A change of plan-can anyone help please?

[Complex Emotions]

Wow, I've had a ton on artificial sugar through sweeteners in my coffee and from drinking DC. Wonder if there is something in that??

How many attempts have you had now? How long have you been on LE? I started in January after about 3 and a half years of lurking behind the scenes!

I'm so sorry, GlitterMouse. I think I was wrong about there being a connection between artificial sweeteners and a short LP. I don't see any sites or articles that suggest a connection now. I'm sorry for confusing you (and anyone else who read this!)

[Complex Emotions]

...Complex emotions, my LP is also very short, although it always has been and I managed to conceive both sons with it...

How short was your LP when you conceived your boys?

[GlitterMouse]

Don't worry about the sweetener linked to LP thing hun. We're all trying to help each other and I appreciate any suggestions. I actually looked it up after you'd mentioned it and thought I did see some websites referring to a possible link! Who knows?

My LP when I conceived DS1 varied from 8-11 days. I tracked it all and made some temp charts and went armed with those to a consultant for some help. He wasn't actually prepared to look at them and said that charting, opks etc all caused stress and that I shouldn't get too hung up on it etc. He basically dismissed my short LP. In fact I'm not sure he'd even heard of it??? He is a renowned guy in his field and the whole thing confused me TBH.

Maybe he was just saying that to chill me out? I have heard of consultants using these tactics to help people trying to conceive. To my surprise I got a bfp 5 days later. Maybe his calming, chilled out response helped me?

DS2 was a planned surprise! We just thought 'if it happens, it happens'. And it happened!

[Complex Emotions]

My LP when I conceived DS1 varied from 8-11 days. I tracked it all and made some temp charts and went armed with those to a consultant for some help. He wasn't actually prepared to look at them and said that charting, opks etc all caused stress and that I shouldn't get too hung up on it etc. He basically dismissed my short LP. In fact I'm not sure he'd even heard of it??? He is a renowned guy in his field and the whole thing confused me TBH.

Maybe he was just saying that to chill me out? I have heard of consultants using these tactics to help people trying to conceive. To my surprise I got a bfp 5 days later. Maybe his calming, chilled out response helped me?

Hm, that's interesting. I keep reading that stress causes short LPs, and I guess that could be my issue...

People on these boards keep saying that if you can get a ten day LP than you can get pregnant though and yours was sometimes 11 days, so maybe that consultant was right - your LP was already long enough and you didn't need to worry about it.

[GlitterMouse]

Bump for Atomic

[atomic sagebrush]

Thanks so much for your patience.

My concern is that without the exercise, the diet can sometimes cause flareups of PCO-tendencies (even if you don't have PCOS) and sometimes this causes the many days of near-pos OPK like that. I don't KNOW that's what is happening, just that's the first thing that jumps out at me esp given your history of short LP. So I would have you switch over to PCO-type diet http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...rt-3-pcos.html and resume exercise even if it is just moderate.

I do think that it is possible you also had cut back too far but since you did have a short LP before this and the many days of flashing smileys makes me lean the other direction. To guard against this issue I think you should prob. try to hold steady on weight and then just alter your diet a bit to be sure you're not reaching carb overload.

If your period came the odds are very good that you did ovulate.

Every 4 days, you just start after AF ends and have unprotected sex every 4 days, the key is to start before you could possibly ovulate and continue going even after you think you should have ovulated.

OR, if you're in a super hurry to get pregnant you can do every 4 days plus one more attempt at positive OPK OR every 3 days instead. I would prefer to see you give it a month or two with e4d before doing either of these though.

[atomic sagebrush]

NO matter what I do want you to add in the serving of full fat dairy a day, 4-6 eggs a week, and then 1 serv. salmon if you like it or red meat if you don't. That will only help regardless of if this is PCO-tendencies or from cutting back too far.

[atomic sagebrush]

Hm, that's interesting. I keep reading that stress causes short LPs, and I guess that could be my issue...

People on these boards keep saying that if you can get a ten day LP than you can get pregnant though and yours was sometimes 11 days, so maybe that consultant was right - your LP was already long enough and you didn't need to worry about it.

There are a lot of things that can cause short LP. The main thing on our site is by cutting back too far particularly on fat, dieting too long, too much exercise, too few cals, etc. The secondary thing is PCO-tendencies - sometimes we go onto a carbier diet (which is good for swaying pink, not so much for PCOS tho) and for people who have the tendency to develop PCO this can cause it to flare up, in essence, delaying O and shortening up LP (usually this will be linked with trouble losing weight or even gaining it on less cals than you were eating before) Another thing is breastfeeding.

I think by the time we're thinking about stress, artificial sweeteners, etc then those things are so far down the list in terms of likelihood that they are miniscule in terms of importance. A super stressful month can both delay O and shorten LP but it just doesn't happen that much in isolation (without having a poor diet or being ill or whatever as well)

[atomic sagebrush]

RE consultant - "stress" is what medical professionals like to invoke when they really have no idea what is up with you. While there are women who get into a "watched pot never boils" kind of mindset where they are practically having panic attacks about TTC I don't think it's caused by charting per se.

For reasons that escape me, many doctors and nurses in the UK "do not believe in" short LP. YOu're not the first who reported a fertility expert did not even seem to know what it was or that it took them some time before they realized and were like "oh yes that idea".

The good news is that 8-11 day LP that varies is obviously not enough to prevent pregnancy and what your LP is tells you about what happened LAST month anyway and NEXT. By this I mean ok 8 day LP, that sucks, but then that doesn't mean that the upcoming month would not have been 11-14 days regardless. LP is very changeable and I've seen plenty of people with habitually 8-10 day LP get pregnant with no problem at all. 10-12 days I believe to be fine for conception.

If you got a BFP 5 days after seeing the guy you were already pregnant when you went in there.

[atomic sagebrush]

Thanks GlitterMouse!

I didn't even know what an LP was until a few months ago! I'd only tried to conceive the one time prior to this, and we got pregnant right away the very first month without OPKs or tracking or temping or anything.

I read online that coffee, alcohol, and artificial sugars are all associated with a short LP, but I honestly don't know how accurate that is. I'm kind of grasping at straws with the LP situation and just waiting to hear Atomic's perspective. As for fibre, I get more than enough from diet so I had a sense that it wouldn't be beneficial in my case.

As for E4D, yes, it should be unprotected. I've read Atomic say that it's best to just let your husband "do what he does" in between because trying to control this just leads to marital frustration. Our stats show there's no sway-related benefit to extra releases or abstaining anyway.

So much of what we read online is well-meaning people who have a specific mindset regarding things that they deem "bad" like coffee, alcohol, artificial sweetener. So they seize on the things that they already dislike/distrust and then put that forth as gospel, and if they are "easy" then even better (just like how doctors are blaming fertility issues on "not taking prenatals" or "breastfeeding" even though their own medical schools and guidebooks state point blank otherwise.) It's certainly not BAD to eliminate those things if anyone is concerned about them, but it is much, much more likely that a short LP is either from cutting back too far or from PCO tendencies than moderate intake of coffee, alcohol, artifical sweetener.