Weddingbee boards

Hi everyone, yep I am a long-time NFP user (2.5 years, no babies yet). I have written pretty extensively about it on this site. I use STM (sympto-thermal method).

Kate 6214 is right about how alcohol can affect your temp---it really does depend on how much and when you drink. If you get blazing drunk in the middle of the night, then yes, your temp will be higher when you take it at your usual 8 a.m. or so. But if you have a few drinks with dinner, you will probably be normal by the time you wake up to temp. Personally I do not drink heavily and I have never experienced temperature variation due to alcohol. My advice is to experiment a little. Have a night of drinking now and see how it affects your temperatures in the morning. Likewise, see what happens when you stay up a little late. I have found that really the only substantial temperature variation I have ever experienced was when I got the flu and had a 101-degree fever. Needless to say, we weren't going to be having sex anyway with a fever like that.

So many of your questions are going to answer themselves as you begin to chart. You see your body's patterns and start to know whether a certain sign occurring at a certain point is right or wrong for you, based on your history. To see the start of Phase III, you are looking for a combination of three days of temperature rise and the drying up of the cervical mucus. If you are unsure, you can always wait another day to double-check.

And if you are on Phase II during your honeymoon....well it happened to me and you figure out how you are going to best accommodate that. It's not the end of the world.

Feel free to PM me with any questions too!  

@KLP: The reading sounds like a genuine disturbed temperature to me and not an artifact of daylight savings time. If you usually temp at 6:45 and the day of the time change you temped at 7:45, you really did take your temp at your regular time this morning and it was abnormally high---sounds like a disturbed temp to me from getting up so much to tend to the dog. That's okay. If you're only on Day 9, and seeing fertile mucus, that means you're fertile---sounds like the beginning of Phase 2 to me.

Assuming you want to temp at 6:45, tomorrow I would just take your temp at 6:45. Any effects from the time change will settle out within 1 or 2 days max. And with springtime daylight savings, when we are losing an hour, any impact you would see on your temps would actually be for them to be artificially low, not high. Since you need a temperature rise to confirm ovulation (in addition to dry mucus, which you don't have), if anything you would be playing things more conservatively by just taking it at 6:45 (and again, in two days your body will be adjusted and it won't matter).

Alternatively, you can adjust in half-hour increments over two days (take it at 7:15 tomorrow and then 6:45 the next day) or 20-minute increments over three days (take it at 7:25 tomorrow, 7:05 the next day, and 6:45 the next day). This method is also outlined in Taking Charge of Your Fertility on p. 80. Hope that helps!