Breastfeeding and Defective Cycle (V. short LP)

[Lyss]

Hi.

I'm a lurker here at mothering.com (just signed up). DH and I are TTC again. I'm 33, and I know we may have (another) loss and will have trouble conceiving this time around.

Prior to conceiving DD, my LP was 8 days. It was enough to get pregnant twice. Now, though, I'm nursing DD, I'm up 20 pounds from pre-conception weight, and my LP is only 3-5 days.

Has anyone else had such a screwed-up cycle? I usually O on day 20-22, so my cycles are around 28 days.

I read the Infertility Cure in the past, but after getting pregnant easily, I loaned it to a friend. I've had terrible experiences with doctors, and we just started a really cruddy HMO, so I'm not really hot on the idea of going to a doctor for this, and the accupuncturist I was seeing before was a quack. She kept telling me I was pregnant, but I needed surgery to remove scar tissue that had actually closed my cervix.

Any suggestions? I'm not hot on the idea of weaning my 10-mo-old, either. She has numerous food allergies and nurses about 6 times/day, including once or twice during the night. We worked hard for nursing.

I took B6 & B-complex before getting pregnant with DD, but I'm not comfortable taking them now while nursing so often.

Tell me about your short LPs. What did you do?

[OTMomma]

While nursing I took B-complex anyway, because even though my dd got a big dose also, I knew it was water soluable and would just come out in her pee. If you only take about 50 mg/day, I think its pretty safe. For now, that is probably the only thing I would do.

Most of the other herb and diet changes you could make have the potential to hurt your milk supply and it sounds like both your dd and your body agree that the main thing you need to be doing right now is nursing her.

I hope that doesn't sound harsh. Its just that imho you will have a better chance of concieving (and probably a shorter ttc wait) if you wait until your dd doesn't need your milk so badly, and thus your body can use its energy to make another child instead of milk.

I've been there, my lp got screwed up due to nursing my dd, and though I tried all kinds of things, I couldn't concieve while nursing. I'll have a lot larger gap between children than I planned on, but I feel good knowing I parenting my dd the best I could. Since she weaned, I've been doing the diet in the Infertility Cure- for me it meant giving up eating Dairy, wheat/flour, and sugar. I also avoid cold foods and raw veggies. After 3 months my lp is improving. I don't know if such a diet is safe while nursing.

Peace,