Reply to Tracking ovulation using Easymom strips

Forum Index » Trying to Conceive (TTC)

Reply to "Tracking ovulation using Easymom strips"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is my first month using opk strips ( have pcos, 2 previous miscarriages and 4 rounds of iui). cleared a recent miscarriage a few weeks ago  and wasn't sure if/when I'd ovulate again ( historically have hard time ovulating and very irregular cycles).

My lh was consistently low ( under .2, usually around .12) until this Saturday. Sunday it started to rise slightly (.26 in am and .34 in afternoon). .  Monday am lh was high (1.28) but afternoon was already down to .7. This am was .8. Also high lots of sticky CM today and yesterday.  Would it be safe to assume today is the day I ovulated if I ovulated?  We only had sex Sunday, Monday,  Tuesday ( multiple times a day as i didnt want to miss ovulation) but now I'm reading that you're most fertile if you have sex 5 days before, not day of?  If you have a rapid lh surge like I did how would you even know you're close to the 5 days before.  Last cycle that led to the pregnancy we just had daily sex for 5 weeks straight  and it "worked" minus the miscarraige. If I don't want to sustain that forever- how do you use opk if you can't predict the peak in advance?

I also realized I made mistake of using first urine for opk like hcg but weirdly my peak was in fact my first urine and none of the later in day tests.  I feel like I'm doing something incorrectly?[/quote]

If you have PCOS, you want to use a more complete fertility tracker like Inito or Proov or another one that tracks an estrogen metabolite in addition to LH, because the estrogen peak in the follicular phase is what triggers the LH peak and subsequent ovulation 12-36 hrs later. You are correct that your best chance of conception is when sperm is already ready and waiting in the fallopian tube for the egg to come out of the ovary, because sperm can survive up to 5 days, and eggs only 24 hours. So knowing when your estrogen is rising, in anticipation of the LH peak, gives you your fertile window of a few days, when intercourse is most likely to result in conception. Whereas if you just use LH strips, you're going to be scrambling at every cycle.

Fertility trackers like Inito and Proov are more expensive, but I think that if you have PCOS, you'll want to increase your chances of conceiving as much as you can. It might be hard enough deciphering your chart with those trackers anyway, forget it if you're just making do with LH strips. 
I think Mira also tests for multiple hormones.

What these trackers do is that you buy the pack (for Inito and Mira there's an actual electronic device, and Proov just uses the camera on your phone) with test strips. You do a baseline test for several hormones on day 5 or 6 of your cycle, so the reading system adjusts for your hormone levels. It can also tell you whether your ovarian reserve is low, based on FSH level. You can enter tests every day, or test only on suggested days, for ovulation, then confirmation of ovulation (by monitoring the rise of a progesterone metabolite, PdG). I advise you to test every day because with PCOS, it will be really useful to look at the resulting graph of all four hormones: FSH, estrogen, LH and progesterone, to make out if and when you ovulated at each cycle. Ovulation is confirmed when there's a decrease in estrogen and increase in progesterone a few days after an LH peak. The LH peak by itself, especially in older women or those who sugger from PCOS, does NOT mean an egg actually popped out of the ovary! Indeed, women can have multiple LH peaks in one cycle. The ovulating one is the one followed by a rise in progesterone.

(BTW, if your LH peak on Monday triggered ovulation, then the egg couldn't have been released later than Wednesday. CM that lets sperm go through into the uterus is the slippery, watery, egg white kind.)

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics