Although she experienced irregular periods for most of her adolescent and young adult life, Charlotte didn’t think too much of it until it was time to start a family. After several years passed, which included PCOS and hormone imbalance diagnoses, Charlotte and her husband were still waiting for their BFP. After going on medication to help improve ovulation and trying OvuSense, Charlotte learned she was ovulating later in her cycle than she had previously believed. After 10 cycles of OvuSense, Charlotte finally got her long-awaited positive test, and she recently gave birth to her beautiful baby girl in March.
Struggling to Become Pregnant
My name is Charlotte and I’m here to share my fertility journey with you. I experienced irregular periods for most of my teens and early twenties. I didn’t really worry about it much until I got married in 2015 and my husband and I decided we would like to start a family. After a year of trying, we decided to see the doctor, who after some blood tests diagnosed me with PCOS. Although no cysts were found on my ovaries, I had a hormone imbalance. We were young and newly married and didn’t put too much pressure on ourselves to get pregnant, so we just assumed it would happen unexpectedly for us at some point. However, as the years passed and people around us started having babies, the sinking feeling at each pregnancy announcement cut a bit deeper.
Learning New Information About Her Cycle
In 2019, I lost four stone (56 pounds) which kickstarted regular periods and things felt a bit more positive. But as each month rolled by, we still didn’t get our positive test. In 2020, I went back to the doctor, who carried out a test to see if I ovulated. It came back saying that I did not ovulate, which left me feeling devastated. We were referred to our local fertility clinic and had an appointment with a fertility consultant scheduled for some months later. In the interim, I had started my own research into what could be going on with my body. I couldn’t believe that I didn’t ovulate yet had regular periods. I then discovered OvuSense on Instagram and my life changed. I quickly discovered after a couple of cycles that I ovulated on days 23-25 of my cycle, not day 14 like the “norm”!
A Long-Awaited & Emotional BFP
We had our appointment with the fertility consultant who unfortunately was not prepared to carry out any further tests until I had reduced my BMI further. I was prescribed metformin to help with ovulation and took that daily. We felt quite disheartened following that appointment, but OvuSense was still giving us a glimmer of hope and control over our fertility journey and we held out hope that the metformin would help too. On my tenth OvuSense cycle, we got our BFP and I recently gave birth to our baby girl in March 2023. Our dreams have come true and I hope my story can give others hope.
The feeling of grief for the life you want when going through infertility can be overwhelming. The feelings of guilt each time you cry at someone’s pregnancy announcement, you’re happy for them but it’s just another reminder that it’s not you. None of that has left me, and I will never take any of this for granted.
OvuSense is so easy to use, the little sensor syncs with your phone to download the data each morning and the predicted ovulation window gave us the control to know when to target trying each cycle. I will definitely use it next time. The OvuSense community on Facebook also helped to keep me going and felt like a safe place to share with people in the same boat which I really appreciated.