Learning to love charting

Back in the days before my neighbor (and good friend) knew I was TTC, she recommended I read the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility. My friend kept telling me it was full of useful information that -- as the name suggests -- allows you to have a better sense of what goes on inside your body every cycle. I kept thanking her for the suggestion, saying, "Yeah, I'm not quite there yet," honestly figuring that I'd be pregnant within the next month, so why bother with the investment and add another thing to the list of items that could potentially stress me out. In hindsight, I was totally wrong, and I wish I had read the book several months before we started TTC.

If you've got any knowledge of the TTC world, you've no doubt heard of -- or, even more likely, read -- this book. If you're brand new to this game, though, I'll offer a quick summary. (If you're already familiar with this information, you should skip down to the My Experience subheading!)

Crash course:
The premise of the book is that women can use basic physiological signs to keep track of where they are throughout the course of their monthly cycles, from menstruation to the fertile phase to ovulation and then to the phase between ovulation and menstruation called the luteal phase. Here's the most important disclaimer: this book is NOT about the Rhythm Method, a totally outmoded and completely ineffective method for those practicing birth control and those hoping for pregnancy achievement alike. The Rhythm Method follows the premise that all women have 28-day cycles, with ovulation occurring like clockwork at day 14. This is false for the vast majority of women, which is why Taking Charge of Your Fertility preaches an entirely different gospel based on a woman's individual physiological signs.

There are two main signs women can track: basal body temperature (BBT) and cervical mucus (or, more preferably, as the author points out, cervical fluid, which sounds a lot nicer). We'll stick to CF for that one.

Your BBT changes during the course of the month: traditionally we have low readings during menstruation up until ovulation (97-97.8 degrees), and then at ovulation most women see a spike in temperatures that remain high (97.9 and up) until the day that your period is destined to arrive, when temperatures typically plummet again. Your CF also changes accordingly, with it being most present and sperm-friendly when you are in your most fertile phase.

The trick to using this Fertility Awareness Method (FAM) for pregnancy achievement is to time intercourse during your most fertile phase based on your CF. You use your BBT, and its spike around ovulation time in particular, mostly as proof that you are in fact ovulating and not having anovulatory cycles. Once your BBT has spiked, the egg has already been released and your chances of fertilization are incredibly low, so if you wait for your temps to change to help you time intercourse, it won't work. (And, if you follow this FAM process religiously, you can also use it as fairly effective hormone-free birth control if you simply avoid intercourse during the window in your cycle when you are close to ovulation -- though I have no experience with that.)

You're supposed to take your BBT each morning when you wake up at approximately the same time while you're still under the covers. You're also supposed to do this for a few cycles to notice patterns and help you determine when you're ovulating. Of course, this is way more tricky when you're like me and have highly irregular periods, so your charts from one month to the next are not that helpful in allowing you to predict ovulation. You're also supposed to start charting on cycle day (CD) 1, the first day you get your period, but really you can start at any time as long as you know how many days you are into your cycle.

My experience:
After almost five months of actively deciding not to read the book, I ordered it on Amazon and devoured the entire thing in a few hours. I got out my trusty digital thermometer and gave it a new home next to my bedside table. I signed up for a free account on fertilityfriend.com. (There's even a mobile site that allows me to enter my temps from my phone while I'm still in bed.) I started charting in the middle of my last (really long) cycle, and you know what? It really works. Like clockwork. I could see exactly when I ovulated based on BBT, CF and my ovulation predictor kit (OPK) to boot as double back-up proof. The upside to this is that my husband and I timed intercourse as well as we possibly could. The bad news is that after 11 days of high temperatures after ovulation the next morning I woke up and my temperature plummeted to my pre-ovulatory temperatures. And I started crying as soon as I put the thermometer down -- I had been convinced this would be the month that it worked.

But then I got out of bed and put on my big-girl pants and I realized, hey, now that I know I am going to get my period today, it won't be such a shock. A few hours later when the dreaded period arrived, I simply shrugged and thought, "I was expecting you."

Even though my irregular periods make my charting experience less than ideal, I will say that there's a sense of empowerment that comes along with knowing that despite all the uncertainty I'm dealing with, at least I know I'm ovulating, and at least I know when my period is going to arrive. Although I'm resigning control to determining when my body will allow me to get pregnant, I now at least know when to throw some tampons in my purse.