I could not be more thrilled to report that today is DAY ONE of my menstrual cycle and I just finished a “normal” twenty-nine day cycle.

My prior cycle was an epic SIXTY-NINE DAYS. I bled for five days, and then another sixty-four days passed before I bled again. I’m only forty-one, so this was, to say the least, a bit crazy. Has my body started skipping periods? Or was this just a blip related to pandemic stress?

My doctor and I decided that I should do a hormone test. The test needs to be done seven days after I ovulate. Since my last cycle was so irregular, I bought an ovulation predictor kit at the drugstore and tested to see when I would ovulate.

According to my test results, I never ovulated.

I could have screwed up the test results. (Maybe I did not pee correctly on the stick?) But I never felt mittelschmerz, the one-sided abdominal pain that some women feel when their ovaries release the egg. I usually experience some fairly intense pain for about an hour when this happens. So between the negative ovulation test results and the absence of mittelschmerz, maybe I really did not ovulate this past cycle.

That’s okay with me! I am done making babies, thank you very much. This just makes testing my hormones a little tricky. And expensive! Those ovulation kits are not cheap.

But I am happy that my most recent cycle was only 29 days. After my sixty-nine day cycle, I am happy to menstruate on schedule, instead of feeling premenstrual for weeks and weeks and weeks. I did not even experience PMS this past cycle!