With a cost of nearly $300 it’s not surprising to me that a lot of women want to know how effective the Ava Fertility Bracelet is before they decide to make the purchase. I’ve seen a lot of women looking for feedback and since I’ve been using Ava for a while now, I wanted to put together a quick Ava Fertility Bracelet Review.
I decided to get an Ava after we had been trying for about a year and while I’ve shared where we are in our fertility journey, overall I’ve been very happy with the Ava as a fertility tracking tool.
How does the Ava Fertility Bracelet Work?
The Ava Fertility Bracelet is worn at night and tracks the 5 physiological signals of fertility. Specifically it tracks skin temperature, resting pulse rate, breathing rate, heart rate and a few other items that are indicators of your health. There are definitely other, more cost effective, ways to track those things but Ava specifically uses those to feed information into their app to provide more comprehensive information about your overall fertility.
Using the data compiled while you sleep Ava provides a six day estimate of your fertile window.
What are the alternatives to monitoring fertility?
The Lutenizing hormone (LH) increases 24-48 hours prior to ovulation. This surge is what triggers the release of an egg from your ovaries. For just a few dollars per test strip you can easily measure LH throughout the month.
There are a few tricky elements to monitoring LH that I didn’t enjoy through the strip method. Similar to a pregnancy test, the strips go in urine and the low cost options are ones that require starting out by peeing in a cup. As fun as that is to do every day for a two weeks the other complicating factor is knowing how to read the tests.
There are two lines that appear on the test and as you get closer to ovulation the second line will become darker and thicker. A positive test is when both lines are ‘close’ the same color. This is literally the biggest pain to read and if you interpret it wrong you have to start all over again next month.
Once you get a positive test you have 24 hours approximately before ovulation. So 1 day notice that its ‘time’ to start trying.
The more expensive electronic tests do the interpretation for you and provide a ‘fool proof’ smiley face when you get a positive. These tests cost around $40 per month to use. If you consider that the average woman takes up to 6 months to get pregnant you’ve already spent $240 just on test strips.
Another method for monitoring fertility is using basal body temperature (BBT). Basal Body Temp is your temperature when the body is fully at rest. Ovulation will cause a small (1/2 degree – 1 degree) change in BBT.
To do BBT monitoring you need a special thermometer that shows to the hundred degree and you need to measure everyday at exactly the same time, without moving or getting up. After you have the temp you need to chart it (there are apps) and when you see a positive change it means ovulation has ALREADY HAPPENED. At that point you’ve completely missed the window and have to start again for next month.
How the Ava Fertility Bracelet is different
I tried both LH strips and BBT monitoring before getting an Ava Fertility bracelet and honestly I hated the experience. I am not a morning person so BBT was impossible for me to get a consistent reading. LH strips were simply too difficult to interpret and buying the electronic ones is just as expensive as using the Ava fertility tracker, especially when you consider that we’ve been trying to conceive for over three years now.
I love the simplicity of the Ava Fertility tracker. All I have to do is wear it every night and I get a full download of detailed information about how I slept and where I am in my cycle. It updates based on the data provided each day and alerts me when I’m entering my fertile window.
That said, I am one of the people who did not get pregnant after a year of use. That’s not because of the Ava, that’s because I have unexplained infertility. It’s an entirely different reason and Ava works exactly as it is supposed to. I’ve even verified the data my fertility bracelet provides me using LH test strips.
If you’ve already been trying for a while and want to purchase an Ava Fertility Tracker it’s definitely worth it to pay for the 1 year guarantee. Infertility isn’t something a smart monitoring device can control.
My favorite thing about using Ava is being empowered to know whats going on with my body, without having to jump through a ton of hoops and guessing games. With all the pressure related to infertility, testing is the last thing I need to be stressed out. Now that I’m all the way down the infertility testing rabbit hole, I still use the Ava app for monitoring and tracking.
If you are interested in checking out the Ava, head over to their website using my affiliate link. Ava did not sponsor me to write this review, but I will receive a small commission if you choose to buy one using my link.
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