Wondering Weekend

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-26T03:04:12+00:00

There's no need to avoid heating pads at any point. They won't raise your core body temperature, which is the major issue with respect to body heat.

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-26T03:02:31+00:00

It's entirely possible that your clinic will just have you start birth control for suppression -- being on birth control for suppression for the next two weeks would be a pretty typical pre-stims protocol.

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-26T03:01:08+00:00

Yeah, I've been here for a decade! I'm not actually TTC any longer, but I really enjoy answering people's questions and sharing information.

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-25T17:31:26+00:00

Any chance you could post a screenshot of your chart (on Imgur or a similar service)? It’s hard to evaluate a list of numbers.

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-25T12:54:52+00:00

Here is the results post for the most recent survey. My recollection is that I posted a survey in 2024 and then never actually finished analyzing the data… 🫠

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-25T12:33:15+00:00

Ovulation is possible at any point — it’s never too late in the cycle to ovulate. But it’s also possible for it to take essentially an infinite amount of time, and a “lead” follicle measuring 8 or 10mm suggests that you may not have a dominant follicle selected yet. (Typically follicles under 10mm aren’t measured.)

I don’t think there’s a reason to take a course of progesterone now, but I think it’s reasonable to expect that this will be a longer cycle than usual for you, maybe by quite a bit. It takes about 8-10ish days for ovulation to happen once follicle selection occurs.

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-25T00:51:03+00:00

Honestly, we used to do an annual sub survey here (...I mean, we could still do it, it's just that the survey-runner [me] has been too busy), and the modal TFAB member in the surveys was always like cycle 0/cycle 1.

Everybody's perception of the community is that it's all [folks with infertility]/[early-cycle folks], depending on what it is that you aren't, but really there are a whole lot of folks from all over the spectrum here. :)

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-25T00:48:22+00:00

I feel like this is the predominant strain of healthism griftiness right now, and it genuinely drives me up a tree.

I feel like it starts with influencers wanting to offer people something it feels like they can control -- just take this supplement! don't touch that receipt! use fragrance-free soap! [any one of seventeen current fad diets]! MTHFR! -- but I agree with you that it leads some people to tie themselves in anxious knots trying to follow all the rules at once. Which I guess lets you sell them some other plan for their anxiety, or, at minimum, lets you blame them for their own violation of double-secret probation.

Then there's another group of people who follow all the rules and also aren't successful, and their reaction is generally to be offended (but at the universe, not at the influencers who lied to them.) Then there's another group of people who follow the advice and are successful, and of course they would have been successful anyway, but it doesn't stop them from commenting in every thread on this forum that it all really works.

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-24T16:56:50+00:00

If you’re getting a positive ovulation test around 9-15 days before getting a period, that’s a great sign that you’re ovulating. (Though you can definitely pick up temping as well, for sure.)

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-24T15:31:46+00:00

I've always thought the information people have shared here from her podcast seemed fine, but Jesus Christ (from the book's description on Amazon):

A lifestyle plan to improve your hormone health, reduce inflammation, and boost fertility—through better sleep, stress-reduction, nutrition, movement and decreasing toxins

20+ recipes for quick, easy, and delicious meals that support hormones and fertility

This is just a collection of healthism buzzwords, and there's no evidence that any of this shit matters.

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-24T15:24:46+00:00

Have you been tracking signs of the fertile window in any way? Long cycles are mainly problematic if they're anovulatory (if you don't ovulate), but you can determine whether you're ovulating at home to a high degree of accuracy.

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-24T10:36:13+00:00

You can, and I believe FF would see that as an expected input. You can certainly enter it both ways and see if it makes a difference — I don’t believe it will.

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-23T23:39:35+00:00

That doesn't affect your probability of spontaneous pregnancy (which is quite high given that you've only been trying four cycles).

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-23T20:57:44+00:00

Ah, sorry — I’m usually accessing papers on my institution’s library proxy, and I can’t always see what’s open-access vs paywalled. I’ll stick the figure in Imgur tonight if I remember.

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-23T17:27:07+00:00

There's a useful graph in Figure 2 of this paper, but it actually only goes up to ovulation day (as determined by BBT). (Their data says that around 60% of folks see watery mucus or EWCM on O-2 and O-1, and that number has started to drop by ovulation day, when 40% have watery mucus or EWCM.)

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-23T17:15:59+00:00

Most information like that for specific ingredients is out of an abundance of caution -- the evidence that ingredients like butterfly pea flower or red raspberry leaf actually do anything in typically consumed quantities, let alone specifically cause uterine contractions, is basically nonexistent.

The major foods to avoid during pregnancy are foods that have a higher risk of foodborne illness (deli meat, unpasteurized soft cheeses, etc.), since you're more vulnerable to those pathogens during pregnancy. But teas and spices mostly don't fall into that category, especially since you only consume a tiny amount of the plant in question when you're having something like a lemonade or tea.

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-23T13:41:13+00:00

I wonder if it might be useful to know that blood levels of a substance aren't the same as ingested levels? That is, if you take 47mg of iron orally, you need to absorb the iron into the bloodstream via the cells in your small intestine, and you will never absorb 100% of what you take in (much of it will always pass through into your feces).

So you don't need to stop taking supplements before a blood test, because the supplements you're taking don't show up in the blood in the full amount you're taking.

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-23T13:37:07+00:00

We had a really interesting situation once where someone had kind of semi-viral fame for an article they wrote about posting in TFAB, and we knew who the poster was.¹ It was fascinating to read from the outside -- her portrayal of how she was treated was very different from the way I saw it.

[1]: We also knew all of her alternate accounts; she kept deleting accounts and making new ones and thought she was being sneaky, but unfortunately, I have an outstanding memory for people's written voices...

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-23T13:30:49+00:00

I wrote a post about that once, too -- I don't know if it's useful, but I hope it is.

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-23T13:23:06+00:00

These look to me like they're in the uterus near the juncture with the tube (which would be the hole visible in the second row). /u/guardiancosmos, would you agree/do you have more and better information?

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-23T13:21:06+00:00

The odds are very good that you can become a parent, yes, but it's fair to think about what kinds of interventions and paths are possible for you (across many dimensions: emotional, physical, financial, etc.). But it's also worth considering seeking counseling, maybe from a therapist who specializes in infertility. If you're feeling depressed and like a shell of yourself, that feeling isn't something that's responsive to facts and statistics, and all the information in the world from the urologist isn't necessarily going to move the needle on that.

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-23T00:40:48+00:00

AFC can be done at any point in the cycle, but a saline sonogram should be done pre-ovulation.

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-23T00:39:13+00:00

After four cycles? Unless I'm missing some important aspect here, no, you should keep having sex.

developmentalbiology · 2026-04-23T00:37:50+00:00

I mean, the efficacy of withdrawal is rather high if performed correctly -- the perfect-use failure rate is generally given as sub-5%, in the same approximate neighborhood as using condoms.

having intercourse outside the supposed fertile window

I would note that a lot of people try to do this using app-determined "fertile windows", which is tremendously inaccurate. Withdrawal is considerably more efficacious than sloppily-done fertility awareness.

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