HOW TO TRACK OVULATION (WHETHER YOU’RE TRYING TO CONCEIVE OR NOT)

What do you know about ovulation? You’re probably well aware that ovulation is when an egg is released from an ovary, and if you’re like most women—your understanding of the subject stops there. 

What so many women don’t know is that ovulation is the star of your menstrual cycle . . . not your period. In fact, you aren’t even able to get a period if you don’t ovulate. And you definitely won’t get pregnant if you’re not ovulating.

So why do so many gals track their period and ignore the rest of their cycle? Because our society only talks about ovulation as “the most fertile time of the month” when a woman is thinking about having a baby. Before then, we’re only taught about our periods—and barely! This is a huge disservice to women, and it stops here . . .

OVULATION IS IMPORTANT EVEN IF YOU DON’T WANT TO GET PREGNANT

Even if you’re not interested in having a baby any time soon, ovulation is important. In fact, ovulation is the primary way your body produces progesterone—which is absolutely vital for women trying to conceive, but is just as necessary for keeping your estrogen levels in check.

Progesterone is the yin to estrogen’s yang. They work together, and if we don’t have healthy progesterone levels, we’ll experience signs of excess estrogen like painful periods, heavy periods, mood swings, weight gain, anxiety, poor sleep, and an inability to manage stress. And if you are trying to get pregnant, progesterone is the hormone that’s needed to maintain and nourish a pregnancy.

In addition to making sure we don’t have too much unopposed estrogen in our bodies, there are several health benefits to making sure your progesterone levels are in good standing. Progesterone supports your bones, thyroid, metabolism, sleep, and your hair, skin, and nails. There are even studies showing that it helps to prevent osteoporosis, heart disease, and endometrial cancer later in life.

And if you’ve ever had a few days mid-cycle where you feel like you’re absolutely on fire, there’s a good chance you were ovulating. During ovulation, your hormone levels are at their peak–which means your energy is high. You’re naturally more social, more extroverted, and more magnetic. Studies show that our faces are more attractive when we’re ovulating and at our peak fertility.  There’s even a study from 2007 that shows lap dancers get better tips during this time of the month!

This magnetic attraction isn’t just because of your cute face. You see, your follicle cells that surround the ovulated egg send out chemical signals to attract the sperm. The full nature of the chemoattractant molecules is unknown, but the one thing that’s for sure is that the egg never chases the sperm. She attracts it. And this magnetic attraction will emanate from the inside out—making ovulation the perfect time to catch up with friends, teach a large class full of people, or launch a new business idea.

Age, stress, and sleep deprivation drastically  progesterone levels so it’s very important to make sure you’re ovulating every month to replenish your supply. 

This is where things get a little tricky—even if your period is pretty regular, you might not actually be ovulating. Women on hormonal birth control don’t ovulate at all. That’s how the pill works . . . by shutting down the communication between your pituitary gland in your brain and your ovaries. So even if you bleed once a month, it’s not a true period. That’s a withdrawal bleed from taking sugar pills instead of the hormones.

In order to get a real period, you have to go through all 4 phases of your menstrual cycle. And bleeding once a month is NOT always a sign that you’re ovulating. Some women are simply producing enough estrogen to shed the lining of their uterus and bleed because of it. 

Many women turn to Ovulation Predictor Kits (OPKs) to track their ovulation, but are they accurate enough to rely on when you’re trying to conceive? What about when you’re trying to NOT get pregnant?

THE PROS AND CONS OF AT-HOME FERTILITY TESTING WITH OVULATION PREDICTOR KITS

Once you realize all the benefits of ovulating, most women want to find out if it’s happening for them. Maybe you’ve seen OPKs on the store shelves, but they aren’t always reliable and come with several pitfalls. For instance, women with PCOS have naturally high levels of LH, so these tests aren’t a great fit for them. 

OPKs work by simplifying your cycle down to a little digital smiley face on what looks like a pregnancy test. They measure LH levels (luteinizing hormones), which typically surge 24-36 hours before you ovulate. When you see that little smiley face, it’s go time if you’re trying to grow your family . . . and a time that you’ll want to say no to unprotected sex if you’re trying to avoid pregnancy.

The main reason these aren’t the most reliable is because OPKs don’t actually confirm that you’ve ovulated. The only thing that seeing an LH surge says for sure is that your body is trying to ovulate. It may not actually do it. It’s kind of like a weather forecast where what’s predicted to happen and what actually happens don’t always line up.

Plus, when you’re strictly relying on OPKs to get pregnant, you’ll end up missing out on so many fertile days waiting for that smiley face to appear. Those kits oversimplify ovulation and fertility by reducing it down to just having sex a day or 2 before you ovulate. When really, your body is sending you messages that it’s sexy time long before the LH strips say you’re in your fertile window. 

Before the LH surge, your estrogen levels are high for a couple of days to trigger it. And when your estrogen is high, that’s when you have cervical mucus. Don’t ignore your body’s signs of fertility waiting for an external algorithm to give you the go-ahead. If you want to get pregnant, you want to pay close attention to cervical mucus and have sex when it’s present. Sperm can survive in that cervical mucus for about 5 days, and needs a little travel time to make sure it’s ready and waiting for the egg when it’s finally released. 

The marketing behind these OPKs all talk about how tracking your ovulation can increase your chances of getting pregnant by telling you the best time to have sex. This is mostly true, but unfortunately it’s really difficult to track your ovulation when you can’t even confirm it’s actually happening. So while these kits are extremely simple to use, they tend to encourage women to ignore the signs of fertility that are happening in real time and end up giving you fewer days to try to conceive, when in reality—your fertile window is longer. This can actually lower your chances of getting pregnant.

HOW TO CONFIRM OVULATION

The only ways to truly confirm that you ovulated is with your basal body temperature, cervical mucus, cervical positioning, and progesterone metabolite-PdG. Since monitoring cervical positioning is more invasive and lends itself to more user error, we’ll skip that one for now. 

CERVICAL MUCUS

Observing the changes in your cervical mucus can provide clues and help confirm ovulation has occurred. The most fertile days are before ovulation when the cervical mucus is abundant, clear, and stretchy, resembling raw egg whites. This fertile cervical mucus facilitates easier sperm movement through the cervix and into the uterus, preparing the reproductive system for potential fertilization.

After ovulation, the rise in progesterone levels causes changes in cervical mucus. It usually becomes thicker, stickier, and less conducive to sperm movement. This change helps create a barrier, preventing sperm from easily accessing the uterus and fallopian tubes since the fertile window has now passed.

While observing cervical mucus can be a helpful indicator of ovulation, it’s important to note that it’s not foolproof since there’s a bit of a learning curve while you get familiar with your body.

BASAL BODY TEMPERATURE

Basal body temperature (BBT) charting can help confirm ovulation by tracking subtle changes in your body temperature throughout your menstrual cycle. In order to do this you’ll need a specific thermometer and will probably want to get an app on your phone like Natural Cycles to keep track of everything that’s happening throughout your cycle.

The main difference between an average thermometer and a BBT thermometer lies in their level of precision and sensitivity. While an average thermometer is designed to measure general body temperature, a BBT thermometer can detect the slightest shift in temperature as small as 0.1 degree Fahrenheit. The increased sensitivity of BBT thermometers allows for more accurate tracking, which is absolutely necessary to confirm ovulation.

Before ovulation, a woman's basal body temperature typically remains relatively low. After ovulation, due to the release of progesterone, BBT tends to rise and stay elevated until the start of the next menstrual cycle. Generally, a slight drop in temperature followed by a noticeable increase indicates that ovulation has occurred. 

To use BBT to confirm ovulation, you need to consistently take your temperature every morning before getting out of bed. It's important to take your temperature at the same time each day, preferably after at least 3-5 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Since BBT alone can’t predict ovulation, you’ll want to pair it with other fertility signs such as cervical mucus observations, OPKs, or at-home fertility monitors to time intercourse for conception purposes.

AT-HOME FERTILITY MONITORS

There may be several downsides to OPKs, but fertility monitors like Inito are different and quickly becoming one of my favorites. Instead of just giving you a smiley face when you’re on the cusp of ovulating, Inito combines hormone testing and your BBT for a deep dive look at the bigger, broader picture. So it actually predicts AND confirms ovulation.

What Inito does is track ALL of your fertility hormones. It measures Estrogen, LH, progesterone metabolite-PdG, and FSH all on one strip. It’s extremely accurate because it measures your urine metabolites, which is why I recommend it to so many women who are trying to conceive but can’t afford the Functional Fertility Labs we offer at Magnolia Wellness.

Inito is basically like having 4 women’s fertility tests in one. It measures your BBT, predicts ovulation, confirms ovulation, and gives you actual values of your hormones. And if you’ve been dealing with infertility, you know that doctors are extremely hesitant to run any blood work until you’ve been trying to conceive for at least a year. 

Knowing real values for your progesterone are especially important because it’s progesterone that is crucial to maintaining a healthy pregnancy. While the Functional Fertility Labs I offer are absolutely extraordinary at giving so much more detail—like if your progesterone is going through the right pathways or just being recirculated—Inito is definitely the 2nd runner up. 

Being able to take your fertility into your own hands is so empowering. My client, Lindsay, has been through 13 IVF cycles and since we’ve been working together, she’s able to monitor her chance of conception on her own with Inito. She just contacted me saying that she can see with her own eyes that her LH surge is strong and her BBT is going up and staying up. She’s getting all the markers of fertility AND she knows her progesterone levels—which is really important because low progesterone is extremely common these days. This is a problem because if your progesterone is low when you conceive, the level can continue to drop rapidly as your body’s utilizing it. This can lead to a chemical pregnancy or miscarriage so knowing these numbers at home, for such an affordable price is such a gift to women trying to have a baby.

So many doctors refuse to test a woman’s progesterone until she’s had 3 miscarriages, and those times are over now that you can do it yourself!

INTERPRETING FERTILITY HORMONE TESTS

Even though fertility testing like what’s offered by Inito is super user-friendly, learning what to do with all of this information can feel overwhelming—especially if you see any fertility red flags. 

There’s more to getting pregnant and delivering a healthy baby than simply having sex at the right time. Booking a Fertility Consult can help you have a deeper understanding of your fertility and get to the root cause of what’s been keeping you from getting pregnant or being able to stay pregnant. When you collect the data on your own, it’s possible to miss clues that there’s an issue, and therefore miss the opportunity to fix it. I’m happy to guide you through the process and answer all your questions!