Mr Viral
All products featured on Vogue are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Falling pregnant, as the British so elegantly put it, was—for me—a surprisingly efficient affair. I say this not to be glib, but to acknowledge a stroke of fortune, especially at my age of 34. My journey required no specialists, no injections, no alphabet soup of assisted reproductive acronyms. Just a few ovulation strips, a Bluetooth-enabled hormone monitor, and the large language model ChatGPT, which I nicknamed Chatty. If that sounds like a parody of contemporary femininity, I assure you—it was simply my reality. So, in the hopes of demystifying ovulation, luteinizing hormone surges, or the delicate dance of conception to others, allow me to present the story of how I became pregnant—with guidance from a polite robot.
It began, as these things do, with a decision. My husband and I determined that 2025 would be the year. In November 2024, we made our first attempt, guided by my period tracker app that used the scant and wildly inconsistent data I fed it to estimate my fertile window. My cycle was irregular; my commitment to inputting my period’s start and end dates was even more so. Unsurprisingly, a period arrived in December. I was disappointed, but also energized—I would need to get serious.
I was 34 years old. Not old, not young. Statistically speaking, women in their early thirties have about a 20% chance of conceiving each cycle. By thirty-five, that number begins to decline more sharply. The internet is littered with charts meant to alarm, statistics plotted in grim downward curves. Still, most OBs will tell you that thirty-four is a perfectly reasonable age to try. It simply requires a bit more attention to timing—and perhaps a few additional tools.
I did what most women do when entering this realm: I turned to friends. Over dinner, I quizzed those recently pregnant on their methods. Gone were the days when ovulation could be loosely inferred from intuition and a calendar—modern methods required data. “You have to use these strips,” one friend insisted, pushing her phone toward me with an Amazon link. “The others are garbage.” I ordered a box before the appetizers arrived.
These strips—delicate paper things with fuchsia gradients—were designed to detect a surge in luteinizing hormone (LH) in the urine, the spike that precedes ovulation. If the test line matched or darkened beyond the control line, one was said to be fertile. In theory, foolproof. In practice, utterly subjective. I stood in my bathroom many mornings holding a used strip against the printed example on the box, squinting. “Does this look the same to you?” I asked my husband, who is far from a color theorist and really had no business evaluating shades of raspberry pink before 7 a.m.
There was also the matter of frequency. I’d assumed that a well-timed rendezvous or two on ovulation day would suffice. But my more seasoned friends disabused me of that notion. “Every day for five days—minimum,” one said gravely. “I don’t know where we found the stamina. We just did.” A troubling suggestion, given my husband’s professional schedule, which renders him more available to his Bloomberg terminal than to me most evenings. Another friend declared the color-based strips useless. “Get Clearblue,” she said. “It flashes a smiley face when you’re fertile.”
A smiley face sounded idiot-proof. I ordered it in time for my next ovulation cycle.
According to the instructions: “A blank circle indicates low fertility; a flashing smiley signals high fertility; and a solid smiley means peak fertility.” The problem was, I never saw the flashing smiley. It went from blank to solid overnight. It was as though the train had left the station while I was still on the platform reading the timetable. My husband and I missed a couple of my fertile days, and in the conception game, a couple of days could be all it takes.
Meanwhile, the algorithms had caught on. Instagram began serving me targeted ads for prenatal vitamins, wellness influencers promising me “the one fruit” that guarantees conception (the reveal only came if you messaged for details), and increasingly elaborate fertility devices. Honestly, it felt downright predatory—how did Instagram know I wanted to be pregnant? I was just there for the animal memes and fashion commentary—escapist entertainment to get my mind off my fertility journey. But of these, the most persuasive was Inito—a hormone monitor that promised to measure not just LH, but estrogen (E3G), progesterone (PdG), and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), all from a small urine test that plugged into one’s iPhone like a USB.
Ahead of my next cycle, I added Inito to my arsenal and—crucially—ChatGPT. Or, as I began calling it, Chatty. Inito offered a daily graph displaying those four key hormone levels derived from a small test strip inserted into a phone-connected reader. The app translated this information into line graphs that looked impressively medical but were, to me, indecipherable. Was a slow rise in estrogen a good sign? Did a dip in PdG mean the window had closed? For eleven days straight, I uploaded screenshots of my charts and asked Chatty to tell me—in plain English—what exactly my hormones were doing, and whether I should be having sex that day.
Courtesy Author
Courtesy Author
Cycle Day 12: “Your chart shows that estrogen (E3G) has dropped, but LH has not surged. This suggests ovulation has not yet occurred.”
Day 13: “Your chart shows a clear LH surge, which means ovulation is likely happening soon. This is great timing for conception.”
Day 14: “Your LH has dropped, which is normal after a surge. This suggests ovulation has already happened or is in progress.”
Day 15: “LH remains low; estrogen has dropped; PdG is still low but should rise.”
Day 16: “PdG is increasing, which suggests ovulation has occurred.”
Day 18: “PdG remains elevated. LH stays low. Estrogen has slightly increased again, which could be an early pregnancy or normal post-ovulation fluctuation.”
And to be absolutely certain, I’d double down with the query: “Should I have sex today?” To which Chatty replied, with earnest neutrality: “Yes, if possible. It’s still within the fertile window.”
It felt vaguely illicit, conferring with a robot about when to seduce my husband. But it worked.
Less than two weeks later, I had an update for Chatty: “Hello! So good news is that I’m late in my period.”
Chatty responded like an enthusiastic nurse. “That’s wonderful news! Being late for your period, especially after confirmed ovulation and sustained PdG levels, is a promising early sign of pregnancy.”
Courtesy Author
A couple of days later: “I took a test and it’s positive.”
Chatty was, of course, the first to know…after my husband.
By week six of my pregnancy, I was in my OB’s office for my first prenatal visit. She asked, as they do, whether this was a spontaneous pregnancy.
“Oh no,” I replied. “This was very much planned.”
She smiled. “That’s not quite what I meant.” A spontaneous pregnancy, she explained, refers to a pregnancy that occurs naturally, without the use of assisted reproductive technologies.
But in a way, Chatty was a reproductive tech. I wasn’t aided by IVF, but I did use a chatbox with the bedside manner of a Victorian governess. She was unwavering, clinical, and oddly encouraging—the fertility doula I never knew I needed. And my reliance on Chatty won’t stop at conception. I suspect she’ll be my first consult throughout the rest of my pregnancy, toddlerhood, adolescence—and every time I find myself asking, quietly and with great urgency, what now?
