When you’re young and overwhelmed with sex-ed classes, you seem to think that forgoing any sort of birth control means instant pregnancy- the end of your life. From what I’ve seen in the media and the news, perhaps young girls ARE more able to get pregnant this way, I sure as hell know just forgetting birth control did NOT work for us, nor a large handful of friends of ours.
So, after a few months of throwing caution to the wind and letting nature do its thing didn’t result in a baby, I started temping and charting. These two aren’t really mutually exclusive, they pretty much go hand in hand. In the morning, I’d take my temperature with a basal body thermometer. It is imperative you take your temp at the same time every morning without fail- sure you can be 5-10 minutes late/early, and it wouldn’t be a sin, but the point of the practice is to get into a schedule. I’d temp every morning at 6:10am. Yes, even on weekends. It was a pain, but it helped to see a pattern.
Once I took my temp every morning, I’d either get up (if it was a work day) or go back to sleep. Some thermometers beep every few seconds to let you know it’s working, which works for some. Not me! The beeping would wake Paul up, so I’d try to get under the covers and do my temping all stealthy. You can do your temping vaginally or orally- just keep consistent. The whole point to temping is to learn your body’s pattern. How? Well, after taking your temp each day, you take note of the temp. Then you either use a calendar or an online site to keep track of your temps and symptoms (I used www.fertilityfriend.com) such as breast tenderness, nausea, back ache, you get it. As time progresses, you begin to see the pattern. I believe I posted my chart in April or May. Temping allowed me to see that my temperature rose when getting to my ovulation day. Once I ovulated, my temp would get higher for three days, which is kind of proof you ovulated. Fertility Friend really helped pinpoint o-date once I entered my temps. When I got pregnant, my temp kept rising, and didn’t have the textbook drop that occurs before your period arrived (whch is actually a really helpful thing to know). Once you start to see your pattern (i.e. ovulation typically occurs on the 15th/16th day of my cycle; my luteal phase (the days between ovulation and your next period or beginning of the next cycle), it makes trying to conceive so much easier.
Once you can pinpoint around the time you ovulate, this makes it easier to use ovulation sticks. Ovulation sticks (or ovulation KITS) are basically sticks like the old school thermometer you’d have to use at elementary school- at least shaped that way. It’s a dipstick type of test and seriously my favorite tool of trying to conceive. How this works is easy. You pee in a cup (not first thing in the morning, many sites recommend you wait until the early afternoon- I’d do it in the early evening), dip the test strip, and set it flat on the counter. I’d wait a bit and check the strip for two lines, much like a pregnancy test. One line is a test line, the other is the line that shows if you have luteinizing hormones, which show up when an egg is released. If the non-test line is darker than the test line- not the same color, not lighter- then you are ovulating. Hooray! This method helps because the temping can only tell you that you ALREADY ovulated. This helps you know your basic schedule so you can begin the sexfest- or, like us, squeeze in one “meeting” while in the process of moving. Gotta tell you, from talking to other ladies while TTC, quite a few of us were one hit wonders- some even getting pregnant while not on their usual ovulating schedule. A lot of women started with the every day/sometimes twice day for two weeks (I cower just thinking about it), which actually seems to thin out the swimmers, with no real time for replenishing the “guys”. A lot of folks start the every other day method after that, because it’ s exhausting. It’s really up to you, there are success stories for every method!
So, using all these tricks, I finally got myself in the family way.
