How were your first few periods when you went off of birth control?

So, like many women, I have used my hormonal birth control (previously the pill, now NuvaRing) to try to "schedule" my periods around major events. Well, I'm planning to take out my last NuvaRing this month so we can start TTC in late July/August (the NuvaRing site says it can take 6-12 weeks after removing the ring to become fertile again, which is why I want to take it out in June).

Now, we are taking our first ever real vacation in July - we never even had a honeymoon. It's actually my first real vacation since I was in HIGH SCHOOL (and even the vacation in high school was a school trip where we had to get up early for choir rehearsals every day!). We are going to San Diego July 20-27 (my first time ever going to CA). I would REALLY rather not have to deal with my period during that vacation.

So...I have a close friend *****cently stopped her birth control pills (also TTC now), and her next period after stopping ended up coming early. I'm sure there's no way to tell with any real accuracy, but I was wondering if this was a common trend? I expect a period within a couple days of taking out the ring, but should I probably expect my next one less than 28 days later?

Another fun aspect of all of this is that I've been on hormonal birth control since I was 16 as a means of cyst prevention, so I really have NO idea if my cycles have any sort of regularity without it. All I know is that I've always been lucy (ha!) enough to have periods that last a good 7-9 days.

I know I'll just have to hope for the best for July, but I thought I'd see if anyone here had any thoughts on the topic   :)

I dont have any answers to your questions but i am thinking of using Nuvaring as my BC. How was your experience with it?

oh and btw.. my mom used BC for multiple years before stopping to try for me... they told her it would take forever since she was on it so long..Bam! she was pregnant next cycle. GL!

I like the convenience of the NuvaRing, and it hasn't actually caused any problems, but I will say that it has fallen out during intercourse on multiple occasions. So, that's a bit of pain that I have to then go to the bathroom, rinse it off, and reinsert it when we're done. I actually totally lost one once - I discovered it was no longer in, but we couldn't find it anywhere!

Holy cow! It falling out is a pain.. did the guy freak thinking you weren't covered any longer? And to lose one completely.. I can just imagine the next day you look at the ceiling fan and wonder what that is hanging from the blade..

heh, well, the guy is my husband, so no worries even if there ever happened to be an "oops." He did look for it a lot more than I did, but I just put a new one in. Knowing that it can take 6-12 weeks to be fertile again, I wasn't too worried about being ringless for a few hours.

Yeah, we never did find that one that got away - maybe I should check the ceiling fan! I once read a story of a woman who found her young daughter wearing her old ring as a bracelet (she had found it in the bathroom trash) - EW!

Unfortunately it really is a crap shoot, I don't think there's any way to know.  I do highly recommend starting to temp now, it may even give you some insight for your trip.  Are you planning on temping/OPKing for TTC?

(let me know if I've lost you with any of my acronyms there! lol)

I'm not planning on doing ANYTHING while TTC other than having sex! At least for the first few months. For me, I think doing that type of tracking would just increase stress and would increase frustration if I did it and did not get the results I want. We're in no major hurry, so we're going to give it a go as stress-free as possible.

 I can understand wanting to be stress free,  but have you thought about using an online program to understand when you are fertile?  Some thing as easy as put in the first day of your last period and then  it gives you a range of 5 days when you are most likely to be fertile and having wild monkey sex.

CNC

Nah. Sex has been an iffy issue for us for a long time (I have zero sex drive, which I've worked with docs about but it doesn't seem to be a medical issue), so I don't want to start having sex on certain days just because I might be more fertile those days. I want to keep everything normal for us; the only difference will be no birth control (which I'm hoping might even possibly help my sex drive a bit). We usually have sex 2-3 times a week right now (used to be more, but he has night classes now, so there are some days we only see each other for about 20 minutes while awake), so if it's meant to happen, it'll happen. Again, we're in no rush  :)