A concerned other half needs advice

I recommend temping and charting using the fertility friend website/app. Usually it confirmed what I knew but the paid for version also lets you compare your charts so you can see if your pattern is different that month to other months.

Do you do the duo-fertility thing? Sorry - I think I've misunderstood your post??

How does your gynae teach you to chart?

WHY do my italics not work? :(

maples

This was your post:

^I've been actually advised by a senior gynae to chart bbt. So he obviously thinks it works.

The duo fertility patch thing that sticks on your arm takes around 2,000 temps a day. Because it does that it can actually give advance warning of ov because it recognises the patterns of the few days before bbt rises. This is not possible with manual charting.^

This is VERY different to the "one temperature a day" BBT tests that are advocated on MN. This is a constant monitoring of what your body is doing.

And just so you know - I know all about how different body temperatures and hormones increase and decrease. My insulin needs change from day to day depending on it - so that kind of constant monitoring would be good even from a non-TTC perspective.

I didn't know that could do that though - it's very interesting. Can you post a link?

Mainly - whoops yes. That was directed at PurpleDragon - sorry.

I think it's funny that because I've not had a baby, I am yelled down when I say (verbatim!) what you just said that the only accurate symptom is a positive pregnancy test.

It's amazing how there are people who will happily shout you down for being practical. I will not, nor will I ever, give false hope or any unsound medical advice. May I be struck down with lightening for daring to not think the same as every other woman in the world

I assume you're talking to purpledragon not me? Because I don't agree with old wives tales either. I felt like I was getting my period both times I was pregnant. (Although on 13 DPO with DS I couldn't finish a glass of wine, which was most unlike me. I didn't link it to pregnancy though, as anyone who has tried to conceive for years knows that nothing but a positive pregnancy text actually means pregnancy. And that doesn't guarantee a baby). I can tell when I've ovulated though. I've read plenty of peer-reviewed articles, believe me. Four years is a long time to be researching this stuff.

I do not believe that we are all equal. The only thing that I will tell people to actual do is have a lot of sex and put a pillow under their bums.

I do not tell anyone that they can pinpoint when they ovulate or that if your boobs are sore, you're pregnant. I do not say that if you put a wedding ring over your tummy, you will know if you are pregnant with a phantom or a real baby. I do tell people that if they chart their temps they will know for SURE when they ovulate or that if you know what date your neighbour had a water pump put in, you're having a girl.

You have a problem with me because I try not to give false hope. I am honest about the true facts of conception and I don't kumbaya and hold hands about symptoms and fallacies.

Fine so I don't believe in bullshitting. Does that make either of us right or wrong? I would have thought it just made us different.
And I think most people probably need more practicality in the 2ww than fallacies and wives tales.

That's a really good explanation Mainly , there are a lot of factors in all of our lives - working out your cycle and working out what works for you is it exactly.

I think the important thing is to work out your own cycle and what works for you. Through years of tracking, including amongst other things a few months of monitoring bbt, using opks, cervical fluid monitoring, blood tests, I know how my ovulation works. I get 2 days of positive opks, accompanied by fertile cervical fluid, then I ovulate the next day, again with fertile cervical fluid. I have a 14 day luteal phase. I have only ever got pregnant through sex on the actual day of ovulation. I know this because DH was working away those months!

How often to have sex depends on your situation. For some people the least stressful thing is every two days through your cycle. But if you have a 45 day cycle and a 13 day luteal phase, it matters not a jot whether you have sex on days 9, 11, 13, 15 etc. There is no chance of that sex getting you pregnant. If you have a 26 day cycle and don't know or want to know your luteal phase length, then sex every 2 days is probably a good plan. But if sex every 2 days is too much for you or impossible due to other circumstances, there are ways of timing things. I think for some people (like me), the timing can be very important.

I only ever used BBT as a backwards check iyswim, it's just part of getting to know your body.

I agree, if it's possible for a couple to do then it's a great way to go. I took issue with you saying it's impossible to time sex for conception. It's not exactly the same thing. I'm not "running around" but you give out a lot of advice and with a very authoritative tone. I don't agree with all you say and I also think some of the things you say are incorrect. I appreciate that you are not pleased with this. I bow out from here on. However much I disagree I will not comment further.

This is one of a million things I have read over the past couple of years about BBT

The ONLY places that continue to bang on about the usefulness of BBT and about how fabulously "normal" and "stable" each of our bodies are is forums. I do not get any of my information off forums - I read a lot of stuff (not off BBC news either) off specific medical case studies and journals. I worked for a newspaper so I know how they work as well

I would rather have a good medical study than blindly believe some of the stuff that is posted on a forum.

epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=nursing_fac

Purple

I just notice you running around contradicting me so I know you've got an issue with me. I notice today you agree with my DTD EOD whereas the other day you were jumping down my throat for saying that.

Didn't see your latest post when I wrote above. I'm v. interested in the study you mention that showed BBT rises occuring before as well as after ovulation. Have you got the refs for that one? If it's true that a BBT rise could show up 3 days before ovulation that endangers a key principle of TCOYF (which makes you wait 3 days post shift before assuming you are 'safe' if tta).

Sorry - the process of ovulation / ovulatory phase includes a three step approach according to some of the reports I've read.

I suppose saying the ovulatory phase is more correct and ovulation for the specific "go ahead and drop the egg" process - which STILL isn't an exact science and still no one knows when it happens :)

I'm afraid you don't know how many times I have sex. You assume I use OPKs I don't- smiley face or no smiley face, they don't work for me. I agree that regular sex throughout the cycle, if that is manageable for a couple is a great way to go and the NHS advice. I take issue only with the idea that the "egg can drop" days after ovulation. Apologies again.

kicktheguru I think it's just the way you use the term 'ovulation' that purple found a bit confusing. I admit I did too, I haven't seen it used that way before (i.e. to refer to the whole sequence of pre-ovulation, (what I would call) ovulation itself and the luteal phase rather than just to the release of the egg itself). I agree of course that pinpointing the timing of the egg being released is impossible to any greater accuracy than 2-3 days unless you are being scanned, even TCOYF, for instance, is very clear about that and builds that margin of error into all the techniques.

I'm also interested by your suggestion that a clear temp shift may not necessarily be proof of the egg having already been released (except perhaps in cases of multiple ovulation where a second egg is released within 24 hours). Have you got any refs for that? I know that the LH surge signs (cervical fluid etc) are not reliable as an egg is not necessarily released after any given surge, which is why the ovulation predictor kits are not entirely to be trusted. But I hadn't heard of a clear and sustained temp shift being unreliable as well.

Although I am pregnant right now I am always interested in new research on this stuff as I plan to go back to using FAM for contraception as I did before.

A common approach relies on detecting, in a woman?s urine, the luteinizing hormone (LH) that typically surges on the ovulation day. The LH surge (sharp narrow peak in LH concentration) occurs a few hours before ovulation. Because that is really too late for anticipating ovulation, a related but more sophisticated fertility monitor additionally detects also a metabolite of estrogen, i.e., another hormone, which anticipates the LH surge by about a day.

Fundamentally the most serious detriment is the fact that ovulation as such is not detected by said fertility device or any other such available in the marketplace. Ovulation is merely assumed to occur some hours after the LH surge ? but the surge of the LH hormone is merely a trigger signal sent by the brain to the ovary. It says, ?ovary, let go of the ovum in our dominant follicle?, but it does not say that the ovary in fact did (or does).

This is a fundamental flaw because ovulation is known to fail to occur in approximately 20% of the follicles. Those follicles, triggered by the LH, undergo the cyclic event of follicle rupture but, despite the rupture, the egg does not come out ? there is no ovulation. Ovulation also fails to occur with another type of follicles, the so-called luteinized unruptured follicles. Yet, the LH surge can be seen in either case, and is therefore a false indicator.

The BBT approach is no longer recognized as medically valid even if it may be acceptable to some of the older physicians (and to the buyers of an expensive microcomputerized BBT monitor offered from Europe). This is because the so-called basal body temperature is a systemic variable that reflects, among other things, progesterone rise in peripheral blood after ovulation, usually one or two days later. It is a very indirect and non-specific biomarker. Even though in some women in some cycles a little-understood dip in the temperature graph may apparently be observed one day before the temperature rise, it is clear that the BBT method is of little value due to its lack of predictive capability and due to its fundamental unreliability. The BBT-rise data is known to have a large error bar since the rise can occur from 3 days before to 3 days after ovulation.

Purple

You can DTD only on two days a month as you want other people to believe. I am glad that you are so certain that you only need to have sex twice a month, but that doesn't work as well for everyone as it does for you.

I choose to follow my doctors advice and DTD EOD in case the actual egg dropping isn't exactly on the day or two that you are 100% certain it happens.

Since I, even with a regular as all hell 29 day cycle, have picked up only two smiley faces in the past year, I will still DTD over a longer period of time to try and make sure that the entire ovulation phase is covered. Which includes the pre-ovulatory phase, the ovulatory phase and the luteal phase

We certainly aren't all as lucky as you are to be 100% of when our egg drops! Blimey you must have NO trouble falling pregnant at all!

Good luck in your future endeavours

Hi swedgirl I've been reading this thread, you really have been having a tough time. I'm a long timer too and have recently learnt a lot from temping, good luck with it. May I recommend the fertility friend website for charting, they have tutorials that help you along your way, sign up for free and they send the tutorials to your email.

Hi kick, I'm still completely baffled by your description of ovulation and eggs dropping! The egg being released IS ovulation and one witnessed (see link) took 15 minutes to complete. To get pg from post-ovulation sex it would need to be within hours. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7447942.stm

You're one of the few people on here who I really wouldn't mind if you fell pregnant before me. :)

Don't listen to the wives tales.

Have a LOT of rumpy pumpy - at a maximum of every second day. Oh and then lie with a pillow under yer bum for at least 20mins after rumpy pumpy so that you give his swimmers the best possible chance of getting to where they need to be for the longest possible time.

Kicktheguru, thanks, its so baffling. You sure do know your stuff. Looks like we'll just have to keep at it