CD19: the opening salvo has been fired!

What we did this weekend
Picked up a spunk-o-gram on Saturday. We'd actually asked on Wednesday for KD to ship us one Thursday, but for some reason he didn't get the email until Thursday night, so shipped Friday for Saturday. It turned out to be a good thing, since on Thursday we learned that my wee tiny follicle was nowhere near ready to pop. I seem to be repeatedly suffering from what someone I know on one of the boards calls "lesbian premature ejaculation". I'm just so darn afraid of missing it.

Anyway, picked up The Junk on Saturday, went home to pee on some more sticks. Nothing nothing nothing. Okay, teeny little line. I sat and stared at the box and tried to ovulate.

Received wisdom is that chilled sperm should all be used immediately, on the theory that there is nowhere it will survive as well as in a nice warm reproductive tract. Well, I'm not sure I believe that. For one, the wrong kind of mucus can kill them dead. For two, the clock ticks more slowly while they're on ice. These are the sensible things that B repeated to me every time I lunged towards the package with a box-knife.

We managed to hold our fire until Sunday when lo! a positive OPK! singing of heavenly hosts! We insemmed with gay abandon. Another package is coming on Monday; it, too will be a 48-hrs in transit package, but we already know that doesn't mean unusable. We'll probably do a frozen vial on Tuesday, too.

All in all, feeling pretty good about this cycle. Despite the fact that, excepting the OPKs, all of my ovulation prediction devices were bloody useless.

The CBFM gave me a peak on CD15. Ah, ultrasound says no. I saw the follicle un-popped, with me own eyes. Actually, I saw a lot of meaningless grey blobs, but B saw them, and I trust her scientific eye.

The OvaCue (never good at predicting) tells me I ovulated on CD14. Ah, no.

The Ov-Watch tells me that I ovulated yesterday or today, CD 18 or 19. Mmm, no, but at least vaguely in the ballpark, unlike the other two. It'll be tomorrow or the next day.

Winner: Ov-Watch, but with a weak performance.

You know, last cycle I ovulated on what can only be described as "Ov 4" -- two days past Ov 2. THe month before that it was on Ov 2. The month before that it was "Ov 5", three days past Ov 2.

I think that maybe I can trust it to give me the beginning of the range. It's not what it advertises, but maybe my body is just weird and works that way, maybe I happen to get my sodium chloride surge two or three days earlier than most women do, statistically speaking.

Warning: long meaderings below

Ramblings on the Ov-Watch's accuracy and customer service
So the Ov-Watch has been off by two days, zero days, three days, two days. The first month I called Ov-Watch and the person I spoke to was nice enough, but insulting in her ignorance. She assured me that OPKs are "twenty year old technology" and what was I going to trust, those old things or this shiny new watch of the future?

Well, huh. I have only the barest grasp of reproductive endocrinology, but I know that you can't ovulate without an LH surge, no matter what your watch says. And when the watch and the OPKs disagree, the OPKs are correct (assuming no factors that throw off OPKs, like PCOS). Ov-Watch's FDA 510 clearance says, and I quote,

"Data from the clinical study showed that [Ov-Watch] predicted ovulation better than basal body temperature... and almost as well as LH levels in urine" (emphasis mine).

I know this, but somehow the person on the other end of the phone did not, just acted like she'd never heard of such an occurrence, and that my OPKs must be wrong.

Thanks, lady.

To be fair, I did interface with their customer service one other time, about a defective sensor. They sent out a new one at lightning speed, which I appreciated very much. In conclusion, their customer service appears to be speedy and pleasant, but not well informed.

So I think I'll just have to make my own way with the Ov-Watch, adding a few days onto its last "Ov". It doesn't suck entirely, it's just not as accurate as I wish it were. It's probably pointless to wish for greater predictive power. Bodies are handmade, after all, and natural irregularities and slubs in the weave should maybe not be considered flaws.

I wouldn't want to be the customer service person who had to explain that to customers, either.