Ravika was celebrating her birthday on holiday with her husband when her Oura ring flagged a poor health score. Her heart rate had risen, her body temperature was elevated and her heart rate variability had dropped. Yet the 34-year-old solicitor from the West Midlands felt completely fine.
A week later, the stats had not improved. Ravika went online and found a community of women all saying their fitness trackers had been giving them signs they were pregnant. A week after that, she had a positive pregnancy test.
“Fitness tracker alerted Ravika to early pregnancy signs before a positive test.”
But following cramping and a notification that her body appeared to be under significant strain, she went to the doctor. She was told to come back in 10 days for tests to establish whether the pregnancy was healthy. The wait was agonising. She began checking her fitness tracker obsessively, waking at 4am every night "just to refresh my app to see if my stats were still low, if my temperature was still elevated. I was holding on to hope that it was a viable pregnancy."
The stats became an "obsession", she said, but "for me it really did feel like a life or death situation".
For many women, the first sign of pregnancy is a missed period, around the time a pregnancy test becomes accurate. But Ravika is one of hundreds of women reporting they see signs earlier through fitness tracker data. These devices, including smart rings, smart watches and chest-mounted trackers, have surged in popularity in the UK. According to YouGov research, 36% of British adults in January 2026 owned and used one – nearly twice the proportion in July 2019.
Finnish-US company Oura leads the smart ring market, alongside India-based Ultrahuman and Hong Kong-based RingConn. A key sign of pregnancy is a change in body temperature. In a typical cycle, a woman's temperature drops just before her period; in early pregnancy it stays high. Trackers that measure temperature can spot this early symptom. Ravika also started reading Reddit posts about others' experiences.
