Written by Mikayla Dalton
Traditional basal body temperature (BBT) tracking can seem hard to manage when you have a little one keeping you up at odd hours through the night. Standard BBT instructions for temping often have requirements like trying to take your temperature at around the same time each morning, immediately upon waking, after at least 3 or 4 hours of sleep. Depending on your fertility awareness based method (check out some great ones perfect for while you're breastfeeding here), these instructions can be modified to suit this phase of life a bit better, but it can still feel unattainable at times.
If you’re waking because your baby is crying, you don’t necessarily want to lie in bed an extra minute or two to temp. You may even be sleep deprived and feel foggy headed, uncertain of how long you’ve slept already and how many times you’ve gotten up. You're not sure if this is your “best stretch of sleep” for the night and the right time to get your BBT.
This is where Tempdrop simplifies your fertility charting routine. You don’t have to listen to your baby crying while you take the time to wait for that thermometer beep! You don’t even have to keep track of how many hours sleep you got in-between wakings, or what time it is. All you need to do is put your Tempdrop on - and turn it on - before you go to bed for the night. That’s it. Tempdrop will take your temperature multiple times a minute throughout the night, and it will discard the temps from those times you are awake.
It requires a minimum of three hours of being worn while turned on, although more is better, especially if you're moving around for part of that time (like getting up with your baby). When you sync the data to Tempdrop's servers, the algorithm will determine when your body is most at rest.
You don't even need to sync it immediately when you get up for the day and have taken it off. You can just lay it aside and sync the Tempdrop to the app on your phone later that day when it's convenient for you. You might even miss that bit, wear it another night, and sync it for both nights at once. It can hold up to 24 hours of data at a time.
You can chart on a 3rd party charting app - or even just keep things simple and use Tempdrop's charting app, which is part of the same exact app you use to sync.
Breastfeeding mothers – scratch that, all mothers – who choose to chart their fertility postpartum might like this option to simplify their lives and make things just that little bit easier. Caring for a baby is a wonderful-but-tough job. Reducing the workload in other areas – even in small ways like this daily point in your chart – can help navigate these early days with baby more comfortably.
Mikayla Dalton is a childbirth educator and certified FABM instructor in the Boston Cross Check method, which includes urine hormone tests, cervical mucus and basal body temperature tracking in its observational toolbox. She's been working as a FABM educator since 2011, and specializes in the postpartum & breastfeeding phases of use as that's a time many women find more difficult to navigate. She's also a femtech geek whose husband once commented that she looked like the Borg Queen with all her fertility charting wearables on, and her bathroom sometimes resembles a lab. She blogs at Fig Leaf Fertility. If you love this post and would like to thank Mikayla, shop Tempdrop with Mikayla's unique referral link.