Getting pregnant isn’t always as easy as it sounds. For some women, getting pregnant takes a little bit of effort (beyond the obvious). You may need to take some time to measure things out, and really track your fertility. If you do that, you’ll greatly increase the chances that you’ll become pregnant. If you don’t track fertility, you’re likely to wind up frustrated and unsuccessful.

Here are three ways you can track your fertility:

1. Track your periods. Knowing when you’re fertile is easy for some folks. If you have a regular 28-day period, you can do some simple math and you’ll just count the days until you ovulate. Typically, you’ll ovulate 14 days after the start of your last period. If you have a cycle that’s longer than 28 days or shorter than 28 days, you’ll have to lengthen or shorten that wait after your period starts. If you have an irregular cycle, as many women do, it can be much more difficult to track your fertility.
2. Chart your cervical mucus. Cervical mucus is a discharge that your body produces. It’s job is to help get the sperm from the vagina up to the cervix, where it can go from there to the fallopian tubes and fertilize an egg. Around the time that you ovulate, your cervical mucus will be plentiful, and it will have the color and consistency of an egg white. In fact, we refer to this as “egg white cervical mucus.” If you chart your cervical mucus from month to month, you’ll have some better idea about when you’re going to ovulate.
3. Track your basal body temperature. Every month when you ovulate, your basal body temperature (BBT) will elevate slightly. (The BBT is that temperature your body has while at rest, so it’s usually best to take it first thing in the morning when you wake up.) Here again, tracking your BBT from one month to the next can help you to track your fertility by helping you be able to predict when you’re going to ovulate.

There are a number of tools out there, including ovulation prediction kits, that can help you track fertility, as well. Many of them use a combination of the methods listed above.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 and is filed under Fertility.