So You Want to Get Pregnant? Try These 13 Tech Tools
Once you’re ready to take the plunge into parenting, getting there often involves more planning than ditching your birth control method, thinking of cute baby names and getting frisky when the mood strikes. We all have friends who get lucky on the first try, but for the rest of us, knowing your cycle is the key to getting pregnant. Thankfully, there are plenty of apps and new tech tools out there to help. Here are 13 to try.
1. Conceivable: Another level of digital fertility aid, Conceivable’s personalized health program aims to provide everything under the sun to help its users get pregnant. Its founder was a fertility acupuncturist for years and wanted to share her services less expensively and more widely than she ever could with a brick and mortar practice. The Conceivable service now does just that by drop-shipping supplements, providing meal plans and advising on nearly every part of health that could impact pregnancy, based on ongoing cycle information.
DL It: Free on iOS, $99 monthly subscription inclusive of supplements and personalized services.
2. OvaTemp ($75): As this product’s website states: “Your fertility monitor just got smarter.” Don’t let the little wand scare you — Ondo is a wireless oral basal thermometer that automatically syncs your temperature to your phone. Smart, indeed.
3. Shine: The Bump’s new app is meant to take you from prevention and period tracking through pregnancy planning with a cycle tracker designed by The Bump and their fertility experts. It also has loads of helpful tips, infographics, articles and other interactive features to help throughout the planning process.
DL It: Free on iOS
4. Glow: Released in September on iOS9, the newest update to Glow’s fertility app now syncs with Apple’s HealthKit and tracks male fertility, too. As men account for 40% of fertility issues when trying to get pregnant, helping your guy keep track of his health as well as yours can be a huge help.
5. Kindara Wink: The new, super sleek Wink thermometer is the first oral fertility thermometer built to sync with a proven app, which in this case happens to be Kindara’s trusty fertility tracker. It tracks your BBT (basal body temperature — a big acronym in the fertility world) and syncs automatically with the Kindara app to let you know key moments in your cycle. You can buy Wink on pre-sale for $99, $129 regularly.
6. OvaCue: The Ovagraph app, Ovacue monitor and new TempCue sensor may seem a little clinical, but has major street cred, as the system is the official fertility tracker of the classic fertility tome Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler. The app and new high-tech TempCue sensor work with the Ovacue monitor that connects to your mobile device to help predict and confirm ovulation, identify key baby-making time and work for women with irregular cycles and PCOS. The Ovacue monitor costs $199, and the TempCue sensor is $25.
DL It: Free on iOS and Android
7. Daysy ($375): Though this personal fertility calculator comes with a bit of sticker shock, it claims that it will show you if you are fertile or not with an accuracy of around 99.3%. You spend only 30 seconds a day with it, using it to take your temperature under your tongue and input your menstruation. Daysy does the rest, evaluating the data given with its proven algorithm and calculating your fertility status for the next day.
8. Natural Cycles: This app can determine the best times for trying to get pregnant using your mobile device, a thermometer and optional ovulation test strips to measure LH hormone the day before ovulation to confirm. Switch the app to “planning” mode to get to work, and into “prevention” mode for just that.
DL It: Annual service subscription is $69.90 and includes a basal thermometer. Free on iOS and Android.
9. Ava Women: Yes, it’s a wearable, but one that you only wear at night and that measures over three million data points through nine body parameters to predict your optimal fertility window. Ava is set to launch in early 2016 for $249 on both iOS and Android.
10. Ovia: Ovia is a simple tracker app focused on monitoring your cycle to help you know your most fertile days. Once you’ve successfully got a bun in the oven, you can transfer over to their pregnancy app for preg-related feedback and education.
11. Yono ($150, expected to ship January 2016): Mama, you’ve never seen a wearable quite like this. The Yono is an in-ear basal thermometer that captures your bod’s true temperature. You pop it in at night, place it in its little pod in the AM and data measuring, recording and charting is handled for you.
12. Clue: This app is a fertility app whose algorithm calculates and predicts your cycle and can let you know the best times for conception, as well as whether your cycle is normal and when to expect your period. It’s also one of the few fertility apps that syncs with Apple’s HealthKit in iOS.
13. TempDrop ($85): Similar to Yono, this sensor that measures (you guessed it) your basal temp can do its work while you sleep. It tracks more than just degrees though — Tempdrop wants to learn your unique cycle, determine sleep quality and schedule and overall add context to what it all means for you and your fertility.
Have you been tracking? Has it helped you prevent or plan? Let us know in the comments!
(Photo via Getty)