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Like many women, I have struggled to understand my own fertility. Whether it was my period, ovulation, or sex hormones that impact fertility like estrogen and luteinizing hormone (LH), I relied on subpar high-school sex education and Googling long-winded questions to better understand my body and how it works. Yet over time, I’ve learned to take control of my health education and utilize better tools to help me better understand exactly how my fertility works and what it looks like day to day.
And like many women, I’ve become more interested in knowing when I’m ovulating and not ovulating. This knowledge isn’t something I use solely to achieve or avoid a potential pregnancy either; in fact, it helps me better understand what’s going on inside my body and what’s affecting it over time, whether that’s stress, hormonal changes, or other factors.
So in an effort to better understand and monitor my fertility, I looked into using a reliable, well-reviewed fertility monitor that would help me keep track of the days my estrogen and LH hormones were rising—which indicates you’re close to or are ovulating—and days when my estrogen and LH levels were low.
Though there is any number of monitors you can buy to track your fertility, few come close to the accuracy and reliability of the well-reviewed—over 75 percent five stars on Amazon—Clearblue Fertility Monitor. The touch-screen monitor tracks the rise of your estrogen and LH levels from urine and indicates whether you’re at low, high, or peak fertility each day.
What I appreciate most about the monitor is how easy, intuitive, and quick it is to use every morning. To get started using the Clearblue Fertility Monitor, you input the first day of your period in the monitor within four days of starting your period and begin testing on day six using the first urine of the day. The monitor has a bright light that blinks to indicate it’s time to test, and the compact purple monitor uses daily Clearblue test sticks, sold separately from the monitor for about $50 per pack, that are inserted into the device to produce a low, high, or peak result after five minutes of testing. Depending on how busy I am, I check my results immediately or later in the afternoon, but the result always stays stored for me to check whenever.
How you use your results is up to your own discretion. I personally use mine to keep track of my cycles, my typical days of ovulation, and to see if there are any significant changes to my cycles or fertility over time. In fact, over the past few months of using the monitor, I’ve noticed my cycles have changed a few days, which was helpful to discuss at my most recent OBGYN check-up. The monitor also stores up to six cycles worth of data if you want to go back and study your fertility trends or share them with your doctor.
So what makes the Clearblue Fertility Monitor such a trustworthy tool to monitor your fertility? Well, it’s 99 percent accurate in detecting an LH rise, and when used to achieve a pregnancy, shows an 82 percent increase in chances of achieving a pregnancy in the first month of trying. Over time, the Clearblue Fertility Monitor also adapts to your fertility trends and has you test according to your individual results, meaning which days you test will change over time depending on your cycles. And while the fertility sticks are priced around $40 - $45 a box, you’ll only need about 10 sticks to test your fertility each cycle, so you can use about 1 box for every three cycles.
Keep in mind: even on days of low readings on the Clearblue Fertility Monitor there is still a chance to get pregnant. While there are natural family planning (NFP) methods that use the Clearblue Fertility Monitor in conjunction with both achieving and avoiding pregnancies, these programs require education and guidance to use. All the same, if understanding and tracking your fertility is something you want to do, the Clearblue Fertility Monitor is a reliable tool to do so.
I must admit I’m rather embarrassed at how long I misunderstood how fertility works and what it looks like; that’s why I took matters into my own hands and utilized effective, research-backed tools like the Clearblue Fertility Monitor to give me peace of mind and clarity. In doing so, I’m much more confident in knowing what’s going on inside my own body.
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