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Monday, August 3, 2009

Bibliosaur and the Magic OPKs

I was at the store stocking up on supplies for this cycle when I spotted some new OPKs.

This, in particular, is what caught my eye:

Two lines = ovulation? That's it? No worrying about whether or not the lines match or paying for expensive digital OPKs? It seemed pretty clear from the packaging: two lines = ovulating...

...and only one line = not ovulating:

Oh I HAD to buy some of these. Not only were they cheaper than the normal test strips (and waaaay cheaper than the digital OPKs that I usually buy, since I'm pretty inept at interpreting regular OPKs), but I was completely hooked on the idea of an OPK that worked like a HPT, with two lines simply meaning ovulation, the same way two lines on a pregnancy test means a positive, regardless of what shade they are.

I wasn't sure how these OPKs worked - maybe they were calibrated to sense a higher level of the hormone, the same way that some HPTs sense low levels and some higher levels? That would ensure that the hormone level was pretty high before you got a positive. But then what if your hormone level doesn't get that high? These things must be magic!

Naturally, even though it's not time to pee on an OPK yet this cycle, I had to open up the box and read the directions the minute I got home, just to see if they said how these worked.

Here's the illustration of what a positive looks like - so far, so good, since all of the double lines mean ovulation:

But then I hit the illustration of how to tell if it's a negative:

See the first box? The test line is fainter than the control line. That means that it's negative. Just like a normal OPK. Which means that the box kinda sorta lied: sure, two lines = ovulating, but it can also = not ovulating. So they aren't really magic. In fact, they're just normal OPKs in a fancy pee stick holder.

On the other hand, it is a pink pee stick holder.

And they were still cheaper than the other OPKs. So even though I'm disappointed that they're not magic after all, and a little nervous about trying to interpret the light/dark of the lines (there's a reason I spend $$$ on the digitals!), they'll still get the job done. Plus they're pink. That's gotta make them awesome, right?

2 comments:

  1. Pink = awesome.
    :)

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  2. Hope they're not too hard to interpret! And you're right, the pink is pretty damn awesome.

    ReplyDelete