Women can track their BBT to find out when they are ovulating. With this time line, a woman can learn when she is most and least likely to become pregnant. About 2 weeks before your period you will ovulate , which means that one of your ovaries has released an egg. You are most likely to get pregnant on the day of ovulation and the 5 days before it. Your egg is fertile for about 12 to 24 hours after you ovulate. Avoiding sex until several days after ovulation may help you prevent pregnancy.
Keep in mind that your cycle can change, making it hard to know when you are ovulating. Some women use this information as a form of birth control. But it isn't very reliable for preventing pregnancy. Your body temperature dips a bit just before your ovary releases an egg. Then, 24 hours after the egg's release, your temperature rises and stays up for several days. After ovulation, it rises to You can track your cycle by taking your BBT every morning.
Take your temperature at the same time every day before getting out of bed. Next, record the results on a chart. While some come with interesting features, the honest truth is that any good, regular thermometer will work.
Taking your basal body temperature isn't too hard. There are a few must-keep rules:. Ideally, you should start charting on the first day of your period and continue to take your BBT temperature every morning throughout the entire cycle.
Every day, mark your waking basal body temperature, along with the time that you took your temperature. After you have experience with charting, you may discover that you can skip the first few days of your period and start taking your temperature around day 5 or 7. Until you know when you tend to ovulate, though, it's best to take your temperature all the way through the cycle. With basal body temperature charting, you're looking for an overall pattern, as opposed to a temperature spike here or there.
Your temperature may rise and fall as your cycle progresses, but you should notice a biphasic pattern after ovulation. This means that before ovulation, the temperatures are on average lower than they are after ovulation. After you see at least three higher-than-average temperatures in a row, you can most likely say that ovulation occurred on the day before the first high temperature.
If you've been tracking your cervical mucus , then you can be even more sure ovulation occurred on the day before if you noticed fertile cervical mucus on the days leading up to the temperature rise. If you're lucky, you may notice a sharp dip in temperature on the day of ovulation.
Not every woman gets this nice heads up. If you do notice a consistent dip in temperature before the rise from month to month, you should be sure to have sexual intercourse on that day. The primary way to use a BBT chart to get pregnant is to look for patterns.
Do you tend to ovulate on certain days of your cycle? Use this information to time intercourse better. For example, if over a three-month period you note that ovulation occurred on days 11, 12, and 15, then on your next cycle, you probably want to time sex between days 6 through 16, with special attention toward days 11 through You don't need to have sex on the day of ovulation to get pregnant.
If you have sex just a few times during those days before ovulation, that should be enough to get the sperm to the egg in time. Some couples try to have sex every other day the week before they expect ovulation.
This is also a good plan. To make charting most effective for you, you should track more than just your morning temperature. Here are some other things you may want to notice and indicate on your chart. Here are some other things you may want to record on a BBT chart:. One of the advantages of charting is you can see whether you are ovulating.
If you're not ovulating, you can't get pregnant. If you are ovulating irregularly , it may indicate a possible infertility risk. Lack of ovulation is called anovulation and is a common cause of female infertility.
Most women with anovulation can take fertility drugs , which will trigger ovulation and hopefully help them get pregnant. Yes and no. Many women read into every little temperature fluctuation. It's part of the two-week wait obsession and the never-ending search for early pregnancy signs.
There are four ways a BBT chart can indicate a pregnancy the possibility of pregnancy. You can only know if and when you ovulated a few days after it happened in a BBT chart. You can look back on your chart and determine this. You are most likely to conceive if you had sex on the two days preceding ovulation. If you have an implantation dip on your BBT chart : An implantation dip is a one-day drop in temperature about a week after ovulation.
The majority of the time, an implantation dip is nothing more than a mid-cycle dip in temperature and does not indicate pregnancy. If you have a triphasic pattern on your BBT chart : A triphasic temperature pattern is a second temperature increase occurring about one week after ovulation.
Seeing a triphasic pattern on your BBT chart is slightly more likely to indicate a potential pregnancy, but it is also no guarantee. A triphasic pattern indicates that progesterone rose a little bit more, causing your temperatures to also rise slightly more. If your luteal phase is longer than normal : The most reliable way to detect pregnancy on a BBT chart takes patience.
The old-fashioned method: By waiting to see if your luteal phase —the time between ovulation and your expected period—is longer than usual. If you see that your luteal phase has gone at least one day past the usual length, you might be pregnant. By tracking your basal body temperature each day, you may be able to predict when you'll ovulate.
This may help you determine when you're most likely to conceive. If you're hoping to get pregnant, you can use the basal body temperature method to determine the best days to have sex. Similarly, if you're hoping to avoid pregnancy, you can use the basal body temperature method to figure out which days to avoid unprotected sex. The basal body temperature method alone may not provide enough warning time to effectively prevent pregnancy. Often, people use this method in combination with other fertility awareness-based methods for avoiding pregnancy.
Basal body temperature can be used as a way to predict fertility or as a part of a method of contraception, by helping you gauge the best days to have or avoid unprotected sex.
Tracking your basal body temperature for either fertility or contraception is inexpensive and doesn't have any side effects. Some women may choose to use the basal body temperature method for religious reasons. The basal body temperature method can also be used to detect pregnancy. Following ovulation, a rise in basal body temperature that lasts for 18 or more days may be an early indicator of pregnancy. The basal body temperature method is often combined with the cervical mucus method of natural family planning, where you keep track of cervical secretions throughout the course of a menstrual cycle.
You might also use an electronic fertility monitor to measure hormone levels in your urine, which can tell you which days you're fertile. This combination of approaches is sometimes referred to as the symptothermal or symptohormonal method. Likewise, using the basal body temperature method for birth control doesn't pose any direct risks, but it doesn't offer protection from sexually transmitted infections — and it's one of the least effective natural family planning methods.
As many as 1 in 4 women — maybe even more — who use fertility awareness-based methods to prevent pregnancy will become pregnant after one year of typical use. Using the basal body temperature method along with another fertility awareness-based method for birth control may improve the method's effectiveness. But, the method requires motivation and diligence. If you don't want to conceive, you and your partner must avoid having sex or use a barrier method of contraception during your fertile days each month.
Tracking your basal body temperature doesn't require special preparation. However, if you want to use the basal body temperature along with another fertility awareness-based method for birth control, consult your health care provider first if:. Take your basal body temperature every morning before getting out of bed. Use a digital oral thermometer or one specifically designed to measure basal body temperature.
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