Let's start from the beginning, shall we? Story time.
I really did not want to be pregnant on my 30th birthday. I wanted to have one last blast with my girlfriends before trying to have kids. So we go to Hollywood Beach FL in January 2020 - there's a group of 9 of us, we get a notification as we're at the airport about some new virus from China at Metro Detroit airport - we laugh it off - go to Florida - have a blast. Little did we know what the world was going to turn into shortly after that.
After my next cycle ended (February) I stopped the pill and started tracking my data on my Apple watch and some other free app I downloaded from the app store. I noticed that the information was similar but the fertility days were not exactly the same. One of my friends had shared that she used the Ava fertility tracker to conceive both her kids and had a quick success rate with it- so I ordered it. It's pricey but they accept HSA funds and they have a money back guarantee. Enter month 1 with Ava, March. Apple watch by day, Ava by night - my left wrist was never getting a break. It tracks your resting pulse rate, skin temperature, breathing rate, sleep and HRV ratio. You can also log things like the days you have sex, your weight, etc. It also gives you a calendar of when your predicted period and fertile days would be. It puts it all in a pretty little chart for you like this -- and LOL at 10 hours of sleep, gone are those days.
We used this method for March-May and I will say I was a bit obsessive with it. The data was so interesting to me. My husband and I talked about the data a lot (to the point where I told him I was telling him nothing for pregnancy #2 because I wanted there to be some element of surprise). The data in the May 13-June 11 chart above is my actual data in the month I found out I was pregnant with Charlotte. That plateau on skin temperature was the trend we were looking for...June 15, positive pregnancy test. Three cycles is all it took for me to get that test and I attribute that to the data that the Ava was able to provide over the other run of the mill apps I was using before. I want to acknowledge that I know there are many other factors that contribute to one getting a positive test other than tracking data and ovulating. If you are struggling, consult your doctors but maybe something with more accurate data could help you too.
However, if you're someone who does better with more information than less, go with a fertility tracker like Ava (there's others out there but I can't speak to those). If ignorance is bliss for you and you just want to have at it - ignore this whole post.
Part 2
We planned to try for a second in spring of 2021 - giving us like a 2.5-3 year age gap between the kids. In February 2022, right after Charlotte turned 1 my period got wonky so I went off the pill and turned to my trusty Ava once again. At this point I was using it as a don't do it tool rather than a today's the day! The next cycle comes along and I thought we actively avoided the fertile window. I'd only been wearing the Ava for one month so the data wasn't super accurate (more wear, more data). So we have sex on a day we think is a nonfertile day - then the next morning I get a notification "Congrats, you ovulated!" Oh shit. So as I mentioned, I wanted some element of surprise for Phil this time, so I kept that to myself. You can ovulate and not get pregnant!
Remember that temperature rising on the graph above? Well I started to notice that happening again. At the end of March I was due for my period to come AND due to go on a trip to Scottsdale....so naturally I texted one of my best friends who's also an OBGYN and said sooo would the responsible thing be to take a test before I go? And her medical advice? "It's too soon, it'd probably be negative anyway". So away I go to Scottsdale and have a blast - drinking, eating sushi at Nobu. Period never shows. Positive pregnancy test two days later. And as she said, it was early, that second line was hardly visible.
And now I have two under two.
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