Temping for dummies

[teaping]

Apologies in advance for the stupid question; however I'm a newbie at all this! I have started tempting to track my cycle, even though we aren't actively TTC yet, but will be soon.

I have read up a little on temping but I don't understand my results - am I doing it incorrectly? My temp seems to be all over the place!

Last months data is a bit useless because I was still trying to get in the habit of daily temping and kept forgetting.

This month so far it looks like this (see pic). I expect to ovulate in 2-3 days. Does the chart look right? Thank you!!

If I ignore the non shaded circle temps (normally as these were taken at a different time) then your chart looks fine.

You probably know that you need to try and be consistent about the time that you temp (or at least temp immediately after you wake from 4/5 hours sleep) to get the most accurate results. However FF can only judge accurate temps based on time. So say it normally expects you to input a temp at 6am. If you wake at 4 and again at 6, the accurate temp would be at 4am not 6am. You may need to "lie" to FF about the time to get it to make it a solid circle temp - however only you can truly judge which temps are accurate (taken at first wake after a decent stretch of sleep) vs those that aren't.

Anyway - most charts are hard to see a pattern until 3/4 days post ovulation so keep going but remember the temps 3ish days before oh and 3ish days after are the most crucial ones for accurately pinpointing ovulation. The temps at the beginning of a cycle can be very variable so don't worry about these

I'm no expert myself, mine is also very erratic! I attached last cycle's so you can see it is only after ovulation that it vaguely makes any sense.

Are you recently off birth control? I was told that could be why mine are erratic. But either way, lots of women don't have charts that look like the textbook charts so don't worry!

Ahhhh thank you ladies, that makes a bit more sense. I have been doing it at the same time each day (well maybe half an hour later or so on the weekends) but I perhaps was expecting a more regimented pattern. Hopefully I'll be able to see a little spike after ovulation. I have only been off the BCP for a couple of months so that may affect it too.

Thank you!