Day 1

I started cramping yesterday, so I knew that my new cycle would be starting soon.  I woke up this morning and took my BBT (basal body temperature) and recorded in my app.  Less than an hour later, Aunt Flow arrived, which means time to chart!

A few tips that I've read about charting to share with you:

• The first day of your period is Day 1 of your  cycle.  This does not include spotting.  Start Day 1 on the first day that you need a pad or a tampon.  

• Be sure to take your BBT at the same time every day.  I plan to keep my thermometer under my pillow and take my temperature as soon as my alarm goes off every morning.  

• Drinking, a lack a sleep, and other variables, my give you an inaccurate BBT reading.  If you think that this is a possibility, you should mark you temperature for that day as "Questionable"

• You ovulate about 2 weeks before your period.  This won't be helpful until you've charted for a few months and have a general idea of how long your cycle is.  

• You can easily check your cervical mucus by taking a look at your toilet paper after you've wiped.  This is definitely one of those extras that you don't have to track, but the more information you track the better you can predict you're fertility.  If you're interested, read more about cervical mucus and fertility here.

• OPKs (ovulation prediction kits) are another extra.  They are little strips that you can test your urine with and they look for a hormone surge which occurs roughly 36 hours before you ovulate.  If you're interested, this is the set that I ordered.

• Timing is everything!  Sperm can live for three to five days, but your egg only hangs around for 12 to 24 hours.  This means that there are only 4 to 6 days every cycle that you can get pregnant.  To cover your bases, they recommend having sex every other day starting 5 days before you ovulate through 2 days after you ovulate.  

Charting

I officially stopped by birth control last week.  With an upcoming girls weekend and a bachelorette weekend, we do not plan on trying to get pregnant this cycle and will be using protection when necessary.  I had decided that I wanted to come off the pill a month before trying in order to let everything regulate, so that I would be able to chart my cycles.

If you're not familiar with the term charting (which I wasn't until only a few months ago), it is a method used by women to track when they are ovulating.  Some actually use this as a natural method of birth control and many use it to help them become pregnant.

After researching various apps, I decided to use Kindara.  This completely FREE app allows you to track you BBT (basal body temperature), your cervical fluid (because who doesn't check that on a daily basis?), your sexual intercourse, menstruation, and results of any OPKs (ovulation tests) and pregnancy tests.  I know that it seems extremely overwhelming, but you can opt to track as little or as much of this information as you'd like.  Obviously, the more information you include, the easier it is to track when you're ovulating. If you decide to use this app, I'd recommend checking out "How to Read a Kindara Chart" here.

Just another couple of weeks until I go off the pill, so I'm making sure I'm ready to chart.  If you plan to track your BBT (basal body temperature) you'll want a thermometer that is accurate to the nearest hundredth of a degree.  I've purchased the MABIS Basal Thermometer.  It was reasonably priced and had decent reviews.

When to Start?

Some things I've learned so far from "The Impatient Woman's Guide to Getting Pregnant":

• Start prenatal vitamins as soon are you are considering getting pregnant.   Now you can get prenatal vitamins with DHA included, but I found a few downsides to that.  They're WAY more expensive and they aren't as easy on your stomach.  After lots of research and input from  my pharmacist friend, I opted for Nature Made Prenatals.   I supplemented these with a Fish Oil/DHA and calcium.

• You may want to give up smoking, drugs, alcohol, and caffeine before attempting to get pregnant.  And that goes for your partner too.  These have been found to reduce fertility.  The extent of my drinking pre-pregnancy was a glass of wine here or there, so I wasn't overly concerned with this.  

• It will take your body some time to regulate after stopping birth control.  Now this doesn't mean that you can't get pregnant the first cycle off, it just means your cycle won't be consistent and that if you plan on charting, it may be difficult. 

• Stress does not reduce fertility!  Again, it may make your cycle irregular and make it difficult to chart/predict when you're ovulating, but it doesn't make you any less fertile. 

• It can take a while to get pregnant.  For an average, healthy woman, it takes 6 to 12 months to become pregnant.  

With this last piece of information, my husband and I decided that we wanted to get started sooner rather than later.  I will be going off my birth control at the end of my current pack, which is exactly one month from now.

The Right Time to Start

My husband and I finally decided that it was the right time to start our family.  And no it wasn't some magical moment where everything perfectly aligned and we both felt ready to be parents.  The conversation last week went something like this:

Me:  "Your birthday's in a few months.  You're going to be 29, we're getting so old."
Hubby:  "We are, we're almost 30."
Me:  "Wow.  Wasn't our plan to have our first kid before then? That's crazy."
Hubby:  "Yeah, we should probably get started on that."

And that was how it all began.  Like I said, no magical moment where we both felt ready because really I think if we waited for that to happen we'd never have kids.

So, ready to get started, I wanted to do my research and get the facts.  I purchased the following books to get me started:

The Impatient Woman's Guide to Getting Pregnant by Jean M. Twenge

Bumpology:  The Myth-Busting Pregnancy Book for Curious Parents-To-Be by Linda Geddes
A science journalist attempting to make sense of conflicting advice about pregnancy.

Expecting Better:  Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong - and What You Really Need to Know by Emily Oster
A professor of economics gathers and presents all of the data out there to give you everything you need to make informed decisions regarding your pregnancy.