I've been doing this for a year and a half so I think I can help. I've done this every morning since December 2008. Temping becomes like a second nature. After a while you don't even realize you're doing it, trust me. But there are a few rules you have to bear in mind.
1.) Temping at
the same time every day is absolutely critical. This is because your BBT changes every half hour until it plateaus off and steadies. Of course, there will be days when you hit the snooze button or are on vacation and don't want to wake up early or on weekends when you want to sleep in or when you get to bed late and just can't get up. My advice is this: Still take your temp no matter what (unless hours have gone by). If an hour or hour and a half have passed, what you can try to do is use this
Online BBT Adjuster, but don't rely on it too much because your actual temp is more accurate than anything this will give you, but it'll put you in the ballpark. Just don't use it if you've overslept for more than a couple of hours. I wouldn't record a temp on days like those.
2.)
Take your temp upon waking -- first thing! This is also critical because as soon as you're awake, your temperature starts rising immediately So as soon as you hit that alarm, insert that thermometer! Don't hit the snooze for the next hour, and don't get up and do anything (bathroom, talking, etc). It's the first thing you need to do. I know it sounds like more hassle than it's worth, but if you set your alarm in the morning, it's basically just one extra step after hitting the button and it only takes a minute or two.
3.)
Know which environmental factors affect your temps. Things like tossing and turning, not getting any REM sleep, sleeping in a room that's too cold or too hot, or significantly changing your sleeping environment can affect your temps. Also, drinking and drug use can also affect your temps. Breathing with your mouth open all night can also make your temps lower than they would normally be. In addition, if you select "Sleep Deprived" on Fertility Friend in your chart under "Specifics" when you enter your data, it will "white out" your temp (which basically means it's "discarded" that temp and will not factor it in, even though it will still appear on your chart, but as a white circle instead of a blue one). So remember that.
4.) Even if you don't GET up when you WAKE up to take your temp, make sure your thermometer has a
memory function on it in case you take your temp and go back to sleep. This is what I do on the weekends.
5.)
It's not necessary to take your temps during your period (probably for the first four days of your cycle) unless you really want that data. I do it just because it's an OCD thing (I don't like having incomplete charts).
6.)
Temps are useful in the long-run. Specific day-to-day temps won't tell you very much. In the book "Taking Charge of Your Fertility," it's said that when looking at the temps on your chart, you need to "see the forest through the trees." That means you should notice long-term trends rather than specific temps on specific days. Observing a pattern in a cycle will tell you more than one or a few temps. You will notice things like phases: monophasic (indicating an anovulatory cycle), biphasic (indicating an ovulatory cycle), and triphasic (often determines if pregnancy has been achieved, but there's no real evidence that the
absence of a triphasic chart means you're not pregnant. Fertility Friend explains the difference between biphasic and triphasic charts but I really don't think there's much merit to the triphasic theory. It basically assumes that there will be a drop in the LP when the egg implants, but no one has ever proven that.
7.)
But there are still some important specific temps to look out for, most of which are only useful in hindsight. Sometimes your temp will drop on the day you ovulate and then shoot back up the next day. Of course, this is one of those temps that's only useful in hindsight because you have no idea if your temps will go up or down the next day. And there's no indication that a temp drop guarantees ovulation, either. And so that means another important temp is the first rise after ovulation. A few days after ovulation, FF will give you those red crosshairs, indicating the day of ovulation and the coverline (the line above which your temps should stay during the LP). What makes your temps rise is the surge of progesterone, which is caused by the corpus luteum, which is like the "shell" from which the egg is released on the ovary, which thereby proves that you've ovulated. So when you see a
thermal shift between the FP and the LP, you can absolutely bet that you've ovulated. Anovulatory cycles won't have this shift because there is no surge in progesterone.
8.) If you're not pregnant, your
temps will start falling close to your expected period. This doesn't always mean you're not pregnant, but if they start to continually fall, you can probably expect AF in a couple of days.
9.) Lastly,
temping is best augmented with OPKs because, like I said, temps are usually only good in hindsight. They can
suggest certain things every month but I wouldn't read too much into some of the temps. You really have to look at the whole cycle overall. The most important temp that could help you ON the day it happens is the rise after ovulation, but this is where OPKs come in handy. If you got a +OPK, it'd be useful to correlate that to your temp drop and subsequent rise. But your temps everyday won't tell you much. Charting is about patterns and observations.
If you want a lot of great examples of the things I've mentioned here, take a look at my charts (linked below in my signature). I have complete charts for the last year and a half. You can see exactly what I'm talking about with regards to the biphasic trend, the date of ovulation (the drop and rise), the thermal shift, the correlation between OPKs and my temps and CM, etc. It's always best to use examples like this, and my cycles are pretty average so they're fairly textbook and therefore easy to learn from.
I hope I've helped answer your questions! Let me know if you have any more. I hope you bought a good thermometer, too. Some of them aren't that great. I bought the
BD BBT from Amazon and have been using it since December 2008. It has yet to let me down and I love it!
Good luck and let me know if there's anything else!
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