heaviness with ovulation?

what you're describing. I don't have periods anymore but when I did, I would sometimes have that horrible achy heavy feeling just as you describe and my lower back would even hurt just as it does now with my prolapse. Sometimes the heaviness would just drain the life from me and I would need to take a nap in order to feel better.

HI Oceangirl

Now I have had menopause I can see that my body was almost continually changing right through from puberty to now, when at last my cycles are amost indiscernible .

Post menopause your oestrogen, progesterone, follicle stimulating hormone and luteinising hormones fluctuate in their own patterns over the menstrual cycle. See http://www.patient.co.uk/health/the-female-reproductive-system .

Ovulation is a time when the follicle has swollen, gets inflamed under the sudden increase of leutenising hormone (which is inflammatory in nature) and bursts. LH production then drops suddenly. The endometrium of the uterus has built up over the previous two weeks, which has required a lot of blood supply for tissue building, so your uterus is 'active' and vascular, therefore larger, I guess, at that time. No wonder we get discomfort at ovulation time! It remains in this state until fertilisation either occurs and implantation occurs or not, with progesterone being produced by the corpus luteum, on the follicle that burst. If implantation occurs the CL continues to produce progesterone until the placenta can produce enough of its own progesterone to maintain the pregnancy. If there is no fertilisation the uterus 'sighs', sheds its lining during menstruation, goes into lower activity again, until the rise in oestrogen from the ovaries starts to build its endometrium again, for another attempt at pregnancy.

Many women feel bloated in the luteal phase of the cycle, which produces extra abdominal volume. It is also a time when many women find that they are more prone to joint injury, maybe from the ligaments getting ready to loosen. I have seen research that backs this up.Often there is constipation, which creates more bowel volume. No wonder we sometimes experience more prolapse symptoms during the luteal phase. I used to also get down in the dumps at ovulation and again in the fourth week of my cycle, particularly once I got to perimenopause. I diaried these black cloud days. Otherwise I would not have been able to relate it to my cycle. Being more emotionally sensitive probably rolled over into being more physically sensitive, as well as actually being more physically vulnerable to injury.

Hope this all makes some sense. Once you get your head around it and can live your life and activities more around your cycle in acceptance, you may be happier. Be gentle on yourself in the luteal phase. Allowing yourself to go inside yourself, and away from the world more during menstruation, and allowing your inner creativity its head at this time might be a productive direction.

Y know, I got tricked by my menstrual cycle right to the very end of my reproductive life. It was as if every cycle I had was the first. That is precisely why I ended up dairying my menstrual cycle signs for the last five years or so before menopause. It was such a useful exercise. Once I diaried them I could see the pattern. Once I could see the pattern it made so much sense, and all I had to do was batten down the hatches and count the sleeps until my bleed. Two days after that all was well again. I still laugh at myself not putting 2 + 2 together *every* month. At least I got one good belly laugh every month!!

Louise

I have noticed a heaviness all day this is first cycle since stopping the pill and am due to ovulate any day now. Great to know!!

Awesome discovery! This should make you a little less stressed when these times come around. The more you see things fluctuate, and the more you can correlate these fluctuations with events (either controllable, or not) the better you feel and the more you can accept your symptoms and not fear them. Good post - Surviving