Ovulation kits

[Blackcoffeeandcigarettes]

AF made an appearance today after I was convinced that we had brought home a holiday baby. So I'm stepping things up a gear and buying an ovulation kit. Coz we clearly are timing this wrong.
Any advice which one to get and how they work?
Thanks x

[pommedechocolat]

I'd start with the sticks rather than a monitor and I would recommend the clear blue digital ones. They are more expensive but so much easier with the smiley face rather than comparing two lines and faffing about.

[Blackcoffeeandcigarettes]

Do I need one a week or one everyday?

[pommedechocolat]

You need one everyday for a certain part of your cycle. They sell them in packs of seven and the first time you use them you will probably need all seven. If you need them again and you have regular cycles you'll need less after the first go.
Basically if you have a 28 day cycle you would assume ovulation on roughly day 14 and test from say day 10 through to 16. The bumpf in the packet explains it all better than I am here!

[Blackcoffeeandcigarettes]

No you are really helping! Thank you. The ovulation calendar in useful tools said I am most likely to ovulate around the 15th. So I'll test everyday around then and try and work out my accurate dates. Thanks again. I don't know why I spent so much of my time trying not to get pregnant! It's not that easy!

[MsWeatherwax]

I didn't have much luck with these; it really seems easy to miss the window of when you ovulate. I got one maybe result and never a positive. I've seen recommendations to test several times a day to avoid this problem (I definitely ovulate because I chart and can see when it happens).

[Blackcoffeeandcigarettes]

How do you chart? I don't know what the next step should be for us because "just seeing how it goes" is not happening!

[MsWeatherwax]

I learnt from this book: www.tcoyf.com/ and I used the free online software there for a bit. I use www.fertilityfriend.com/ now. It's actually not that hard - I use it to avoid pregnancy at the moment which is a bit trickier. Basically you take your temperature every morning with a good thermometer when you wake up and during the day check your cervical fluid to see how fertile it is. You record both on the chart - the online ones are quite good and will do the maths/working out for you. Your cervical fluid/vaginal discharge change in the lead up to ovulation and after ovulation your temperature goes up slightly and stays up, so you can generally pinpoint the day of ovulation. The nice thing is it's free (assuming you have a thermometer), cheaper than millions of ovulation kits and less messing around with wee all the time.

[Blackcoffeeandcigarettes]

Thank you. I have joined up to tcoyf. really helpful advice. Thanks

[MsWeatherwax]

No problem! Hope it helps - it can be confusing at first but once you get the hang it's so great to have an idea of what's going on in there :)