Idiots guide to confirming ovulation

[Digby86]

ive never previously tracked ovulation with opks/bbt or similar and find the whole thing a bit complication, am struggling to get to grips with it. So hoping someone can help?

ive recently miscarried and want to confirm when im actually ovulating again, as assuming things may take a while to settle down and cycles may well be a bit off. Could anyone talk me through the simplest way to confirm that you have in fact ovulated (if that’s possible)? Thanks

The easiest way is to confirm when you are very close to ovulating using LH tests. I used the easy at home ones from Amazon and the free version of the premom app to get it to judge the strength of the line. Test twice a day for a whole cycle initially, just in case you ovulate at a random time and might miss it. Temp tracking is useful if you are a very good sleeper who doesn't randomly wake up/get woken up. You have to take your temp in bed before you've moved for it to be accurate, and if you don't sleep well it will be all over the place so I never found it helpful. But once you get a peak on the LH strips you'll usually ovulate within about 24 hours, so all you have to do is have sex on peak day (and the day after - ovulation day - if you can be bothered 😂) and you've hit your most fertile days. And that's all you can do anyway!

So sorry to read about your miscarriage. I had a chemical a couple of weeks ago and bled for two days around when my period would have come, so I have treated the first day as CD1.
I’m using LH test strips, tracking my basal body temperature with a thermometer that goes to two decimal places, and watching for EWCM.

Hopefully the strips should let me know when a surge is happening, along with the CM, and then the temperature should let me know if I actually ovulated.

It’s fairly involved, but I really want to know if and when I ovulate after the loss. I don’t like being in the dark.

I'd personally recommend the Tempdrop wearable monitor. It's a band which you wear on your arm when you sleep at night (very comfy) and it monitors your basal body temp. It sends all the data to the app in your phone so you can see and understand it really easily. It's such a relief to not have to remember to take temperatures etc.

Just to say I track temp and frequently wake in the night and wake at different times of the day and it’s fine! I think if you had really broken sleep maybe not, but if you get a 3-4hr stretch before waking (for me varies between 5:30-8 that I temp) it’s fine and the pattern will show.
LH shows your body is trying to ovulate but unfortunately doesn’t confirm it has actually happened ☺️

This is a great shout / they’re just a bit expensive but worth it if you do want to temp but there are barriers