NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING: THE TEMPERATURE METHOD?
The Temperature method is based on the fact that when you ovulate, your body temperature rises between 0.2 and 0.5°C and it stays that way until your next period starts, then it drops down again. The next period usually starts between 12 and 16 days after you ovulate.
How do you use the Temperature method?
You have to take your temperature every day to find out when you ovulate so you can work out your safe time. You must take your temperature every morning as soon as you wake up, before you get out of bed. It also has to be taken before you eat, drink or smoke.
This is called your basal body temperature (bbt). Your basal body temperature is your temperature when your body is completely at rest.
You can take your temperature with the thermometer in your mouth or in your vagina, but you will need to decide on one or the other and do that for the whole cycle. Be aware that your temperature can go up for a number of reasons, like illness for example. It should be safe to have sex once you have had three days, one after the other, where the readings are higher than on any of the six days before them.
Take your temperature every day from the first day of a period, and record the temperature on a chart or graph. You will see that for a number of days your temperature will stay just about the same, then one day you should notice that the temperature has gone up a bit If it is still up on the following day, and then the day after that (three days), and it is higher on each of those three days than on any of the six days before it went up, that means you have ovulated. It also means your fertile time is now over and it is safe to have unprotected sex.
You will notice that this method only gives you a safe period in the second half of the cycle after you have ovulated and isn’t able to give you any idea of your fertile times early in the cycle. This means if you use this method correctly and have a 28 day cycle there are probably only 11 days a month when this method says you are safe from pregnancy.
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