Why Is This App Useful?
Ms. Tin told me that when she was in her late 20s and thinking of having kids, she realized that no one had come up with a program or application that would help her understand and analyze her cycle. “I needed a product that didn’t exist, so I decided to build it myself,” she explained. After developing a prototype, she then talked to hundreds of women to find out what they’d want to see in this kind of app.
She learned through these interviews that many women who don’t have a 28-day cycle don’t feel “normal.” But your body’s not a clock, and every woman’s cycle varies. Clue helps women keep track of their cycle.
“Most women, at some point, feel a certain way and aren’t sure what's going on. Maybe they feel pain, but don't know if it’s normal. They wonder if their body is changing and if that’s healthy. That’s what is so powerful about this app. It helps answer their questions. Plus, a woman can only get pregnant about six days during her cycle, so this app helps them determine when those six days fall in the cycle,” she says.
The information that women enter into Clue is analyzed and lets them know when there may be a health reason to see their doctor. Many women see their gynecologist just once a year if they’re not pregnant, so this app also helps to educate women on their sexual health.
The Clue app is user-friendly and simple to use. You record any pain, your period, cervical fluid, mood, and sexual activity, plus there’s a section for notes if you’d like to jot something down that you think is important — such as the results of an ovulation test or your basal temperature.
In the future, Ms. Tin would like to add features to the app, such as more categories for tracking or having the capability of sending a text to your partner when you’re ovulating!
You can download Clue for free on your iPhone or Android.
Planning a Pregnancy?
Here are some other tips from Ms. Tin about fertility:
- Brush up on your sex ed. Do you know when in your cycle you’re most likely to conceive? Then you’re ahead of most women. In a Yale School of Medicine study from last year, only 10% of women surveyed knew that sex needs to happen before ovulation to optimize conception — not after. In fact, there are only six days in the entire menstrual cycle where it’s possible to get pregnant.
- Start using a cycle tracker (like Clue). The first thing you need to know is that your body is not a clock. A 28-cycle is a global average but may not be your personal average, and ovulation does not occur on the same day for every woman. Start using an app to keep track of your personal trends and learn how long your cycle lasts.
- Fertility has many factors. To pinpoint your most fertile times, start by using over-the-counter ovulation tests. Or read up on the Fertility Awareness Method and track your basal body temperature and cervical fluid and position. You can take a lot of the guesswork out of conceiving by adding more data points to your tracking process.
