one of them alone didn't change your cycle, the combination of all of them, over a long period of time, absolutely can. It can also be that having gotten a few illnesses can also exacerbate this, so it may be just one thing on top of another here.

The answer to your question is, the LE Diet when done in a form in which you are getting adequate nutrient intake for your height, weight, and nutritional requirements, shouldn't affect your immune system at all in any negative way (and in fact for many people who are overweight, it would actually HELP their immune system by improving their health.) But if you're not eating enough, over the span of months, then yes, you could be seeing a decline in your immunity. Now, I don't necessarily think that's what is happening, but it is possible as it is possible any time when you are not getting enough nutrition.

That having been said, the real concern for me is that you're seeing clear changes in your cycle that are associated with not eating enough. Typically, people worry way too much about their immune system - I get this question fairly often, even from people who have been on diet for a week or two, and additionally get it from people who are overweight and/or eating plenty of calories. It is largely in people's heads. Most of the time, the reason why you get sick is because you've been exposed to viruses and bacteria that you hadn't been exposed to before, and nothing whatsoever to do with a "weak immune system" or any such thing. The truth is there are tons of sicknesses going around right now because of the lockdowns - everyone is getting sick all the time including people who are taking lots of supplements and are on very nutritionally dense diets. Now, you're telling me you're getting sick longer and having trouble recovering compared to your family, and so I absolutely hear your concerns and take them far more seriously than a person who's been on diet a week of course, but the bigger problem from where I sit is the change in your cycle.

Shorter, lighter periods happen to a lot of people on LE Diet. That is not in and of itself any cause for concern (and keep in mind a period tells us what happened LAST month, not this month) and we generally take it as a good sign, but I do want to ensure you're getting enough fat and calories to get and stay pregnant.

Nothing about this indicates you have any egg quality issues but knowing more about your diet will really help me piece everything together.

Nine days should be long enough to conceive, but I always like to see changes made whenever anything seems off. If you could fill me in about the other stuff going on in terms of diet, exercise, the supplements you're taking, etc then I can be of more help in telling you what to change.

ETA - I did go over macros and stuff back on the first page, but we sometimes need to even go beyond them for people who lose ovulation very easily and/or have a lot of stuff happening that can affect their cycle negatively.

[emilyjo3]

Thanks for the reply!

The reason I’ve been doing the LE diet so long is because we were undecided about whether to try for a fourth baby, but we also weren’t actively preventing pregnancy. I also didn’t anticipate such a long break in my cycles after getting sick. I stopped doing LE diet for a time in order to replenish after being sick.

I haven’t been super strict or precise about the diet. To be honest, I tracked calories and macros early on, but it felt pretty overwhelming so I didn’t continue, especially since we hadn’t decided about TTC. So instead I just kept my diet similar to my usual but tried to reduce the amount of protein (particularly red meat, which I keep to about 2 servings a week), fats, and calories overall. Once I started ovulating again, I figured I must be getting sufficient calories since historically my body will drop ovulation SO EASILY.

I realize I do not have good info to give you about my diet..sorry about that! I will try to track that better so I can understand what changes might be needed. I usually get overwhelmed because, while breakfast and lunch can be pretty straightforward, dinner is when I typically make a meal for my family loaded with veggies, healthy fats, and proteins. It feels daunting to estimate all the things in our dinners. I have still been eating dinner with everyone, just a slightly smaller portion than I normally would. I realize it’s very hard for you to help me without more concrete information, so I will see what I can do.

My luteal phase tends to be short postpartum. In fact since I’ve been tracking my cycles, my longest luteal phase has been 11 days (the cycle prior to conceiving baby number 3). I’m thinking that means that: either a 8-11 day luteal phase is just my normal (especially if it is possible to get pregnant on a 9 day luteal phase. I had not heard that before, but I trust your knowledge on this) OR my cycles while breastfeeding just never have a chance to lengthen but I have conceived almost immediately once they are long enough OR there is still come combo of breastfeeding and calorie deficiency that needs to be addressed in order to lengthen my LP.

My toddler is close to the age my other two boys were when weaned - this happened pretty naturally once I was in my second trimester of pregnancy. I’m not feeling ready to wean yet (breastfeeding is just so convenient for me!) but technically I could.

And like I said, as far as ovulation goes, I have been ovulating amazingly regularly for me. It’s mainly the light period and the short LP this far postpartum (because usually I have conceived again by now) that seems off. But maybe it’s not actually too off for me, I have no idea. I am very relieved to hear that immune issues are probably not related to all this.

No, I am not exercising. We are a pretty naturally active family, and I have not changed that (well, now that the weather is colder we haven’t been getting out as much, but we usually go back to being more active once we are all re-calibrated to cold weather). No major or consistent exercise for me though.

The only supplements I am taking are myo inositol and folate. I have continued myo because I remember hearing from a doctor long ago that some women can be insulin resistant in their ovaries specifically as opposed to systemically. I have wondered if that MIGHT explain the irregularities related to my menstrual cycle (and since I have tested as having normal-to-low blood sugar and never had symptoms of insulin resistance). The myo seems to help me…but who knows, maybe it’s all in my head.

I am drinking lots of coffee during the day and having alcohol most nights.

I have also been curious about olive leaf extract for swaying? I used that in my previous sway (opposite), and my husband took it inconsistently. Is that something you recommend? What does it supposedly do for a sway?


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[atomic sagebrush]

Ok bump this for me if I don't get back to you first thing tomorrow! Thanks!

[emilyjo3]

Bump! No rush though :)


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[atomic sagebrush]

Oh ok great! Sometimes people think that if they're on the diet a long time they'll get better results, but generally it just ends up causing so much trouble with delaying or stopping ovulation that it's best not to approach it with a "more is better" mentality. If this was more convenient for you, then by all means.

While it's fine to start off tracking and then drop it over time, just be very sure you are eating enough. It really is all too easy to cut back too far without even realizing it, and ending up undernourished.

Something we do find is that people who have always had irregular cycles sometimes go onto the alternate LE Diet sometimes see improvements in their cycle that they never expected. We've had people who have never had a regular cycle get textbook cycles on the alternate LE. I want to be really careful though because if the issue is more that you're not eating enough, the alternate LE Diet can really aggravate that. Even if you were to just take an average day and add it up once, it might really help me understand if the issue is more PCO-tendencies causing short LP, or if you're truly not eating enough. Even tho the symptoms are the same, the fixes are different so I want to get this right and avoid any kookiness in your cycle.

The thing with understanding LP and conception is a tricky one, because when you get pregnant you will never actually KNOW what day your period would have otherwise come!! We have absolutely seen many people with an 8 day and even 7 day LP who get pregnant, but we have no way of knowing if their LP was really even that long that month, or if it would have been 11-12 days long, that sort of thing. LP do change by the month and even if it's a regular pattern, we don't actually know if the people with a 9 day LP conceived with that, or if it' was 10 days long that month. But yes, I do regularly see people who have 9-10 day LP getting pregnant, and even with 8 day LP.

The light period is less of a worry to me than the short LP - we see many many people with lighter periods on LE Diet - it happened to me personally and I had the lightest period I ever had in my life the month I conceived my daughter - but I do think if you eat a bit more consistently, particularly with calories and fat, we will see an improvement in both.

But yes, I really do not see any immune system link between clients - I have many people who lose ovulation and never seem to get sick, and some people even swaying blue who will say they think swaying is making them sick, and people who are on diet an impossibly short time who ask me if swaying is making them sick - there's just not a strong trend that the LE Diet as written is making anyone get sick. But if you do feel you have something going on by all means we can consider doing something like adding in a prenatal 3x a week, or zinc/Vit. D/Vit C separately, even B12 if you think you might need that.

Myoinositol absolutely can help people with irregular cycles to become more regular. The issue is that sometimes, we can get too much of a good thing going where we lower hormones via diet, nursing, myoinositol, weight loss, etc and end up with a different problem that looks the same - the symptoms are the same, delayed O and short LP, but it's because of lower hormones, not hormones that are too high. So I am wanting to rule that out in case we are having what is basically the opposite problem.

The backstory on OLE is that we had a doctor from Australia show up on here in the first year of the site, who claimed she was studying it to make better gender splits with IVF for those who wanted girls. (more XX vs. XY) She claimed she was doing a study and it would be published eventually. But time passed and no study ever came out. In the meantime, some IVF people started using it and at first blush they did seem to be getting good splits. Then I started using it for a small number of swayers whose husbands had very bad sperm quality, and at first we also seemed to be getting good results.

BUT. Over the course of time, I came to realize that firstly the IVF people were basically taking the OLE and then cycling UNTIL they got more XX than XY. For some people this was after a couple months, for others it took them 6 months or even longer. Whenever they got more XX, they declared the OLE had worked, and then went on from there. There was no pattern or rhyme/reason to how long it took to get this result. It occurred to me that it was likely that they were getting more XX eventually just from sheer dumb luck, and then deciding it was the OLE even when it took a year for it to supposedly work.

At the same time, as more and more swayers used the OLE, even people who didn't have poor sperm health, the results dropped and settled at the overall success rate of the site (this generally indicates something is ineffective). It was likely that in the case of swayers, it was the original group - the couples with fertility issues and poor sperm quality - had better chance of pink to start with and as people outside that group used the OLE, it no longer appeared effective. I still let people use it so they avoid things like cranberry that are actually worse than the overall results of the site, and are also harsher on sperm, but in my gut I truly doubt it does anything.

[emilyjo3]

I am so sorry to be messaging on a holiday week, and please feel free to disregard..but I think I just need to process what might be happening and don’t know where to go.

Yesterday I noticed some spotting. Very odd, especially because my period (or what I thought was my period; it was somewhat light and started 9 dpo) had ended just over a week ago. I wondered if it could be mid cycle spotting or what. On a whim I took a pregnancy test and it was POSITIVE. I took two more - both positive.

What???? I spent the day not sure if I should be excited or sad or what. I have not been tracking my cycles other than temping to confirm ovulation and watching cervical fluid (trying to avoid obsessiveness), so I don’t know if my BBT had been elevated.

I temped this morning, and it was low. Spotting has continued. I’m assuming I miscarried or am currently miscarrying. If it was a chemical pregnancy, I’m not sure my HCG would still be elevated? Or was that initial bleeding threatened miscarriage and now I’m having the real thing? Or is there some other reason HCG could be elevated?

I know I probably just need to wait things out. But should I keep swaying, take a break from swaying until things get back to normal? Does this mean it’s going to be ages before I actually ovulate again? Did I do anything to cause this (I assumed I’d had my period I went back to drinking coffee and alcohol and my somewhat LE diet)?

I feel bad posing all these questions to you, and you are in no way obligated to answer. It’s just you are so knowledgeable, and I’m not sure where else to turn. TTC can be such a roller coaster of a time.

Also, thanks so much for your precious reply. Very helpful as usual. I’m feeling motivated to try to track again, maybe in a few days once the holiday weekend is over and I’m a little settled down.


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[Boysway2022]

I had this twice… once was a chemical pregnancy (I tested positive and then a week later tested negative) with my last pregnancy with my little girl I thought I had a period but it stopped really quickly… I then took a test and it was positive I continued to bled as well… I bled each time my usual period was until 30 weeks . If I wasn’t ttc I wouldn’t have known I was pregnant ! All was fine with this pregnancy and went on to having my girl! (Scary with all the bleeding though !) maybe take a test in a weeks time - if it’s not a full blown period I’d hope it was just some bleeding which can happen in pregnancy. Such a scary time though ! ❤️

[emilyjo3]

Thank you so much for your reply!! How interesting. That must have been scary
To have bleeding throughout your pregnancy, but I’m so glad it worked out! I never had bleeding in any of my pregnancies, nor have I had a chemical before. I had wondered if I could actually be pregnant and just having bleeding, but with my BBT being low, I don’t think that’s possible. We’re you tracking BBT by chance?

I think it’s most likely that I had a chemical and maybe just a didn’t flush everything out which is why I’m having spotting now. And maybe that’s why I still am testing positive. I also have felt pregnant with slight nausea, but I know that can be due to any number of things. It sure seems like I’d be negative by now as it’s been well over a week since my “period” ended. It was a light period but dragged on with spotting for multiple days.

Your advice is very good - I will take another test in a week or so and see what’s happening. Not sure where that leaves me with swaying..whether I should keep swaying or take a break for a bit on the off off chance I’m actually pregnant.

Anyway, thanks again - I so appreciate hearing your experience! It makes me feel less crazy haha.


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[Boysway2022]

My chemical was really heavy bleeding heavier than a normal period. My successful pregnancy my temp did drop slightly so I was thinking the same
Thing happened but it was just spotting / light flow for 3-4
Days! Was so stressful! Fingers crossed it’s all good for you!

[atomic sagebrush]

Oh gosh what a roller coaster ride! I'm sorry you're going through this.

The temp being low is obviously a complicating factor, but it IS possible to have bleeding in pregnancy, even very heavy bleeding, and still come out of it with a baby at the end. I had what seemed like a full five day period, heavier than a normal period, and had a baby about 8.5 months later. It is possible and not uncommon, so I second the suggestion to give it a few more days and test again because until that test is negative, you're still pregnant and it can still work out.

Since this spotting has continued for a while and you're past where your period would have been due, I would not consider this a chemical but (if it continues, that is - still hoping it resolves with a happy ending) a very early loss. My guess would be there was implantation near the cervix, which caused the early bleeding and it's still working itself out. That having been said, tubal pregnancy is also possible so if the spotting continues and the pregnancy tests stay positive we'd want to have that checked out to be sure.

Until you have a negative pregnancy test or it becomes glaringly obvious it's not working out (bright red blood + much lighter tests) I would operate under the assumption you're still pregnant. Don't start swaying again, just assume pregnancy until you have a considerably lighter test. Even if you have red bleeding, if the test is still dark positive, assume you are still pregnant and act accordingly. It's not over till it's over, and I know it's tough to believe it when you see spotting but more often than most people realize is even possible, it resolves happily.

If this is a loss, nothing you did caused it. The embryo would not even be attached at this stage of gestation and couldn't be affected by alcohol or caffeine (although stop both right away of course, or at least cut back on the caffeine if you were having a lot)

If it is a loss, it shouldn't take ages for you to ovulate again. In most cases with a very early loss, you'll ovulate pretty close to "normal" (meaning about 14 days after you lose the pregnancy). The longer the pregnancy continues, as a general rule it will take longer for your cycle to resume. But in most cases with an early loss - if that is in fact what is happening - it will be quite close to what you might have expected if you had not conceived.

[atomic sagebrush]

Thank you so much for your reply!! How interesting. That must have been scary
To have bleeding throughout your pregnancy, but I’m so glad it worked out! I never had bleeding in any of my pregnancies, nor have I had a chemical before. I had wondered if I could actually be pregnant and just having bleeding, but with my BBT being low, I don’t think that’s possible. We’re you tracking BBT by chance?

I think it’s most likely that I had a chemical and maybe just a didn’t flush everything out which is why I’m having spotting now. And maybe that’s why I still am testing positive. I also have felt pregnant with slight nausea, but I know that can be due to any number of things. It sure seems like I’d be negative by now as it’s been well over a week since my “period” ended. It was a light period but dragged on with spotting for multiple days.

Your advice is very good - I will take another test in a week or so and see what’s happening. Not sure where that leaves me with swaying..whether I should keep swaying or take a break for a bit on the off off chance I’m actually pregnant.

Anyway, thanks again - I so appreciate hearing your experience! It makes me feel less crazy haha.


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If you're still having a positive pregnancy test then something is still there signalling the body to make HCG. Something is still attached or the test would have gone negative. I do think that a trip to the doc to rule out tubal pregnancy makes some sense, although they may not be able to see anything at this stage of gestation, they can run a couple of betas to see if the levels are doubling appropriately - it can help us see what is going on. It may be your levels are going up, which would be great news, and then they need to be monitoring you much more closely to rule out a tubal as quickly as possible. If the levels are low and are declining, then the pregnancy is probably wrapping up on its own and will not require any more intervention.

I don't say all this to freak you out or anything, the odds are that it's just going to work itself out completely on its own (either with a successful pregnancy or an uncomplicated loss) but just so you know what the next steps should be, if you've been spotting this long and are still having dark positive tests, it's best to get that checked sooner rather than later.

[emilyjo3]

Oh my goodness thank you ladies for your responses! I can’t tell you how helpful it is for me.

Atomic, thanks so much for your kind words. It’s incredibly helpful for me to hear your perspective, involving both the hopeful and the scary possible outcomes. You are such a wealth of knowledge. I had wondered about a tubal pregnancy too, but I wasn’t sure if there was anything I could/should do at this point. I will contact my midwife in the next day or so if things don’t seem be be resolving. The spotting has stopped so far. I just occasionally have tinges of pink. I’ve not had any cramping or anything, but I have felt slightly nauseous. I’ve had small amounts of ewcm, which I’m guessing is due to hormonal shifts.

I will also watch what the pregnancy tests are showing. Unfortunately the ones I used are expired (I know, I know..I’m not supposed to use those, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment), so I’m not sure the accuracy of the darkness of the line. But I just tested this morning and it was definitely LIGHTER. Two days ago, it was showing medium-dark, maybe about half as dark as the control line. (I even ran a control using my toddler’s pee that was conveniently in the little potty haha..it was stark white negative.) Who knows how accurate the darkness of expired tests are, but I suppose it’s better than nothing until I can get new ones.

I appreciate you confirming my thoughts that I should stop my sway for now. Believe me, it was hard to pass on all the yummy thanksgiving cocktails when I was feeling pretty sure I was miscarrying.

And thank you for reassuring me that I didn’t do something wrong that could have caused this. How quickly I can go down that hole sometimes.

It’s amazing that you also had so much bleeding and went on to have a healthy pregnancy! I know a couple women who had threatened miscarriages with lots of bleeding, where it ended up fine. But, in my case, the low BBT seems ominous. And now, with the line getting lighter, I’m pretty sure I can move forward expecting it was an early loss. Emotional roller coaster for sure, but it’s good to remember that usually our bodies know what is best.

Thank you again - I know I keep saying that, but hearing some input from other ladies is helping me think more clearly.


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[atomic sagebrush]

While they can't actually see via ultrasound at this point in time it's always a good idea to get in and be seen by someone if tubal pregnancy is a possibility. There are some cases where (and while you seem very knowledgeable, it has happened often enough so it's best to rule it out) where people are further along than they think, and by the time bleeding from a tubal conception starts it can be a true medical emergency even if dates were off by just a week or two. So yes if the tests stay positive (even if they're just a weaker positive, as some tubal pregnancies make less HCG and thus yield lighter tests or start off darker and then go lighter but STAY positive, that's what we want to have checked!) Again, not trying to scare you but just so you're aware of the possibility.

Expired tests are fine, no worries with those, people use them all the time. The darkness is really not as informative as people think; it's VERY common for tests to dance back and forth in early pregnancy between darker and lighter, and even sometimes between positive and negative before they just get very dark and stay there. So we're not necessarily going to read too much into a somewhat lighter test. If it goes from very dark to much lighter then that's when we know the score. But if it's just a little lighter then it can be darker again the next time you test.

In my case I was pregnant with twins and one was lost (we know this because the placenta continued to develop right alongside the other pregnancy). But 15-20% of pregnancies have bleeding, in many cases extreme bleeding much worse than mine was, and still end up making it! It's crazy until it happens to you or you see enough people for whom it has happened.

I do agree the low BBT seems, as you say, ominous, but even low BBT can turn around. Keeping my fingers crossed for clarity very soon.

[emilyjo3]

Ok I have an update. The hcg line stayed positive for about a week and then finally started to disappear. This morning it was barely there. Bleeding had stopped after a week. Over the weekend I had tons of ewcm. I assumed I’m not able to ovulate with hcg still in the system but we dtd anyway just in case. I’m 3 days past peak ewcm with no BBT spike (although at 98.3, it is slightly higher than it had been, but I’d normally be up to at least 98.5 by now. I realize this is splitting hairs and probably over obsessing…) I’ll temp again for two more days to be sure but otherwise assume the ewcm was just a hormonal shift or anovulatory. I have not been temping other than to confirm O, but I’m not sure if I should go back to temping for a bit until my cycles seem to be back. This is new territory for me.

I had stopped swaying for the most part while I waited for things to work themselves out (less coffee, no alcohol, still sort of LE diet, although we had visitors in town so I was eating a bit more meat than normal). Now I’m back at at. I guess the good news is that I CAN get pregnant doing what I am doing. I feel that this miscarried pregnancy would have been a great girl sway.

Thank you so much for your advice. I appreciated having the support and a place to process what was happening. I contacted my midwife as well as my cousin who is a doctor and has sadly had multiple miscarriages herself, and we all felt comfortable giving it another week. But, atomic, I’m so glad you brought up the possibility of eptopic so I could be aware that it was a real possibility. Having information is so important.

To be honest, I’m feeling low motivation right now. The timing for a fourth baby is feeling less and less ideal as the months go on, but I’m REALLY REALLY trying to trust that things will work out as they are meant to be. So, I want to keep swaying, but I’m also struggling with feeling discouraged and not knowing when my cycles will come back. I know I need to track calories and macros, but I’m just not feeling motivated, plus we are just very busy right now. One step at a time I suppose. This surprise pregnancy/loss was a strange experience, but I am very grateful that things seem to have resolved on their own.


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[atomic sagebrush]

Oh gosh I'm so sorry it took me so long to get back to you. Thanks so much for your patience!

While yes, you're not supposed to be able to ovulate through detectable HCG levels, we have had a few cases where "ghost lines" were actually negative pregnancy tests and a couple times people did ~seem~ to ovulate while still getting very light positive tests. Please keep in mind this is just what people tell me and I have no way to know if it's accurate info (as in, "I tested three days ago and it was positive then so I'm assuming it's still positive" sort of thing)

That having been said, from what you're describing I doubt you've ovulated although your body may be considering the possibility. I would keep testing with OPK or having unprotected sex every 4 days and/or temping if you want to.

The most important part of the tracking is simply ensuring you are eating ENOUGH. If you are getting adequate food intake then you can largely let go of the tracking but you need to be ABSOLUTELY certain you're not inadvertently cutting back without realizing it.

[emilyjo3]

Hi it’s me again. I found out last week I’m pregnant! I’m so excited! Quite shocked to be honest! Buuuut I’ve been swaying for close to a year, and the week I got pregnant I was not following my diet as closely because we were on vacation (still good amounts of coffee and alcohol though haha). To make matters worse, we had two attempts, one 4 days before and one 2 days before ovulation (at least I’m pretty sure that was the timing. I wasn’t feeling like I normally do.) It’s the first time our frequency has slipped all these months, but we were having a lovely time on the Oregon coast and it just felt right! [emoji51] I did immediately jump and dump but I’m assuming that doesn’t do a whole lot for lowering sperm count. We’d abstained (due to generally being busy) for probably at least a week before that. It was just a chaotic time with travel and such. But in the end, the frequency was quite boy friendly.

I’ve ovulated pretty consistently (for me anyway) for the past 5 months or so, but my luteal phase has been stuck at 8-9 days. I was SHOCKED to be pregnant because I kinda just assumed my hormones were not balanced enough to sustain pregnancy…this is also why I was a bit lax with my sway.

I’m trying to stay positive and focus on the excitement of baby number 4. By in large, I have been at ease with the very real possibility of having another boy. I’m trying very VERY hard to trust that whatever happens is meant to be. However, there are also times I am gripped with fear of how I will take it if we find out we are having a fourth boy! I’m just writing this out here because I know people in this group understand. We also haven’t told anyone about the pregnancy yet, so it’s fun to talk about :)

I welcome any words of wisdom or encouragement.


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[atomic sagebrush]

Aww, huge congrats!

Being off diet for a short time - particularly when it's just "not following it closely" cannot possibly a dealbreaker. If anything, that may even have helped you conceive if you were cutting back too far (I recall you weren't eating enough, and if you've been having a short LP that still may have been an issue). So don't worry about that at all.

An attempt 4 days before O is not an attempt. The odds of conception are 1 in 1000 according to a really good study done a few years back. This is very much in line with what we see too, where people who insist on 4 day cutoffs have absolutely terrible rates of conception (as in, virtually nonexistent).

I think you did a lot to sway pink, far more than you realize, and you have just as good a chance as anyone! Good luck and pink dust headed your way.

[treens]

Congratulations! I have everything crossed you get your perfect healthy baby girl!

[LMSM]

Congrats & heaps of pink dust coming your way!

[emilyjo3]

Thanks so much, everyone!!! I so appreciate it. By some funny coincidence, all our babies have been born on holidays, but this baby is due the end of January…the only “holiday” even close is my birthday [emoji23]

Atomic, thank you so so much for your encouragement. I have been feeling much more hopeful these last couple days, and reading your response was incredibly helpful. I can rest easy knowing that, for the most part, I did what I could and trust that everything else is in the hands of God/fate/the universe… As always, motherhood is a good exercise in letting go of control and expectations. We will probably wait until the anatomy scan to find out gender, but I’m so tempted to find out earlier haha! I wondered if my short LP was due to too-low calorie intake. But I was staying within the limits for the most part, and historically my body just won’t ovulate if I don’t have enough weight on me. But perhaps my hormones have just kinda changed after all these years

It still does not feel real. Cuddling with my sweetest-ever toddler, I just pinch myself that I get to do this again. I feel incredibly blessed, especially remembering how many question marks there used to be for me ever being able to conceive and be able to carry a healthy baby to term. I’m choosing to be cautiously optimistic that this will not end in miscarriage as my last one did because I don’t have the bleeding like I did.

Thanks again, all [emoji3526]


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[atomic sagebrush]

Oh that's great, I'm so glad to hear you're feeling more upbeat!

Yes short LP is one of the situations that can develop with too low a cal intake. People get delayed ovulation, short LP, or both.

Regardless of what happened in the past, there's so much variation month to month we can't really base anything that happens in the now on what happened in the past. Even just a couple hundred calories or a few grams of fat can make the difference between a normal cycle and one that can't end in conception, so these minor variations like going on vacation can totally have an outsize impact!

We are all keeping our fingers crossed for a happy, healthy pregnancy!

[Walkerbabies]

Congratulations on your pregnancy! I hope you get your girl. Keep us updated!