Tracking ovulation gives you a detailed picture of your fertility and your reproductive health. Read on to find out the best way to track ovulation, so you can be informed about what’s happening in your body.
Understanding your ovulation is an important part of understanding your body, your cycle, and your reproductive health.
How can you understand your ovulation? By tracking it. While there are multiple ways to track ovulation, they’re not all equally up to the task.
Here, we’ll take a look at the advantages and limitations of different methods, to uncover which is the best way to track ovulation.
How to track ovulation Ovulation is the moment around the midpoint of your cycle when your ovaries release a mature egg. That egg can either be fertilized by sperm and become a pregnancy, or go unfertilized and your cycle continues onto your next period.
There are different ways to track ovulation, each with varying levels of reliability and accuracy.
Let’s take a closer look at a few different ovulation tracking methods.
The calendar method The calendar method, also called the rhythm method, is a type of fertility awareness-based strategy (you may also hear these strategies referred to as “natural family planning”).
This strategy is relatively simple. Using a calendar, you:
Monitor your cycle Track your period Determine your average cycle length Calculate your cycle midpoint Once you’ve calculated your cycle midpoint, you assume ovulation happens around then. However, the key word here is “assume.”
Even in the most regular of cycles, ovulation can move around. With irregular cycles , ovulation timing varies even more. Counting days on a calendar simply can’t account for that. Plus, the calendar method can’t confirm ovulation.
In other words, using this method on its own isn’t an accurate way to track ovulation.
Physical signs of ovulation To help build on the calendar method, you can also pay attention to the physical signs of ovulation .
Signs and symptoms that can indicate ovulation include:
Cervical mucus changes : secretions become more abundant, slippery, and clearCervical changes : your cervix moves higher, and becomes softer and more openOvulation pain But ovulation-related physical changes can be hard to interpret and easy to miss, and not everyone experiences them.
So while it’s certainly helpful to look out for signs your body may send you, this strategy won’t necessarily give you the information and certainty you need to track ovulation.
Traditional ovulation predictor kits If you experience any kind of cycle irregularity (or even if you tend toward regular cycles), using fertility-awareness based methods likely won’t cut it for tracking ovulation.
Luckily, there are other tools in the ovulation tracking toolkit, including ovulation tests , also called ovulation predictor kits (OPKs).
These at-home tests look for luteinizing hormone (LH) in your urine. A rise in LH (the “LH surge ”) triggers your ovaries to release the egg, so when OPKs detect rising LH levels, they tell you you’re ovulating.
It’s up to you to determine when to start testing with OPKs. Generally, aim for a few days before you expect to ovulate (for example, start testing around day 12 of a 28-day cycle).
This means, however, that OPKs can be hard to use for anyone who has unpredictable cycles—and that’s not their only limitation (more on that below).
While these tests offer more information compared to the calendar method and physical signs only, traditional OPKs still aren’t the best way to track ovulation. So, what is?
What’s the best way to track ovulation? Now that we’ve seen a few different methods of tracking ovulation, we’ve arrived at the big question: what’s the best way to track ovulation?
The answer is: multi-hormone ovulation test kits .
Multi-hormone test kits, like the Oova fertility kit, are a much more advanced method of hormone measurement and ovulation tracking. These kits offer a vast improvement over traditional OPKs.
Why are multi-hormone ovulation test kits the best way to track ovulation? Here are just a few reasons.
Ovulation confirmation Traditional OPKs only measure LH, but LH does not confirm ovulation .
To confirm with certainty whether you’re ovulating (as opposed to just seeing a rise in LH), your ovulation tracker has to measure progesterone. Multi-hormone test kits measure LH, estrogen, and progesterone .
Wider window of measurement Traditional OPKs can only detect hormone levels within a narrow, “standard” range. The problem is, many people’s hormone levels fall outside this narrow window.
Multi-hormone kits are capable of detecting a wider range of hormones, making them better-adapted to measure each person’s unique hormone levels and accurately track ovulation.
No more guesswork With traditional OPKs, you have to guess when to start testing for ovulation. This can be particularly difficult for anyone who experiences cycle irregularity.
Advanced multi-hormone ovulation kits like the Oova fertility kit, on the other hand, use smart technology to learn the hormone patterns unique to your body that signal ovulation.
By adapting to your cycle, these kits accurately predict ovulation and prompt you to test on the right cycle days. That takes the guesswork out of ovulation for you.
Quantitative hormone data Traditional OPKs tell you whether they detect LH in your urine—but that’s it.
Multi-hormone ovulation test kits like Oova go beyond a simple “yes” or “no” hormone detection result, giving you quantitative hormone data with lab-level precision.
Greater reliability All these advances combined offer you an ovulation test kit with a much higher degree of reliability and precision.
The greater the reliability of your ovulation test kit and the more accurate your results, the more information you have about what exactly is happening in your body and when.
That makes multi-hormone ovulation test kits the best way to track ovulation.
Why should you track your cycle with a multi-hormone ovulation tracker? Anyone can (and should!) track their ovulation, for any reason at all.
For example, multi-hormone ovulation trackers are a key tool if you’re trying to conceive (TTC). Tracking and predicting ovulation can be particularly important if your fertility journey has some extra considerations to take into account, like if you’re:
But trying for a pregnancy isn’t the only reason to use a multi-hormone ovulation tracker. Understanding your ovulation helps you understand your body, and that’s good for everyone.
Using the best ovulation tracker can also help you:
Avoid pregnancy Manage a reproductive health condition alongside your care team Maximize your ovulation strength boost in workouts Confirm whether you ovulate regularly Learn your body and your cycle What’s the Best Way to Track Ovulation? The bottom line There are many ways to track ovulation, from calendars to physical signs to OPKs.
But the best way to track ovulation is the method that gets you the most detailed and reliable results: multi-hormone ovulation trackers.
Ovulation test kits like the Oova ovulation and fertility kit measure three key reproductive hormones. These kits provide quantitative hormone levels according to your unique body and cycle, so that you can track ovulation with confidence.
Whether you’re TTC, managing a reproductive condition, or just interested in understanding your body, you can take control of your health using tools that offer the best way to track ovulation.
