Trying to Conceive While Continuing to Breastfeed

Many women will still be breastfeeding a child and decide it is time to try to have another one while still continuing to breastfeed. There are advantages to having children close together in age, as they can share toys and interests, and you will have your children in a shorter time period, allowing you to go back to work, or your children to attend the same schools for a time, along with many more reasons. You may try to become pregnant while breastfeeding, and find that you are having trouble doing so. There are reasons for this.

While you are breastfeeding, your body is expending energy on producing milk for your new baby. You may choose to continue breastfeeding beyond a few months, into a few years of its life. In this time, your body is producing hormones associated with breastfeeding, and they suppress your ovulation and menstruation. This will inhibit your ability to conceive while these hormones are at high levels in your body. While it is not impossible to conceive while these hormone levels are high, it does make it more difficult than if you were to try to conceive while not breastfeeding at all.

Prolactin, the hormone responsible for suppressing ovulation, is at high levels while you are breastfeeding. It will vary in concentration, with frequent breastfeeding bouts, usually highest when you breastfeed 8 times in a 24-hour period. This will suppress your ovulation and menstruation cycle completely, and usually happens for the first few months after giving birth, when you are feeding your baby frequently.

When you begin to feed your baby less often, or begin the weaning process, the levels of prolactin decrease. This can take a bit of time, depending on how often you feed your child, or how soon you wean your child from breast milk. As your hormone levels return to normal, so does your ovulation and menstrual cycle. You will begin ovulating again as your body adjusts back to these levels. Then you will find it easier to conceive, when you try. It is not impossibly to conceive while you are still breastfeeding, you may just have to wait a bit if your body is adjusting to the hormone variations in your body that allow you to breastfeed in the first place. You will find that as you wean, and feed your baby less frequently, your chances will go up for becoming pregnant.

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