Questions/Chart Stalk May 2022

optimistgardener

Got a question? Need chart interpretation? Ask away!

optimistgardener

*bumping* this thread so newer members of our community know that this is a perfect place to ask all kinds of questions! anything from what's going on with your cycle to what kinds of supplements people are taking and why to how to deal with TTC stress! I know a few months ago we talked about how this was an under-utilized thread. it's a great way to get a lot of eyes on your question, especially since not all of us stalk/participate in the dailies.

thankfullyamama

I just ordered a BBT thermometer and the special OPK’s for people with PCOS lol now just wondering what is everyone’s fav way to track? I used to use Premom but I see a lot of people using FF so are there any reasons why you would want to use FF over premom?

edit to add, would taking progesterone supplements post ovulation alter BBT?

anniemarie887

i use FF and the ava bracelet b/c i don't have the discipline to use a BBT. i do believe progesterone will keep your temp up, a quick dr google says it depends on how your body metabolizes it. 

optimistgardener

@tryingktogku a quick reply here: I think a lot of people use FF because it is the main platform for doing things like sharing charts with one another. we all use the same platform and understand what other people's charts look like. but there are other platforms to use also. and yes, progesterone will almost certainly tick your body temp up by a half degree, more or a little less. i always recommend that people temp at first just because it's interesting to learn how your body changes through a cycle; i would even recommend it once or twice during medicated cycles just so you can confirm that the drugs are doing their thing. But if you have to do more than a cycle or two, you might opt to stop temping just because your cycle will be so highly shaped by the drugs you take. Temping is more useful for folks doing natural cycles.

mrsmtothek

@tryingktogku I prefer FF over Premom because for me, the chart is SO much easier to read. I really don't care for Premom's interface. FF also seems to adjust accordingly when I update my symptoms, whereas Premom makes no such changes. I was on the free plan, but maybe it's different with a paid subscription?

coldlife2

*dirty lurker*

I use the free version of kindara. I used FF for awhile and much prefer kindara for a lot of reasons. 

—CM and BBT are together on one graph and thus much easier to read and cross reference. (You can choose to have your CM rise with the temps as it gets increasingly fertile or go down). 
—If you’re TTA, it’s better for that (added, better than FF for that), as well as being good for TTC.
—Much better offline access.
—You pick your own temp shift day instead of FF (sometimes wrongly) guessing.
—It predicts your next period, which I find helpful as I have regular cycles.
—It has four free customizable fields as opposed to none in FF.
—It tells DPO in the free version.
—A very big pro for me - a discarded/questionable temp stays on the chart instead of being completely removed like in FF. That makes it super convenient to reference just in case (I do this all the time). It’s not linked with lines to the other temps, but stays there as a dot on the chart. 

maggiemadeit

@tryingktogku I use a cheapie BBT from Amazon after my nice Bluetooth one broke. And I totally agree with everything @coldlife2 has said, Kindara is an amazing app. I’ve been using it for 6 years both TTC and TTA. It has a pretty good resource section, and the community is really nice, although there is a fair amount of baby dust and toxic positivity there, but easy to avoid the community feature if it’s not your thing. 

coldlife2

Yea, I’ve never used the community or resources on kindara. Only the tracking. 

acleverusername

@coldlife2 I'm not sure if it's the paid version, but you can do the following things in FF: 

_ manually over ride O date (or select a different detector)
_ add any number of custom fields
_ discarded temp is also represented with a dot on the chart. 

But I've always paid for FF, so I don't know if those come with the free edition. 

The FF UI is pretty awful though. It gets the job done, but certainly nothing more. 

iiirene

Based off the rise in temp, do you guys think I’ve ovulated? This is my first time doing BBT and OPKs. I’ve had no other signs of ovulation-CM has been basically nonexistent. I started testing for ovulation the day after my period just to get a sense of what my body might be doing. I missed temping for a few days and The timing for my OPKs were a bit off from the norm because we were out of state for a wedding.

TW

I was sort of assuming I would ovulate later because I conceived my son a full week after I thought I had ovulated. At the time I was “tracking” ovulation by tracking my period with an app. 

I got off birth control in April-I had Nexplanon. Again, thank you all for helping me out. You are a wealth of information!

It’s been a while. I hope I’ve used spoilers correctly. 

optimistgardener

@iiirene from the info you've provided, my best guess would be a CD11 ovulation, in line with what FF thinks. this is a pretty early ovulation, and lucky that you caught your LH surge on CD9! It is very plausible that your first couple of cycles after getting off birth control could be a bit funky until things even out. I have been known to get early O days like this, but I am 39 and a early O day is something the aging ovary is prone to. In your case, I would expect, especially if you are used to an O day that is some days/a week or so later, that subsequent cycles would start looking a little more like "normal."

coldlife2

acleverusername said:

@coldlife2 I'm not sure if it's the paid version, but you can do the following things in FF: 

_ manually over ride O date (or select a different detector)
_ add any number of custom fields
_ discarded temp is also represented with a dot on the chart. 

But I've always paid for FF, so I don't know if those come with the free edition. 

The FF UI is pretty awful though. It gets the job done, but certainly nothing more. 

I know custom fields are not available in the FF free version. O date - I believe the different detector is available, but I don’t think actually choosing a different date is. I do not recall the discarded temp staying on the chart in the free version. 

I haven’t used FF in over two years, but I originally wrote out my comparison of kindara and FF within the first couple months of using kindara, so I believe it was pretty accurate then, and I’m not just misremembering. It’s always possible FF has changed since then, too. 

annanbby

Anyone want to try to take a guess on the day that I ovulated this month? lol I'm so confused. I have three different apps and they're all telling me different days. Here's what I'm getting from FF:

As you can see, I had a couple higher temps, but of course those were the two mornings after we had a bunch of stuff going on so I was catching up on sleep and didn't temp on time....so that may have affected that.

Here's my OPKs (and note that I didn't record a test on the 13, but I took one around noon and it was negative. I was too busy that evening to take another one. Of course lol

Any ideas?

Paturkey

@annanbby I don't know! I'd be inclined to agree with FF but also I question whether today (CD16) could be the day since it's still +48 out from your positive OPK and the temp dropped. I feel like you need a few more days of temps to really pin it down.

bbrahmbhatt

Does anyone have a good way to do BBT if you're not good at doing BBT? I tried it for a few cycles but gave up because I usually either forget, or I wake up in the middle of the night so then my am temp is wonky. For those who do BBTing do you feel like it provides good additional information? I usually determine O based on OPKs and I consistently get ovulation pain (which usually occurs sometime 12-24 hours after I get a positive OPK). Do you think doing BBT would provide additional information, or should I just leave it alone?

anniemarie887

@bbrahmbhatt Ava bracelet. Check Facebook marketplace for one secondhand, I got mine for $125

acleverusername

@bbrahmbhatt also TempDrop; I would also look for one second hand. Basically any wearable that you'd wear at night, that does skin temp measurements. 

But also, if you consistently get O pain and clear OPKs, there really isn't additional value in BBTing. Just more data, ya know? 

optimistgardener

@bbrahmbhatt i can't remember if you normally have a pretty steady cycle or not, but if you do, and if you can almost always line up your OPK+ with ovulation pain a day or so later, I don't see a need for temping, especially if all you're trying to land is some good timing. We often use it on this board to precisely locate O day (like, "looks like your temp spiked on CD14 so you probably O'ed on CD 13!"), but from a scientific perspective, you can get a temp spike right before O, the day of O, 1 day after O, or even 2-3 days after O, so it isn't actually narrowing things down that much for us even if we'd like it to.

If you don't temp, and if you know your cycle is usually, say, 30 days long with O usually around day 15 or so, then I think it's probably safe to just start your OPKs around day 10 along with a more regular calendar with your SO. Meanwhile, look for the first sign of a surge, and get busy in seriousness as soon as you see it, knowing the window is likely closed ~48 hours after you get a true positive.

If your cycle is more wonky than that, then I would say adding BBT data is more useful in terms of narrowing down your window.

optimistgardener

@acleverusername lol, you managed to answer in a tidy lil one liner what it took me a short essay to say.

bbrahmbhatt

Thanks ladies! I was thinking along the same lines @acleverusername and @optimistgardener, that it might not add anything useful. My cycles have historically been pretty consistent, and the ovulation pain has been thankfully consistent as well. Maybe I'll hold off on BBT, I was just feeling a little guilty that I wasn't. Y'all know how TTC brain is; you want to feel like you're doing EVERYTHING possible, even if logically you know it doesn't matter. 

annanbby

Here's my updated chart with a couple more temps:

@Paturkey I think I agree with you. Looks like O was probably either overnight on CD13 or early morning on CD14. Either way, that probably means our timing wasn't good, and we totally missed this cycle. Such a bummer. 

I've always gotten two very positive OPKs in a row, and this time around I got a just-positive-enough OPK and that was it. So I'm not sure if the clomid just made O happen REALLY quick or what. Also only having one day of EW CM was super weird for me. -sigh-

thankfullyamama

@annanbby clomid can make you O early or late and it also affects your CM for sure! However if you O’d between CD13/14 you still Bd’d Cd14 so you still could have caught it!

annanbby

@tryingktogku ahh that's good to know. I figured it would probably effect things somehow, I just wasn't sure how it would happen for me. Hopefully we managed to get right before.