Returning to Fertility after Pregnancy

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My wife and I had our 2nd baby (boy) on August 12th. Because of our finances we are “seriously” trying to avoid pregnancy until a later time. We have used NFP throughout our entire marriage 3 1/2 years except after our first baby was born we used ABC as a kneejerk response due to our inexperience with NFP. But we quickly stopped. However because of that we didn’t have to deal with NFP and returning to fertility after pregnancy issues.

When we took the class I remember talking about it, and basically what they said is if you are trying to avoid, then you cannot have relations until you have had two full cycles.

Well my question is when will that be? :o She was on maternity leave until the beginning of this week, and we have started temping. We assume that now she is back to work and pumping and not breastfeeding as much that her fertility should return sooner than later, but any advice on this matter would be greatly appreciated. Especially from all you NFP experts out there!

We have abstained since he was born and both have mutually agreed to abstain until we can be confident her cycles are back to “normal”. I guess I am just asking for some anecdotal evidence that her ferility will be returning soon. I mean to think we have to “wait” for two more cycles is gonna be tough. I guess lots of cold showers, and LONG flowing flannel pajamas!!

Thanks and God Bless.
 
First: Congratulations on your new baby!:clapping:

Second: if you’re serious about the need to avoid, I’d really recommend getting in contact with your NFP instructor (even if it’s been years) to get some one to one follow-up consultation. We can give advice on this forum, but there are a million details that need to be addressed, and an “oops, I forgot to mention…” might mean some incorrect / incomplete advice.

Nursing patterns, supplements, pacifier use, mother’s sleep habits, nutrition, stress…there’s so much that can factor into return of fertility.

I know you specifically asked for anectdotal evidence, but I sure wouldn’t be planning my family based on anectdotal evidence! :eek:

We practice the Creighton Model (www.creightonmodel.com) and there’s no guessing, and there are clear instructions for post-partum cycles. Couldn’t recommend it more highly.👍

Seriously, call for a follow-up / refresher lesson. You’ll be much more reassured then. Good luck and God bless!
 
I’d like to second the congratulations! 🙂

It depends on what method of NFP you’re using… I’m personally only familiar with the sympto-thermal method.
When we took the class I remember talking about it, and basically what they said is if you are trying to avoid, then you cannot have relations until you have had two full cycles.
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This is not something we were taught in our class… so it’s probably a good idea to get in contact with your NFP instructor…

There are a lot of factors… especially whether or not she’s breastfeeding.

In my personal experience, I was able to detect a return of fertility after both my children by simply watching my mucous patterns. Once I noticed an increase in mucous I’d start taking my temperature to verify if it was truly ovulation or not…
Time periods can vary GREATLY from woman to woman… some have an early return of fertility… others can go 2+ years without a cycle…

Good luck during this time… it can be tricky… but it’s DEFINITELY possible… so just stick with it and make sure to see an instructor!
 
Yes, congrats on the baby, and go contact your NFP teacher for help in this area. When I returned to work pumping and nursing my cycles returned at 9 months for baby 1 and 3 months for baby2. There can be a wide range of variety for return of fertility. All methods have rules dealing with postpartem return of fertility so that you should be fairly confident when you learn what they are! Go get that refresher course!!! 🙂

Jennifer
 
Am I wrong in thinking that I am not fertile if I’m not having a cycle? I am 9 weeks postpartum and have not had a cycle and fully breastfeeding.
 
Congratulations on your growing family. Temping won’t help much until ovulation has occured, as you probably already realize. In my case (and I was not working/pumping, but just doing the breastfeeding on demand thing 24/hrs a day) that was 14 months after my daughter was born. We did not abstain for 14 months. I tracked my cervical fluids and position. Every so often, I’d get “more fertile” signs. Not “yep, that’s fertile alright” but just, “it might be the start of fertile”. Then it would go away, and come back, and go away. This went on for months. So we’d abstain while these more fertile patches occurred and when it seemed clear that nothing more would come of it (2-3 days of drying up) we could resume. Not that we had nearly as much time or energy for such things as we’d have liked, but that’s another matter. In any case, abstaining until her cycles are regular again may not be practical, as sometimes even pumping moms can have many months of ammenorrhea (anyone want to check my spelling?).

I’d recommend either brushing up on the cervical fluids and postions chapters of your workbook, or taking Creighton instructions (which is a symptom only method and therefore won’t present the problem of a possible year without a temp peak), or checking out the book “Taking Charge of Your Fertility”. It’s not a Catholic text, and “allows” the use of barrier methods during fertile times (although it is very clear that this variation of the method is not nearly as reliable as the abstinence variation), but it does an excellent job of explaining cycles. Much better than The Art of NFP IMHO. And there is a chapter on LAM. I borrowed it from the library after rereading the child-spacing information in The Art only to find that it really only seemed to say that LAM would space my babies to about 2 years apart. And we had serious reasons to need more space than that. One really can see fertility coming even when nursing, but those of us who learned on temperature taking methods need to reorient ourselves to the fine art of symptom observation.
 
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