Need help with conception science

[FutureMrsD]

Hello :)
I have been TTC since January by just DTD, however I am pretty certain that 50 ish day cycles are my life now 😩 so think I may need a bit of help.
I am going to buy a Clear Blue Digital Ovulation tracking when I am finished the AF that is looming.
Having watched the instruction video, because my cycle is 40+ days, it says that I should not be testing until the 20 CD mark. Would someone be able to vouch for this? I am just worried that I will miss my fertile days if I leave it that long.
I also have a thermometer, so planning to take my temp as well each morning - has this method proved helpful for anyone TTC?
Hopefully these measures along with the Glow App will put me on track for a successful 4th cycle (5th months into the year 🙄) !
We are both taking the Pregnacare conception supplements (or Spaff tablets as my DH affectionately calls them lol), is there anything else anyone can recommend worth taking?
Thank you in advance, sorry for the long rambley post! Xx

I used the glow app with long/irregular cycles and it was really good, I tracked temp, OPKs and cm.

I never used clear blue ovulation kits as they are quite pricey for how much I tested. Until you've done a couple of cycles you might need to test a lot to get an idea of when you ovulate. I used cheap OPK strips from eBay from CD10 until I got a positive (or af, my positives aren't always obvious!) so it could be 30-40 strips if it was a long cycle or doing more than 1 a day.

I have the added complication of pcos but with medication for that and tracking I've been successful twice now!

Good luck!

Hi OP I was a big fan of clearblue digital for years and had good success rates with them (but had several losses) but they are horrendously expensive? My cycle length is pretty normal - 29 and it would say to start testing around day 12 but I've actually found I often get my surge day 10 which means some months I would have missed it and wasted lots of money on the test sticks

There are a lot of good apps out there now (I use Premom) which you use to take a photo of the cheap test strips and it compares the line and tells you whether it's high or peak and plots it on a graph - I was really sceptical but I've now permanently switched to them and won't use clearblue again l. Also my IVF clinic won't let you use clearblue digital as in their experience it registers the LH surge later than the cheap strips so aren't as accurate

Also as they're cheap you can use several per day without worrying about the cost as I often find I get my LH surge in the evening which would have been missed by the digital x

Brill, thanks for the replies, think I will try the OPK strips next cycle then.
I think the Glow app has the line reader so that should help I think!
I assume a blazing positive on those is when you are ovulating? - I guess once I start tracking it on my app it should tell me.

Yes glow also analyses them, it will flag when you're close and when it's positive. You can also manually input if you need to.

The strips are a lot cheaper than CB, I think my last batch was 100 for less than £10 delivered with 20 pregnancy tests too.

Last month I started testing with the cheapies from CD8 as I had no idea really after coming off the pill and then as I got closer to when I thought I might OV I started using the ClearBlue as well, so about CD12. I'll probably do the same again this month.

Bear in mind: most women ovulate 10-16 days before the arrival of af (if not pregnant). It's therefore extremely unlikely that you'd ovulate before cd35 if you have a 50 day cycle. It's also possible to not ovulate during a cycle (called anovulation).

Also it's possible to get a positive and then not ovulate 12-72 hours later. But if you go on to ovulate, you'd always have a surfer before. So surge of lh means you might ovulate, but if you do ov, you definitely had a surge 12-72 hours before.

Some brands of f opk don't work for everyone.

It's all trial and error.

So shall I take my temp every morning and record that and then start with the strips around CD 30?
And once it is positive I may be ovulating in the couple days after that point so DTD lots in this time?
Sorry if I’m not getting it

Yup. That's what I would do in your shoes.

Are your cycles regular, but long? How long have you been off hormonal birth control?

Sorry to hijack! I'm in a similar situation. Came off hormonal bc a couple months ago and this ovulation tracker puts my next ovulation day at the 21st - I'm not convinced my cycle lines up with that as I'm still not pregnant!! As far as I can see from reading around a bit the ClearBlue OPK is dead easy and convenient but silly expensive and you can do just as well with the cheapy OPK sticks? Should I be temping as well to figure out my ovulation more accurately? This will be my first so I'm completely new to all this.

I would suggest going with internet cheapies and testing daily from period end to a positive - that way you're getting good coverage without spending a fortune.

But generally the advice is not to wait for ovulation - sperm is viable from a week before and ejaculation every other day is generally considered optimal for freshness/numbers. So waiting until you get a positive can mean you've missed a week's worth of opportunities and don't have optimum sperm quantity or quality. Better to start from shortly after your period ends and try for every other day until a few days after confirmed ovulation.

That sounds right op, if you combine OPK tests with temps and cervical mucus you can get a more reliable result.

So, if you have positive OPKs, egg white cervical mucus and a temperature spike you can be fairly confident you ovulated. I'd recommend reading up on temping so you know you're reading them right, most importantly make sure you record your temp every day and do it as soon as you wake up (before you do anything else at all).

Not everyone has spikes, or surges or EWCM the same so get to know your own body.

You should aim to have sex in the days leading up to ovulation, the day of and after as the egg has a short life span once released but sperm can live for days (and why not? It's fun!)

So I came off the pill on Jan 1st and had a withdrawal bleed straight away. Then proceeded to have a 27 day, 51 day and as it stands 49 day cycle. Have had the tiniest amount of spotting since Saturday which is just about getting heavier now so I guess that is AF coming.
Sorry if I sound silly but is cervical mucus the same as discharge?
Would the strip show a faint line in days up to ovulation so we can make a point to DTD in those days too?

You can have the hormone in your system (lutenising hormone) at any point in your cycle, so a second line can be present at any time. But it's the surge in hormone that you're after. A cheapie opk is either positive or negative, not 'half way' or anything.

It's not uncommon for it to take a year to get regular cycles after coming off hormonal bc. Given that the lib cycles could be from that and that you had one 'normal' lent h cycle, I'd start testing cd 10 and see how you get on.

And yes, discharge is cm. but you can have cm that doesn't make it all the way out too and stays up by the cervix.

Yes cm is discharge, if you don't get a lot you can (carefully) insert a finger and see what you get or check after a bowel movement.