diagnosis: not as broken as you think
I'm feeling a little bit better about this phenomenon. Well, not about having to wait till Day 8 - that still seems excessive to me, in the absence of something actually happening in my uterus, like pregnancy, surgery, or (chas veshalom) miscarriage. And I still wish it could be Day 6 more often than Day 7.
But I'm trying to stop wishing for the elusive Day 5 Hefsek. As Desde pointed out, she's never had one, and it hasn't been a barrier to her fertility. And then I found this on the Yoatzot website: "If you can get a good hefsek on day 5, that's great, but many women bleed for at least five full days."
It all goes to show how important an open exchange of information about taharat hamishpacha is. Why was I struggling for Day 5 with so much anger and desperation? Well, in part because that's what infertility often does: it makes you angry with your body, for not doing what it was made to do. There is so much about infertility you can't control, the scheduling, the costs, the risks, the failures, and you seize on the only thing it seems like you should be able to control: yourself. Except of course you can't.
But it was also because the first couple of women I mentioned my early ovulation to, said "Oh, is that the problem? Just call a rabbi who specializes in infertility! He'll give you a heter to make a hefsek on Day 4, instead of Day 5."
Day 4?? I thought. Are you kidding?! I've never even gotten clean by Day 5! I didn't realize how non-representative those two women might be. And that began to seem like yet another way my body was cheating me, another thing I needed to fix if I was ever going to be normal. Let me be fertile with a long period, or infertile with a short period: it seemed so unfair to be cut off from escape in both directions.
I know intellectually that it does me no good to fight my own body, but it's hard. And I won't give up trying for a hefsek on Day 5 altogether: it might still happen, once in a blue moon, and it feels wrong to give up on any chance however remote. But maybe I don't have to be angry when it doesn't work. It will be a relief if this is one struggle I can let go.
Comments
Me too. I think the only time I was able to make a hefsek on day 5 was the single month I was on the pill (as a bride).
Are you sure you can't get a clean bedikah on the 5th day; I also thought that way for a long time, until I finally asked the rov about which colors were okay and which were not.
It was a real eye opener for me!
If she isn't sure, I am; you absolutely CAN NOT get a clean bedikah if you still need to change pads every 3 hours, OK?!!! (Maybe not eden's details, but on day 5, always mine)
Not to sound grumpy and argumentative or anything, but B"H I am not struggling with infertility - I can only imagine how such a question might sound to me if I were. BECAUSE eden's original point was that she HAS been trying.
Day 5 almost doesn't exist in anyone I know except when on the pill. Howver, 3 healthy children can testify to conception even when hefsek only happens on day 6 or 7. Work on that day 8, I think that's what delayed conception of my first, the time I got it one day earlier I conceived!
Good luck with it all, remember stress also inhibits conception :-)
A
Maybe she is trying to get a perfectly clean hefsek, or a perfectly clean moch dochuk.
And when she doesn't, she starts over, not knowing that some colors ca be okay.
Just trying to help.
even on the pill it doesn't always happen. but that could be stress influencing...
Sara, I think Eden has made it fairly clear in the past that she's in touch with her rav about many things, and she knows for sure that her Day 5 attempts are not OK.
while i don't follow t'h and have never, for obvious reasons, done a hefsek (or is it bedikah?), i can tell you that in 29 years i've yet to have a period that didn't last 8-9 days. on day five i'm still bleeding like there's no tomorrow (and am angrily jealous of any woman with a short period!)
Hey, thank you for the commiseration over 6-7-8 day periods! Thank you especially, Ksis and Michaela, for understanding my frustration at Sara's question.
Sara, you must have read my comments on this post, because you commented there too. Please go back and read them again: "I am unfortunately seeing bright red blood on Day 6." You might also want to take a look at my comments on this old post.
Your desire to help is a good one. But please, try to think about how to phrase your help in such a way that it does not come across as "Are you sure you're not doing it wrong?"
I didn't say you were doing it wrong.....if you got that impression, then THAT is wrong.
Anyway, we have more than one person replying here, that reply was actually not meant for you!
Well, for whatever it's worth, you can add me to the list of those who have never made a hefsek on day 5, rarely if ever on day 6, usually on day 7,8 or even sometimes later. Infertility has always been my greatest fear from the time I was old enough to understand the import of those long cycles, but B"h, although I did have to wait nearly two years, I eventually conceived without any medical intervention. I understand your situation is different because of the early ovulation, but in so far as long cycles go, I don't really think they're that unusual.