Fertile Focus: You Don't Have To Pee On It

Wake up. Stumble into the bathroom. Eyes half closed, fumble around for your ovulation predictor sticks. Pee on the stick. Don’t angle properly and accidently splash yourself in the face. 

Wait five minutes, look at the stick. Is the line darker than yesterday? Is it as dark as the first line? Throw into trash.

Come back an hour later and fish out of trash. Maybe you didn’t look at it closely enough. Is it darker now? Well, sort of. But it also dried a lovely yellow color, so its hard to say. Take another test, just to be sure. Compare the two sticks. Take a third test. Arrange all the sticks in a row on your counter to see if there is a progression. 

Ask your husband to come in and look at this. Does this line look darker to you? You husband asks “Did you pee on all of those?” Gross out your husband completely.

Go out to store and buy another box of ovulation predictors. Repeat.

That’s pretty much the play-by-play of the first three weeks of every cycle for me (if I ovulate, I always ovulate late). Spend a fortune in pee-sticks. Use twice as many as I need in my experiments to test at different times of the day. Freak Adam out by shoving a yellow stick in his face for analysis. You know, the usual.

I’m exhausted. And possibly addicted. Mentally and financially, I needed to pull the plug.

Fortunately, Fertiliaid Amy took pity on me and sent me a Fertile Focus to try out. It’s a microscope. And no, you don’t have to pee on it.

Now I stumble into the bathroom, pull out the little lens and dab some spit on to it and wait for it to dry. Even in my most sleepy, delirious mornings I couldn’t screw it up.

Here’s the 411…

What it looks like: I was imagining some big, middle school biology class type microscope. The whole thing is actually the size of a tube of lipstick.

How it works: You open the tube, and pop out the black lens thing. You flip it over and wipe some spit on the bottom. Avoid getting bubbles on there if you can, those dry all weird and it makes it hard to read later. Also, don’t eat or drink before you spit. First morning spit it the best because it’s the grossest (and gross dries better).

The box says wait at least five minutes. I found I usually needed to wait much longer to get a good view. What I’d usually do is wipe the spit, then go on about my morning… breakfast, shower, get dressed, get ready and then right before I leave for the day I check it out. Replace the black lens thing back in the lipstick tube. Press the button on the bottom to shine a light through the glass. Twist to focus.

I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to tell when the “ferning” happened, but it turns out its pretty easy. It just looks like snowflakes… and the closer you get to ovulation, the thicker and denser the snowflakes get.

Look at it the rest of the day, or clean then retest again later in the day. Once you’re done, drop a little water on there and wipe it off. Easy clean-up to say the least.

One point to note: This month I took Clomid, and I noticed while I was taking the Clomid and for a few days after, I was getting the strong ferning pattern even though I was at the start of my cycle. I think that’s from the rush of hormones from the Clomid. It went back down to normal spit, and then started ferning again around the time I theoretically ovulated.

Pros:

-No need to buy additional tests. You can use the same tube over and over again. Pay for it once and use it forever.
-No pee splash-back.
-You can get your husband in on the action. As opposed to something I peed on, Adam was ok with looking at my little microscope. And since it’s sort of science-y, I think men in general can get into it more.
-No pee drops to clean up off the floor. Well, at least not pee that came from you.
-I can verify with my own eyes what’s going on. I don’t have to rely on a little electronic device or possibly expired stick to relay the message to me. I can decide from my own observations.
-Easy to use.
-Did I mention you don’t have to pee on it?

Cons:

-Can’t keep picture day-to-day to compare versus the prior day. You can write down what you see, but I didn’t. You miss that rainbow of OPKs to compare prior days.
-You have to rely on your own observations. There’s no flashing screen to tell you definitively if you’re ovulating or not.

So, my bottom line: I like it. I’ll continue to use it. It’s easy, its reliable, and its cost-effective. For under $30 (which is usually how much I spend in a month on pee-sticks), you get a dependable and simple ovulation predictor method that you can use month after month.

If you’re super chill but just curious how your body works, use this and nothing else. Bone down as soon as it starts to fern, and keep boning down until the ferning goes away (that’s easy to identify too). Or just keep boning down and make your husband happy. Whatevs.

If you’re super TTC-MustKnowExactlyWhenIOvulate, then use this with something else for the “second opinion”. I’m also using the OV-Watch this month, so it was nice to have something else to go to. And again, I appreciated being able to decide with my own eyes what was going on in my body.


I had trouble finding a picture by itself, but you can see it below here... its that little blue tube in the lower right hand corner...

So, here’s the super rad part. Fertiliaid Amy gave me a second one to give to you. Here’s how you can win…

The Rules:

1. Leave a separate comment for each entry.
2. You must have a contact email. If you’ve got yourself set up to that “No Reply” email thing, then you’ve got to leave an email address in one of your comments. M’kay?

Entries:

1. Visit the Fairhaven website and leave a comment here with one product that peaked your interest (1 entry, manadatory).
2. Follow Busted Plumbing on Google Friend Connect (1 entry).
3. Follow @FertiliaidAmy on Twitter (1 entry).
4. Follow @BustedKate on Twitter (1 entry).
5. Tweet this message: “Because I am awesome, I entered @BustedKate's #giveaway for a FREE Fertile Focus microscope! http://bit.ly/aAOc9Q" (1 entry per day, up to 7 additional entries)
6. Blog about the contest (please leave a link to your post) (5 additional entries)

I'll draw a number using the Random Number Generator, sometime on Thursday evening (April 15, 2010)... so you have a full week to rack up as many entries as you can! 

Disclosure: The Fertile Focus microscope was provided to me free of charge to try out. I received no financial remuneration, and my opinion was not influenced in any way by money or any other compensation. Like anyone could influence my opinion anyways.

Thanks for entering, and good luck!!