Make sure the test line is as dark as, or even darker than the control line. You can also double-check your fertility window by tracking your basal body temperature and cervical mucus consistency.
While a few days of positive OPKs are nothing to worry about, there can be some conditions that lead to your test incorrectly detecting the LH surges that trigger ovulation. Women who have polycystic ovary syndrome may experience false small peaks of LH. Those who have recently hit menopause or were recently pregnant can have false positives, too.
The American Pregnancy Association also notes that some prescription drugs can also affect your results. These include:. This is due to how pregnancy and ovulation tests work. Once an egg is released, it is viable, or fertile, for around 24 hours. Considering the possible window of ovulation, and the lifespan of male sperm, couples should have their best chance to conceive in the first two to three days following a positive ovulation test.
Most experts suggest that couples have sex two to three times during this timeframe to increase the likelihood of conception.
Unfortunately, ovulation tests can be costly. The good news is that women do not need to test as frequently as they may think.
If a woman has a regular cycle, she can start testing a few days before the midpoint of her cycle. Testing in the morning is best. She can then continue testing every day or every other day until she gets a positive test result. At Houston Fertility Center, Dr. Sonja Kristiansen and her team offer a wide range of services to assist individuals struggling with infertility.
To find out how we can help you on your path to parenthood, send us a message online or call us at This monitor detects two hormones, LH, and estrogen. This allows it to detect more fertile days than the paper tests. The cheapest ovulation tests are simply strips of paper. You can purchase the test strips online in bulk , but they often come with no instructions for use. What you choose to buy and use has more to do with your comfort and your ease in reading the test strips. They aren't always easy to interpret.
A digital monitor takes the guesswork out of ovulation testing. A digital test will tell you whether you're fertile or not. That said, it is pricey.
The paper tests, especially the cheaper ones, aren't simple to read. Unlike a pregnancy test where you either have a line or you don't, an OPK test requires you to determine if the test line is darker than the control line. That's not always easy to determine. More on this below. Despite the slightly more difficult result interpretation, some people love the extra cheap test papers.
Ovulation predictor kits work by detecting the levels of LH hormone in your urine. LH stands for luteinizing hormone. As ovulation approaches, LH spikes in order to push the egg into the final stages of maturity. This spike of LH is called the LH surge. About 36 hours after the LH surge, ovulation occurs. To increase your chances of getting pregnant, you should have sex the two days before ovulation occurs.
Since OPKs detect the LH surge that occurs 12 to 36 hours before ovulation , you can be sure to have sex at just the right time for conception. Because estrogen begins to rise before the LH surge, the Clearblue Easy Fertility Monitor can give you more warning that ovulation is coming. This will allow you to have conception sex for up to a week before you ovulate.
Be sure to read the instructions of your particular ovulation predictor kit, since there may be slight variations on how they work. Generally, however, an ovulation predictor kit comes with a set of test strips or sticks. Some OPKs come with five tests, others with as many as You should begin using the tests about two days before you expect to ovulate.
There are also fertility apps that will attempt to guess at when ovulation is likely to occur for you. It helps to have a kit with several test strips if this is your situation. Ovulation predictor kits have two lines. One line is the control line. This just lets you know that the test was used properly and is working.
The second line is the test line. When the test line is as dark or darker than the control line, LH is surging. She began testing on Day 13 of her cycle and peaked in the evening of Day 16 through the morning of Day These are the daily test results from a 34 year old woman who had a Liletta IUD for two years before TTC and experienced mild premature ovarian failure. You can see the darkest line is on Day 16; however, it is not as dark as the control line. These are daily results from a 22 year old woman with a regular 33 day cycle who tested once a day, first thing in the morning.
None of these are a positive result, so she should continue testing until the test line is as dark as the control line. These are test results from a year old woman with an irregular cycle who tested every morning starting on cycle day On day 15, she captured her baseline results and tested each morning 8 am until an LH peak or surge was present.
On cycle day 20 she found an LH peak and tested twice to confirm, once in the am and once in the pm. Combining ovulation test results with other tracking methods, like basal body temperature monitoring can help confirm ovulation.
As you can see, menstrual cycles are different from person to person—and also from month to month. Ovulation tests are a useful tool to inform and educate you on your journey to parenthood; they help you get to know your body and its variations, so that you can identify the time when you're most likely to conceive.
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