charting and getting up for a wee in the middle of the night...

[rosieposey]

Hello, just wondered if anyone could tell me about charting a little bit. Im going to start this coming cycle i think (just a few days away) and i am diabetic so rarely go through the night without getting up for a pee, sometimes its about 4am so im not really sure if that will bugger up my attempts at charting - i wake up around 6 - 6.30 ish usually.

Also, say i had an earlier pee during the night like 1 or 2am would i wait till 6 am?

Advice gratefully received (also could someone direct me to the charting thread on here?)

TIA

Bump

Hi rosieposey,
I am an irregular charter - been TTC for 10 months and got fed up with my irregular cycles and not knowing when to expect AF or when to BD. I use fertilityfriend.com - they have all the info you need to get started.

As far as waking times etc, fertilityfriend say that you need 3 hours sleep before you take your temp though I wake at all times of the night and automatically stick the thermometer in when I wake and I have no problems creating a readable chart. It seems fairly obvious when my temp has risen for more than 3 days - even if it's erratic - it's just erratic at higher levels!

Make sure you buy a good digital thermometer though - the raise in temperature is only around 0.3 degrees for me.

Hope this helps!
Good luck :-)

Ell11 thank you

I'm a chronic insomniac (stupidly one of the reasons I lie awake is fretting cos I can't get pregnant - and lying awake makes knowing when to bonk to get pregnant harder = catch 22). Generally I wake around 3/4am anyway - take a temp then and just flip the therm straight off. If I get back to sleep properly I'll re-take temp at 6.30 when hubby's alarm for work goes off, if not - I'll just flick the thermometer back on and grab the stored temp from earlier in the night.

Found I get a less spikey chart if I go by the 6.30 temps even if I haven't had a full 3 hours sleep back by then though... although having said that... this chart has one nice deep spike about 6dpo which I'm trying not to get hopes up about. FF complains a bit about the spikes and jumps my OV date about before it finally decides on one is the only thing - but I started temping because I needed to know I actually DID ovulate and was getting naff all joy from the NHS so it's me and my thermometer against the world.

Emptyshell - thats a really useful post, will just check and see what time i go for a wee and make sure i do it first thing after that, im usually awake (before my 18 month old ) by 6am anyway. Good luck with ttc!

rosie don't do it after your wee, you have to take your temp before you move much or your temp goes up anyway. So if you wake at 3 or 4, take your temp then go to the loo. I am about to start this month too and hadnt thought about my occasional nocturnal wees so thanks for having raised it.

I usually take my temp at approx 7.30. BUT i often wake for a wee in the early hours as well - what is it with us women? - I used to sleep right through as a teenager and could go about 13 hours without a wee

Anyway, as I was saying - what I do now is this - if I wake and think I need a wee I quickly take my temp before getting up (often i am quite desperate for a wee so that's fun!)

Then when I've wee'd i look at the time and the temp. if it's less than 3 hours before I would be due to take it anyway, i count that temp as the one to use and make a note that i temped a bit early on my chart (I'm an old fashined pen and paper charter).

However, if I look at the time and it's only about say 4 o'clock. i will take it again at about 7.30.

Does that make sense??

I have to say that often my temp at 3.30 will be much the same as my temp at 7.30. On the whole I hover around 36.40 before ov and 36.75 after. So all I'm really looking for is that temp rise and i'm getting good at spotting it.

Good luck.

There is a wonderful thread called charters annon - which is full of very clever ladies who all chart using fertility friend and know how to interprit charts and over lay charts etc. they let me join in despite me doing my charting as they did in the 1950's!! Bless 'em.

Good luck.