BBT Temping Advice

[Gurraun]

Last month helpful Mnetters advised me to start temping.

Background - came of pill TTC no2 in May. Since then fairly regular 28 day ish cycles but spotting from about 4 - 5 days before AF. 4 months of CBFM always show a peak. Last month day 21 blood showed low progesterone of 14.9. I was confused about whether I'd ovulated or not hence advice to temp.

Day 3 bloods this cycle normal. Got a babymed thermometer which arrived day 3 of cycle. First 2 days I was ill so temp was high. Since then days 6 - 18 (today) temp is always 97.7. This is despite EWCM (which I don't usually see) on day 15, first peak on CBFM on day 16 (and had reflexology on day 13 and had pain which she told me indicated close to ovulation). Have therefore been gutted not to see any temp rise today or yesterday.

I understand that the likely reason for this (especially as thermometer seems to work when tested later in the morning) is that I have not OV'd but my body geared up to do so. However, can anyone advise me:-

• I wake quite a lot during the night and sometimes don't have the 3 hours sleep before temping which I understood is likely to make temps erratic so is it not odd that mine is flat lined?

• I always wake up quite stuffy and thirsty so think I may breathe through my mouth will this make a difference?

• when I took temp again about half an hour later (still lying in bed but been up for the loo) it was lower than when I took it at first waking - I thought you took it at first waking because that was the lowest point??

All very confused and sad to think that I probably have not ovulated as DTD lots and was feeling quite positive. Next month would it be better to temp vaginally...? I guess I need to wait for next day 21 bloods and see what is going on but in the meantime any advice appreciated as I am going slowly (or in fact quite rapidly) bonkers and will be fired from work as spend all my time googling conception related matters!

Thanks

Hi, I use a Duofertility monitor, it's a small device you can wear at night(or all the time if you want) and it continually does temp readings which you send via a reader online to a fertility centre so you don't have to worry about timing taking your temp etc. It gives very accurate readings and there's a team of fertility experts you can phone or email for advice. However it is scarily expensive. They offer a guarantee in some cases so if you haven't conceived in 12 mths you get a full refund. Being 44 and having had a miscarriage I thought I'd nothing to lose by getting one but unfortunately I've had a further two miscarriages so the guarantee is invalid as I have conceived twice even though I'm now not pregnant. The other thing is that the information you get is retrospective, it estimates when you're likely to ovulate and gives a period of green days to dtd but until it only confirms ovulation once it's actually occurred , it is a very useful tool to monitor your cycles.
Check the website out and you could try phoning them, I got quite a lot of advice from them even before I purchased the monitor.

I temp orally and find that gives me decent enough readings. It is a long term project though as you need to see the patterns emerge over a few months to get to know your cycle. If the peak on CBFM means an LH peak, then that usually comes a day or two before ov. Temps don't rise until afterwards, so be patient and you might still see a rise. I use OPKs rather than a CBFM and ovulate quite quickly after my LH surge so a typical pattern for me would be a positive OPK on Saturday, ovulation on Sunday, temp rise starts on Monday and continues for the next few days, then stays high until the day before my period comes. You could be ovulating today and get a temp rise over the next day or two.

Thanks both of you (Irishmammybread sorry to hear of your mc's). I think I have to accept that for some reason my body is gearing up to OV but not doing so as I really should have had a BBT rise at least by this morning as if I did OV it would have been yesterday at latest - will see if anything happens tomorrow but sadly suspect my body is going to end up needing a bit of help to get going.....so annoying as with ds1 it was a cinch! :-(

Your BBT is your lowest temperature during the day which will usually be first thing in the morning but if you get a lower temperature at another time (and it's not because you're standing outside in the freezing cold) you could use that too. One off temperatures don't mean anything as many things influence your temperature and we have no way of controlling for all of them. You're looking for patterns and often you only start seeing these patterns after a few months of looking.

It's possible you haven't ov'd yet this cycle so keep temping and keep it up for a few months before you draw any conclusions.

Thanks everyone. Following further experiments with the bleeding thermometer it seems the recall function (the one that is supposed to let you go back to sleep and read it later) is faulty and automatically reverts to 97.7 - grrrr. So no idea if I ov this month but do know the temps recorded are all wrong so guess I will just have to wait for 21 day bloods.