I know I posted yesterday, but for the sake of educating and talking about my frustrations I’m back to talk about one of the most aggravating TTC things! OPKs or ovulation predictor kits. Lots of women use these to predict when they are ovulating. Once you get a positive you should ideally ovulate within 24-36 hours. They work by detecting your LH (luteinizing hormone) surge. The problem is some women only test once a day and for some of those women their surge lasts only 12 hours so they completely miss it if they only tested once a day. That’s why it’s good to also monitor your basal body temperature to confirm ovulation with a temperature rise, and to monitor other fertility signs like cervix position and mucus. Gross I know but that’s the life of TTC.
Lots of people say “why do you have to check all that stuff?”. “Why can’t you just have sex and see if it works out?”Another thing I frequently hear is “Just relax and it will happen.” Well Susan, if just relaxing worked then I would have gotten pregnant in the 3 years before even really trying when I was never on birth control or preventing. These things sometimes help women identify they are having a problem to begin with. That’s why I use them. I’m also extremely type A and like to plan to optimize our best timing which these help with. If there is any type of male factor infertility going on, timing is of huge importance because it can be counterproductive to BD (baby dance) every day because counts will just get lower and lower.
I wake up around 5 am every day to check my BBT and then test with my OPK. This morning I woke up at 5 am and to my dismay had a negative on both tests. You may be wondering why I use two tests. That fancy looking digital one you see…those boxes come with 10-20 tests depending which one you get and can run you about 27-55$ a pop! I feel like these are the easiest to read because unlike the cheap looking one you see (what we like to call internet cheapies in the TTC world), you don’t have to decipher if the test line is similar or darker in color to the control line. Some women get BLARING positives on these and others you have to have a PHD in rocket science to decipher. Using the cheapies first lets me know if it’s a good time to break out the more expensive test.
With the regular digital test you have an empty circle when it’s not positive and then you get this nice little smiley face when it does become positive. There is also an advanced digital opk and it shows empty circle when negative, flashing smiley when you are at a high level of fertility, and a solid smiley face when you are at peak fertility which is considered the positive. You’re supposed to only get 2 days of flashing smileys and then a day of a solid smiley. I have seriously had 9 days of flashing smileys before! So frustrating! That’s why I stick to the internet cheapies and regular digital test now.
If you notice the top left picture, that’s the first test I took this morning. Negative because the test line isn’t as dark as the control line. I also had an empty circle on my digital test meaning negative. That was at 5 am. Around 7 am something was just telling me that I needed to test again, and because of my other fertility signs. Lo and behold just a mere 2 hours later I got a positive on the internet cheapie (bottom left) and on the digital! If I had decided to just not test again today I would have missed it!
I was feeling defeated with those first negative tests this morning because I’m already on CD 19 and I know my day 21 progesterone will be negative. My sweet husband prayed over me this morning after those negatives and a quick 2 hours later God answered! So thankful for a God that is attentive to our hearts!
Making a Myers 