Menses
What health teachers call, the Menstrual Cycle...
What researchers call, the Hypothlalamic-Pituitary-Ovarian-Uterine Axis
Q & A: I have been trying for a couple of years
to get pregnant. I do believe the next step is fertility pills. My first
question is are they good thing to try? My second question is in my family
my sister, my mom and grandma all had there menstrual periods for the first
four or five months. What is the chances of this happening to me and what
causes that to happen?
Fertility pills,like any
indicated medicine, should be used by a qualified specialist in an organized
protocol. There are many causes of infertility,
but what these medications do, at the simplest level, is help you to ovulate.
Of course they won't do much good if your tubes are blocked or a low sperm
count is the cause of your troubles. Are they a good thing to try? I suppose
the answer rests in whether the decision to use them follows logical reasoning
on the part of your doctor. If you're having trouble ovulating (and there
are no other causes of your infertility), then these ovulation drugs are
a good idea. Which brings me to the second part of your question.
Irregular or non-existent ovulations will
yield irregular or non-existent menstrual periods. The two seemingly unrelated
parts of your question are actually more related than it seems. A period
comes about only with a successful ovulation. Ovulation then sets about
a phase of your cycle (the second half) that prepares the lining of your
womb (uterus) for the implantation of a fertilized
egg. If there's no conception, all of the hormones of the second half
will crash. The lining, supported by these hormones, loses its attachment
and tears away--what you see as your period. Any bleeding after a cycle
that fails to ovulate is a false period, because this bleeding is nothing
more than disorderly debris which has not been properly acted upon by cyclic
hormones. If you have irregular cycles, it's only because you have irregular
ovulations. So it's not unusual for a woman with irregular periods to need
"fertility drugs" to get her to ovulate. Many women who have
such troubles have a family history of it. So your sister and mother and
grandmother experienced tissue debris during their pregnancies as well
as probably before.
A correct ovulation is a deal-breaker for a correct menstrual cycle.
So any bleeding in pregnancy can not be a menstrual episode, otherwise
the baby would be lost in miscarriage. The bleeding
you recall in your family in their pregnancies are threatened
miscarriages. True, this may be bad hormonal support for that baby
trying to hang on with these limitations, but it is not a menstrual period.
