This will probably read like Greek to anyone who doesn't chart their basal body temperature, but I'll try to keep it interesting.
Despite having PCOS, my cycles are fairly predictable - I'll get a big dip in my basal temperature the day of ovulation, followed by a spike up to 97.1 degrees the day after. I'm usually pretty consistent about taking my temperature at 7:30 am, so it's always been easy to see a nice, ovulatory pattern. Two days ago, I got the dip; yesterday, I got the 97.1. "Yay," I said, "I've ovulated!" My husband and I went out to dinner to celebrate, stuffed ourselves with pork and whiskey and then dragged our bloated asses home, content in the knowledge that we'd already done all the baby-making we could do for that cycle.
Yesterday, though, I started getting awful ovulation pains, and this morning some regular old menstruation-type cramps came to join the party. I started worrying that maybe I didn't really ovulate on day 16 and the pains were a sign that I was gearing up to ovulate for real. I figured today's temperature would reveal the answer - if it was low, then clearly I didn't ovulate, but if it was another high temp, I was right about day 16 being the lucky day.
Of course, this morning had to be the morning that my pain in the ass cat woke me up at 4 am by knocking everything off the nightstand. I scrambled to get the thermometer into my mouth without too much motion, waited through the little beeps and... 96.8.
Fuuuuuck.
The teeny tiny Captain Optimism in my brain swooped in just then. "It's three hours before your normal temping time!" he said, "Go back to sleep and temp again when you wake up!"
So I did, after evicting the pain in the ass cat from the bedroom. I woke up again at 8 am and stuck the thermometer back in my mouth. This time? 97.8.
"Whoo hoo!" cried Captain Optimism. "You ovulated on day 16!"
"Nah," Admiral Pessimism chimed in, "You can't trust the 97.8 - it wasn't after a full night's sleep!"
They are still debating.
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