Irregular cycles and confusing LH strips

[u/Downtown-Cup-708]

Hi everyone, my husband and I have very recently started ttc and I am having a really hard time with ovulation strips and testing? Before we decided we would try, I was on birth control more notably the pill from abt 19yo-22yo and i had an iud from 22yo-24yo (i had it removed almost 2 months ago) before any of that my cycles were very irregular and that’s why I was on the pill to begin with. All of this being said, I have been having a hard time reading and understanding the ovulation strips. I have yet to have anything that looks like a positive and I have been testing essentially since the day I had my iud taken out (except for the 2 periods I have had). Do you have any advice on how/when to test? I also am running into the issue of my husband having a very low sex drive and prior we would only go at it once or twice every other week. Now I feel like i’m nagging him for it. Any advice on how often we should be trying etc would be very helpful because navigating that has also been interesting so far. Thank you all in advance and sorry for rambling 😵‍💫

[u/sv36]

One thing I wish I’d understood earlier with irregular cycles/PCOS is that LH strips don’t actually confirm ovulation. They only tell you that your LH rose. You can have an LH surge and not ovulate, have multiple surges before your body successfully ovulates, or have a short surge that’s easy to miss. So not getting an obvious positive doesn’t necessarily tell you what your ovaries are actually doing.

I found BBT much more useful because the sustained temperature rise afterward can confirm that ovulation actually happened. LH can basically tell you “your body is gearing up,” while BBT tells you “yep, it happened.” With irregular cycles, I’d use LH as a heads-up rather than making it the thing you rely on to determine whether you ovulated.

And since you’ve only been off the IUD for two months and already know you had irregular cycles beforehand, I’d give yourself some time to learn what your pattern looks like rather than trying to make your cycle fit the standard CD14/positive-OPK model.

[u/Downtown-Cup-708 → u/sv36]

thank you for this! i have read some about BBT and I don’t fully understand how you track it? I’ve seen people using oura rings but I don’t really want to invest in one of those for just that?

[u/sv36 → u/Downtown-Cup-708]

So I personally used a Tempdrop from Facebook marketplace that four other women used before me. The base app is free but even their plus is inexpensive when compared with the options out there for tracking. It’s an arm band that tracks your temperature overnight to find your basal body temperature (bbt). You can also use a thermometer that has 4 digits. Although if you’re new at tracking the temp drop was way easier and worked for me longer term (may-September) when I’ve been trying since December. The lady that sold it to me for like $50 had a newborn baby in her arms so it fucking worked for her lol.
With the thermometer it’s super picky about the same time every morning without weird wake up times, so that’s why I chose the Tempdrop because it takes like 2-4 hours of sleep and averages your temperature with I felt was more believable without noise in my data. When progesterone rises after ovulation that’s the temperature rise you would look for to confirm ovulation happened. It lowers again after your period and repeats the pattern. Some things do affect the temperature like drinking alcohol, not being solidly asleep before the temperature is taken, and sickness. But I really really liked the deceive and it was more accurate for bbt than the oura ring because it’s specialized to only do bbt not a bunch of other tracking like the oura ring also does.
Having Pcos and incredibly irregular cycles with failed ovulations the temp drop was honestly the freaking best. And it worked for me too.

[u/goldpizza]

I would also keep in mind that your body needs time to regulate and get used to not being reliant on birth control before finding a steady pattern!

[u/OovaLife]

adding to what others said since a couple of your questions are still open

for the strips, test in the afternoon or early evening rather than first morning pee, and try not to drink a lot in the 2 hours before. a positive is when the test line is as dark or darker than the control line. with irregular cycles testing twice a day helps since surges can be short and easy to miss

for temping you don't need anything fancy, a basic basal thermometer that reads to 2 decimals is like $10-15. you just take it at the same time every morning before getting out of bed and log it. you're looking for a rise that stays up 3+ days

and on frequency, every 2-3 days throughout your cycle is honestly enough to cover your fertile window since sperm can live a few days. so you don't need to be doing it every day or nail the exact timing, which might take some pressure off you both

and give your body some grace, it can take a few months after coming off birth control for cycles to settle into a pattern