Fertility Tracking Meets Innovation: A Teacher’s Honest Review of the Inito Monitor

The Inito Monitor is spendy. Its initial price and test strips add up quickly, though it is HSA eligible. I was hesitant at first due to the cost. One of the reasons I loved using the FEMM method was that it's so affordable!

After much discussion with my doctor, we decided that using the Inito Monitor would be cheaper for me than continually ordering that many labs per cycle. My physician had planned to use the information to glean more about what might be impacting my shortened luteal phase. The monitor tracks all four major reproductive hormones: FSH, Estrogen, LH and Progesterone, and it puts them into an easy-to-read graph for you.

After using it through both postpartum and normal cycles, and for roughly a year, I have some thoughts.

Let's talk about using it postpartum first!

Postpartum is wild. Charting is wild. Observations are wild. It's a fun time. Even for a FEMM teacher it can feel scary. Using the monitor during a postpartum season of trying to avoid pregnancy gave me an extra sense of security due to it's ability to track progesterone and confirm ovulation.

It was significantly more expensive to use postpartum. Normally, one box of 15 strips would equate to one cycle but in postpartum when I was not cycling normally, I was using one test strip each day for a long time. However, we did use the monitor in conjunction with the FEMM postpartum protocols for a better picture of what my fertility was doing postpartum. The cross-check of confirming ovulation helped us to stick to our decision to avoid a pregnancy and gave me extra confidence in my own charting when it can be so confusing.

Normal cycles was a different experience all together.

Using the monitor during normal cycles was a bit much, honestly. For those who are trying to concieve and are healthy, I don't think it's very necessary because the regular LH strips I normally use are testing for the same information much cheaper. However, for those who are trying to concieve and have or suspect issues, it would be so nice to have a big picture of what your reproductive hormones are doing each cycle. It allows year teacher (me!) and your physician to deduce more about what's happening in your body with more concrete data.

I was not trying to concieve with the monitor during normal cycles, but I was merely using the data to share with my physician so she can better inform my treatment and management of my endometriosis symptoms. I'll use the below image as an example.

Here, you can see my four major reproductive hormones: FSH, Estrogen, LH and Progesterone. My estrogen is extremely high compared to the rest of them, and that is what my doctor has been watching. Clearly, I am still ovulating, which we can confirm from the progesterone rise and healthy levels. There are some cycles where my estrogen remains in normal range, but there are others where it rises too much and stays high for too long as seen above.

While it was so nice to see this data and not drop a ton of money on labs each month, it was slightly more effort to use this monitor when not trying to conceive, since the monitor is meant only for those who are trying to conceive. I still had to observe and use my FEMM protocols for avoiding and chart that nightly, but also had to remember to run this test each day in the morning. I am a type-A person and I knew I would get addicted to seeing this data laid out for me each month. So, here we are, ready to be done with the monitor for now since I have gotten the data my physician needs, and ready to save some costs! But, I find myself not wanting to forgo the monitor since it gives me such detailed data.

Overall, I'd rate the monitor on it's own a 7/10. My only downsides are cost and that it's not developed for trying-to-avoid pregnancy just yet. I would love to see that addition in the future! Don't want to use the monitor? You can always just use the FEMM method!

FEMM Introduction

Book Now

Share this to Pinterest: