The sympto-thermal method is the most accurate method of fertility awareness because it combines both cervical mucus observations with your basal body temperature and the option of tracking your cervix positioning and openness to determine your fertility. This is the method I use and have really enjoyed it.
How do you do it?
You will need to take your temperature each morning with in 30 minutes of waking up and before getting out of bed. It is also important to get at least one hour of consecutive and 3 hours total of sleep before taking your temperature for it to be accurate. For an in-depth understanding on how to record your basal body temperature read this post, The Basal body temperature method of natural family planning.
You will also then throughout your day take note of your cervical mucus. This will be less in-depth than the observations necessary for the Creighton model, but some observations are still needed. If you have tacky or stretch mucus and it feels slippery or wet when you wipe it's considered fertile otherwise not fertile mucus. If you decided to match this up with your cervix positioning you will have to feel for the positioning, texture and openness of your cervix. When you are in your fertile window and approaching ovulation, your cervix will move toward the front of your uterus to align with your vagina, it also opens and softens making it easier for sperm to enter and an egg to be fertilized. This will be helpful information to note if you choose to help you determine whether or not you may be ovulating or ovulating soon.
Other observations you may want to include are mood and other symptoms. Some moods that you might want to add would be happy, energetic, sad, moody, irritable, stressed, or angry. Some other symptoms that can be helpful also include increased appetite, increased libido, ovulation pain, back ache, headache, illness, constipation, diarrhea, cramps, acne, PMS, etc. to help you have a better idea of what your body is doing at any part of your cycle.
Charting:
To chart your observations and symptoms you will need to have a graph of some kind or an app. You will then have the vertical side of the graph with your temperature and the horizontal side with your cycle day, people will often then include the date below that to keep track of each cycle in a more organized way. Then after that you will put below the temperature, menstruation and any other symptoms you want there to down a column and check each day if you experienced any of them. To chart your menstruation, you will want to come up with a symbol for the various amounts of bleeding (heavy, medium, light and spotting) to help you identify each of those. Also, you will want to do the same for your cervix observations both the openers, positioning as well as the mucus you observe. For some ideas of symbols see this post The Creighton model fertility awareness method and for a better description on how to make your graph for your temperature see this post The Basal body temperature method of natural family planning the app I use is this one here called peak day if you would prefer a digital version.
How to determine your fertile window:
You will determine your fertile window the same way you would for the 2 posts I just mentioned except you have a lot more information to go off of which helps give you a clearer peak day. The peak day will be the day you observe a soft open and forward cervix, clear stretchy mucus, and a dip in temperature followed immediately the next day by a spike in temperature by half a degree or more. This will help you to determine whether or not you should have sex based one of you want a baby at that time or not.
Who is this method best for?
This method works great for anyone because there is so much information to go off of it will give you a really good picture of your fertility. This will give you a more precise and accurate fertile window and can help you be successful in preventing or achieving pregnancy. I highly recommend this as a starting place and then when you have more confidence in your observations you can be more comfortable with dropping some parts if it's more convenient for you. This is the method I currently use because I like the confidence and confirmation, I get with having multiple signs of fertility to go off of.
Leave a comment with what method you're considering or which one you are already using below.
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