I don’t know if our pills were the same, but I had long been on a generic of Aviane (which I’m pretty sure is a combination pill) when my husband and I decided we were ready to “not-not-try,” as we put it: pulling the birth-control goalie, but not aiming to DTD in a particular window, no charting temps, no ovulation strips, etc.
I was on the Pill for so long (10-11 years; started in college) that I honestly can’t remember what my cycles were like before I started, but I’d read somewhere that it typically takes up to three months for your cycle to return to being regular and that it often takes on average around 5-6 months after stopping the Pill to conceive (like, where did I read that…?). We decided that we would start not-not-trying this [name_f]February[/name_f] and let my cycle reinstate itself; fancying ourselves pretty average, we went in with the hope to get pregnant at the end of the summer. If we weren’t, then we’d begin trying in earnest.
I finished taking a pack of pills in mid-[name_f]February[/name_f], got my normal period, and then didn’t begin a new pack. I had what seemed like a long cycle (around 34 days) before getting my period in late [name_u]March[/name_u], and at least compared with my birth-controlled periods, this one seemed light and irregular and had a long spotty tapering-off that left me unsure when it really ended. (Sorry if this is TMI!)
About two weeks ago, I was sitting at a dinner party and internally panicked, “Why are my breasts so sore?” One week ago, around when my app thought I might get my period, I took a HPT that lit up immediately with a dark, positive line. It’s obviously still so, so early (I am guessing I’m about 5 weeks), but anecdotally, I can say that you can get pregnant pretty much immediately after stopping the Pill. We are excited, but a little shocked (I admit I feel the littlest bit wistful I won’t get one last kid-free summer sipping rosé and drinking at all these weddings we have lined up this year, but oh well, haha).
My understanding now of that “it takes three months before you start trying” line is not that it necessarily means you won’t ovulate for 3 or so months (though that could happen). It’s more that you will ovulate, just maybe not quite predictably when–and if you can track your natural period for three months or more prior to TTC, you’ll get a sense of what IS regular, and it will be much easier for you to aim for a fertile window and predict when you got pregnant. I imagine since you already have a sense of what was regular before the Pill, it’ll level out soon enough back to how it was before. Most phone apps for logging your cycle (I was just starting to use Clue) will not just track your period, but make an educated guess at your ovulation window. Since I was one irregular period in before we conceived, I can’t pinpoint as easily when that period technically stopped, what my normal cycle length is, or when I ovulated, which might initially make it a little trickier for an OB to guess the due date or gauge if development is on track (I do know when we DTD that did it, haha, which helps). Anyway, I figure as long as the pregnancy sticks, that will all be revealed by future ultrasounds.
TLDR: as with any TTC journey, how long it will take is hard to know. But how long the Pill lingers in your system and might prevent ovulation/pregnancy…at least in my experience, not all that long!