Family

Clearblue Fertility Monitor

Ovulation tracker

This fertility monitor is designed to predict ovulation and optimize a couple’s chances of conception. It requires test sticks which are used at the onset of a woman’s menstruation to monitor urine once daily (best in the AM). The urine is applied to the test stick which is inserted into the monitor. When ovulation is at its peak, the monitor shows a dot within a circle. We referred to this as the “egg’s in the basket.” My wife and I had tried for quite some time to have a second child. Our firstborn son was conceived in vitro, and the second time around we paid for two attempts at a cost of approximately $16,000 — both failed. Just as we started to save up money to try again, we stumbled across the fertility monitor (it cost $250 when we bought it six years ago). We thought we’d just keep trying with the monitor until we’d saved enough for another in vitro attempt. To our surprise, the monitor worked on only the second attempt using it. Much quicker than when we had our son. I’m pretty sure it would have worked on the first attempt, but at the time we actually didn’t believe the readings were accurate. It showed my wife ovulating extremely late in her cycle. News to us! There are now monitors available that don’t require test sticks ($50-60/pack). This one’s still the best purchase we’ve ever made. The average cost for an in vitro attempt is $12,000 to $16,000, which was not covered under our medical plan. The first attempt is the most expensive and subsequent attempts can be less expensive depending on the number of embryos available from the first attempt. We had four embryos remaining and if we paid for that treatment, it would have run around $6,000. The unit saved us roughly $5,750, which was a blessing, but needless to say, the birth of our daughter using this monitor is one of the greatest joys in my life. We have since loaned our monitor to four other couples that were having trouble conceiving. All four mothers got pregnant — interestingly, all with girls.

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-- Jeff Cruz 07/30/08

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