Last summertime I sat in the bathroom of an Irish pub , try out desperately to figure out a maths equation . I had abandon my friend at the bar , where I ’d been make to drink an IPA , to tend to this press arithmetical in individual . If I solved right for ‘ x , ’ the answer would allow for me with some crucial entropy — whether or not my pregnancy was go well .
Earlier , a fundamental number in this chemical formula had been leave on my voicemail by a nurse at my medico ’s office : The grade of my human chorionic gonadotrophin ( or hCG ) , a endocrine the consistency start make a few days after invention . The hCG number was suppose to be replicate roughly every 72 hours since then , according to a internet site I ’d somehow google myself to — after I ’d looked up what the heck this hCG affair was .
But I was missing one bit of information . “ What we need to know , ” the nurse had read , “ is when you become pregnant . ” Although I had a few rough estimate , based on , you know , receive sex , I really had no idea . With my doctor ’s part now close , it was up to me to surmount the spermatozoon - egg algebra in this sticky , woodwind instrument - paneled stall . I secure in a few dissimilar potential date , feeling for the first clip in my life like my body was a foreign heap I happened to wear around me like an ill - meet sundress .
As I crunched the data , I start to see that even with the most generous calculation , my hCG was n’t comport the way it was supposed to . There , with a faux - vintage Guinness mirror over my psyche , I realise that my pregnancy credibly was n’t either .
I ’d always known I need to have a family , yet I never experienced those maternal urge that everyone swear I ’d start up to experience as my biological clock ticked past 30 . When my husband and I got get married , that seemed as practiced a reason as any to get started . But I was still in no bang . During the winter I turned 35 , I cease taking my nascency restraint pills . By summer , I was pregnant .
Or was I ? The restroom math I hoped I had cypher wrongly was confirm a few weeks later on at the Dr. ’s office , as she peer inside my womb with an ultrasound baton . Even with my shameful equivocalness factored in around when I ’d in reality conceived , she should have insure a practicable conceptus , a diminutive jiffy ostentate like an LED bike light . rather , there was only a hollow ring . She shook her head . “ No , I ’m sorry . ”
She left me in the room to change , the paradigm of my empty womb still on the screen . I slow get to over for my clothes , all blindsided . The pregnancy that I ’d nonchalantly and somewhat ambivalently stumbled into had been snatched away from me by a gritty image on a disastrous - and - ashen monitoring gadget .
And all of a sudden , all I want in the world was to be pregnant again .
Since nobody ever talks about miscarriages , I ca n’t really say that there are a few thing I bid someone had told me about miscarriages . But here are three thing I figured out about stillbirth after I had one . I ’ll call them two truths and a lie .
First truth : Miscarriages are far more rough-cut than you might consider . If you ask three char of childbearing eld that you know , chances are at least one will have fall behind a maternity . The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists consider that up to one in five pregnancies will end in miscarriage . Many miscarriages are early , though , so sometimes charwoman do n’t know they actually had one , assign it to a former period .
Second true statement : Most women will get pregnant again without any problem — miscarriage is not always a sign that something ’s wrong with you . Many miscarriages are the termination of a random genetic irregularity that ’s determined at creation . Or as I wish to think about it , a “ sorry ballock ” ( or spermatozoan ! ) . As your organic structure ages , you ’ll statistically have more risky eggs . That ’s why as you get old , your prospect of miscarriage goes up .
And here ’s the Trygve Halvden Lie : The miscarriage itself is n’t the bad part . It ’s the days or weeks or month or old age after it ’s all over , as you impatiently expect for the hormones to tardily empty your body , searching “ abortion ” on your phone in bed with the brightness level cranked fashion down so you do n’t wake up your husband , hold your hands over your abdomen as you sob quiet in the dark , wonder if you ’ll ever get pregnant again .
It was during one of those 2:00 a.m. Googling sessions that I stumble upon a tale aboutGlow , an app that was helping adult female concieve . I ’d see plenty of those those bicycle - monitoring sites : cursive logos , a URL with “ fecundity ” or “ ova ” unavoidably embedded in it , lot and lots of pink . They worked by helping you track certain subtle hints associated with ovulation , like a basal eubstance temperature growth and a alteration in your cervical mucous secretion . I thought back to the first clock time I endeavor to get pregnant , when I jotted down fragments of data every few days ( okay , whenever I remember ) on the newspaper chart that came with my Target thermometer . This seemed like even more work I would n’t do .
Glow was designed to brook aside from its all-embracing range of competitors with clean art and colour other than pink ( thank good )
But there was something about this one that made me keep click . First , it was good - looking : It was almost like it was designed to equalize the novel look of iOS 7 . It also talked to me like an grownup . Instead of cheesy euphemism and abbreviations for periods and intercourse , the selective information was present in normal , grown - up language . But here was the tangible determining factor for me : The app was blue and imperial , not pinkish .
Plus , it had something calledGlow First , a kind of crowdfunding saving programme for couples having trouble conceiving . We could choose to pay off $ 50 per month which would go into a birth rate fund . After 10 calendar month , most of the couple would get pregnant , statistically , and those who did n’t would get to split the rest of the money for fertility treatments .
I downloaded Glow .
In over two X of consider procreative wellness practitioners , not a single doctor had ever propose that I track my cycle . When I had started to entertain the approximation of getting pregnant , I asked one of my physician for tips on what I should do , and she looked at me rather peculiarly and offered this sage advice : “ Just have sex . ”
But as I would come to find , it ’s not actually that easy . The richness windowpane is already moderately narrow-minded , and as you get older you ’re frankly only looking at a daylight or two when you’re able to actually get significant . When you ’re 35 , you do n’t have time to be casual about it . I realized that I had spent far too much of my life clueless about the happenings in my pelvic region . I wanted all the information laid out cleanly for me . Very quickly , and with endearing graphics that did n’t offend my discerning taste , Glow cope to instance everything I did n’t recognize .
The casual logarithm get over fertility discriminative stimulus as well as health data . The app really made gathering information about cervical mucous secretion ( CM ) moderately fun ( well , as fun as it could be )
Using the app was gratifying . I ’d tap in my temperature and other fertility cues during my morning Instagram - provender viewing . Later , I ’d fill in basic health information about my day — exercise , alcohol ingestion , push — while ride the bus . ( Now the app syncs with seaworthiness trackers to import all that data as well . ) When I did n’t log entropy , the app would knock me . But I did n’t require the reminders very often . I became persevering about trailing . My husband was able to download the app , too , and have access to all my info . defy I say , it was almost fun .
Right out I embark on to see patterns which storm me . It flex out that even though I have a pretty average 29 - daytime Hz , I ovulate really former , commonly on day 17 or 18 . Which means if I was going by the “ typical ” Clarence Shepard Day Jr. 14 ovulation most women experience , I would have been missing my fertile windowpane entirely . In fact , this is one of the biggest insight Glow has gleaned from their users , says Jennifer Tye , Glow ’s head of marketing and partnership : 50 percent of woman are falsely judge their cycle by up to four days .
I was intrigued why Glow would know something so specific about its user until I learned more about the troupe ’s rootage : Glow was in reality depart by PayPal founder and Yelp chairmanMax Levchin , who had identified fertility number as a trouble in motivation of a tech root . “ We ’re a data point company at heart , but we ’re taking these capabilities from datum scientific discipline and machine eruditeness and utilise them to the very tangible worldly concern issue of procreative wellness , ” say Tye .
An infographic prepared by Glow designate where 20,000 of their drug user have conceived and how up to half of their users were wrongly figure their cycle distance
The data - driven perspective also inform Glow ’s educational focus and the way of life it talks to its users . “ Educating adult female before conception is something we feel very stormily about , and that includes both physical and mental health , ” says Tye . “ We ’re able-bodied to to flag potential danger or concerns and we approach it with very personal perspective . If you start to look things up on the internet you could terminate up reading a lot of shuddery hooey , so the goal is to give you insights that are specific to what ’s going on with you . ” The personalised information is what help the app immediately feel relevant and useful to me : I father everyday connexion to sketch about fertility over 35 or getting meaning after a loss .
Some cleaning lady do need aesculapian intervention to get fraught . But Glow can help oneself name some of those problems , says Tye . Certain richness issues , like polycystic ovarian syndrome ( PCOS ) , have symptoms like extra - tenacious cycles which Glow ’s algorithm will isolate . A woman experiencing this might get a message say her to ask her Doctor of the Church about PCOS . Glow can then educate the app to ask better question relate to symptoms that might be red flags .
The elaborate data Glow is compile can reveal very nuanced insights , like how often distich in their 20s are get gender during their rich window or how long it takes for the modal 35 - twelvemonth - previous cleaning lady to get pregnant . In fact , Glow is introduce details culled from their first yr of datum collection at the American Society of Reproductive Medicine later this year . While they do n’t release figures for how many char have downloaded their app , Glow does have one telephone number they ’re proud to advance : In less than a yr , Tye says Glow has helped 20,000 cleaning lady get pregnant . There ’s even a name for these successes : “ Glow babies . ”
Glow now has tens of thousand of chart from women which they can analyse . The app garner questions about emotional wellness as well as physical health .
Talking with Tye , I bug out to see why my experience with Glow was so positive . The app collapse me a series of task to do each solar day that made me sense connected to the process : I fill out my basic entropy , but the app also asked me how I felt emotionally and provided me with health tips . “ I cerebrate there is that aspect , a feeling of acquirement or like you have some control , ” says Tye . “ you could see what you could interchange or alter about your behaviour . ”
Some of the nudges made me wander my heart — I remember being get at by the app telling me repeatedly to eat a spinach salad , and my husband got a nice cock-a-hoop pop - up on his screen reminding him to have sexual urge while he had his phone out at work — but for the most part , the app provided useful everyday meditation on my fertility . In a room , Glow matte up like a game where I was taking incremental steps , every 24-hour interval , towards my goal .
I ’m not enounce that the information about how to get pregnant is somehow proprietary to Glow . But have it right here on my home plate screen , snuggle next to Twitter and Google Maps , made it more appropriate to my everyday life style . I do almost everything else in my life on my phone . Why could n’t I use it to get pregnant , too ?
When another natal day lapse and I still was n’t pregnant , we had been ordered to set about the nerve-wracking procedure of fertility testing . I was subjected to interminable echography to examine the health of my ovaries , had fluids inject into my cervix to test the receptivity of my fallopian tube-shaped structure , and even had an MRI to supervise the size and shape of a heavy , unknown blob in my uterine bulwark , which was “ plausibly ” nothing to vex about . But they were n’t sure . Each surmisal the MD floated by me was terrifying .
To make matters worse , I ’d leave my examination with poorly - worded interpretations of my status stump across my paperwork — Advanced Maternal Age , high-pitched - Risk Pregnancy , Elderly Primigravida — hints that I had made a horrible mistake by waiting so long to get pregnant . Yet once I download Glow , the app delivered positive statistics for 36 - year - old moms or linked me to studies on the mean clip it take duad to conceive . It keep me go . I tracked and we tried .
Dr. never did settle what — if anything — was unseasonable with me . But due to all these mystical factors which may or may not have been impeding my power to conceive or sustain a pregnancy , I was recommended for intrauterine insemination , or IUI , which would possibly advance our chances of success .
On the sidereal day I went in for my final consultation to start the IUI process , the nursemaid jot down info on my chart , asking me , as usual , the engagement of my last catamenia . I tell her the particular date . “ But , ” I said confidently , “ I ovulate pretty late . This cycle I ovulated on day 18 . ” I knew this , without any dubiety . I could show her on my app , I extend . She was looking at me suspiciously , but not because of my command cognition of my consistency ’s follicular stage . She handed me a plastic cupful and instruct me to make up a sojourn the restroom , just in fount .
Just as I sat down with the doctor , the nanny knocked on the door with a huge smile on her case .
I was meaning . Without the medical intervention that everyone had claimed I take . We had done it ourselves . of course .
My slenderly OCD personality makes me a natural nominee for living the quantified life , yet my fitness tracking up until this point had been a serial publication of failed experiment . I assay several times to document my caloric inlet through Lose It but ended up faking a lot of the data because I could never remember all the food I wipe out . I call back excitedly strapping on a FuelBand but then I seldom synchronise it : Here was an app that was all about something I loved to do — walking — but it never pursue me enough to update it . So I was truly suspect about the effectiveness of an app that was pretty much build around cramming a thermometer in my mouthpiece and observing the fluids oozing out of my body . Fun !
But I can honestly say that Glow has essentially changed the relationship I have with my wellness . I strongly believe in birth control , and that woman should have admission to the method acting of their alternative for free . But once I understood how predictable my own cycle was , I realized that I in all probability did n’t need it . All those years I popped birth control pill without try on to figure out how my body actually operate . In fact , the app works so well for unconstipated onetime cycle - trailing that just as many women started downloading Glow to forfend getting pregnant . Glow redesigned the app to invoke to those users as well .
The new Glow Nurture app wreak the same Glow approach to foetal developing , with trailing and crown
consequently , Glow is develop more tools to support fair sex throughout their reproductive lifetime . Glow launchedGlow Nurture , a pregnancy track app for monitoring foetal exploitation and maternal health , which make it just in time for me to start log my own gestation symptoms . They ’re also crop on a “ squawk counter ” to track babe ’s crusade , which I ’ll be needing as I roll into my third trimester . Glow is plan another app to endure fair sex experiencing post partum depression . And they ’re also influence on one for loss , which would have help me and all the other women desperately Googling during those watchful nights .
In those farseeing benighted months after my stillbirth , I promised myself that I ’d portion out my story in public in the hope that more women would be able to get wind from my experience , which is frankly still a pretty taboo subject . But by using Glow , I ’ve already been able to contribute far more to the state of women ’s reproductive health than I ever envisage . Just by updating this app every daylight I ’m compiling a useful dataset for Glow , which will help 20,000 more women have levelheaded babies — just like the one my husband and I will be welcome into our life sentence in a few unretentive months .
illustration by Tara Jacoby
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