Trying to Get Pregnant

Weekly Chart Stalking / Questions Week of 11/28

This is a thread where we can feel free to ask for a chart stalk, interpretation, or other chart-related questions, regardless of where in your cycle you are. 

Re: Weekly Chart Stalking / Questions Week of 11/28

  • I'm happy to start this off - I did post in WTO (although I should likely have been in TWW - I'm admittedly confused this month), but am happy to repeat it here.

    My FW was this weekend. I used OPKs for the first time, and got positives late Saturday and early Sunday, and was back to negative by Sunday afternoon. 

    Normally, between CM and BBT, I have a decent idea of when I ovulated, and mostly agree with FF's crosshairs. The issue this cycle is that since we were away for a baby-making weekend in wine country, my sleep was off and I had more wine than normal, so my temps were of course higher. Plus, I couldn't distinguish reliably between CM and *ahem* leftovers from DH. 

    Given that information - do you think FF is correct with the CH? Or am I more likely to have O'd Sunday or Monday? 


  • @Sailing_Mama does your temp usually spike when you drink?  (mine does not, not that I usually drink that much) so if not than I would tend to lean towards where your CH are... also after tomorrow's temp what happens if you discard sat and sunday's temps (just for the fun of it... does that move your CH?  If you switch to OPK only than you would get CH on sunday... well either way you did O, and your timings good...
    *TW*
    TTC 1/2012
    Diagnosed : unexplained infertility
    6 rounds of IUI and a MC 2/2014, rainbow twins 4/2015
    TTC #3 5/2016
    Restarted Fertility tx
    IUI 2 rounds, baby girl 12/17

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  • @sailing_mama I would move O one day later to cd20 given the OPKs. My temp spikes like crazy with alcohol so I would think the OPKs are more reliable for this particular cycle. Either way, I agree with @wabash15 that you have beautiful timing! 


  • @wabash15 and @adirat They do seem to spike when I have even a couple of glasses of wine (I lovingly refer to them as my weekend wine spikes haha) - you can see the same thing on CD 5/6 (also a weekend). 

    I am definitely happy regardless of which day it was - but it was just one of those things where I realized that I didn't really know enough about the OPKs, and just knew that my BBT/CM wasn't trustworthy on key days. I may play with discarding the high ones, or adding in CM, or both... but regardless will probably go by CD20, if for no reason other than to push testing a day instead of accidentally testing too early! 

    Thanks for the feedback! 

  • @wabash15 @adirat So my temp was pretty stable again this morning - and I added in my best guess for CM which changed the CH from dotted to solid. I still think it may have been the following day, especially after our discussion last week about how OPKs were so much more accurate, and BBT indicators often point to the day before O - I forget who asked about that, but I'm glad that it brought up that discussion with such perfect timing for me! :)
  • I feel like the crosshairs are correct with the given information.  I know the LH tests might be confusing you, but remember that it does take time to secrete LH into your urine and for it to leave your urine which is part of why LH tests are only really reliable in combination with temping.  I vote Saturday was O day.
  • @Sailing_mama Yep, I would keep my opinion of a day later than FF thinks. :)


  • izza2izza2 member
    edited November 2016
    I agree with @antoto on this.
    Your BBT will rise a day after ovulation, which is why we see CHs the day before a spike in temperature. Your temperature didn't spike more CD 21 (Monday) to signify ovulation on CD 20 (Sunday). It spiked on CD 20 (Sunday) to signify ovulation on CD 19 (Saturday). (ETA:) Even with your "usual" temp spike from alcohol use, your temp spike and your positive OPK point toward ovulation on CD 19.
    OPKs are reliable, but only to a point. I'm not sure where/who discussed OPKs being more reliable than BBT, but they're not, unless you have the worse sleep schedule and can't get even a semi-accurate BBT. OPKs test for a LH surge, and many women have multiple surges and positive OPKs throughout a cycle without having ovulated during that surge, or already having ovulated.

    Even if you look at your OPKs, you got a positive/spike on CD 19, meaning you had a LH surge at that point in time. This is also where FF put your CHs. You had a positive OPK, you had a temp spike, you ovulated that day. Even with drinking, I see nothing pointing toward you having ovulated on CD 20. (ETA:) When you take your OPKs also matters. If you test in the AM on CD 18, and the AM on CD 19, then you could have started having a surge in the PM of CD 18. Some instructions say not to test after a positive OPK, and some say only to test once a day; but many women test twice a day when they're entering their FW for the most accurate results.

    Either way, I would say you ovulated on CD 19 / Saturday.

    Me: 30 | DH: 34 | DSS: 14 | DS: 4
    PG #2, EDD 10/12/2023

  • Thanks for all the great discussion and feedback - and I know that either way my timing was good, but felt a bit confused. Really hoping that others can benefit from a central CS thread and start asking questions too!

    @izza2 Thanks for the explanation! I did test late Saturday (between 4 and 5 pm) and then early Sunday (around 10 am), followed by a negative later in the afternoon. 

    The discussion about BBT and OPKs was last week (when maintenance ate all our posts!) - it was from a study referenced in Expecting Better. Here is a link to the discussion in case you want to read it:  https://forums.thebump.com/discussion/comment/89453761#Comment_89453761
  • @Sailing_Mama
    I'm honestly sad I missed that discussion.
    But reading through those studies, I don't see where OPKs are necessarily more reliable than BBT.

    They are two different studies, for starters, and the BBT study included 40 women (an excessively small number) who were told to take their BBT after "two hours of bedrest"; not 3+ hours of sleep and not first thing in the morning before even getting up, which is what you do for an accurate reading. Just... resting in bed for 2 hours, doing whatever. I would completely scrap that study, personally. The BBT recordings can be and likely were completely inaccurate. I've seen charts from someone who was adamant she could take her BBT at the same time every afternoon after laying on the couch for a couple of hours. It wasn't pretty.

    For the OPK study, BBT was only used in 15% of cycles (for the test group) and 29% of cycles (for the control group). You can't really compare the effectiveness of OPKs and BBTs in that study if it's not being a universal requirement that they use OPKs and BBT on a regular basis to track ovulation and pin-point the accuracy. That study was purely to measure whether OPKs helped a woman get pregnant during 2 cycles. Which, about 20% of the women in each group got pregnant in that time frame...
    That study was also funded by Unipath Ltd, and two of the authors are from Unipath Ltd. Unipath Ltd is the company who manufactures ClearBlue tests. It's a completely biased study. Of course they'll say that OPKs are superior to everything else -- any other difference wouldn't have gone to publishing.

    I just wrote an essay on the affects of weight on fertility. I can show you a dozen studies that show that being underweight or overweight negatively effects your chances of conception. I can also show you another dozen studies that show it doesn't have any effect.

    IMO, the root of it is that no at-home testing method is perfect. OPKs test a LH surge, which some women can't catch with OPKs, even if they're testing twice a day during their FW. BBT tests your basal temperature, which can be difficult for some women with their work and sleep schedules, and it notes O date after the fact. OPKs can help predict ovulation, but BBT is better for confirming it.

    /endverbaldiarrhea (sorry, got super in to reading those studies and looking up more! I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole!)


    As for your case, I'd still go for CD 19 as O date. Did you use an OPK on the morning of the CD 19 or the evening of CD 18?

    Me: 30 | DH: 34 | DSS: 14 | DS: 4
    PG #2, EDD 10/12/2023

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