Confused and anxious

[famous]

Hi, this is my first time posting on this site, and I'm not sure I'm posting I'm the right area, but I'm going to give it a try.

I'm really confused in my current state, and I'll explain why.

I'm a 22 year old female. I went off my birth control approximately two months ago. It was the Seasonique, where you get your period every three months. I was never irregular before and when i was younger, the only reason i went on it in the first place was for the bad cramps. anyways, I started my period right away as soon as I went off the pill. A month later, like clockwork, my period showed up like I had never been on it. It was a relatively light period, lasting only two and a half days. This month, though, today I am officially eleven days late.

We have not been using any sort of birth control. We haven't been TTC, but it's something we both want, and thought if it happened, cool! We just really wanted it to be a surprise! So I am eleven days late. I have taken three pregnancy tests, two Clearblue and one EPT, and they have both come out negative. I haven't really noticed any classic pregnancy symptoms. At the point, if I am pregnant, i would probably be somewhere from a few weeks to a month and a half. I don't know how soon symptoms show up anyways. My back has been achy, I've had headaches, bloated ALL THE TIME. I've been crampy, like I'm going to start my period, but it has been hit and miss. I've had the clear white dischargy stuff consistently, I'm just not sure what to think.

I'm going to wait til I hit two weeks late before I call my gynecologist to schedule an appointment. I'm just so confused and anxious. Has anyone else experienced this?

 

[lolasmith]

This is fairly common when coming of birth control. Starting your period straight after coming off the pill will generally be a breakthrough bleed- therefore not an actual period (Because you didn't actually ovulate before bleeding).

Basically it is hard to know when you're late because you need a few cycles off birthcontrol to distinguish how long your cycle will be.

If you are infact 11 days late then a false negative test is very unlikely. My guess would be that your hormones are still adjusting from coming off birth control. Unfortunately, with out lots of ovulatory cycles behind you to distinguish a pattern then it is hard to say when your period is expected. Without tracking ovulation you really just don't know when it is due.

Estrogen surges which tend to happen when your cycles are balancing do mimic a lot of pregnancy symptoms. Also, you may have ovulated at anytime, perhaps later than usual, and your symptoms are related to progesterone.. so your period may still be on it's way.

Hope this helps--- with the negative hpt and no period, my guess is that you haven't ovulated yet, or that you ovulated later than usually and you are not long enough past O to get a positive, or you won't ovulate this cycle.