Agnus Castus

So, my period is usually like clockwork. I have a period every 30 days. I knew a month before my wedding that I was going to get my period on my wedding. It is very predictable. I have fallen off track a few times, and it is usually kind of funny. My body likes being on a timetable so much that if I fall off track, my body keeps the new timetable religiously. So I went through a time of getting my period every two weeks. My body did it once, then wouldn't budge. I had to use the pill to fix that. This year my body went long and then stuck with it. The month I started taking my temperature to detect ovulation, I totally wigged out when it came time to ovulate. I stressed the fuck out. I was so sure I wasn't ovulating because a doctor once told me that because I didn't feel any mid cycle pains that proved I wasn't ovulating. I have no idea why she said that. She wasn't even all that young, so she should have been more experienced. But I digress. Anyways, I delayed my own ovulation. It came 15 days later, while I was visiting friends in Paris and was distracted. Bam, just like that. I was so relieved. Although it gave me a nearly 45 day cycle. I figured I just needed to relax the next cycle. Well, I have never been one to relax. I'm not chill. I'm not cool. Sometimes people mistake me for somebody who is cool. They are very wrong. Anyways, combine an inability to keep it cool and a body who loves to stick to a timetable, and my cycle stayed out of wack. Three months (I guess technically longer if it was 135 days) of approximately 45 day cycles and I was going nuts. I had finally figured out that I was ovulating regularly, so I was finally able to relax a little bit, but it was totally unpredictable, our timing was hard to plan, and I just didn't feel like sex every other day by the time day 30 rolled around. I had learned about vitex when I was young and worked at an herb store. I talked to a friend who is training to become a homeopath, and looked it up on the internet. It seemed like an option and I couldn't think of a reason not to try it. We call it Vitex at home, but in England they usually call it Agnus Castus, so it took me a little while to find it. I found the Nature's Way brand at Holland and Barrett and started taking it right away. I was two days out from my last period when I took it and the next day I started getting cramps. They were pretty strong and I even had to stop walking once or twice while I cramped. They were not that painful, just strong. Well, I ovulated on Cycle Day 8. That was about 3 days after my period stopped and 2 days after I started taking it. The cramps stopped after ovulation (I figured the cramps WERE ovulation) and I went on to get my period about 10 days later. I was amazed. I had always heard it took months for an herb to work. And I wasn't even sure this could be considered working. Although, when trying to conceive, it is a lot more convenient to have a short cycle. I looked on the internet again and found very little to explain what happened. I asked one of those internet questions to a supposed professional naturalist and she gave me the normal answer that it takes a few months to work and that even if something happened, it wasn't necessarily settled at this point. I also ran across a lot of contraindications for vitex. Like people saying it caused them a miscarriage and others saying it prevented a miscarriage. I hadn't really thought about what I'd do if I got pregnant while using it, I just figured I'd stop, but those websites had me scared that if i just stopped I could kill my baby. There were a lot of vague suggestions to wean yourself off. I found these suggestions really inconsistent and unclear. There were also lots of things saying to take it only the first half or second half of your cycle. The bottle itself said not to take it in pregnancy. A lady at a health food store told me that that was just so the company could protect itself against liability. She also didn't know that vitex and agnus castus were the same thing, so I didn't trust her for shit. I decided to take it until I ovulated. It made sense because I knew it had made me ovulate before, and because then I would avoid taking it while pregnant. I have no idea if this the right way to take it, and honestly, I don't think anybody on the internet knows either. I kept taking it from the last month and I ovulated on day 17 that month- which was perfect for me. It fits right into my 30 day cycle preference. The funny thing is, I haven't had a period since because I became pregnant! It is so exciting. I have no idea if vitex helped me get pregnant or if it helped correct my cycle so our timing worked or if it was a placebo effect. Either way, I still haven't had a regular cycle (hee hee), but I do intend to use it again if I have trouble with my cycle again. It is amazing, and one day I will know more about herbs and how they work. I am so glad to live in a place where it was so easy to find and where information was so available, even if it was very flawed.