Bulk OPK purchase

[annaconda]

OK... I did it - I have a long cycle and I'm new at TTC. So... I bought some OPK and pregnancy bulk tests online for next cycle. I don't want to mess around I also got a thermometer for charting.

Does anyone have any tips to share with me? I'm good at POAS now, but have only used the expensive drug store varieties. Boy for the price of one trip to the drug store I will have so many tests. I'm psyched!

So I've not used OPK and wonder if anyone has any educational input for me. I've learned a lot on this site.

Thanks!

[karmab]

i like the internet cheapies too, like wondfos, you can get them from ebay or amazon.com, etc. they work great and they are like .30 each.

i have lots of advice! there's a fine line between loving them and hating opks- i think it depends on if you use them the best way possible. i love them. so for starters, the key to reading them is to hold them at arm's length- when they are positive, they are obviously positive, you dont have to look closely at them, that's one of the reasons some people get confused, they overthink it.

you will want to test 2-3 times a day, one of those times ideally should be around 2 pm. i start on the first day of fertile cm, that works for me. you can look at my chart and see what i mean. plan to start at least probably 5 days before you expect to o if you dont have a lot of cm. when i am expecting it to go pos, i will test at maybe 11 am, 2 pm, and then maybe 6 pm. once it goes positive, i test once a day at 2 pm, but that's up to you. (what i used to do is keep testing on the same schedule and then just chart the trend- what i mean is... if a got a negative in the am, then a pos in the pm, i would chart positive, because it was trending positive, if the next day i got a pos in the morning and a neg in the afternoon, i would chart it for the day as neg, because it was trending neg. i know others who do it this way too, but now once i get a pos, i just test at 2pm once/day. whatever works for you, as long as you are consistent.)

now, here's what else i recommend. say you get your pos opk, then it goes neg sometime the next day for example. ok, once it's neg, keep testing, once a day, until you get your crosshairs (or you are really confident that you temp is up and you o'd.) it's just another day or two, and i have seen too many scenarios where this wasnt done and there ended up being ambiguity, so i say, just do it. some people say after you get 1 pos, stop testing, but i do not recommend that strategy at all. a pos opk, you have to remember, does not guarantee an o. it means you are having an lh surge, and that should trigger an o, but it's not a sure thing. you have to keep watching.

and just remember, you can o anytime from the day of your first opk until 48 hours after your last. the avg is 36 hours after the first.

there's more, but that's a good start. good luck!!!

[finnegansmom]

I agree with Karma...

Especially about not stopping testing after getting a real +, but also, do not get so hung up on them that you ignore your body's other signs. They are good as a warning, but I seem to be one of those people that get + OPKs for a few days, including AFTER I ovulated. It took a few months before I realized it, and my timing must have been late. If you have crazy EWCM and a negative OPK, I'd still be BDing....

Good luck!

[annaconda]

Wow - I'm glad I asked - there's so much to this stuff that I don't quite get yet!

So let me ask some "beginner" style questions that came up as I was reading your replies.

The LH surge will be picked up by the OPK. Ideally, that means you'll ovulate sometime in the next 24-48 hours. (That's my understanding). The test should be read at arms length and if there's a line, there's LH surge. I know it can be lighter than, same color as, or darker than the test line.

So you're saying that it's important to continue to test pretty regularly to make sure you're getting a sustained LH surge. So if you have positive one day and negative the next, that means you're NOT ovulating, right?

If you ARE ovulating, you should get continued positives over the 48 hour period?

So if you get a positive one day and a negative the next, you just test the next day again. The point is to get confirmation with 2-4 tests after the first positive. Right?

Temping to back up the data should show a temp rise as well (over the cover line.) This will be my first shot at temping too.

I'm also a novice at the CM.

Last month I had mittleschmertz THEN four days of EWCM. I thought the mittleschmertz was when I O'd but here I am... 24 days later... no AF (but cramps).

It's standard that I have 17-24 days between the mittleschmertz and AF. But I know that's too long for a LP.

So my thought was to start testing about three days before the mittleschmertz, which usually comes on CD 17.

More comments please THANK YOU for the help and support.

[karmab]

ok, important point about interpreting the line! you will probably ALWAYS see a line, because we just about always have some amount of lh floating around. to be POS, the line has to be AS DARK OR DARKER than the control. that means, if you were to cover both ends of the stick so you didnt know which was which and flip it around a few times, you would not be able to tell which one is the control and which is the test, they are identical, or, you pick the one that is darker and it is the test line. that's a positive test. if the test line is not as dark or darker than control, it is not positive.

you MAY (or may not) see it fade in- i almost always do, where over a couple days the line gets darker and darker, but not positive, and i know the positive is coming soon, so that's when i really am careful about testing 3 times a day. then one time, usually it's just like BAM, it's positive, blaringly.

now, how long it stays positive, that varies. it does NOT have to stay positve for 24 hours or 48 or anything, although it often does. for some women, ONE pos is all the warning you get, and that's why it's important to test more than once a day. if you test once a day (if you HAD to for some reason, the best time is 2 pm, btw) it is possible to miss it. say you tested at 11 am, and it went positive (theoretically) at 3 pm, but you only tested once so you never saw that. then the next day, maybe you test at 4 pm, and the surge is already gone, although if you had tested at say noon time, you would have caught it still. you never would see a real positive, whereas, if you were testing 2-3 times a day, you would have had a pos the day before and the next day. that's the difference between 2 days blaring positives and no positives! see- this is why some women get frustrated, but the key is, follow the best way to do this to a tee, and you will get great results.

[karmab]

Originally Posted by annaconda

So you're saying that it's important to continue to test pretty regularly to make sure you're getting a sustained LH surge. So if you have positive one day and negative the next, that means you're NOT ovulating, right?

If you ARE ovulating, you should get continued positives over the 48 hour period?

maybe i should be clearer about this point. you aren't continuing to test to make sure you are getting a sustained surge. the surge can be short, a few hours even for some women, and still be successful in getting you to o (although it will stick around longer than that for most.) the reason you continue to test is because even if you have a whopping 3 day blaringly positive surge, that is not a GUARANTEE that you are going to o. it is very very likely, but there is nothing more confusing than a great lh surge NOT followed by a sustained temp shift, or in other words, not followed by an o. it could be lengthy to try to illustrate these possible scenarios, but if you can just trust someone who has been at this ttc for ... too long... just do yourself a favor, and keep testing until you get 3 elevated temps on your chart and crosshairs, and you are certain that you did in fact o. if you have a pos opk and no increased temp within 48 hours of the last positive, well, you are still testing opks, and more than likely, a day or two later, you will see a second surge, you will know the o is gearing up, you will dtd as you should, and your bases will be covered when, a day or two later, you finally see your temp rise. too many ladies pull the plug on bd'ing too soon, and since you can only confirm o after the fact, end up missing the best timing.

[karmab]

Originally Posted by annaconda

Temping to back up the data should show a temp rise as well (over the cover line.) This will be my first shot at temping too.

I'm also a novice at the CM.

Last month I had mittleschmertz THEN four days of EWCM. I thought the mittleschmertz was when I O'd but here I am... 24 days later... no AF (but cramps).

It's standard that I have 17-24 days between the mittleschmertz and AF. But I know that's too long for a LP.

So my thought was to start testing about three days before the mittleschmertz, which usually comes on CD 17.

More comments please THANK YOU for the help and support.

one last comment- i told you to check out my chart earlier, but forgot the link-

http://www.fertilityfriend.com/home/2caf4e

if you are new to temping, i highly recommend fertilityfriend.com. they have all kinds of introductory info for new folks. use it! it's free and it's very educational.

as far as cm, it is pretty easy. the best pictures i have found of cm are on amandabears.com. basically, you put (clean) fingers up there. if it's hard to get your fingers in, you are dry/scant. if they come out feeling like lotion, that's creamy. if they are wet and slippery, watery. if the watery mucous stretches- that's eggwhite. now, it's really not quite that simple, but that's all you need to know to enter on your chart and make sense of it. there are other charting methods, like creighton, that have about 50 different descriptions for cm. but the 4 basic ones are good enough for most. if you have say creamy in the morning and watery in the evening, chart the more fertile- watery. (this doesnt apply to after o, when you checking cm doesnt even give any useful info, so don't worry about checking it once you have confirmed ovulation.) cp just takes about 1 month to get the hang of, so just start doing it, and even if it doesnt make sense, give it time, it will.

now, girl, my last comment. i hope all this info is for nothing. are you saying you think you are 24 days into your lp?? um.. have you tested? likely, when you feel mittelschmertz, you are feeling it pre-o, which some women do, because it is exceedingly rare for an lp to be longer than 16 days on a normal basis, and you say you think yours goes 17-24. that's not likely. except in unusually situations like one particular month a cyst arises, it is very unlikely to go past 16 days. so your temping and opks are going to give you lots of info about your cycle.... if you get to the next cycle. maybe you will have to give all your bulk opks away! in the meantime, did you get any bulk hpts with those opks? it's time to try one.

[karmab]

ok, this is the last, last thing. i remembered i have some pics of my opks from last month. this might help you determine pos/not pos...



http://i626.photobucket.com/albums/t...os/mdc/005.jpg

http://i626.photobucket.com/albums/t...os/mdc/006.jpg

first link- the top opk is from cd 11 last month. it was negative when i tested late morning, and it was positive in the mid afternoon (bottom) (i didnt bother testing early evening because it wouldnt have told me anything new.)

the second pic, top opk is the next day (cd12.) the first time i tested (top, early afternoon i think) it was still very positive (i only tested once that day, which is what i do after it's pos, that's just my routine.) the bottom opk in that pic is from cd13- negative. it is almost positive, but it's not, it is negative. i o'd on cd 14.

[Sweet.Bee]

I've only used OPKs for one cycle so far, but here was my experience.

I ovulated on CD25. I had a + OPK on CD22 and a super + on CD23. Then CD24 was - again. From my temps, CD25 was my clear O day, so my OPKs went - even before I ovulated. At the time, I was pretty upset that I wouldn't O because my temps had not gone up yet, but it seems my body just has a surge a day or so before O.

You were talking about O pain, so I'll mention that mine happened at the same time I was getting + OPKs, so about 2 days before O.

In terms of lines, I always had 2 lines, but most of the days the test line was faint. When you see a +, you will know. For me, it made the control line look really weak.

I started testing when I first got fertile CM (watery, in this case). I ended up going through (I think) 17 OPKs because I O late and get over 2 weeks of fertile CM, but I don't think that's typical for people. So, I'd suggest you start OPKs when you first get fertile CM. I will be starting them much later this cycle, but I learned a lot doing them early the first time around.

[karmab]

sweet bee is right- when it is positive, there is no question.

and right, it is typical to o after your opks go negative. for me, the most common time to o has been on the day they are first negative- another reason to keep testing after your first pos. because whether i got one or two days of pos, it was the next day (usually) that i will o. that would be 2 days from the first pos. that's part of another reason to keep testing, is that it is within normal limits to o 48 hours after your LAST positive, whether that is one, two, or three days that your opks are positive. so if you have 3 days of positives, and o 48 hours after the last, that is 5 days after your first pos! if you stopped testing after the first pos, you might stop dtd too soon and would be going out of your mind thinking something is wrong when your temp wasnt up. dont freak out though if your temp is up the day after your first pos, that can happen to, so once you do have a pos opk, get busy.

[annaconda]

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU !!!!

I did take a HPT and it was BFN... this morning. What it feels like, frankly, is that I get caught at the end of the LP and hang out there. WAITING WAITING WAITING for AF to start. Like my body wants to shed the lining but the hormones aren't quite balanced to get the process started. It can be weeks between the first "AF cramps" and it actually showing. It's quite frustrating. It's every other month it seems like... one month it's shorter, one month it's way long.

You're right I'm going to learn a LOT about what's going on next cycle.

It's got to be that I ovulate later than the sensation I was thinking was ovulation... it's just got to be. So I picked up 30 opk's and 20 hpt's. I'm hoping that is a good supply for a month's worth of obsessing ha ha ha.

GREAT to know all the tips about reading the cheapie OPK tests. And I have signed up for FF and will be learning all about mucous and such fun things.

THANKS AGAIN LADIES!! Any other tips gratefully welcomed.

[annaconda]

now that I think about it... I didn't check mucous around mittleschmertz sensation last time.

But I did notice "discharge" on my panties for about four-five days AFTER I thought I o'd
(mittleschmertz saturday afternoon, discharge through at least Wednesday maybe even Thursday! I'll have to check my notes.)

That wouldn't explain anything on this end of the luteal phase (why no AF!?!!) but will help me target. Anyway I plan to start with the OPK's five days before I expect Mittleschmertz (CD 12 - CD 16) but I'll be really tuned in on CD 17 - CD 22. I'm betting I O sometime around CD 22.

Detective work. I love it!

[karmab]

im guessing you are going to find you o later than you think you do. one of the signs of an o is that your cm will dry up within 24 hours or so. some ladies have creamy in the luteal phase, enough to end up in their panties, but really, the heaviest cm is just before o, so i am guessing you are o'ing like maybe 4 days after you are feeling the pains. typically, the lp is real consistant too. it's not unusual for the follicular phase to vary by 3 or 4 or 5 days, but luteal phases are usually within a day or so of each other in length. i have been learning about the whole ttc thing long enough to say though, everytime you think you know what's going on, you learn something new, so there's no telling if your lp is really that variable or if the differences are happening pre-o. but charting will help you figure all that out.