How To Know If You've Ovulated When Recovering from Hypothalamic Amenorrhea
If you’re recovering from hypothalamic amenorrhea, you’re likely not just wondering when your period is coming, but you’re also wondering…”have I ovulated yet?!”
So, how do you know if you have? This article will dive into how you can tell if you’ve ovulated.
Why Knowing If You’ve Ovulated Is Important
Contrary to popular belief, the bleed is NOT actually the main event of your menstrual cycle, ovulation is. It’s the star of the show!
Ovulation happens when one of your eggs, given to you at birth and nestled into your ovaries waiting for their day to shine, is selected as the lucky egg of the month. In the form of a follicle, it comes to full maturity and finally releases – ovulation!
It's the start of this eggs journey before heading down the fallopian tube to find a sperm, if it’s there.
1 egg releasing and being fertilized by 1 sperm = 1 baby.
In some cases, when it selects 2 eggs AND 2 sperm manage to fertilize them, we get fraternal twins 😄 🧑🤝🧑
When an egg releases, is fertilized and splits into two, we get identical twins. Fun stuff!
Without the event of ovulation, pregnancy cannot happen and let’s face it, that’s the body's main objective here (even if it’s not your objective.)
The reason this is important to know is because a precursor to losing your period is that you’ve stopped ovulating. Often you’ll stop ovulating before entirely losing your bleed, it’s just that you can’t see ovulation like you can see a bleed.
This makes sense as to why we tend to, unfortunately, hyper-focus on getting our bleed back, VS focusing on our ovulation – because we really notice when our monthly bleed is absent but ovulation is happening behind the scenes.
Here’s the thing: if you ovulate, you WILL bleed. If you bleed, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you ovulated. That’s why it’s important to focus on it more than focusing on your bleed.
Other reasons that ovulation is important:
Regular ovulation is linked to good overall health, meaning if you miss it, that’s showing us you’re either stressed, under-fueled, sick or even overworked.
If you’re not ovulating, you’re at greater risk of osteoporosis, stroke, dementia, heart disease, and breast cancer long term.
Anovulation
So, what does it mean to not ovulate? It’s called anovulation: when the maturity of that egg we discussed earlier simply doesn't happen. Ovulation is skipped…BUT you still get your menstrual bleed.
Note again, that your monthly bleed can deceive you into thinking your cycling optimally after amenorrhea, but if you’re not confirming ovulation you can’t be sure.
How Anovulation Happens
To begin, this process starts at the hypothalamus. Your hypothalamus sends a signal to the ovaries to produce estrogen and gear up for ovulation.
Naturally, when our estrogen production is suppressed (hello, HA) there isn't enough to trigger ovulation.
One of two things will happen depending on how the rest of your hormones are going:
Nothing. Your estrogen was so low that nothing happened, you have HA and it’s all tumble weeds down there.
Your body had some hormone production, it tried to ovulate, didn’t have anything it needed and so it decided to move on, not ovulate, not pass go and not collect $200. It does however bleed because you had just enough estrogen to build up a uterine lining, and just enough progesterone to shed it out.
As you can imagine, anovulation is common in recovering HA’ers because you’ve gone from zero reproductive hormones to some reproductive. It often takes time and/or a bit more recovery work to get your body to complete a cycle at 100% functionality.
How to Know If You’ve Ovulated
A rule of thumb that I find myself repeating to clients over and over again is this: you cannot confirm ovulation until AFTER it’s happened.
You cannot accurately predict ovulation either, you can only make your best, educated guess. I’ve broken these tips into ovulation predictors, but note they are not always accurate predictors and just a guide, and ovulation confirmers.
Ovulation Predictors
Mucus pattern
If you’re seeing cervical mucus of any kind, your ovulation window might be approaching. If you’re seeing peak mucus signs (vs non-peak mucus signs) you might be even more likely.
We have a mini course inside of The HA Society that takes you through how to track mucus.Cervical Position
If you feel your cervical position start to change and if you notice that your cervix is going from closed to slightly more open with an internal check, you might be approaching ovulation.
We have a mini course inside of The HA Society that takes you through how to track cervical position changes.LH strips
If you’re using LH strips or ovulation predictor kits, essentially pee-tests that look for signs of a lutenizing hormone sign, and they show that you’re having a surge, you might be about to ovulate. Check out this Instagram post about why LH strips are not 100% reliable.Ultrasound
If you’re getting a regular ultrasound to track the progress of a developing follicle, and it looks like it’s almost at full maturity, you’re likely ovulating soon.
Now if you notice a few of the above mentioned symptoms at once, you’re definitely getting closer!
Ovulation Confirmers
Basal body shifts
When you track your temps in the morning, you’ll notice you’re generally around the same temperature (if not, consult a professional!). When you notice that temperature shift almost a whole degree or so higher (eg from 97.5F to 98.2F), and it stays that way for 3+ days, you can confirm ovulation. NOTE that this takes practice and you should learn all of the rules and work with someone or do a course to fully understand how to using temperatures to confirm ovulation.
We have a mini course inside of The HA Society that takes you through how to track basal body temperature for recovery.
A clear, readable mucus pattern
If your mucus pattern is fitting the optimal parameters, which is about 3-5 days of mucus that progress relatively consistently from non-peak to peak mucus followed by an abrupt stop in mucus production all together, you can be more confident that you ovulated the day of the last seen mucus observation. NOTE that this takes practice and you should learn all of the rules and work with someone or do a course to fully understand how to use cervical mucus to confirm ovulation.Cervical Position
If you feel your cervical position completely change and notice that your cervix has gone from closed to open with an internal check, you can be confident that you’ve ovulated.
We have a mini course inside of The HA Society that takes you through how to track cervical position changes.
NOTE that this takes practice and you should learn all of the rules and work with someone or do a course to fully understand how to use cervical position to confirm ovulation.Ultrasound
If you’re getting a regular ultrasound to track the progress of a developing follicle, and that ultrasound shows that a follicle recently ruptured, your doctor can confirm ovulation.
Now combine a few of the above at once, you can be super confident!
What To Do If You’re Not Ovulating
A number of things can affect your bodies ability to ovulate so by no means am I chalking it up to these issues only, but in my work with women with hypothalamic amenorrhea and what we see in practice as users of the fertility awareness method, improving these areas yield the best results:
Assess your caffeine intake
Start with stimulants. Coffee, tea, caffeine tablets: they’re causing you and your hypothalamus stress!
Assess your caloric intake
Under eating, focusing on clean eating, eating the same foods every single day 365 days a year…these behaviours can result in eating less than your body needs to successfully ovulate.
Assess your energy expenditure
Exercising 5-7 days a week has a bigger strain on our body than we realize. Working out that often has been normalized in our culture, but when you combine it with the frequency, volume and intensity that most people are pushing their body, it’s a problem. Regular exercise should not be consistently strenuous or jammed inside of a fully packed schedule. It shouldn’t be exhausting to work out and it shouldn’t leave you breathless or burned out regularly. This will affect ovulation every time.
Assess your stress
Aside from the stress of nutrition and exercise, life stressors play just as big a role. Trying to close on a house? Loss of a loved one? Wild travel schedule? The state of the world got your feeling a certain kind of way? These cannot be ignored. Focus on your parasympathetic state. Breathe deeply, meditate and for the love of all things that are good and holy, say no to things, relax and remove unnecessary responsibilities and stressors from your plate. Recovery and anovulation is no time to mess around.
Work with a coach
Identifying ovulation and the potential causes of anovulation isn’t that easy – but with a bit of guidance you can become a pro and have this knowledge for life. I recommend working with a fertility awareness educator or FAM practitioner certified recovery coach who uses FAM in their practice to help you not just recover, but equip you with the tools you need to take charge of your menstrual health forever.
Use the Period Recovery Game Planner
I designed the Game Planner to help women figure out what areas of their recovery might be blind spots for them. It’s a great tool even for especially for women who do have a recovery period but are not yet ovulating.
Can one guide really change the game? Actually, yes.
The Period Recovery Game Planner is your primary tool for figuring out WHY you have hypothalamic amenorrhea and what your next steps are going to be to treat it and get your period back.
This guide covers every foundational thing you need to have in place in order to recover AND most importantly, makes sure you’re not missing anything.
So grab a cup of tea and a snack, get comfortable and dive in to building your own hypothalamic recovery plan thanks to the guidance and tools inside of this planner.
