Using CLOMID, hoping for a girl...but also hoping for twins. I'd love some pointers!

[Genevive]

Hey, everyone. I'm new around here, but I'm a long time lurker I have read SO much of your stuff, atomic!

Anyway, I'm 30 and have been TTC for a while. I desperately yearn for a daughter, like so many of you. It turns out I don't ovulate, so I got put on clomid. I'm finally ovulating! My DH will be away for work soon, so unfortunately we won't be able to TTC next cycle (so I won't take the clomid in Jan.). Anyway, I was so excited to hear that clomid does sway PINK, but even more excited when I found out how much it ups the odds of twins. It might sound crazy, and I know that twins are riskier, but as a twin myself who has had a best friend since birth, I would LOVE to have twins.

DH and I will try again in February, with the clomid. I have obsessed over the stats on this site for a while, and I know that clomid, fiber, coffee, cardio (1 hr, many days/week), LE or LE PCOS (or veganism? is that right?) are great for swaying pink. But ONE ATTEMPT seems really important. The thing is that I need to get pregnant fast on the clomid, and I really do want to up my odds of fertilizing two eggs, should there be two! So I'm afraid to stick to one attempt, or even E4D...my doctor won't let me take clomid more than five more times.

I also learned that clomid can make you drop a second egg up to five days after the first one. I'm totally going to take fiber, drink black coffee, go running or walking 1+ hr per day, and stay in the LE frame (but it might not be doable for 12+ weeks in time).

Does this sound like a good plan to get at least one girly? Or is it better to stick to one attempt and hope for the best? BTW, DH is 36. Thanks in advance!

[atomic sagebrush]

Hi and welcome!

I just want to make sure that you aren't taking the Clomid at all when you're not trying - obvs not in Jan as you mentioned, but were you trying before when you were taking it?? Sometimes doctors are not good at explaining this to people, so I was wondering if they'd had you on it as a "test run" or something (if so they shouldn't have done that, since you can only take Clomid a limited number of times in your life, and they're only letting you take it five times. Plus you will be needing it for all conceptions since you're not Oing on your own, if you get pregnant again in the future.)

Since you don't ovulate on your own my gut instinct is for you to do the PCOS-type LE Diet - 50-60 g protein and fat (not counting protein and fat in fruit and veg), whole grains only, no white refined grains, full fat dairy only, NO skim or part skim dairy, and limit sugar strictly...while sugar added to things like sauces and yogurt is ok, avoid sweets like cookies, cakes, candy, soda pop, that sort of thing.

But I do want to be sure we are diagnosing the problem correctly, and also want to set your cal intake correctly - if you don't mind my asking, what is your BMI? Do you have periods regularly? How was your lack of ovulation even determined?? Did the docs test you for signs of PCO? Because there are TWO reasons why a person may not be ovulating, and fixing PCOS if you don't have it would be disastrous if you're actually not ovulating due to low weight and low hormone levels.

This is important because if you do have PCOS, going vegan can be disastrous as most vegans eat significantly more carbs. We need to be careful to get you into the LE Diet range without going too carb-heavy if you do have PCO-tendencies.

Where did you learn that Clomid can make you drop a second egg five days later?? That isn't true. There is a very narrow window for multiple ovulation, with or without Clomid, because the hole that the egg comes out of (the corpus luteum) IMMEDIATELY begins to release a hormone that stops the development of other eggs in its tracks. It is believed that most, if not ALL multiple ovulations happen in a time frame of no more than 24 hours, if not more like 8-12.

Depending on when you've been taking the Clomid, I have a schedule where I'll have you start with one attempt for the FIRST month only, then go to e4d, then e4d plus one more attempt at first positive OPK, and finally SMEP in the last month on Clomid. This way we gradually boost odds of conception.

I want to assure you of something, though, and that is that you can absolutely get twins with one attempt. You DO NOT need more than one attempt (or e4d method) to get twins. You will only be releasing eggs for a day, max, and one batch of sperm has more than enough sperm in it to fertilize not just one but two eggs. Not sure if you knew that or not.

[Genevive]

Thanks for your response, Atomic! It's so cool that you're talking to me after I've read so much of your work

No, I'm not taking clomid when not trying. I did take clomid last cycle and per an ultrasound, it looked like I ovulated one egg. Yes we did try that month, but nothing happened for us. The reason I got put on clomid was because I have semi-regular periods, but never increases in progesterone and never any ultrasound evidence of anything being released. No standard BBT curve either. I do understand that I will likely need clomid for future pregnancies as well, which is another reason why I'd be happy if I got twins now. Dealing with TTC has been so stressful.

I don't seem to have any PCOS like cysts, so my doctor thought we could rule that out. I also don't have other symptoms of it (other than infertility), but I do have Hashimoto's. I'm finally getting medicated for that, and my thyroid levels are in a good place now, however I'm still not ovulating on my own. My progesterone is also quite low, and my doctor plans to put me on suppositories at the first BFP.

My BMI is about a 19.4. It seems like in spring and summertime I weight a less. I like to run, but I hate the cold so I haven't been exercising so much. My periods are semi-regular. They are anywhere between 26-44 days but usually don't vary so dramatically between two consecutive months. Some months are a light spotting, and others are wildly heavy. Again, my doctor blames Hashimoto's for not ovulating (and the heavy periods too), but he does seem to think that could change after enough time and thyroid medication. I just don't want to wait any longer, as I feel like I've already waited so long, so I'm happy to take the clomid for now.

At my ultrasound, I remember the tech, or maybe a medical assistant, saying that twins could be conceived up to five days apart. Maybe I misunderstood her somehow. My doctor has me on 50 mg of clomid on cycle days 3-7.

I have definitely heard of people getting pregnant with twins after having sex just once. I did take a look at the full list of stats and see that it was something like 7 out of 13 people with multiples had 4+ attempts but that 5/13 got twins with just one attempt. Oddly enough, it seemed like everyone who had twins with 4+ attempts on clomid conceived at least one girl.

I definitely understand why it would make sense to slowly up the numbers of attempts. I'm just kind of impatient haha. Is it a very bad idea to start with multiple attempts but stay strict on everything like diet, coffee, cardio, etc.?

Thanks again, Atomic!

[atomic sagebrush]

My pleasure, hopefully I can help.

How many times was progesterone/ovulation tested? How long have you been temp charting??

Having PCO-tendencies, without the syndrome full blown, is very common with Hashimotos. Here's one article that's a decent compendium of info, but there are lots https://hashimotoshealing.com/hashimotos-pcos/

While you are fairly thin, because of the Hashimotos and irregular cycles I think it's best to assume you have some PCO-tendencies even if the syndrome hasn't developed due to your healthy lifestyle, so I would have you on the alt. diet I mentioned above, but at upper levels of cals (start with more like 1800-2000)

Sometimes people like techs and medical assistants say things that are not true (sadly, even sometimes docs will say things that are not true, but fortunately this is rarer). There has never been a confirmed pregnancy (even with multiples) any longer than 24 hours after ovulation. The egg does not live that long, more eggs can't be released, and the cervical mucus changes when the corpus luteum forms and would not let any more sperm through.

If you're looking in our stats, the 4 or more attempts data is HIGHLY suspect and probably stems from people attempting to have sex daily from AF-through a Shettles cutoff - an old school tactic that has fallen out of disuse because it was so unreliable (people were simply stopping sex CD 11-14 regardless of when they actually ovulated and there was no way to know how many attempts they even had in the fertile window. I haven't seen the number of people who did 4+ attempts change in many, many years so I am pretty sure that's the group of people represented in those stats. Additionally things like 5/13 vs. 7/13 sample sizes are meaningless because the difference is well within just a lucky sway or two, we cannot draw any conclusions from that and I would hate to see anyone undermine their sway by having 3 or more attempts based on what amounts to a difference of two sways.

Most of our twins on Clomid (as in, virtually all) did have at least one girl. So that doesn't really mean anything either. We have, fortunately, had very few BB twins on here so far so we really cannot draw any conclusions there either.

Yes, it's a very bad idea to start off with multiple attempts in the fertile window. At MOST you should start off with e4d. I will explain why we learned one attempt is so effective, and I think it will shed some light on many of your questions.

During the early days of this site, no one had ever guessed number of attempts might sway. At that point what we were doing is all the old school sway stuff, plus some changes in diet based on my research, and then because the old school sway stuff cuts odds of conception so hugely, we were having people add attempts to boost chances of conception (one of the main reasons we started this site was to avoid the situations on other sway sites where people were going many months, even years, without conceiving). So we had people doing not only diet, coffee, cardio, etc but also frequency patterns, pH lowering supplements, herbal supplements, douche/jellies, timing, etc. It was the worst results of the site, only 58%. At the same time, the blue swayers were getting spectacular results, AND our "classic" dieters were also getting terrible results, so I wasn't ready/willing to admit that the LE Diet might not be working, it simply made no sense that it was these minor changes in the diet that could possibly be swaying so blue.

Fortunately, we tracked our results very carefully (unlike most sites, where if you don't include every element of swaying exactly as they say, you are not included in the results, we include everyone, and this allows us to see individual sway tactics and how they're working). We also calculated the inverses (the number of people who DIDN'T do a tactic and still got their desired gender) of various sway tactics. And just through sheer dumb luck, one of the things we tracked was number of attempts.

Well, it was quite stunning. People who did one attempt were getting 70-75% success rates regardless of any other sway tactics they were doing. This dropped all the way to 60% for two attempts, and then 43% for 3 attempts - even with otherwise brilliant sways, people were getting nearly 60% boys with 3 attempts. Yes, the numbers for 4+ attempts did go up slightly but again, that was virtually all in people who were having daily sex thru a cutoff meaning that they still had very few actual attempts in the fertile window, since they stopped having sex just as the fertile window opened. Additionally, any tactics that were always done with one attempt (O+12 for example) also had that 70-75% range so it certainly did appear to me that it was number of attempts that was swaying. And when we looked at the inverses, we could see very clearly that most of the old school sway tactics were getting roughly the same number of boys and girls, meaning they did nothing at all to sway and were simply "free riders", cutting odds of conception while not helping the sway.

So right then and there, we changed course. We emphasized number of attempts and started dropping the "free riders", those ineffective sway tactics, to up chances of conception, instead of adding attempts. Our results IMMEDIATELY went up and have stayed up ever since. Even though you can't really make this out any more in the stats (because people hear about the "magic one attempt" and do nothing else BUT one attempt, and then of course get opposites since they're not dieting, exercising, etc) it was crystal clear because of those results over time, that the one attempt really was bringing some noticeable benefit that could not be denied. We don't know why, but it was very very obvious that it was helping somehow for reasons we can only guess at.

Over the course of time we realized that one attempt does have its drawbacks in terms of lowering chances of conception, so we now do the e4d method (which works quite well itself, and you can certainly start off with it if you'd like), then have you go to e4d plus one. And for those who have been on Clomid several months, we do SMEP. But I can never recommend anyone start off by going at it like bunnies during the fertile window simply because I do not believe based on what I observed over the years, that it is a good way for anyone to get a girl.

If you're not ovulating then it makes sense that prog would be low. I suspect once we get you ovulating you'll see your progesterone in the normal range, but of course if you're more comfy with using the prog supps then that's a-ok too.