Ravika was celebrating her birthday on holiday with her husband when her Oura ring flashed an unusual alert: her health score was poor, her heart rate had gone up, 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 hadn't improved. Ravika went online and found a community of women reporting that their fitness trackers had given them signs of pregnancy through the data they collected. Soon after, she had a positive pregnancy test.
“Woman's Oura ring detected pregnancy before she knew, sparking obsession and questions about fitness tracker fertility monitoring.”
But her relief was short-lived. Cramping and a notification from her phone that her body appeared to be under significant strain sent her to the doctor. She was told to return in 10 days for tests to establish whether the pregnancy was healthy. The wait became agonising. Ravika found herself waking at 4am every night "just to refresh my app to see if my stats were still low, if my temperature was still elevated". The checking became an "obsession", she said – but "for me it really did feel like a life or death situation".
Ravika is among hundreds of women who are noticing early pregnancy signs through their fitness tracker data, often before a missed period. The devices – smart rings, watches and chest-mounted trackers – have surged in popularity: according to YouGov research, 36% of British adults owned and used one in January 2026, nearly double the proportion in July 2019. Finnish-US company Oura leads the smart ring market, followed by India's Ultrahuman and Hong Kong-based RingConn.
One of the key signals is body temperature. In a typical menstrual cycle, a woman's temperature drops just before her period; in early pregnancy it stays high. Trackers that measure temperature can pick up this change days before a standard pregnancy test would work. For Ravika, that early knowledge turned into a source of both hope and anxiety – and she is not alone.