The most useful information about the adequacy of your menstrual cycle and your ovulation can be learned at home via OPKs or LH dipsticks. This technology is available in your local drugstore under brand names such as First Response, or Clear Blue Easy. When these tests first came out, they were laborious and cumbersome and required about an hour of testing time. But now you can get a simple answer in just a few minutes.

LH dipstick tests do not give you the exact quantitative level of LH in your blood, but rather turn a certain color on the day that your LH surges to a high level. If you do this dipstick testing every morning, the test will be negative until the day of your LH surge. If you do the test a day or two later, it will once again be negative. This simple home method for determining when you ovulate has many advantages over the basal body temperature thermometer and cervical mucus testing.

We know that ovulation should occur within about thirty-six to forty hours of the very beginning of the slight increase in LH production, and about twenty to twenty-four hours after this LH surge reaches its peak. By using the LH dipstick, you can tell the day before you are going to ovulate. However, “saving it all up” and abstaining from sex until just before ovulation has been shown to have very little advantage for most couples over just having sex three times per week, and not paying any attention to when you ovulate. Frequent intercourse is sometime a better, and cheaper, strategy.

When do you test?