From what I have read, there is ample research that too much soy wreaks havoc in a healthy woman's reproductive system, and every nutritionist I know of who writes about healthy fertility now recommends against soy. One of the most comprehensive researchers connecting charting and nutrition, Marilyn Shannon, author of Fertility Cycles and Nutrition (Couple to Couple League), turned her back on soy only very recently due to overwhelming new evidence that it is not healthy for fertility. I haven't seen any evidence linking soy to an early return of menstruation during breastfeeding, but it is important to note that the body's natural, healthy state following childbirth is amenorrhea. This preserves extra nutrients (including iron) for the growing baby and allows for a healthy spacing of pregnancies that makes sure that there is enough milk supply for the nursling and allows the mother's body to replenish nutrients. An early return of menstruation following childbirth is not natural or normal and is correlated with an unhealthy state in the mother's body: not breastfeeding, extreme stress or sleep deprivation, obesity, etc.
Â
To understand what is going on, it would be helpful to know if you ovulated before the bleeding you experienced. Were you charting temperatures or using the CBFM at the time. I don't think that the Peak reading you got almost a month earlier could have been ovulation that lead to a true period that you experienced. Did the CBFM continue to ask for tests? Did another Peak reading show up within a couple weeks before your bleeding? Did you chart a temperature rise within a couple weeks before the bleed? Did you experience fertile CM followed by a dry up in those couple weeks? If you observed any of these, I would guess that you ovulated. That would make things more difficult. Remember that an early return of menstruation is a sign of an unhealthy state, not a healthy one, and if so, it is quite likely that your body will continue to express to you this unhealthy state for a much longer period of time. It is quite difficult to shut down the cycles of ovulation and menstruation once they have started, so it is quite unlikely that your cycles would stop if you did indeed ovulate. Instead, you may experience long cycles, anovulatory cycles, and cycles that are very difficult to understand. No, you've never experienced cycles that crazy before, but you've never experienced such an early return of fertility either. If this is the case, I recommend looking into the CM-only methods, Creighton or Billings, since they would help you the best to minimize the need for abstinence during this time. (I'm still partial to taking my temp to confirm ovulation, but you'll get better CM info from them than anybody else, and until you ovulate within a cycle, CM is all that matters.)
Â
A second theory is that you didn't ovulate. I wouldn't count on this one unless you were charting and did not observe signs of ovulation. If so, you are still in your postpartum cycle "0," that is, you have not experienced a true menstruation. While a warning bleed is usually a sure-fire sign that menstruation is returning quite soon, you'd have a much easier time shutting down the process of an early return to fertility if your body has not actually reached the threshhold for ovulating. If this is the case, if excessive soy was causing your early return to menstruation, cutting soy could cause your body to stay in amenorrhea. If you still have not experienced ovulation followed by a true menstruation, I believe you would still be using the MM breastfeeding protocol for before the return of menstruation, not for cycling.
Â
I'm really not sure which is true. I don't think sex would cause a "pool of blood," spotting yes, but not much more than that. It's common to have unusual bleeding the first time postpartum, but I haven't seen anything that has connected it to ovulation or lack thereof except that spotting is not a period but is usually a sign that one is coming soon. Not knowing which it is, Sheila Kippley (author of Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing) considers 6 weeks without bleeding to be a return to amenorrhea. However, it is still unclear how effectively this amenorrhea would be to prevent pregnancy.
Â
My personal experience (As a scientist, you know not to put too much trust in the experience of one person on the internet.) is that I experienced one day of spotting at about 4.5 months postpartum, no other bleeding until 20 months postpartum (so it was a true continuation of amenorrhea) when I experienced a second day of spotting followed by ovulation and a true period about a month later (less than 6 weeks). 5 cycles later, after having 1 cycle with an adequately long LP, I had a cycle that I ovulated over 5 weeks into the cycle. I assume that the cycle would have ended up being longer than 6 weeks if I had not gotten pregnant in that cycle. However, all other cycles in the meantime were under 6 weeks long, and if I had assumed that I was infertile after 6 weeks of that cycle, I would have been correct (based on my STM fertility charting). Hope that helps. Let me know how it turns out.