Tracking O - using opk

[Munchkin8]

Hi ladies,

I’m feeling so frustrated trying to track my ovulation and using opk. I do bbt correctly and find it helpful to CONFIRM when I ovulated but I need something, some sign of when I’m ABOUT TO ovulate - I need enough time to know when to BD.
In the past 5 months I have only got 2 positive opk results both around 4pm (and it doesn’t last long). I’m testing 3 times a day and still can’t seem to catch that positive LH rise. I’m testing at 10am, 1pm with test strips and 6.30pm with a digital opk this cycle. I also make sure I drink normally and don’t urine for the hours in between testing.

What am I doing wrong? Does anyone else have this problem?
I know I shouldn’t be but this is stressing me out!

Just to add: my cycles average 29 days, I don’t have any fertility issues that I know of and I’m 36 years old. TTC baby #3

[a million dreams]

I can't help with your specific question - I've heard OPK can be tricky. You may already be doing this, but I know my fertility specialist and most other Drs would just encourage you to BD every second day from ~5 days before you're likely to ovulate until 1 or 2 days after ovulation (which you might be able to confirm with the OPK). This gives you the best chance of falling pregnant - it's less important to catch ovulation precisely than it is to have sperm present (which can survive for up to 5 days) when you do. Too many people miss their fertile window by waiting until ovulation to BD (not saying this is you, it's just a reasonably common misconception).

You can use BBT and cervical mucus as helpful signs, and if your cycles are pretty regular you can probably figure out when to start your BD week.

If it's really playing on your mind, perhaps you could speak to your GP about doing a monitored cycle, where you have regular blood tests to track what's actually happening with your hormones? If you went a step further and did this with a FS, they could do scans as well to track your follicle/s.

Best of luck! 🤞

[Kazza78]

My digitals were only positive for 12 hours. I did them morning and around 7pm. Both times I conceived, we bd once as soon as af finished . Then 3 days later, then as soon as a positive come up and 36 hours after that .
In my case , bd every 2 days was not enough and everyday was too much. Can you throw in some morning bd when possible?

[Kazza78]

Also, it took me 11 mths to conceive at age 34/ 35 and 18months at age 38/39.

[Beary]

I always did my digitals (Clearblue) first thing in the morning and that worked for me

[Munchkin8]

Thanks so much for all your replies!
I got my first positive opk yesterday morning CD14. I realise I was just impatient and hormonal (blaming pms for that!) Hubby had a very stressful week at work so I didn’t want to put pressure on him. We BD last night, so will see what happens (we struggle to find the time in the mornings unless we wake up at 5am , kids are always up early). I’m trying not to over think things. I’ll take another opk test later this morning to see if it’s still positive. Feeling a few cramps and still lots of EWCM and my temp hasn’t risen yet.