Description

Whether you’re struggling to conceive after months or years of trying, just beginning your fertility journey, or simply interested in learning more about your reproductive health it’s likely that you’ve heard of Basal Body Temperature (BBT) tracking. BBT tracking has been around for years and is one of the most common methods of tracking a woman’s cycle at home. (Note: We at iFertracker are a bit of what we call “BBT Nerds” so bear with us on this explanation)

Invented decades ago, this Fertility Awareness Based Method is a novel way of providing clarity on the behind-the-scenes hormonal changes occurring at different points throughout your menstrual cycle. These hormonal changes have a small, but noticeable impact on your body’s temperature and can luckily be tracked day to day to infer when you’re most fertile.

For those unfamiliar with fertility tracking, the goal is usually to find the roughly 5-6 days per cycle where a woman can become pregnant. The traditional BBT method involves taking your temperature right after you wake up, before you move a muscle, and (for it to really be accurate) within the same 60-minute window every morning. Then you input or record that temperature (used to be on graph paper, nowadays in a smartphone app) and go about your day. After a full cycle of doing this every morning, you should be able to notice a roughly 0.4˚F – 1˚F (0.2˚C-0.5˚C) spike in temperature somewhere near the middle of your cycle. This signifies that ovulation has occurred: an egg being released from the ovaries for subsequent fertilization, implantation, and full on pregnancy.

You might be thinking, simple enough! Let’s get a digital thermometer and start making babies. However, the traditional method of BBT tracking does have its flaws.

For starters, the true definition of Basal Body temp is the lowest temperature reached throughout a 24-hour period, usually during rest! Not after you’ve woken up. Moreover, your pharmacy brand oral thermometer might not be as accurate as you think; see: random number generator. On top of that, you have to remember to measure and record your temp before moving ANYWHERE, even on those days when the only thing waking you up is your own bladder.

This might make it seem like BBT tracking isn’t all that great. However, the correlation between hormonal fluctuations and subsequent BBT changes is undisputed science. The issue lies in the method.

At iFertracker we came up with a solution to the antiquated, single data point way of tracking a woman’s cycle via BBT. The idea was not to reinvent the wheel, but rather make some design changes to a historically proven method that had flaws with regards to data collection and visualization. Traditional methods of BBT tracking do not gather your actual Basal Body Temperature, they get what is referred to as “waking temperature” and only gather one data point per day. This requires a strict sleeping schedule and manual data entry each morning, whereas the iFertracker automates this process and gets your temperature at your actual most restful state.

Instead of remembering to check and record your temperature every morning, iFertracker is at work while you sleep, gathering roughly 20k data points per night. Our continuous thermometer gathers CORE temperature while you sleep and when you wake up in the morning you just open our app to start syncing data. You’ll get notifications for when your fertile window is approaching and you can check out your color-coded fertility chart whenever you’d like in our app.

What does that mean for our users? No more worrying about waking up in the middle of the night or not moving a muscle in the mornings so you can get an accurate temp! Stay in bed a little longer. Go get that glass of water at 3am. Snuggle up to your significant other before work. FINALLY, you can sleep in without worrying about ruining your fertility chart.