Learning about tracking your cycle is such an important part of not only understanding your reproductive health, but also your overall health. Our periods, ovulation and overall cycles are highly linked to physical, emotional, and hormonal changes within our bodies. It is not uncommon to miss a period due to extreme stress, drastic weight changes, influx of physical activity or changes in your hormones.
A few important points to remember when tracking
Cycle: We refer to your cycle as from start of your period to the day before the start of your next period.
Cycle Day 1: the first day that you start bleeding
Last day of your cycle: the day before you start bleeding
Peak Day: Last day of high quality cervical mucus, likely day of ovulation
Cervical mucus
Throughout your cycle, the mucus produced by your body is going to change. Following bleeding ending, your cervical mucus will be more crumbling and less inviting for sperm. As your approach ovulation, the mucus becomes thinner, more clear, and stretchier. This change is designed to help guide sperm to your egg. After ovulation occurs, the mucus will go back to low quality where it’s not slippery, stretchy, and/or clear.
When checking your mucus, you should be able to just notice it after you wipe from going to the bathroom or by gently placing your fingers against your vulva. There is no need to insert your fingers into your vagina to check the mucus quality.
Slippery cervical mucus should feel just that, slippery and watery almost. When you wipe, there should be little to no resistance and the toilet paper just glides over.
Stretchy cervical mucus is consider high quality when you can stretch it greater than one inch.
Clear cervical mucus is when it is mostly clear. There may be some white specks, but overall the color is clear.
For some amazing pictures, check out the Cervical Mucus Project!
We recommend that you check multiple times everyday to really notice the changes hour to hour and day to day. Only record the highest quality mucus you observe throughout the day.
Once you have your mucus observations, you can begin to figure out your peak day. This day likely corresponds to ovulation and is determined by the last day you had at least one out of the three characteristics of high quality cervical mucus (slippery, stretchy, and/or clear).
And also it is important to note that not everyone has all three characteristics of cervical mucus, and that does not mean you are unhealthy or not ovulating. By tracking your cycle, you are learning about your body and noticing your individual changes throughout the month.
Basal Body Temperature
Tracking your temperature is a great way to see if ovulation has occurred as your body temperature will increase (and stay increased) after ovulation. If you decide to also track your temperature, this should be done first thing in the morning before you even get out of bed or move around too much.
Once you notice that your basal body temperature has increased, and stayed at the same general temperature, you can also deduce that ovulation occurred prior to that change.
Ovulation Predicting Kits (OPKs)
OPKs indicate if your body has an LH surge, which normally precedes ovulation. Luteinizing hormone (LH) is released by the pituitary gland to trigger ovulation. Therefore, the OPKs can pick up on this surge to help you see when ovulation may occur.
So What Does It All Mean?
Whether you use all three to track, or just pick one or two that work better for you, any information you gather is going to be helpful to learn about your cycle and ovulation. While these three methods do not provide an exact time of ovulation, it does help to notice your fertile window. By finding your fertility window, you can then prepare according. Say by receiving a fertility massage prior to ovulation!
