Community post

Let me start by saying I'm so sorry for your loss and all the trouble you've had TTC. :(

Now let's discuss OPKs:

OPKs must have the test line be as dark or darker than the control line to be considered positive. If there is clearly a test line but it is noticeably lighter than the control line the OPK is negative. I know this tends to cause some confusion because a pregnancy test is positive no matter how light the test line is. Simply a test line being visible at all makes a positive.

Also, OPKs cannot confirm ovulation. OPKs only detect the LH surge that is responsible for ovulation. Unfortunately, your body can "gear up" to ovulate and not quite make it. It isn't uncommon or abnormal. When this happens your body will generally try again in time. Your body may try again in a couple or days or it may take a couple of weeks. Because of this you can have multiple positive OPKs in a cycle. You can also have a positive OPK and not actually ovulate.

What you're describing with your breasts being tender reminds me of how my breasts get around ovulation. My breasts tend to stay tender for a couple of days after ovulation. This is not to say that you definitely did ovulate as there is simply no way I could know that.

If you conceived this cycle it would be very unlikely to get a positive test a 6DPO. Once an egg is fertilized it takes approximately 7-12 days to travel from your Fallopian tube to your uterus where it implants. From the time of implantation you can expect it to take a day or 2 before you're able to get enough hCG in your urine to turn a test positive. Because of this, most women are not able to turn a positive HPT till at least 9DPO.

If you suspect you may be pregnant my best advice is to wait till your period would be late. If you don't get your period take a test. Also, if you know you wouldn't take seeing a negative well then you may want to use a conservative test date. In this case, you'd take the day after the last positive OPK as your ovulation date and use that to determine DPO for testing.

Hopefully your get your BFP soon!

I understand how OPKs work, when I say they're positive, I mean test line darker than control line. My boobs have been sore for over 2 weeks and today had some terrible cramps and aches in lower tummy, don't know what's going on but its so frustrating not knowing what's going on and doctors unwilling to find out!! X

Sorry I didn't mean to imply that you don't understand how they work. I was sorta including that to be thorough since I wasn't 100% sure from your post what you were counting as positive.

You likely already know this also since you've been TTC with PCOS for as long as you have but PCOS can cause false positives on OPKs.

Do you temp? It would probably help you track what is going on with your cycles. I have very irregular cycles and temping has saved me a lot of confusion. It's been really nice to be able to know when I ovulated from temp spikes and such. I usually get more than 1 positive OPK a cycle so I find OPKs aren't too helpful for me.

I can absolutely relate to it being frustrating when doctors just don't seem to care and won't take the time to investigate something when you know there is something not right. It took me several years and a lot of different doctors to finally find out I have Endometriosis because no one would ever investigate it. It seems doctors always assume everything is totally normal and you're overreacting.

TTC is so frustrating already without all the other added nonsense. Hopefully you get some answers soon. :/