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These can be easily found online or in most fertility books.

Start taking your temperature every morning. You can take it in your mouth or anywhere else temps are commonly taken but really, I find the mouth the easiest and most pleasant.

Very important is that you take it roughly the same time every morning (I'd say within 15 minutes either way) and preferably early (sevenish is good). Also very important is that you don't get up or move a whole lot before you take the temp.

Plot your temperature on the graph and connect the dots. Normal pre-ovulatory temps will be about 97.0 to maybe 97.8F. Please keep in mind that a lower or higher pre-O temperature is likely also normal, as long as it's fairly consistent. Fluctuations every day by 3 or 4 tenths (or sometimes more) is normal.

What to look for while charting: A rise! A big one, that is. When you notice your temps starting to look higher and higher for a few days, a helpful thing to confirm that indeed they are consistently higher is to draw what's called a cover line. Find the temperature that is higher than the six previously. If you're lucky, perhaps the rise was 5 or 6 tenths so it will be quite obvious. Circle them to make it clear. Draw your line across the page one tenth higher than temp number six.

Congratulations! You've ovulated!

So maybe at this point you've realized that charting tells you after the fact that you ovulated and everything is alright with the world. Maybe you're now wondering why this is helpful at all-you need to know before you ovulate so that you can have sex and get pregnant or tell the big guy to back off!

The reason all this is important is because you need to know if you're ovulating at all. If you're not, you're going to need some help getting pregnant. If you are avoiding pregnancy, being aware of ovulation is equally important. Charting also gives you an I'll know by' date. Your temps should stay elevated for 12 to 14 days. If they're still high after 14 days, you can start suspecting you're pregnant. If they're high 18 days or more, you can be pretty sure you're pregnant. Look at that! You don't even have to spend 20 bucks on that double home pregnancy test!

And so, the number one fertility sign is your temperature. Number two might make a few of you out there uncomfortable. But, this is part of the joy of being a woman.

The cycle of Cervical Fluid

So you get your period. It lasts anywhere from 3 to 7 days. Afterwards, for a few days, things are pretty dry down there. Nothing

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