Postpartum recovery ovulation time

There is no unified time standard for postpartum ovulation recovery. Existing clinical data shows that ovulation can occur as early as 21 days after delivery, and the overall average recovery time is 4-6 months after delivery. Mothers who insist on exclusive breastfeeding may delay ovulation recovery until 1 year or more after delivery. Mothers who feed mixed feedings and exclusive milk powder generally recover earlier.

A while ago, my best friend called me in a panic just after her confinement, saying that she fed her baby exclusively with milk powder and had sex with her husband 30 days after giving birth without taking any measures. Will she win the lottery? I quickly urged her to buy an ovulation test strip, and the result was that the two red lines were so bright that she had just finished ovulation. She was completely stunned at the time. She said that her elders in the family had told her that it would take at least three months for ovulation to resume after giving birth. How could she be infected just after giving birth?

In fact, many people’s understanding of postpartum ovulation is still based on the old experience of more than ten years ago. They either think that normal birth will recover earlier than cesarean section, or that normal ovulation will occur only after a good confinement period. In fact, there is only one core influencing factor: the secretion level of prolactin.

The ovaries are always in a "dormant" state during pregnancy. After giving birth, prolactin begins to be secreted in large amounts and is responsible for milk production. This hormone will directly inhibit the ovulation function of the ovary. Therefore, in theory, the more frequently you breastfeed, the higher the prolactin level, and the later ovulation will resume.

However, it must be mentioned here that there was actually a lot of debate on this issue in the academic community before: one group once believed that mothers who exclusively breastfeed would not ovulate within 6 months after delivery as long as their menstruation has not yet come, which was the once popular "lactation amenorrhea contraceptive method", but later More and more clinical cases directly overturn this conclusion - after all, everyone's prolactin level is very different. Even if some mothers only breastfeed, their prolactin will drop to the threshold that does not inhibit ovulation after confinement. Some mothers are still amenorrhea after breastfeeding until they are two years old. It is impossible to generalize.

When I was doing rotations in the obstetrics department, I met a mother who exclusively breastfed her baby. She unexpectedly became pregnant when the baby was only 3 months old. She was confused and said that she had to wake up three or four times every night for night feeding. It is said that prolactin should be very high, so why is she still ovulating? Later, after a hormone test, it was discovered that her basic prolactin level was lower than that of ordinary people. Even if she breastfed frequently, she could not meet the standard for inhibiting ovulation.

There is another pitfall that people are most likely to step into: thinking that the absence of menstruation means that there is no ovulation. Don't be so stupid. Ovulation occurs 14 days before menstruation. If you don't get fertilized for the first time, you will have your first menstruation. If you happen to ovulate, you will be pregnant directly and you won't be able to wait for your menstruation. The mother I just mentioned who was 3 months pregnant had never had her first menstrual period after giving birth. When I checked, she was almost 40 days pregnant.

Oh, by the way, there is another very interesting observation. When we sorted out postpartum cases in the past two years, we found that mothers who have good weight control during pregnancy, adequate postpartum nutritional supplements, and regular exercise habits will generally resume ovulation earlier than mothers with the same feeding method. However, this is only a phenomenon we have observed on a small scale. There is currently no research conclusion on a large sample, so everyone can use it as a reference.

In fact, when our obstetrics nurses give postpartum mothers out-of-hospital education, the most common thing they say is: as long as you resume sexual intercourse, no matter whether you are breastfeeding or not, and whether you have menstruation or not, you must use contraception. Don't believe the old sayings like "you won't get pregnant if you breastfeed" or "you won't get pregnant if you don't have your period". If you really fall into a trap, you will be the one to suffer. Especially mothers who have had a cesarean section have scars on their uterus and have to wait at least 18 months before becoming pregnant again. If they get pregnant just six months after giving birth, the risk is particularly high whether it is an abortion or a continued pregnancy.

In the final analysis, postpartum ovulation recovery is a very personal matter. There is no standard answer, and no one can accurately predict for you whether you will ovulate on the 21st day or until you are 1 year old. Instead of worrying about this time, it is better to take the contraceptive measures in place honestly, which is worse than anything else.