
Do you know how to measure your basal body temperature? If not, then let me tell you that it is pretty easy. Read the following article that deals with a few tips to measure your body temperature accurately.
Basal body temperature or BBT is the lowest temperature of a person’s body, when he is fully at rest, especially during sleep. It is the reason why BBT is measured as soon as you wake up. Although there is a slight variation in the accurate basal body temperature and the temperature measured, it is still considered as the lowest body temperature of a person.
The temperature holds a lot of importance amongst women who are trying to conceive or want to avoid pregnancy. As you know, there are various measures of earliest detection of pregnancy. Measuring BBT is a popular method of determining the time of ovulation as well as spreading fertility awareness. Although there are many experts who have doubts about the accuracy of measuring this temperature, there are a lot of women who use the BBT method to track their menstrual cycle and the time of conception.
How to Measure Your Basal Body Temperature Accurately
Benefits
Observing changes in various things like the basal body temperature, cervical mucus and cervical position are the basic steps of tracking fertile and infertile phases of the menstrual cycle. Charting your temperature helps you to predict the most fertile days, a possibility of hormonal imbalance and the time of conception. However, there are a few tips to measure your BBT accurately, and that you need to keep in mind.
As a rule of the thumb, you are advised to start taking BBT from the first day of your menstruation. First day of menstruation is counted as the first day of the menstrual cycle. Starting from the first day, you need to make sure that you are taking the temperature as soon as you wake up. Keep in mind that the body temperature rises as soon as you get up and starts moving around with your daily chores. Hence, make it a point to note down the BBT while you are still in the bed. To be able to do that, keep the thermometer near you, so that you won’t need to move a lot to search and use it.
Considerations
As an important pointer, you should take the temperature at the same time, each day. To make it easier, you can set an alarm for a particular time of the day, when you normally wake up. However, also make sure that the alarm clock is not too away from where you are asleep. There are only three things that you need with you to track your BBT. These things include, the BBT thermometer, BBT graph and a pen. There are special thermometers designed to measure your BBT that you can purchase for a pretty low cost.
The BBT graphs are easily available in the market. You can also find a printable version of these graphs on the Internet. You may also like to maintain an online BBT graph, for which you may need the computer and the Internet. Similar to the alarm clock, make sure that all the essential materials like the BBT thermometer and graph are kept at places close to the bed, so that you can reach them as soon as you wake up. It is also important to use the same thermometer throughout the entire cycle that you are about to measure.
Instructions
As I said earlier, you don’t even need to get up from the bed while measuring your BBT as you can do that while lying down in the bed. Whether you are using a digital thermometer or a mercury thermometer, it is important to leave it on your body for long enough, so as to get an accurate reading. Once you have taken the temperature, mark it down on the BBT graph. You might get confused when the thermometer shows some odd readings like 96.52ºC or 96.89ºC, etc.
In such cases, the best thing to do is to round up the measurements and mark them as 96.5ºC and 96.8ºC, respectively. You need to draw a temperature graph by joining all the temperature marks with each other, horizontally. It will give you a definite graph of your menstrual cycle, which is likely to remain the same for the next one to come. Continue this for the entire cycle while observing the changes in the curve of the graph.
Results
Regular observation of the graph can pinpoint a few things about your ovulation and menstrual cycle. For instance, on a particular day, you may find a sudden drop in the BBT. Low basal body temperature is the indication that you are ovulating. For 2-3 consecutive days, you may find the temperature to be a bit higher than average. This rise in temperature mostly indicates that you are in the luteal phase of ovulation. Luteal phase is the second phase of ovulation.
The BBT chart can be your best guide for prediction about your most fertile days. For instance, if you found that you ovulated on the 14th day of the cycle, then 12th to 19th days are possibly the most fertile days of your menstrual cycle. At the end, it is important to understand that the BBT method is widely used, yet a bit unreliable in predicting ovulation as well as conception. Hence, you always need to visit your respective obstetrician/gynecologist for pertinent results.
As I mentioned above, you may also check with a professional health care provider, instead of taking the results of the BBT graph for granted.