Thank you for reaching out to us.

It sounds as though what you are experiencing prior to ovulation is what we call mid-cycle staining or ovulation bleeding.

By paying careful attention to the laws of stains, a woman can often successfully complete the seven clean days even with mid-cycle staining. Learn more about the precautions for stains here, and about counting the clean days while staining here.

In this type of situation, you can rely on the minimum requirements to get to mikveh: the hefsek taharah, one bedikah on day 1 of the clean days, and one bedikah on day 7 of the clean days. For a valid count, no more than five days can pass without a bedikah.

With the pattern you describe, it sounds like you would be able to get a valid hefsek taharah and a valid bedikah for day 1 of the clean days. After that, depending on the situation, you have a few options:

1) If you suspect that you will already start staining on day 2, you can skip the bedikot of days 2-6. In that case, you would absolutely need to do a bedikah on day 7.

2) Alternatively, you can do a bedikah on day 2. In that case, if you are still staining on day 7, you can push off the seventh-day bedikah to day 8. Your clean days will still be valid, since only five days will have elapsed without a bedikah.

To avoid finding stains on white underwear, you can wear disposable white pantyliners during the seven clean days. We follow the position that stains on disposable pantyliners do not make a woman niddah or disrupt her clean days.

If you find discharge of a questionable color on a bedikah, make sure to have it evaluated rather than assuming it is invalid.

Though such staining is fairly common, we would still recommend consulting your physician about it to rule out any unusual – and treatable – cause.

Please don't hesitate to follow up with us.