Parent Paraphrenalia: Knowhen Saliva Ovulation Test Kit

I genuinely do not mean to brag or boast, but my husband and I were extremely lucky.

 When it comes to conceiving a child, we’ve all heard the saying, “it only takes one time!” For our situation, this was pretty much #truelife. We were very fortunate that, literally, it took us about one time to conceive. I know that so many couples struggle with conception, so I do not take how quickly it happened for us, for granted.

 When we made the decision to TTC (try to conceive), it didn’t take me long to realize how freakin’ difficult it is to figure out the best time to try. Sure, we all know that when we’re menstruating, there is that golden period where we are our must fertile.

 Okay, that’s cool and all but good luck actually KNOWING when that perfect time is. I have seen and heard of different apps and products, like the Ava bracelet, that help track the perfect time to conceive. From my understanding, they use your physiology to better determine the time to try, but to be honest, we just had a lot of sex. If anyone has tried this out, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Good, bad, indifferent.

 I did hear, however, of an ovulation kit that was saliva-based, as opposed to urine. I was intrigued and reached out to the company directly, to see if they would be willing to have me test the product. I spoke directly with the Founder and CEO, Helen Denise, and she was extremely friendly and willing to send me a kit for free. The kit is through a company called Knowhen, through Hilin Life Products. Their website claims that the saliva ovulation test is 98% accurate, and only requires a drop of saliva, to determine your most fertile window.

 The kit almost works as a microscope, if you will. The kit itself, almost looks like a lipstick tube, in the sense that the “microscope” is housed under a lens cover. You pull the cover off, leaving the lens exposed. You pull the lens off and apply your drop of saliva. Confused yet? Don’t be, just look at these pictures.

 At this point, this is pretty much where the product lost me. You are instructed, before eating, drinking, or brushing teeth, to apply a thick drop of saliva (thick drop? Is that an oxymoron like jumbo shrimp?) to the glass surface of the lens. The drop of saliva should be without bubbles, as this makes it more difficult to determine the results. I don’t know about you, but getting a drop of saliva without bubbles is damn near IMPOSSIBLE.

 The saliva must dry completely on the lens, in order to provide the most accurate results. Well, personally, with a thick drop of saliva, it definitely took more than 15 minutes to dry, when the website says to allow 5-15 minutes. I basically would apply the saliva before I left for work and check it when I would get home, eight hours later. Once the saliva is dry, you place the lens back onto the tube and look down the tube . The “microscope” allows you to view the drop of saliva in extremely close range. You compare what the saliva looks like, to the chart that is provided to you in the kit.

 Based on what image closely matches your saliva, determines how fertile you are. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to read the image and match it to the images provided to you. It just looked like a bunch of lines to me, so I genuinely had no freakin’ clue when I was fertile or not.

 Like I said, we were lucky enough to conceive naturally, without any issues. I feel like this product could be awesome, especially since it requires saliva and not urine. However, with the image being barely visible to read, and the requirement of no bubbles in the saliva drop, this wouldn’t be product I would necessarily recommend. Again, I have not used any other methods of figuring out my fertile window, but I am sure that there are other products out there, that might make finding out a little bit easier.

 Maybe I’m just not good at following directions or producing bubble-free thick saliva, but since I tested it out, this has been featured on both The Doctors and The Today Show.

 If you are TTC, does this sound like a product you would be willing to try? Are you skeptical, just like I was? If you have tried out some of the other fertile window predictors, how do you think that this would compare?