Dear manufacturer,

I wish to complain about your product.

How can a girl be expected to pee in a "cup" (which cup? the one I haven't got from the doctor for the urine test they gave me a cup at the lab for? one of our landlady's Vegas mugs? a spare glass jar? an empty Starbucks vanilla roibos chai latte cup?), dip the stick for 10 seconds, leave it for five minutes ("or possibly 10 to confirm a negative result") and meanwhile run back to the bedroom where her husband is rapidly going off the boil? And if I leave the stick in a handy bathroom drawer, and minister to Mr Spouse's needs, you're going to have to be awfully quick to get back before you are no longer allowed to read the test.

Although I was wondering whether having my insides poked about would make the little girls be a bit reluctant to come out and play, I wasn't prepared for 3 straight days of negative - including the latest day I normally get a positive OPK/fertility meter reading - and not just "well, maybe, let's think about it tomorrow" negative - pretty much blank white negative. Especially since all the other OPK type things I've used before (Persona, an early version of the Clearblue meter, and some digital Clearblue sticks also once I think) have had at least some form of second line from day 13 at the latest.

But as the big girls have done their "ooh, we're sore now" post-ovulation, presumably progesterone-induced end-of-day sigh, I'm assuming the cheap OPKs are a pile of, as my nieces would say, caca.

So I think I'm going to start with the suppositories on day 18 not day 17, just to be on the safe side, but I'm not sure if I'm going to call the doctor about using them in, er, a different area, given just how sore we both were last month.

And then I'm going to ignore the OPKs and use either my Persona, or nothing.