When do You Ovulate after a Miscarriage

Having a miscarriage can be emotionally and physically difficult.  You might want to get pregnant right away in order to make up for the lost fetus.  Because the temporary pregnancy has disrupted your normal cycle, it can be difficult to predict when you will ovulate again.  In some cases, it can take a few weeks.  In others, it can take a couple of months.

The important thing is to try and conceive when you are ready.  Many experts recommend that you wait a couple of cycles before trying to get pregnant again because the miscarriage rate is somewhat higher if you try to get pregnant right away versus waiting until you have established normal cycles again.

Calculating when you are Ovulating

There are many ways of determining when you are ovulating.  Here are a couple of ways you can tell if you’re ovulating after a miscarriage.

Get out a calendar and write down the first day of your regular menstrual cycle. If you have irregular bleeding, write down each day that you have some type of spotting or bleeding that may or may not be your period.  This helps you determine when your regular period has started again.  If you have regular 28-day cycles, you generally ovulate on the fourteenth day after you begin to have bleeding that seems like a regular menstrual cycle.  This is the day you should try to get pregnant.  If you have long cycles, the day you ovulate is actually fourteen days before you anticipate your next period.  It requires you to know just how long your periods are so you know when the fourteenth day is before your next period.

You can use a basal body thermometer and take your temperature every morning before arising. Your temperature is usually low as you are preparing to ovulate.  At the time of ovulation, there is a dip in your temperature by just a half of a degree before it rises a full degree.  Once the temperature has gone up a degree, you have already ovulated and can’t get pregnant.  This method works well as long as you don’t have some type of infection or other reason for having a fever.  You really need to take your temperature before getting out of bed as, once you arise, the temperature will be inaccurate.  You can chart your temperature readings for a couple of months before determining when the best day is to ovulate.

You can keep track of your cervical mucus. Your cervical mucus will change, depending on where you are in your cycle.  In the beginning of the cycle, the mucus is white and a little bit sticky.  As you come closer to ovulation, the cervical mucus will become clear and will be stringy, resembling egg whites.  This change occurs because the sperm travel up into the uterus better when the cervical mucus is stringy.  After you ovulate, the mucus will turn white and sticky again, so you won’t be able to get pregnant.

After a miscarriage, you will still have higher than normal levels of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) in your system. This blocks any chance of ovulation.  Following your miscarriage, you can see your doctor for serum HCG levels so that, when it returns to zero, you will be able to ovulate again. This reduction in HCG levels usually takes about 2 weeks after the miscarriage but can take longer if you had high HCG levels in your system during the missed pregnancy.  Once the HCG levels return to zero, your pituitary gland will begin to put out hormones that will allow you to ovulate again in about two weeks.

You may wish to talk to your doctor or see a specialist before trying to get pregnant again.  You may have some kind of health condition that caused your first miscarriage and you will want to have that remedied before trying to get pregnant again or you may have another miscarriage.

It pays to wait until you have 2-3 normal menstrual cycles before trying to get pregnant again.  This allows your body to heal and your uterus to return to its normal, pre-pregnancy state.  This can be frustrating but is usually necessary to have the best chance of having a healthy pregnancy in the future.