This webpage is designed to help women and their partners learn about Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), help them find the information they need, and increase their chances of giving birth to healthy a baby.
This advice is not to be used in place of professional medical help and is just my own personal opinion based on my own experience with infertility and what worked for me. Hopefully what I have learned through trial and error will save you precious time, money and energy and make your dream of motherhood a reality.
You may be just starting out or have been trying to conceive for some time now. Either way, there are a lot of things that can make this challenging time in your life a bit easier and hopefully more successful.
The first place to start is to try to determine whether you are ovulating or not. A simple, reliable and cost effective way to determine this is to record your basal body temperature each morning and use some method of charting it. If you are ovulating you will notice consistently higher temperatures of approximately 0.5 degrees after ovulation than in the pre-ovulatory phase of your menstrual cycle. If you are not ovulating there will most likely be no noticeable temperature shift throughout your cycle.
The book Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler is one of the best on the Fertility Awareness Method and will describe in detail how to track all your fertility signs and will help you determine when and if you are ovulating. There is an ovulation tracking software program called Ovusoft that is related to Toni Weschler's book. It makes keeping track of all your fertility signs a lot easier.
With the software you can also post your charts online and join the Ovusoft message board for trying to conceive support. You can purchase the software by itself or sign up at iVillage.com to use their related fertility planner on a monthly basis. Fertilityfriend.com also has a free web-based software with a paid VIP version. They also have a message board support forum and other free helpful information.
One thing that really helps when dealing with the stress of trying to conceive is the support of the women on the message boards. It is often difficult to talk about infertility with your "real life" friends and family who don't really understand what you are going through. If you don't have an online support group, try to join one or two if you have the time and try to post as much as you can. Yahoo.com also has different groups for women trying to conceive with PCOS.
A good online support group will help you realize that you are not alone in your struggles and that other women who are going through the same thing really do understand and care. The women on the boards are usually quick to answer any questions you may have and offer their knowledge and support.
While charting your fertility signs is one of the best ways to understand your cycle, ovulation predictor tests can also be helpful. Women with PCOS tend to have higher levels of luteinizing hormone (lh), which is the hormone that these tests measure. This can make the tests inaccurate so they may not work for all women with PCOS. If you have long cycles it can be expensive and difficult to pinpoint your most fertile days with some of these lh test kits.
I use the Clearblue Fertility Monitor and it does work for me. Since my lh is somewhat elevated I do get more days that indicate high fertility when it probably isn't and sometimes don't get a peak day within the 20 day test window but it has still been very helpful for me. The monitor has always been accurate when indicating my peak day if I ovulate early enough in my cycle and even when I use the test sticks by themselves after the monitor no longer asks for test sticks in really long cycles.
I admit it, I need to join TA (Test-aholics Anonymous). If there's a fertility test you can take, I'll take it. It helps me feel more in control of my body to know what's going on. I think that is important when you have PCOS. I buy the jumbo pack pregnancy test kits too.
