AN HONEST REVIEW OF THE MIRA FERTILITY TRACKER
I tried the Mira Hormone Monitor for a month as part of my trimester zero plan to prepare to conceive.
My husband and I are deciding whether to try and have another baby. I’m sharing our journey here if you want to read along.
We had always imagined having a big family, both of us have four siblings each. But the reality of parenting in the 2020s quickly calmed that ambition after our first was born.
And yet, as I turn 37 and my husband celebrates his 40th, it feels like if we are to give our child the gift of a sibling, like we have both known, it’s now or never.
I have been tracking my cycles using the Fertility Awareness Method for 10 years and know them inside out. Which is why when I started to notice changes, particularly to my luteal phase temperatures, I wanted a way to get into the details of what was going on.
Enter Mira. I used the Mira fertility device for a month to measure my hormones and it has given me the answers that charting my cycle and blood tests alone couldn’t. It gave me texture and detail to the data I already had, helping me understand what I need to focus on supporting in my cycle and my health in order to boost my chances of getting pregnant naturally.
WHAT IS THE MIRA DEVICE?
Mira is a high-tech fertility test device that measures key fertility hormones like oestrogen and progesterone in your urine. The device itself is small, white and egg shaped with a screen to read your test results, a port for charging and a hole for inserting the wands. To use the Mira you need to use it with a pack of wands, which are designed to test levels of various hormones in your urine. I used the Max 4 wands which measure the four main menstrual cycle hormones: FSH, LH, Oestrogen and PdG (the urine metabolite form of progesterone). These wands cost more as they measure more hormones but I honestly believe if you want to get a clear benchmark of your fertility, it’s necessary to test all four. At least at the start.
WHAT IS THE MIRA APP?
The Mira app is an essential tool for using the Mira device. Once you have done your reading the Mira fertility monitor syncs to the app and you can review your results each day. While you can read the daily results on the device, it's best to connect it to the Mira app.
The app provides your results in relation to your previous results and average expected results for each cycle phase.
The best thing about the app is the graph it provides. You get to see a full chart of what your hormones are doing each day, in real time without having to take multiple blood tests, all from the comfort of your own home. This is nothing short of revolutionary. And what I found as a result of the Mira has shifted my approach to preparing for pregnancy, more on that below.
Although easy to set up and onboard, the user-friendliness of the app leaves a lot to be desired however. The home screen is unnecessarily busy with not only your fertility summary screen but also promotions and articles from Mira. The thing I found most frustrating about the app were the ovulation predictions. Prompted by the onboarding sequence I entered data about previous cycles. The app used this to ‘predict’ when ovulation was going to happen right off the bat instead of waiting and learning from my test data.
The predictions were wrong and I knew that because I track my cycle using the Fertility Awareness Method. But for someone new to tracking, I think this feature is at best, unhelpful, at worst, misleading.
HOW DOES THE MIRA DEVICE WORK?
Using Mira couldn’t be simpler. On test day, you collect some urine from your first wee of the day in the little silicone cup that is provided with the wands. Test days are decided by the Mira app algorithm depending on your goal for using the Mira and you are prompted the night before and morning of to help you remember to test consistently.
You then dip one wand into the silicone cup for 20 seconds, place the lid on the wand, and then insert it into the Mira device.
15 minutes later, your results are ready and synced to the app. The app handily tells you if your readings are within the expected range for where you are in your cycle.
And that’s literally it.
HOw mAny cycles with MiRA DOEs it tAke tO get PRegnAnt?
This is a bit of a ‘how long is a piece of string’ question, and the answer is it depends on a few factors.
First, if this is your first time using anything to track your cycle, expect there to be a bit of a learning curve. Mira gives you a lot of data on your cycle which is only really valuable if you know what to do with it.
Second, if your cycles show abnormal hormone patterns based on the Mira results, unless you know what to do to rebalance them, Mira isn’t going to help you get pregnant faster. You really need to work with a practitioner who can help you understand what the results mean and what to do with them.
Like most FemTech devices. The tech is fantastic but if you don’t have the education and understanding behind it, which most of us don’t, you’re just going to end up with more data and potentially more overwhelm.
As a women’s hormonal health practitioner, I have found the Mira device to be an invaluable addition to my work supporting women with their fertility. The data provides an empirical underpinning for the symptoms the woman is often suffering with and it guides us on what to prioritise first to support her fertility. That could look like making shifts to her diet, introducing targeted supplements, making lifestyle changes to support her nervous system or reducing exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals in the home and in self-care products.
WHY DID I CHOOSE MIRA?
I got pregnant with my first child on my first try. But the preparation for getting pregnant began 6 months prior. Tracking my basal body temperature showed that I had a short luteal phase - often only around 8-9 days. To be able to get pregnant and stay pregnant, your luteal phase needs to be at least 10 or 11 days long. So supporting progesterone production became my focus for 6 months and I made changes to my diet and lifestyle to help lengthen my luteal phase.
This time round, my luteal phase was fine but I noticed that the basal body temperatures of this phase were lower than my usual. They were still within the acceptable range but, with years of history on my cycles, I knew they were low for me. Although my hormone blood tests all came back normal I couldn’t help wondering that something else was going on….
So I decided to try out Mira and what I found was not only astonishing but it also would NEVER have shown up on a blood test.
What looked normal on paper was actually a fight to the death between oestrogen and progesterone. Progesterone is meant to be the dominant hormone in the luteal phase but as you can see below, it is overtaken by oestrogen several times. Some hormones just don’t know how to take a back seat!
I combined this data with the results of my holistic assessment of my cycle using my signature Fertile Flow Framework. Looking at the data, the symptoms the charting together was like one giant arrow pointing to the root cause.
The problem wasn’t that I wasn’t making enough progesterone, rather that progesterone was fighting for its life. Why? Cortisol dysregulation.
You see, two years ago I made the biggest life decision. My family and I packed up our rented flat in London, shoved all our belongings into the back of a van and moved to the south of France. I also left the most secure job you could ever have to start my own business.
Let’s just say my nervous system is fried. And my menstrual cycle has been waving the white flag.
WhAt I’m DOing DiffeRently tO PRePARe fOR PRegnAncy
I’m not starting where most people start: with a prenatal supplement and eating a few more vegetables. Thanks to Mira I know I need to seriously support my HPA axis - aka. my nervous system. You see, hormones in the body are similar to a lock and key system. Each hormone is a key and the cells have locks on them. The problem with cortisol is that it shares a similar key to progesterone so they compete for lockspace with cortisol often blocking progesterone from being able to act on the cell. I also want to incorporate a focus on the gut to help my body get rid of excess oestrogen.
I go into more detail here about what I’m doing to support my HPA axis in trimester zero but this includes things like prioritising rest, morning light, protein rich breakfast soon after waking, and journaling.
Is MiRA OvulAtiOn WORth it?
I honestly think that the Mira fertility device is 100% worth it but only if you are working with someone who can help you interpret the data and turn those into insights.
The Mira device provides lab-grade data on your hormones, at home. The only other way to get that would be through a daily blood test and we all know how hard it can be to get just one blood test out of our doctors sometimes, let alone a daily one!
Hormones fluctuate in the body and the most valuable way to understand them to get data on them over the course of an entire cycle which is what the Mira device provides.
It’s from there that you can make decisions about what’s going on with your hormones, why you aren’t pregnant yet and what you need to focus on to get that positive test quicker than you would if you just randomly try things influencers recommend on IG.
That’s why the Mira device coupled with the support and guidance of a hormone practitioner would be the most effective route to better hormones, more energy, better mood and hopefully that positive pregnancy test.
Want to try Mira yourself? Use the code 2BAUMANN20 for 20% off the Mira Device and wands at checkout. If you work with me as a client, the discount goes up to 30%, even during a sale.
