Getting pregnant with irregular periods may be hard, but it’s not impossible! Here’s your go-to guide on how to get pregnant when you have irregular periods, plus some tools to make your fertility journey easier.
If you have irregular periods and you’re trying to conceive (TTC), you’re not alone.
Cycle irregularity is much more common than many may realize. In fact, up to one in three people may experience irregular periods! That means that the odds of trying to conceive while having irregular periods are pretty high.
Luckily, you’ve come to the right place.
In this guide on how to get pregnant with irregular periods, we’ll cover topics like whether getting pregnant with irregular periods is harder, how often you should have sex with irregular periods, and strategies to optimize your chances of conceiving (plus, we’ll tell you which tool may be most useful!).
Is it harder to get pregnant with irregular periods? Whether your periods come infrequently, very frequently, or totally randomly, or whether you have very heavy bleeding or no period at all, having irregular periods can make fertility confusing.
>>RELATED: How Late Can a Period Be?
If you’re wondering whether it’s harder to get pregnant if you have irregular periods, the answer is: it can be.
But pregnancy is still possible with irregular periods, it may just take longer and require a bit more support!
How long it takes for you partly depends on the reason behind your irregular periods: is it an underlying health condition, or just the way your body works right now?
Say your irregular periods are a symptom of a health condition like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) , thyroid disorders (hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism), diabetes, or celiac disease.
These conditions can also impact fertility. Before pregnancy is possible, you may need to treat the underlying condition for your own health and well-being, and to address infertility.
Sometimes, you may have irregular periods just because—without an underlying condition. Factors like exercise, stress, weight fluctuation, and diet can all impact your cycle regularity, causing things like infrequent or unpredictable periods.
If this is the case for you, you may not necessarily encounter infertility while trying to conceive. But getting pregnant may still call for some extra support as you navigate factors like variable cycle timing, unpredictable ovulation, or cycles without ovulation (anovulation ).
How to get pregnant with irregular periods Whatever the reason for your irregular cycles, getting pregnant with irregular periods may require a bit more patience and planning than with regular periods. But pregnancy is still very possible!
To help you along your fertility journey, here’s your go-to-guide to getting pregnant with irregular periods.
1. Stop birth control use If you decide to start trying for a baby, the first thing to do is stop taking hormonal birth control.
This step may seem obvious, but it’s worth mentioning—particularly when it comes to getting pregnant with irregular periods.
Many people with irregular periods take hormonal birth control for purposes aside from (or in addition to) preventing pregnancy, like making periods more predictable, controlling heavy periods, or stabilizing hormone levels to treat an underlying condition.
Regardless of your reason for using birth control, you’ll have to stop using it when you’re TTC. Your doctor can help you find alternative treatments, if needed.
2. Wait for ovulation to return Ovulation is what makes pregnancy possible: during ovulation, your ovaries release the mature egg that can then be fertilized by sperm and become a pregnancy.
Hormonal birth control prevents pregnancy by stopping ovulation or by blocking the functions around ovulation and fertilization. That means that once you’re off birth control, you have to wait for your body to reset and start ovulating again before you can get pregnant.
How long does it take to get pregnant after birth control ? It depends on the type of contraception, your body, and your ovulation.
Generally speaking, here’s when you can expect ovulation to return:
3. Track your ovulation Once ovulation has returned, knowing when you ovulate is another key part of the pregnancy puzzle. In fact, that information is the answer to the question “When should you have sex in order to get pregnant?”
That’s because, for fertilization and a potential pregnancy to occur, you need to have sex around the day of ovulation, in what’s called the “fertile window .” Correctly timing sex to this window optimizes your chances of getting pregnant in a given cycle.
>>RELATED: How Long Does Ovulation Last?
When you have irregular periods, this is easier said than done. It can be hard to know when you’re ovulating or whether you’re even ovulating at all, which makes reliably predicting ovulation and correctly timing sex a tall task.
But tracking ovulation with irregular periods is still very possible! Plus, there are strategies to help.
Ovulation predictor kits (OPKs) , for example, aim to tell you when you’re ovulating by detecting the LH (luteinizing hormone) surge , a hormone event that triggers ovulation.
Traditional OPKs leave you with some guesswork, since you have to determine yourself when to test. If irregular cycles make this difficult, try using your OPK over a longer period each cycle. Testing over a couple weeks rather than a couple days increases the chances that you’ll capture the LH surge.
4. Track your hormones to better identify ovulation While traditional OPKs can be useful for some people, they aren’t always advanced enough to properly measure your body’s signs if you have irregular periods.
If this is the case for you, multi-hormone fertility kits may be more equipped to give you the detailed ovulation and fertility picture you need.
In fact, if you have irregular periods, multi-hormone fertility kits may even be the most useful tool at your disposal!
The Oova kit, for example, measures multiple key fertility hormones (estrogen , progesterone , and LH) with lab-precision accuracy, so you can track your unique hormone levels. Using this individualized hormone data, Oova can tell you when you’re ovulating—even with irregular periods.
When you know with certainty when ovulation happens, you can correctly time sex to maximize your chances of conceiving in a given cycle.
5. Look out for signs of ovulation For some people, ovulation comes with certain signs and symptoms, including:
In addition to using fertility kits to track your ovulation and hormones with irregular periods, it can also be useful to look out for these signs.
Keep in mind, however, that not everyone experiences physical signs of ovulation . If you don’t, it’s not necessarily a sign that you’re not ovulating, it may just be that your body reacts differently.
6. Have sex regularly Here’s the big question: if you have irregular periods, how often should you have sex to optimize your chances of conceiving?
For cycles when you’re just not sure when ovulation is despite your best efforts (this happens!),
you can try having sex very regularly. That way, the odds are higher that your egg will meet some sperm—even if you don’t know quite when that egg is planning on coming out.
How regularly? If you have irregular periods and you’re struggling to conceive, try having sex every two or three days throughout a given cycle.
If that rhythm sounds good, great!
If it sounds overwhelming, that’s okay too—you don’t have to follow it all the time! You may have cycles where tracking your hormones to identify ovulation enables you to pinpoint more precisely the window when regular sex is most important.
When to see a fertility specialist Getting pregnant with irregular periods can sometimes be hard.
If you’ve been trying to conceive for one year and haven’t yet gotten pregnant (or for six months, if you’re over 35), it may be time to see a fertility specialist.
Alongside your partner, consider consulting a reproductive endocrinologist (REI) and a reproductive urologist for help addressing your fertility issues.
>>MORE: What Are My Infertility Treatment Options?
How to get pregnant with irregular periods: the bottom line Getting pregnant with irregular periods may be harder and require more patience, but it’s not impossible.
To help optimize your chances of conceiving in a given cycle, consider tracking your ovulation with OPKs and hormone tracking kits, looking out for signs of ovulation, and having sex very regularly (think, every two or three days) for the cycles where ovulation is a total mystery.
If you suspect you’re dealing with infertility, consider consulting a fertility specialist for help.
