Any ladies who has BBT before?

[allthingssparkly]

I have been doing opk alongside BBT, I got a positive opk yesterday afternoon. My BBT seems to be elevated from this mornings temp in comparison to others I have done on previous days.

I have also had some mild lower abdo cramps this morning.

If ovulation is happening/already happened what am I now looking for with my BBT? Should it be continuing to rise or will I see a dip?

Advice welcome 😊

Should be constant rise from here in temp

It should rise after ovulation and stay high until your cycle starts again with a period (or it will stay high due to pregnancy). I've attached an old chart. It shows all the temps before ovulation below the line and everything after, above it. Cross hairs show the calculated day of ovulation based on OPKs and BBT.

(obviously only compare and input temperatures that were taken at exactly the same times of day - BBT rises during the day....it's lowest right when you wake up so that's your baseline. Daytime temps aren't reliable)

@Regenbogen22 I only temp first thing in a morning when I've just woke up before I've done anything else. I've never even heard of temping in the day time as that wouldn't be accurate. Thank you for the image example.

Thank you @lullabyalways 🤞🤞🤞

Ah! Somehow I read your OP as that you had compared a temp from later on in the day with the morning temp! Sorry!

@Regenbogen22

It should rise after ovulation and stay high until your cycle starts again with a period (or it will stay high due to pregnancy). I've attached an old chart. It shows all the temps before ovulation below the line and everything after, above it. Cross hairs show the calculated day of ovulation based on OPKs and BBT.

Was this chart showing you got pregnant or was this when your period came?

That's ok don't worry @Regenbogen22 I will attach my chart now. Red line is OPK and Blue BBT ☺️

Hi @lullabyalways this was a cycle when my period showed up i.e. not pregnant. You can see the temperature fall and on the last day of the visible chart (Friday 4th, 11DPO) I started my period. That's when the chart reset to cycle day 1.

Had I been pregnant, the temp would have stayed high

This chart is from the month I got pregnant. The temp stays high (line changed to green as soon as I inputted a positive pregnancy test).

My temp tracking before and around ovulation wasn't great because I was ill and wasn't sleeping well. Missed several days, deleted certain temps due to fever. So it's a good idea to use OPKs too!

I temped for years for contraception (succesfully!) -- to confirm ovulation you are looking for three temperatures clearly above the previous six. Until you see that, you should assume that you may still be fertile (so if you're ttc, keep trying!).

Some women always or often see a 'dip' in temperature just before ovulation but this is not a reliable sign as it's not at all universal; and you'd need to have temped consistently for several months to know whether it was generally true of you or not.

Thank you @kalidasa this is my first month temping so still getting my head around it. Tomorrow will be day 9 of temping 😊

No prob @allthingssparkly . Charting is one of the most useful things I have learnt as an adult! The book I learnt from was an American one called "Taking Charge of Your Fertility" and was very thorough and helpful, I expect you can still buy it online. It covers the principles and then how to apply them either for ttc or for contraception. I learnt how to do it about 15 years ago now but found it quite fascinating and empowering to be honest! I used it for contraception (along with barrier methods during the fertile period) for several years with no probs, though proved to be very fertile indeed as soon as I did ttc. I think for online charts fertility friend is still probably the best website that's the site @Regenbogen22 is using. I had a coil for years after my two older children so didn't bother with it but charted again for a few months when I was ttc this pregnancy last year (now 38 weeks aged 42!). It was useful to confirm that I was still ovulating, still had a decent luteal phase etc, though my ovulation had definitely moved forward slightly with age, which I believe is typical this baby was conceived about day 11. Good luck!

Oops sorry about cross-outs, didn't mean to put them in!

Thank you @kalidasa I've put my temps into the fertility friend app this morning to see if I can understand it abit better than the pre mom chart as it doesn't provide you with a guide line whereas FF does.

Would you say mine looks ok so far?

Yes that looks fine though I would completely ignore that dotted line for now, especially as it's your first few days charting! Definitely assume you are still potentially fertile for the moment. The shift four days ago doesn't meet the 3/6 rule and it may be that all your temps so far are still in the normal pre-ovulatory range for you, you won't know yet. How long is your cycle usually?

Hey @allthingssparkly you can also input your positive OPK tests on fertility friend and it will use both that info and your temps to give you an ovulation day. Go to the day you want to input, scroll down past where you enter temp, and under Test&Devices there's an option to enter +ve or -ve OPK

@kalidasa I got my positive OPK on the 19th April 😊 and ever since then my OPK's have been negative so I'm pretty sure of when I ovulated. I had EWCM and ovulation pains around the same time too!

Thanks @Regenbogen22 I will input my OPK's into FF at some point. For now I have them saved in the Pre Mom app 😊

@allthingssparkly you're probably right about your ovulation. I would still keep going though until the temps confirm ovulation because it is possible to have more than one "pre-ovulation" hormonal surge (and positive OPKs) in the same cycle, but only actually ovulate after the last one. When I was younger I had cycles like this quite a lot, with several patches of fertile cervical fluid before actual ovulation. If your cycles are short/average and of a very consistent length it's less likely that you do this but it's still possible. Good luck with it.

@kalidasa I thought the temps have already confirmed ovulation or are in the process of? 🤔

I will just keep temping each morning. Stopped OPK testing from yesterday morning as I presumed pretty much that I'd ovulated.

It's now a waiting game, it will be what it will be this cycle 😊 There is always next cycle if I don't get my BFP.

This is my chart since doing my temp this morning, the temps are increasing some what each day 😊

I've added my OPK's into FF @Regenbogen22

The line on my chart has got from dotted to solid red, not sure why this is? Do any of you know? 🤔

@allthingssparkly yep, it gives you a solid line (crosshairs) when it is pretty sure you ovulated. So with the rising temps and the added input of the OPKs, the algorithm can identify your ovulation day. Has the Ov. day changed from the dotted line prediction?

This is what my chart looks like now @Regenbogen22 😊

@allthingssparkly The change to solid means the fertility friend algorithm is now more sure. You can put it on different settings though. You will get a slightly different interpretation depending on whether you stick to their own in-house interpretation or switch to e.g. 'fertility awareness method' specifically (which is what I have always preferred because it's the method I learnt). From an FAM perspective, it is only your most recent temperature that it is clearly above the previous 6 temps, so you would need another two at that higher level to confirm ovulation, and ovulation could be slightly later than the chart is currently saying. Obviously if you are trying not to conceive you have to be really careful about this; if you are ttc it matters a bit less because of course sex a couple of days before ovulation is almost as or may even be more likely to lead to conception than sex on the day of ovulation anyway, but all the same if I were ttc I would always keep going until the temps were unambiguous. Especially as you are new to temping so you don't yet really know what your 'typical' pre- and post-ovulatory temps are.