Irregular and lengthy periods

[elysium]

I am suffering from irregular and lengthy periods. I have PCOS and was diagnosed with this when I was 15 I am now 27, for years I was on the pill, Dianette and then later Yasmin until I met my partner and we decided to try and conceive. I came off the pill when I was 25 and luckily we conceive in the first month of trying. I was not on any medication to help my fertility, tried ovulation predictor kits but never get a positive and checked my cervical mucus often for signs of ovulation and saw egg white cervical mucus which the family planning clinic advise me is a sign of ovulation and then got a positive pregnancy test when I assumed my period would be if I was having regular periods.

My son was born on the 30th of March and I bled after having him for approx 4 weeks.

I was exclusively breastfeeding him but in spite of this my period returned but have been very irregular and at times I have bled for quite a while. Details of cycles and dates are as follows -

52 days after having my son I had my first period on the 21st May for 5 days with it ending on the 25th May.

Following a 35 day cycle I had my next period on the 25th June for 4 days with it ending on the 28th June.

After a 70 day cycle my next period was on the 3rd September for 11 days with it ending on the 13th September.

Then I had a 33 day cycle with my next period on the 6th October for 14 days with it ending on the 20th October.

After 48 day cycle next period on the 23rd November for 13 days with it ending on the 6th December.

Then I had 28 day cycle with my next period on the 21st December for 5 days with it ending on the 25th December.

And then I had a 76 day cycle with my next period on the 28th February for 16 days with it ending on the 15th March.

During this time since having my son, I have not gone back on any pill or the injection or implant. We were using condoms as contraception until November, since then we have not used any contraception as we have decided we would like another baby and if it happens it happens.

I have been breastfeeding my son since birth until recently, he was weaned at 20 weeks but was still breastfeeding but that has reduced in the last few months and he no longer feeds during the night and only has a couple of feeds in the day and in the last week he has refused to feed from my breast and I have decided to use this time to stop breastfeeding and give him formula instead.

In between my periods I have noticed egg white cervical mucus but not really sure if I am ovulating or not. I tried using ebay cheapie ovulation predictor kits in following my period in December around the time I would possibly ovulate if I was having a regular-ish period but I never got a positive and stopped trying as I didn’t want to waste money and it looked like it was going to be another long cycle.

A few months ago I had my routine Smear test and it came back fine.

In between my last two periods I felt very tired and nauseated and hormonal. Its starting to get to me, waiting around to see when my period will arrive and then bleeding for so long.

I realise the breastfeeding and the PCOS can cause irregular periods but I was wondering is it normal for them to be so irregular and my concern is that sometimes I am bleeding for two weeks at a time. In general the periods have been normal and not excessively heavy or painful, apart from my last period which I experienced a lot of period pains with, was very heavy and I had lots of clots.

Is there anything I should do? I don’t really want to go back on the pill as we would like to have another baby if possible without too large of an age gap.

Sorry for such a long post. Thank you for your time and any advice you can give.

[Mr. Hugh Byrne, MRCOG]

hi - it's probably a combination of the PCOS and the natural change that occurs with having a baby.

The problem for you is that any treatment- such as a Mirena - that might help is also contraceptive, while at the same time it is hard to predict when you are ovulating due to the irregularity and so hard to concieve. Has your weight changed? Now you've stopped breastfeeding that will help, but perhaps the pil or mirena until you want to concieve? and when you do I would start counting your cycle from the first full day of bleeding, and start tsting the urine with reputable kits from day 9 onwards, even if you ened up testing every day for over a week.