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Sunday, November 23, 2008

LH Overflow

I took an OPK on 16 cd and it seemed to come up positive, although I never trust these stupid tests anymore. Bah!

But here's the rub...I've been taking them every day, twice a day (and spending an obscene amount of money on them) to see if I truly ovulated or not. My temperature had not spiked, and I wasn't ready to accept the idea of anovulation yet. I took another OPK yesterday (24 cd) in the morning, and it seemed to be positive again.

Still unsure and out of curiosity, I waited until noon and took yet another test, because it has been noted that early morning urine is not best for OPKs. This time, there was no mistaking the darker test line. Positive? 24 cd? Twice in a cycle?

Because I'm obviously a masochist, I repeated again today...once in the morning, once in the afternoon.  Both positive, with an even darker line.  

Of course, I found something through some irresponsible Goggling to make me insane with hope and anxiety.  

A woman trying to conceive asked her doctor if she could use Ovulation Predictor Tests (OPK's) as Home Pregnancy Tests (HPT's). The reason for the question is that it is asked a lot on "trying to conceive" web sites. Many women will have an extra OPK after ovulating and may want to use it as an HPT. Here is what the doctor said.

The chemical make-up of LH (LH is the hormone that triggers the release of the egg and is very high prior to ovulation and causes a positive result on an OPK), is one thread short of being hCG (HCG is produced by the placenta during prenancy and it is what HPT's look for). That is why you will not get a + hpt if you are having your LH surge, but you will get a + OPK if you are pregnant, that one thread that is in the hCG, but missing from the LH is what makes the hpt work.

But on the other hand, he did say that an OPK is probably the most sensitive hpt you can buy. He said that there are two ways to use it.

1. Using it daily and if your test line gets darker then you are most probably pregnant

2. Use it once (yeah right ), and if your test line is as dark as or darker than the referance line then you are pregnant.

He said that the only bad things about using the OPK are that

1. The OPK will pick up a + hCG before the doctor's office test but about two days after a beta test would pick it up (detecting 10mIU of hCG being between 7dpo - 9dpo ~ according to the average impant of 5-7 days), so if you are waiting to take a urine test at the doc's office, you would still have to wait.

2. It detects pregnancy so early that it will detect chemical pregnancy and early m/c pregnancy

3. Cannot be used reliably by PCOS patients if they have a high LH (as most do)

Ugh.  I'm a crazy person for the next two weeks.  Stay tuned for updates about the crazy lady.

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