In my tip of my Fertility Insider Tip Series, I will give you some tips on how you can successfully master the task of taking your temperature, especially when you have one or more little children.
Before I became a mother myself, I never thought much about how difficult it could be to keep track of my temperature. Mothers with little children often tell me how the thermometer is pulled out of their mouth, or the child wants to be lifted up, to eat or drink or demands some sort of attention, and that of course exactly then when it is time to measure the basal temperature. How is it possible, with all those disruptions to get a whole three minutes time available for this daily task?!? That’s how I came up with a few tips, how you can turn this challenge into a breeze.
Let Daddy or your partner help
Cooperate as parents, be a team. Once your partner is also around on mornings, you two can arrange for a Baby-Daddy time while you measure your temperature. It takes only three minutes and can be a great morning routine for bonding. This is, in my opinion, the simplest and most convenient solution for all involved. However, should your partner not be around, then you can consider one of the other tips.
Measure the temperature before your child or children wake up
You could also just set your alarm clock to half an hour or one hour before your child or children usually wake up. If you all sleep in one family bed, then the alarm should be rather quiet so that only you wake up. Otherwise, the same disturbances as usual arise. If your partner gets up earlier than you would usually, you could get up at the same time as him, and measure your temperature. After that, you can go back to bed and snooze a little longer until your little one is up.
It is not necessary to measure the temperature each and every day
Once the cervical mucus and the temperature curve have been evaluated and double controlled, you won’t need to measure again for this particular cycle. Hence after the evaluation has been established, until your next menstruation you won’t have to take your temperature and you can relax and lie back. Many women who apply the basal temperature technique don’t measure any temperature while bleeding until the sixth day of their cycle. However, there is one exception, and that is when a woman ovulates very early in her cycle. In such case, the first higher temperature would also appear on an earlier day.E.g., the first higher temperature was already measured on day 12 or earlier. In such case, it is recommended to start measuring from the first day of bleeding so that enough temperature data can be collected to evaluate the temperature curve.
Use an analog Thermometer
Should the beep of the digital thermometer wake up your child or children, and they won’t let you measure the full three minutes to the end, then there is another excellent solution. Switch to the analog thermometer for the next cycle – That one won’t beep.
Take a nap at midday, together with your child
Many babies and toddlers take a nap. Therefore if you missed taking your temperature in the morning, you may nap with your child, and catch up with measuring when you wake up. For some women, it is not relevant if the temperature was taken when waking up in the morning or when waking up after the nap. Babies tend to have a different wake and sleep pattern than adults, in some situations it is advisable to avoid sleep deprivation to rest when they sleep. That gives you the perfect opportunity to measure after you have rested for at least one hour. What a great fit, as according to the rules of fertility awareness, it is possible to measure your basal temperature after you have rested for at least one hour, even if it is not right after you wake up in the morning. Just try it out, and you will see if this works for you. Maybe your child naps regularly at the same time so you can keep track of your temperature consistently, like at a time after lunch. Thus you can collect your data with a constant measurement standard.
Measure while breastfeeding
If you breastfeed your baby, and it wants to be nursed as soon as it wakes up in the morning, then it is a great idea to measure the basal temperature while you breastfeed. However, in that case, you should not combine with diaper-free, as many babies will have a bowel movement and urinate as they just woke up.
Keep something on your night desk to distract
Some children wake up and want to play immediately, of course, their attention is caught by the unusual thing that sticks out of Mama’s mouth, the thermometer. By having a toy at hand, preferably one of their favorite ones, or even a toy thermometer, you can solve that problem quickly, and the two of you can measure together.
iButton
As a last excellent option, once everything else fails, I suggest you could use the iButton. The iButton is a microchip that can measure your temperature while it is inserted into your vagina overnight. It will measure the temperature in intervals that you can pre-set. Then in the morning you can connect the chip to your computer and observe your temperature curve. This can be very practical, as your baby or toddler won’t be able to disturb this process. There is one downside though, the iButton is relatively expensive compared to regular basal thermometers.
Wishing you Good Luck and Success, when measuring with little kids,
Anne
