Temping

jbal918

So I've googled tons about tempting but one thing that I have got mixed results on is when to temp if you wake up a night... I've always had trouble sleeping and wake up a few times at night at least 3-4 nights a week (which is frustrating in itself). So my question is, should I temp when I wake up at the random times or should I take it at 545am because some nights I sleep ok and that way it's at the same time? I'm on Clomid now so I definitely want to temp along with the opks.
Thanks ladies!!

ceclarlinetlo

If you've slept at least 3 hours I would take it when you wake up.

jbal918

If I wake up less than three hours before I actually get up at 545, should I do both and compare or discard? Honestly, I would discard a lot but I'm not sure how it works. Sometimes I wake up for a few minutes and sometimes for a while but I don't get out of bed usually.

ceclarlinetlo

TBH I started having a lot of trouble with temping- after 4 cycles or so I started waking up in the middle of the night. I would take my temp every time I woke up and record it in the notes section of my fertility friend app with the time I took it to look for trends but I think that actually made it worse because I started waking up every two hours or less - and at that point it's no longer actuate anymore anyway, so I quit temping all together. I'm pretty sure it was all the stress of temping because a few days after I quit temping I actually started sleeping through the night again.

But to answer your question - I would say if it's less than three hours until you'll wake up again I would use the time you wake up.

jbal918

Thanks for your help!

iloverocksalot

Hi, I had the same experience as @ceclarlinetlo during our time TTC, where I'd become so focused on remembering to temp first thing that I'd wake myself up over and over in the middle of the night! There's tons of useful info in your temp, but it can vary depending on so many factors, especially the one you mention. I had been temping for years to avoid pregnancy, so I had a lot of background info available to me, which helped, but I also I started experimenting: every day, every time I woke up I'd note the time and take my temp. This meant I'd have three or four temps some days! After a couple months I learned which factors had the biggest control over my temp. For example, I figured out that if I got up to pee, I could still temp after and get the same result as I did while still lying in bed. I also learned that a glass of wine or two really made my temps high the next day. Clomid made my temps rise like crazy each month I took it. Then afterwards, and before O day, it would drop again and look normal. Sometimes I was a slow riser, but others it was like a knife edge rise. It just takes a lot of observations to understand what your body does on average.
The most important things are: whether your temp rises at all to signify ovulation, how long it stays elevated (to calculate your luteal phase), how much your follicular phase can vary in length before ovulation, and if you have any leading indicators to ovulation, such as a temp dip on O day.
After a year TTC, the temping was driving me crazy (obsessing over every tenth of a degree), I already knew a lot about my cycle by that point, and I was getting regular monitoring from my RE, so I stopped temping.
My advice is to just look at the overall patterns and then make a call about throwing out temps after you learn your average patterns over several cycles.
I use the Fertility Friend app and find that it does a great job of pattern identification and figuring the most likely O day. It will also provide you with plenty of statistics once you have several cycles enetered, and you can overlay each month's charts to see patterns for yourself.

jbal918

I actually haven't done my temps yet. I keep forgetting so I figure I'll skip it this month and maybe try it next month.

KLake42

I wake up a lot.  It doesn't really impact my temps, so long as I stick to a regular time.

jbal918

Thanks! I'm definitely going to try next month or whenever I get my next cycle. Hoping I won't have to take Provera or Clomid again but I haven't ovulated yet and I started checking Saturday, day 10 after Clomid.
* Edited for spelling