Although it is not necessary to check your cervix in order to practice FAM effectively, I urge you to learn how to do so. At a minimum, I think you should practice checking in the days leading up to and just past ovulation, for the first few cycles that you’re learning the method. Once you [...]

It can mean one of several things: First, you may be ovulating, but you may be one of the few women whose temperatures do not reflect the heat-inducing progesterone produced following ovulation. Second, you may indeed be having a thermal shift, but are not drawing the coverline correctly in order to accurately interpret your charts [...]

There may be several factors, from fever to alcohol to lack of sleep, that could affect your waking temperature. Yet this doesn’t compromise your ability to rely on them while charting, because you ultimately want to identify a pattern of low and high temperatures, rather than focusing on individual ones. Outlying temperatures can be effectively [...]

No, although you should try to be as consistent as possible. In general, waking temperatures tend to creep up about two-tenths of a degree for every extra hour you sleep in. Thus, if you take it substantially later than usual, it may result in a reading that is outside the range of your usual pattern. [...]