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NOT According to Plan

Why Irregularity Happens and What You Can Do to Help

By Heather Johnson Durocher

For countless women, trying to conceive is a daily commitment that may include religiously charting their basal body temperatures, using ovulation predictor kits, taking prescription drugs or experimenting with herbal therapy.

The process can be both daunting and exasperating, especially for women with irregular and long menstrual cycles who have to guess when they might be ovulating from one cycle to the next – if they're ovulating at all.

"It is hard because for a few months I will be regular and it makes it easy, and then I go four months without a cycle and it makes it very difficult," says Laura Wedeking of Bryan, Texas, who dates her "erratic" cycle back to her teenage years. "It is really annoying when I have a cycle three months in a row and I am regular and I don't end up pregnant, and then I go for three months without one and still nothing."

"I get extremely frustrated," says Laura Pita, a Norwalk, Conn., resident whose cycles have ranged from 35 to 42 days in length. "By the time I have finally ovulated, other women are on to new cycles or have had the almighty positive test."

Pita says she never thought much of her long cycles until she and her husband began trying to conceive. "When I was a teenager, I loved the fact that my cycles were long," she says. "And I'll probably like it again once we've had a baby, but right now, I just get disheartened. We've been trying for nine months, but I just started my seventh cycle."

At least 10 percent of all women have irregular cycles, which are defined as those outside of the normal 25- to 35-day length, says Dr. Steven Bayer, a reproductive endocrinologist at Boston IVF (in vitro fertilization) and a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. Some cycle variability is normal in women from month to month, but "when it becomes a pattern it is something to become concerned about," he says.

For women with consistently irregular cycles, achieving pregnancy can be difficult, but not impossible. "Many times, all you have to do is correct the cycle," Dr. Bayer says.

Want to see more?

• When Is It Time to See an Infertility Specialist?
• Making Sense of PCOS: Answers to Common Questions
• 10 Myths About Conceiving
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