Sex & fertility

Tracking and predicting your ovulation cycles

Once a month during your reproductive years, one of the many follicles in your ovaries will ripen and release an egg. This egg is then drawn into your uterus via the adjacent fallopian tube. From there it will either be fertilized and implanted in the uterine wall, or shed in your menstrual flow. This process, known as ovulation, typically occurs on the 14th day of a 28–day cycle, though cycles vary widely from woman to woman, and what’s “normal” can change as a woman ages as well.

The best way to become familiar with your ovulation cycle is to listen to your body and track your observations on a daily basis. You can use Women to Women’s Ovulation Chart for this purpose, or devise your own way of tracking your cycles. Most women pay close attention to ovulation when they are trying to conceive. However, knowing when you ovulate can be a valuable tool during any stage of your reproductive years, including perimenopause, and in predicting and preparing for other health issues and symptoms. Keep in mind that predicting ovulation requires careful listening to your body’s signals, and it helps to have some degree of consistency in your daily routine.

The changes your body undergoes from month to month are closely connected to the cyclical rise and fall of hormone levels. Prior to ovulation, your ovaries produce estrogen at an increasing rate. Your hypothalamus and pituitary gland stimulate the production of FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) and LH (luteinizing hormone) to prompt the follicle to release the egg. After one of your ovaries releases the egg, estrogen levels decline and progesterone levels rise. Some women notice a slight twinge of pain in their lower abdomen, called mittelschmerz, on the side where the egg is released.

These hormonal fluctuations may cause symptoms such as breast tenderness, general abdominal pain, or mood shifts. However, hormones are also responsible for changes in: 1) cervical mucus; 2) body temperature; 3) positioning of the cervix; and 4) the presence of hormones in your urine. Monitoring two or more of these four factors on a regular basis will allow you to predict your own ovulation cycle.

1) Changes in cervical mucus

The cells of your cervix respond to hormonal changes by producing various kinds of mucus. Paying attention to changes in your cervical mucus is one fairly accurate external way to determine internal hormonal changes.

You can check the mucus on your inner labia, in the vagina, or directly on your cervix. With time, you can also get a good sense of this when you go to the bathroom, or from the discharge on your underwear. But sexual arousal and other activities can affect your mucus, and because the consistency of the mucus produced by your cervix is what you are tracking, some people believe checking the mucus on the cervix itself may be preferable. Either location is okay, though it is a good idea to pick one strategy and stay with it.

Here’s how to check your mucus: Prior to checking, be sure to carefully wash and rinse your hands. When checking the labia, wipe your fingers over your inner labia and then pat your thumb and forefinger together to determine the consistency of the mucus. If you choose to check your cervix, insert two fingers into your vagina, taking care to avoiding the vaginal walls on the way in or out, and run your fingers across the cervix. Remove your fingers and pat your thumb and forefinger together to determine the mucus texture. Keep the following phases in mind as you track your cervical mucus:

• Menstruation: At this phase it is difficult to track cervical mucus due to the presence of blood. Some women do not monitor their cervical mucus on the heavier days of their menses, but many factors can affect women’s fertility cycles, so whether you check daily or skip this time depends on your situation. (Remember, if you are using our ovulation predictor chart, the first day of your menses is day #1.)


• Pre-ovulatory (follicular) phase: In the days following your period and prior to ovulation, you should feel mostly dry. There will be little to no sensation of discharge, scant cervical mucus or discharge on your underwear, and your labia should feel somewhat dry (except when sexually aroused). The cervical mucus you do produce will generally be cloudy or slightly yellowish, and it will break apart easily with a “tacky” consistency between your thumb and forefinger.


• Ovulatory phase: As your body prepares for ovulation, more estrogen is produced. Your cervix responds by producing more abundant mucus in preparation to aid the passage of sperm. You may notice wet discharge on your underwear or when wiping with toilet paper. The mucus will have a creamy texture for the first 1–2 days and become increasingly clear, smooth and slippery the closer you get to ovulation. As the mucus becomes slippery, it will stretch like the white of an egg between your two fingers. This is when you are most likely ovulating.


• Post-ovulatory (luteal) phase: After ovulation occurs and estrogen production falls, your mucus will lose its moisture and become sticky or tacky again (as it was in the beginning of the ovulatory phase). Your discharge will diminish and become drier than it was days before.

Keep in mind that swimming, showering, or bathing can alter the quality and quantity of mucus, so be sure to make your observations before introducing external water to your body.

2) Basal Body Temperature (BBT) method

A second component to estimating time of ovulation is temperature. Because a woman’s basal body temperature generally increases about one-half to one degree when she ovulates, monitoring your BBT requires a digital or basal thermometer that displays in tenths (0.1) of degrees. Tracking your BBT can unveil patterns in your cycle over time, so plan to track your temperature consistently each morning for several months, and be sure to start on day #1 of your menses.

Here’s how: Take your temperature immediately after waking and before rising, eating, drinking, or any other activities. Even the shaking of a glass thermometer can raise your temperature and throw the numbers off, so either use a digital thermometer or, if it’s a glass thermometer, shake it down the night before or directly after use. Insert the thermometer either orally, vaginally, or rectally — but again, adopt a consistent location and stick with it. Keep the thermometer in for five minutes and record your temperature on a chart.

As noted, your temperature is typically lower (97–97.5º F) prior to ovulation and higher (97.6–98.6º F) after ovulation.  Sustained high temperature (an increase of four–tenths of a degree or greater) for three days indicates that ovulation has occurred. When menstruation begins, it should fall again.

Getting into the habit of tracking your basal body temperature may seem inconvenient and time-consuming at first, but over time you will gain wonderful insight into how comings and goings in your outer world interact with your body’s inner reproductive cycles. Making those connections can be useful at different phases of your reproductive years.

3) Shift in cervical position

In addition to changes in cervical mucus and basal body temperature, your cervix becomes softer and moves to a higher position in the vagina as you approach ovulation. The cervical os (opening) also widens during this time. Keep in mind that the opening is circular, more like a pore, in women who have not given birth, and becomes wider and more slit-like after childbirth. You may want to ask your gynecology care provider to show you some images of the various positions.

To check the position of your cervix takes some practice, but once you get a feeling for where it sits in your pelvis and what it feels like at various stages, you will have one more tool for predicting your ovulatory cycle.

Here’s how: Be sure to wash your hands well. Squat down or sit on the toilet and insert two fingers deep into your vagina until you feel the cervix. It should feel firm (like the tip of your nose) when you are not ovulating and softer (like your lips) prior to and during ovulation. Note these changes on your daily ovulation chart.

4) Hormone monitoring

Ovulation predictor kits are also widely available to help you in tracking your ovulatory cycle. Some are designed to detect the surge of LH hormone typically present in your urine just before ovulation (24–36 hours in advance). You can purchase these kits, which provide five to nine days’ worth of testing, for anywhere from 20–50 dollars. Like home pregnancy tests, this type of ovulation predictor kit can only give you a positive or negative response. They do not measure how much LH hormone is present. Nor can you truly tell whether or not you’ve ovulated, because LH has been known to surge without the release of an egg!

To avoid false–positives with an ovulation predictor device, use the second urine catch of the day rather than the first. If you have a 28–day cycle, start the test on day 11 and use for six days. (A note of caution for those women experiencing irregular cycles: this method can be quite frustrating as well as expensive because you may not know when to start testing.)

Symptothermal approach

This method combines the monitoring of cervical mucus with the monitoring of basal body temperature. Using these methods together certainly can provide you a more accurate picture of your menstrual cycle than if you were to use one on its own. Similarly, at Women to Women we recommend using two or more of the above methods to get the most accurate assessment of when you are ovulating.

Life’s ups and downs — stressors, symptoms, and ovulation

Another important aspect to predicting ovulation are the features of your daily life, which can radically alter the fertility cycle — such as all forms of stress, travel, food, alcohol, caffeine, sleep, sexual relations — the list is endless.

You may want to take note of these as you track the other, more easily quantifiable components outlined above, and then correlate them all with physical and emotional symptoms you experience during your cycles. Some of these may be more negative or unwelcome, such as menstrual migraines or tearfulness. Some may be positive, such as peaks in creativity or periods of dream-enhanced sleep. Like everything else about our health, it’s all connected.

Changes in schedule may or may not occur with regularity in your everyday existence; the degree to which your routine varies and how much it impacts your fertility and symptoms varies widely from woman to woman, and over time. And again, some women are more sensitive to the vagaries of life in the outer world, while others are not. Many women certainly do become more sensitive during times of hormonal fluctuation, such as post partum or in perimenopause. This information may seem completely intuitive to you, but we mention it because many women are just so busy or “in their heads” that they may not have even had an opportunity to weigh these possibilities.

Keep in mind that you will need to record your findings for at least two months in order to see what is normal for your body. You may want to be creative and keep a diary, or keep it simple and track your findings on our Ovulation Chart. Whatever you decide, remember that the important thing is to stop and listen to your body. Becoming familiar with your ovulatory cycle will not only bring you closer to your body, but will give you insight into many other related symptoms and wellness concerns.

 

Last Modified Date: 04/19/2011
Principal Author: Amy Amoroso