Short cycles do not automatically mean your fertility is in trouble. In this episode, Dr. Carrie Bedient of the Fertility Center of Las Vegas and Dr. Susan Hudson of Texas Fertility Center unpack what a 19- to 20-day cycle may mean, when it’s worth investigating, and why your personal pattern matters. A listener’s question about short cycles, anemia, birth control, and egg supply leads to a practical conversation about cycle length versus bleeding days, changes after pregnancy, and the difference between ovarian reserve and egg quality. The Docs also explain how thyroid issues, prolactin, breastfeeding, stress, and ovarian aging can affect cycle regularity. They address a common worry head-on: Do frequent periods mean you’re using up your eggs faster or heading into early perimenopause? Get a clear, nuanced perspective on when a short cycle may simply be your normal—and when it’s time to talk with a clinician.

Episode Transcript:

Susan Hudson (00:01)

You’re listening to the Fertility Docs Uncensored podcast, featuring insight on all things fertility from some of the top rated doctors around America. Whether you’re struggling to conceive or just planning for your future family, we’re here to guide you every step of the way.

Carrie Bedient MD (00:23)

And welcome to another episode of Fertility Docs Uncensored. I am one of your hosts, Carrie Bedient, from the Fertility Center of Las Vegas, and I am joined by my supercalifragilisticexpialidociously fantastic co-host, Dr. Susan Hudson from Texas Fertility Center.

Susan Hudson MD (00:37)

Hey Carrie, how you doing today?

Carrie Bedient MD (00:39)

Good. I have important questions for you before we dive into our topic, which is actually fabulous today. One of our listeners wrote in a really detailed set of questions that we have not had before. And so that’s really exciting. So we’re gonna dive into short cycles and and how that goes in a minute. But first for my unrelated question, how does one get rid of yellow jackets? Like those little wasps.

Susan Hudson MD (01:02)

Do you have a flying insect issue?

Carrie Bedient MD (01:05)

Yeah. I was sitting on our porch last night and we’ve got one of those little fire table things that is like it’s not big, but it’s enough to put off some heat. And I was sitting there reading and all of a sudden I feel something crawling on my hand and I kind of brush it and then I realize it’s a yellow jacket. And this is at midnight, and so the fact that I did not scream loud enough to wake up the whole frickin’ neighborhood is nothing besides absolutely sensational. And I want a medal. Thank you very much.

But I look up and there’s two or three of them crawling on the ceiling because they’re attracted to the heat. And I don’t know where their nest is. I don’t think it’s in my yard, but it’s close enough that they found me and I am not okay with this.

Susan Hudson MD (01:46)

You’re not used to flying insects, are you?

Like wasps and yellow jackets and things like that.

Carrie Bedient MD (01:54)

I mean a little bit, but not a whole hell of a lot. We found a nest on the other side of our wall last summer. And the city dealt with it. And it’s right next to an elementary school. I understand city’s not doing it, but this is a liability.

And the problem went away.

Susan Hudson MD (02:12)

So, all right, you need to go and walk around your house. And if you do this at night, it’s gonna or kind of dusk, it’ll be a little bit easier because you’re more likely to see them, but you need to look especially in anywhere that there’s a corner. But if you saw quite a few of them by your light fixture, there’s a possibility the nest is possibly in the light fixture.

I know for those of you who are not watching…

Carrie Bedient MD (02:37)

hell no.

Susan Hudson MD (02:38)

on YouTube who are listening to the podcast, Carrie’s eyes just got as big as oranges.

Carrie Bedient MD (02:45)

hell no.

Susan Hudson MD (02:46)

So you need to find the nest, and then you can buy spray, and the spray is like very targeted. It has a the stream, but you need to do it in the evening because that’s when they tend to come back to the nest.

And you’ll spray them, but you eventually have to get the nest down and bust it up to kill the eggs.

Carrie Bedient MD (03:07)

But in order to get the nest down I have to take the whole fixture down.

Susan Hudson MD (03:10)

That is possible if it’s in the fixture. So what I would do is keep an eye on it the next few nights. Is that really where they are or are they somewhere close and then they’re coming close to it? But I’m betting it it might be in the fixture.

Carrie Bedient MD (03:25)

So I was out there yesterday afternoon, and there was one little scout that that wandered into my space.

But I was out there for the better part of two hours, and I just saw that one little dude, and I ran downstairs to get my electrified tennis racket because one does not mess around with flying creatures. And then of course he went away because he sensed that I was a threat and he knew that I was in charge.

Susan Hudson MD (03:52)

Gonna divert this conversation for a second with about the electrified tennis racket. We love those. However, I never ever recommend using them on bees because I’m absolutely convinced because we used to use them on bees around here, that I think they produce some sort of pheromone when you zap them and it attracts more. So don’t use the electric tennis racket.

On bees, wasps and yellow jackets and hornets and things like that, completely fine. Flies, of course.

Carrie Bedient MD (04:24)

I thought that yellow jackets had the same set of pheromones where if you really piss off one, they all come flying in.

Susan Hudson MD (04:32)

I’ve never seen it in anything specifically except for bees.

Carrie Bedient MD (04:36)

I do not like this development in any way, shape, or form. Okay,

Susan Hudson MD (04:38)

I’m sorry.

Carrie Bedient MD (04:41)

Let’s talk about periods and short cycles.

Susan Hudson MD (04:43)

Ha ha ha.

Carrie Bedient MD (04:45)

I find that to be far more appealing than wasps.

Susan Hudson MD (04:47)

Okay, so let’s talk about what in general is a short cycle. Like, how short is short?

Carrie’s still very disturbed. How about this? Carrie, why don’t you read the question and then we’ll get to how short is short, just to give you a moment.

Carrie Bedient MD (05:01)

That’s probably a much better idea. I’m really not okay with any of this. Okay, so could you consider covering short cycles and how it impacts fertility? I have short cycles of 19 to 20 days, and most information online is about long cycles. I feel like I should have added more info to my prior question. My short cycles of 19 to 20 days started at age 22 were regulated with a combo pill due to anemia at age 23 and resume their cadence of 18 of 19, 20, 21 days at age 33 after having a child, which is presumably a spontaneous pregnancy. I don’t find much info about short cycles and would love y’all’s intake. Anything to keep in mind, does this mean I will go through my egg capacity faster? Decreased chances of conception, early perimenopause. Okay. All right. So Susan, what is a short cycle?

Susan Hudson MD (05:50)

So a short cycle in general is something I would say less than about twenty-six days. There’s always gonna be some variability. I think normal people would consider twenty-six to thirty-two days getting little past that you start getting long. There’s not an absolute in this definition, but that’s generally what I would classify.

Carrie Bedient MD (06:13)

Okay. And when people say cycles, oftentimes our patients come in and they say, I’ve got a really short cycle. It used to be long and now it’s short. And so one of the ways that you can apply that is with 19, 20, 21 days between first day of your period to first day of your period. What’s the other thing that people mean when they talk to us about, my cycle is a lot shorter now?

Susan Hudson MD (06:34)

So sometimes they’re talking about how many days they’re actually bleeding. And it’s your menses, it’s your menstrual period, but it’s not really your menstrual cycle. The cycle is the phenomenon that happens, how your brain and ovaries and uterus all communicate with each other that causes the thickening of the lining of the uterus, and then the exposure to progesterone, which compacts the lining, and then if you’re not pregnant, the drop in progesterone, which generally causes an organized shedding of the lining of the uterus.

Carrie Bedient MD (07:08)

So for completeness sake, when we’re talking about the menses, what is normal there and what is considered short?

Susan Hudson MD (07:16)

So when we’re talking about how many days somebody is bleeding, I would say probably four to seven days is normally quote normal. Anything shorter than that is a little short and longer than that is a little long. Again, no hard and fast rules, but a lot of this has to do with quality and quantity.

Carrie Bedient MD (07:39)

So in looking at her question, first of all, her short cycle started around age 22. And we’re just gonna make some baseline assumptions here. We’re gonna assume that she started getting her period early adolescence, early teen years, to mid-teen years. And by 22, that would be plenty of time for them to have declared this is what their pattern is because by that point you we should see a consistent pattern. So what do we think happening? Fine.

Susan Hudson MD (08:08)

I’m gonna interrupt Carrie. So why do we give people some grace between the time that they start their periods until they’re maybe in their early twenties? What’s unique about that time period and situation?

Carrie Bedient MD (08:25)

The HPO, Hypothalamic pituitary ovarian access, which is the set of controls that all have to function together in order to get your period, that takes a little while to mature. So it’s not like you hit age 13 and one day, and all of a sudden it goes from zero to 60. It goes from zero to 20, down to five, up to 80, back down to 32 and a half, and it keeps doing that ping-ponging. And so you usually by the time you’re in your mid to late teens, I would say five-ish years is a good range. oftentimes it can regulate in a shorter period of time than that. But but for some people it does take a while. So it takes a couple of years for your HPO access to really decide: this is who I am, this is my normal, and this is what we’re gonna do.

And and that’s why when we will oftentimes have patients come to us with, teenage kids and they say, she had a period and then she didn’t have one for six months and then she had two in a row and then it disappeared and now it’s back. And does she have PCOS or PMOS? What’s going on here? And particularly if they’re in the first two years or so, it’s chalked up to normal because they’re not expected to have a fully mature.

hormonal set of signals that quickly.

She had cycles that were 19-20 days at 22. So this is relatively early on for this. What would you tell her if she had come to you at age, let’s say, 23? So she’s having this anemia and she needs a solution. What would you tell her about having short cycles at 19 to 20 days at that stage of the game?

Susan Hudson MD (10:08)

Stage of the game, I wouldn’t be too concerned about big things. However, I do think that even in your early to mid-20s, it would be reasonable to make sure your thyroid is working appropriately. I would want to check your prolactin. Prolactin level is a little hormone screened by your brain. Normally makes you get breast milk after you have babies. But if it’s a little off, it can mess with your periods.

It would probably be reasonable to do a pelvic ultrasound to make sure structurally things look appropriate. The lining’s not too thick, not too thin, kind of mama bear just in the middle, right? Goldilocks,

Carrie Bedient MD (10:49)

Goldilocks. Yeah.

Susan Hudson MD (10:51)

yes, exactly. And I would probably at that point, as a reproductive endocrinologist, I don’t think an o regular OB/GYN would do this.

I would probably do baseline ovarian reserve testing, looking at really at first an AMH level. AMH stands for anti-mullerian hormone, which is a good marker of quantity of eggs, because that’s our job is to have spidey senses about funky egg issues. And so that’s what I would probably do if somebody came to me in this type of situation. Like I said, I think that most general OB/GYNs would consider an AMH at that point overkill, but that’s not something that I think as a REI we can miss.

Carrie Bedient MD (11:37)

Yeah. Well, right now she’s at least 10 years, 11 years older than that, if not a couple more than that. And so if you think back to what life was like in, 2013, 14, 15, 16, were we doing AMHs all day, every day at that point?

Susan Hudson MD (11:55)

Two thousand sixteen. Yeah, it’s kind of in a transition period then, I would say.

Carrie Bedient MD (11:59)

I don’t know.

Susan Hudson MD (12:00)

About ten years ago. I mean, I think I was probably doing AMHs, but I don’t know how ubiquitous that was within the entire fertility treatment process, that type of thing.

Carrie Bedient MD (12:12)

I remember at that stage, maybe two, three years earlier than that, when I was a resident, I remember my program director coming to me, because at that point I had declared my interest on REI and he was like, okay, what do you know about this AMH thing? And he was exceptionally well read and on top of things. And so, thank you, Dr. Frank. But that is my benchmark of when AMH really came around because it just wasn’t done a whole lot before then. And so particularly in the world of general OBGYNs, which they’re having to think of absolutely everything in the free world, the breadth of what they deal with is just phenomenal and frankly gives me chest pain. Because if I was responsible for that breadth of information, I would go absolutely bonkers. I’m much better at depth. But for OBGYNs, not everyone would have naturally gone to that. So for the question asker, please don’t think you got the short end of the stick at all. It sounds like the evaluation you got was the evaluation that was very appropriate for that time.

Susan Hudson MD (13:11)

Think getting put on birth control pills at that point in time because you were symptomatic with anemia, which is a low blood count, was a very reasonable thing to do. So birth control pills, because of using active and inactive pills, or if you were just using active pills and avoiding periods altogether, that’s going to decrease the frequency of having bleeding in this type of situation. And it is also going to decrease the volume of menstrual flow you’re going to have which fixes the main reason you were being seen at that point in time, otherwise it wouldn’t have been that big a deal.

Carrie Bedient MD (13:50)

Right, right. Okay, so what’s a possible reason for the anemia that she would have had at age twenty-three that required the pills? What’s the quick differential of all right, what are we thinking about? Because that may or may not influence what our discussion is today.

Susan Hudson MD (14:09)

So, the main reason somebody who is young and menstruating is going to have significant anemia is that they’re bleeding more each month than what they can replenish, not taking vitamins, maybe not having the best teenage diet, all of those types of things. And and it

Carrie Bedient MD (14:29)

What do you mean cup of noodles and Kraft mac and cheese is not balanced?

Susan Hudson MD (14:33)

It may not contain the amount of iron that your body needs to do everything that it needs to stay healthy. And we still see it all the time that you have, teenagers who have anemia, they end up needing something to help regulate their menstrual flow. And just by controlling the quantity and quality of the amount of blood you’re menstruating each month, it’s going to fix what’s causing you the most deficit in your physical life.

Carrie Bedient MD (14:59)

Okay, so it sounds like she went on a pill, presumably at that point her period’s regulated. And sometimes people will come back to us after being on a pill for, 10 years or so and they say the pill caused this problem. How

Susan Hudson MD (15:13)

So Carrie, does the pill make you have problems in reproduction in the future?

Susan Hudson MD (15:21)

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Carrie Bedient MD (16:19)

No, the pill does not make you have any problems. What the pill may potentially do is hide problems or mask them. Now, that is a double-edged sword because, for example, in this case, the pill might have been masking an issue, but it was also solving an issue. Because turns out you need blood to survive, and if you are losing an excessive amount every month, that is not favorable for your overall survival.

Not that it is likely to kill you in this day and age, but there are absolutely patients that we see who come into the emergency room with a hemoglobin that is a third of normal and they’re just walking around because that’s how much they’re bleeding every month and that’s a problem.

The thing that can solve the problem may also mask another problem. And it’s a tough situation because nothing is perfect. So no, the pill does not cause reproductive problems. It can potentially mask them. When someone comes to us and says, I’ve been on the pill for 10 years and I went off three months ago and I haven’t gotten it back, what’s going on? What do you normally tell them?

Susan Hudson MD (17:24)

Well, my first question is what was happening before you got on the pill? Because a lot of times people think that the pill just like you said, they think that it fixes the issue where actually it’s masking or taking care of it artificially. But once you stop, you go back to what you were doing before. So number one, if you were having frequent periods before, you’re probably going to have frequent periods.

After if you weren’t having periods before, you’re likely to not be having them after. Now, once in a while, people can be very suppressed. Essentially, the brain and ovaries are not communicating quite as effectively during the first couple of months of stopping the birth control pill. However, there is also very good evidence that you are the most fertile.

In the first few months, you stop the birth control. So this old adage of, you need to have a washout period of three to twelve months from an oral contraceptive before trying to conceive is absolutely not true. And that’s really a leftover of the amount of hormones, especially estrogen, that was in birth control pills when the estrogen level was very high. But I can say those high numbers were from like in the eighties. Okay. So I mean it’s really not been that type of a situation for decades.

Carrie Bedient MD (18:58)

Mm-hmm. And those really high estrogen containing pills, yes, they’re still around, but they get pulled out so rarely. Usually the main time that we’re pulling them out is if someone is having an acute, heavy, heavy bleeding episode and we just need to do something to get them to stop bleeding because it is it’s dangerous how much they’re bleeding. And the vast, vast, vast majority of doctors across all the subspecialties stay away from those unless we have to. And pretty much anybody else in the hospital tends not to be willing to prescribe them except for the gynecologist. And the gynecologist will put you on them for exactly as long as you need them and then try and get you down to a lower dose. And so a lot of the old concerns about birth control pills, whether that is blood clotting or ifficulty with conception afterwards are related to the the first generation of pills, which were fantastic and were revolutionary when they came out, but also are different than what we have today.

Susan Hudson MD (19:51)

Very true.

Carrie Bedient MD (19:52)

So she mentions that they resumed that short cadence at age 33 after having a child. What does that sentence tell you?

Susan Hudson MD (20:01)

That she was normal enough to get pregnant. That’s what that sentence tells me. So that in itself does have a reassuring aspect, but we may have had that little surge in fertility after getting off the birth control pills that allowed her to do so.

Carrie Bedient MD (20:19)

So what are the things that can impact your cycle regularity after having a child?

Susan Hudson MD (20:25)

So number one, if you’re breastfeeding, that can definitely affect your cycle regularity because of naturally high progesterone levels. Other things, stress. So that’s…

Carrie Bedient MD (20:38)

Do you mean that people who have a newborn are stressed? I don’t understand. It’s supposed to be the happiest time of your life, next to the day you get married, which is clearly a stress-free day.

Susan Hudson MD (20:47)

It’s just a different type of stress. You can have thyroid issues that uncover themselves because of all the hormonal changes that happen. and sometimes it’s from ovarian aging, whether it’s appropriate ovarian aging or inappropriate ovarian aging. Those those are what I would say are the biggest contenders. Do you have other things you would add to that, Carrie?

Carrie Bedient MD (21:10)

I think that those are

Are really the big ones? I mean, stress, breastfeeding, and ovarian aging are the three biggies that that come to mind. Now, occasionally you’ll find some of the genetic conditions that can lead to ovarian aging at a faster rate. so rather than just kind of idiopathic or unexplained, it’s related to fragile X or it’s related to Mosaic Turner’s or something along those lines. If someone has a history of chemotherapy or significant autoimmune disease, significant endometriosis, typically with surgeries, usually just endo won’t do this, but it’s the surgeries that do it. Those are other things that factor in. But in the absence of all of those, it’s usually breastfeeding stress and aging.

Susan Hudson MD (21:59)

One thing I do want to mention. So she asks, does this mean I will go through my egg capacity faster? So when we’re talking about ovarian aging, it is important to understand that women are born with all the eggs they’re ever going to get. When you were in your mama’s tummy, you had about three million eggs. By the time you were born, down to a million, by the time you went through puberty, down to about 300,000.

The average woman is going to ovulate or release about 450 eggs in a lifetime, and the rest of them are going to go through atresia or program cell death. They’re just going to disappear. The rate at which they typically disappear increases in your upper 30s and early 40s. Now, all those things that Carrie was just talking about are things that speed up that ovarian aging process. And it’s really that disappearing act that the eggs go through, not the fact that you’re ovulating. So even if you ovulated an extra 10%, that’s only adding an extra 40 ovulations into your entire lifetime. So even if you’re having more periods, the number of eggs that’s actually getting rid of is very minimal.

It’s what’s happening behind the scenes, behind the magic curtain of the ovaries, that maybe there’s something going on at the rate that it shouldn’t have happened, whether you might have been born with less eggs than the average person, or the rate of atresia is faster than in the average woman.

Carrie Bedient MD (23:41)

Mm-hmm. So how does that relate to decreasing chances of conception?

Susan Hudson MD (23:47)

So really we’re looking at somebody who has poor ovarian reserve is going to have decreased chances of conceiving. Now I would rather have a quantity issue than a quality issue when it comes to eggs any day. So if you come to me in your 30 and have a low egg count, that is a completely different situation.

Than if you come to me and you are 30 and you have a poor egg quality measure, like a really high FSH, or you come to me and you’re 43 and you have a fantastic measure of egg quantity, that egg quantity is gonna help. But quality, I need I need a good one. Okay. I don’t need lots of bad ones. And a lot of times we can find a good one and lots of bad ones. But it’s still a harder thing to fight.

Carrie Bedient MD (24:45)

So how that relates to early perimenopause is typically, especially because it looks like this is her normal. I mean, this has been the case since her early 20s. So you’re not necessarily going to go through early perimenopause. The ovaries have two functions. One of those functions is to make babies, the other function is to produce hormones. When you look at an entire population, it is more important to make babies.

But when you look at the individual, it is more important to support the hormones. And that is a very important distinction. And so I would anticipate that you wouldn’t necessarily have an early perimenopause like more.

More than anybody else, because a lot of times what will happen is that the ovaries preserve their ability to produce at least one egg a month. So you may have decreased quantity where instead of producing 15 to 20 eggs per month, you’re only producing five, but you are still getting the ovarian function that you need. And that’s really what drives perimenopause more than anything, because there’s a a critical point at which, and this is different for every woman, but there’s a critical point at which the body says, okay, we really don’t have enough in reserve. We are going to scale this back, we’re not going to release an egg every month. But in general, it tends to be protective of that function for as long as possible. And that’s how you find people who have random pregnancies much later than anticipated because they are still producing that egg, because the body is trying to preserve its hormonal function to support brain health, heart health, joint health, all of those things.

Susan Hudson MD (26:23)

Carrie, what is the average age of menopause for our listeners?

Carrie Bedient MD (26:27)

51. And that is a very helpful number to know. It’s also useless in many respects because it doesn’t, that’s an average. So that means 50% of the people are gonna go higher than that, and 50% of the people are gonna go lower than that. And just like having a baby, you’re not going to have a fraction of a baby. You either have this experience or you do not.

Susan Hudson MD (26:51)

But what also is the definition of menopause?

Carrie Bedient MD (26:54)

One year of no cycles. So it is a diagnosis made in retrospect. And the kind of sucky thing about perimenopause is that it can last for five, ten years potentially, which is completely and utterly rude. And I think the system needs to be rethought just a little bit. There are a lot of people that are actually doing that in the sense of hormone replacement and augmentation therapy is happening in a lot earlier ages. So that even though you might start to feel those effects in your early forties. You don’t necessarily have to live with those effects in your early forties if you’re getting that supplementation.

Menopause the whole system needs to be rethought. Like the body just was not planning appropriately. It was kind of a a poorly controlled wind down that I think frankly most of us would appreciate knowing, when I am forty-nine and seven months, that’s when my last egg is gonna go. And so just have it functioning really well up until that point and then have the whole damn thing break down all at once. I think in many respects that would be far more preferable because you can at least plan for it as opposed to this perimenopause bullshit, which is all over the place. Okay, I will step down off my soapbox that absolutely nobody can control what happens with perimenopause, but…

Susan Hudson MD (28:05)

How do you really feel about that, Carrie?

Carrie Bedient MD (28:07)

Well, I didn’t want say anything, but but yeah, both Susan and I are in this category of kinda entering this phase and it’s bullshit, let me tell you. Like I try not to actively swear, but…

Susan Hudson MD (28:19)

It’s more complicated than I expected. Like, even knowing what’s going on is way more complicated and it’s like, this is how this is gonna figure out. Yeah.

Carrie Bedient MD (28:28)

Yeah, yeah. I I have a lot of four letter words and let me guarantee you, I know how to string them together. and it is often that not only I’m saying them, but I’m pretty sure my husband is thinking them. Now he is smart enough to not say them out loud, at least around me, because he doesn’t have a death wish. But this is not it this is not for the fainter part.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so from the fertility perspective

How should this chicky approach things? Because at this point, we’re making the assumption that she’s already had one spontaneous conception and one child. And she’s probably somewhere in her mid-ish 30s at this point. And it’s probably been a couple of years since she’s been able to conceive, because that gives her long enough to have found the podcast and to be annoyed enough to actually have the impetus to write in and say, hey, what’s going on? And so if she walked in your office right now?

How what would you tell her? What would you do?

Susan Hudson MD (29:25)

So if she was not the type of person who had been trying already but was just trying to be proactive, I would say try for three to six months. I wouldn’t recommend trying longer than that just because I think that there’s an issue, but I would be more than happy to do an evaluation and I would check everything out that we already mentioned and be prepared, especially depending on what her family building goals, to be more aggressive than less aggressive.

Because I’m sitting here and I’m sure you feel the same way. I’m worried about her ovaries. And

Carrie Bedient MD (29:59)

Yeah.

Susan Hudson MD (29:59)

it is her ovaries not working appropriately until proven otherwise. Now, is it possible that everything’s gonna turn out fine and we still need to do something to help? Sure. And if we’re looking at that and say she only has wants to have one more child, then taking oral ovulation induction agents with the combination of insemination to make that egg development and follicular development and ovulation happen in a better time course and maximizing egg and sperm interaction, I think would be very reasonable. If we’re looking at wanting to have three more children, depending on ovarian reserve, we might want to do things where we are potentially going to cryopreserve embryos to use in the future and go from there.

Carrie Bedient MD (30:52)

Yeah, I agree with that.

Susan Hudson MD (30:53)

So Carrie, any other thoughts on short cycles?

Carrie Bedient MD (30:57)

I think that’s really the big part of it, backwards and forwards. What I appreciate the most is how much she’s paying attention and how much she’s paying attention with respect to what is her normal throughout life. Because all of the standards that have been produced and the averages, they’re really helpful when you’ve got somebody coming in who has absolutely no idea what her normal is because it just hasn’t ranked in the things that she’s paid attention to. When you know what someone’s standard is, and this is what I have been throughout the course of my life, it allows you to think about it differently because bodies are allowed to do whatever the hell they want to do. And in some cases, that means a 20, 21-day cycle every single month.

And if that’s just how you’re wired, that’s probably fine. And so she may be in a much less dramatic situation because she knows, this is just what my body does. And it might allow us to be a little bit more relaxed about it than somebody in a different position. So A plus for paying attention, that is phenomenal. And we definitely appreciate that. Do you have any extra thoughts, Susan?

Susan Hudson MD (32:05)

Nope, I think we got it.

Carrie Bedient MD (32:06)

All right. Well to our listeners, thank you so much for spending part of your day with us.

Susan Hudson MD (32:10)

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe, leave a review, and send us your questions at fertilitydocsuncensored.com.

Carrie Bedient MD (32:16)

And if you want even more fertility information, pick up a copy of the IVF Blueprint, which is our practical guide to understanding fertility treatment IVF and the decisions that you will face along the way.

Susan Hudson MD (32:26)

Before we go, remember, this podcast is intended for education and entertainment only.

Carrie Bedient MD (32:31)

While we are fertility doctors, we are not your fertility doctors.

Susan Hudson MD (32:35)

Nothing we discussed should replace medical advice from your own physician who knows your individual history and circumstances.

Carrie Bedient MD (32:41)

Thank you so much for listening. We’ll see you next week. Bye.