So I use two different BBT (basal body temperature) apps for my iPhone. One is called Kindara (top chart) and the second is called Fertility Friend (bottom chart). I like both but for different reasons. Kindara to me if very "eye friendly". It seems to read easier especially if you are also including your cervical mucus. Fertility Friend will pinpoint your ovulation based on your BBT. I haven't seen Kindara do it.
The way you chart your BBT is right when you get up. They say you shouldn't even get out of bed. You need to have at least 4 hours of sleep and you should be temping around the same time. Working graveyards and trying to have a normal schedule on my days off doesn't allow me to temp around the same time. So I temp when I get up and it seemed to be ok.
During your period (the follicular phase), you're temps will set basically the bar of when you could see when you are ovulating. During this time, cysts will be forming which will release the egg during ovulation. When you ovulate, you'll see a spike in your temp and this is when your cervical mucus will be the best for conception. It'll be consistent to that of egg whites. I was so oblivious to what EWCM (egg white cervical mucus) was. Does it really look like raw egg whites? It sure does. Imagine cracking an egg and looking at the egg white and the yolk before it is cooked. The egg white is clear and stretchy, almost like something you'd blow out your nose when you're sick. That, my friends, is EWCM which will help your guy's sperm swim to that egg. So you will learn to love EWCM if you're TTC. Remember, you have 12-48 hours to try and fertilize that egg! Afterwards, your temp will rise because of the increase of progesterone. This is your luteal phase which is basically when the blastocyst (a fertilized egg) attempts to implant itself in the uterine walls. Progesterone is a hormone needed to help sustain a pregnancy. If you're pregnant, your BBT will continue to rise. If you're not pregnant, your BBT will drop right before you start a new cycle.
As you can see in my charts, during my follicular phase, my temps were lower than my luteal. Unfortunately, the dotted line on both of the charts indicate that no temperature was recorded. So I can't pinpoint when I ovulated but my best guess is between cycle day 16 thru 19.
During my luteal phase, my BBT rose a bit but it seems like it was a short phase, at least 11 days. Luteal phases are typically supposed to last 12-14 days. Without all my temperatures being recorded, I can't really tell if I may have a luteal phase defect. If your luteal phase is shorter than 12 days, there might be a lack of progesterone. Usually RE's will give progesterone supplements to try and correct this. Now you can see on CD29 (CD=cycle day) there is a grey dot on the Kindara chart and a lone blue dot on my FF chart. This is showing that there was a drop of temperature indicating that there was no pregnancy. Sure enough, the next day I started a whole new cycle.
Although it's disappointing, I have to look at the silver lining in all of this. It looks like I ovulated sometime during this cycle and I can temp everyday. It's a fresh start!
One more app I really like but don't use that much is the What To Expect Fertility app. The one nice thing about it is when we can see a positive pregnancy test, it will show you your estimated due date which is always exciting!
Happy charting!
So this cycle I decided to chart my basal body temperature. This chart was very screwy. First off, I started tempting late in the game. Second, I missed days. So I had a lot of blanks and I don't exactly know when I may have ovulated. The good news, the way my funky charts look point in the direction that I did ovulate this cycle! You go ovaries! It's about damn time. I just hope I'm not disappointed next cycle. Third, not enough...well....lovin' time. With our screwy schedules, it seems I may have ovulated right around the time I started an 11 day work week. 12 hour shifts and a 2 hour commute round trip, it really doesn't leave much time. So now that my schedule is back to normal, maybe we'll hit a home run this cycle. ;)
So, I had experienced what people describe as pregnancy symptoms. Low back pain, sore boobs, moodiness, abdominal pain, and even spotting. I was so excited. So this morning I took a test. Big. Fat. Negative. I got that annoying phrase "Not Pregnant" on my Clearblue digital test. Ugh. But since my temps look like I ovulated, I'll continue with what I'm doing. In the meantime, I'm going to invest in an ovulation monitor. They're not cheap but hey, we're coming up on a year and eight months of trying. So I think I can spend the money on a monitor to help us out.
Anyways. I'll post my charts and show you what you should NOT do (like not temping everyday)
And yes, this is MY actual test. I even covered the results with my finger and slowly revealed the ugly truth.
"Aim at the sun, and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself." - J. Howes
Well I hope everyone has been doing well!! So from my last post, I have not been back to my RE for any treatments. I've slowly changed my lifestyle as far as diet goes which was our game plan for now. I have to say, it's working! I got the best OPK result thus far! It's not a positive but it's pretty damn close. Unfortunately, our TTC efforts were put on a hold for a bit because of some health issues I was facing. I experienced severe esophagitis which made me feel miserable and you know what feeling miserable can do to you...not make you feel like you want to be doing any type of "baby dancing". So, we've had some bumps in the road but we're overcoming them.
The game plan for right now is to continue with the progress of weight loss. My work schedule is difficult to schedule workout time at the gym. I work strictly nights and I'm on call everyday I don't work. It's definitely not an excuse but just like changing my diet, I have to start somewhere and just get used to it. I'll contact my RE soon and see if I can start Metformin and Clomid shortly and see how everything turns out!
Thank you everyone for your continuous support!
"If you're going thru hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
