Charting Your Cycle – 5 Ways To Track You’re Fertility

Charting your cycle can help you identify your most fertile days and boost your chances of conceiving.

By tracking small changes in your body, you can pinpoint your fertile phase and predict when ovulation is likely to occur. Ovulation is when an egg is released from an ovary. Having fertility awareness and knowing when your fertile window is allows you to time sex effectively and increase the chance to conceive (when sperm meets the egg) and achieve pregnancy.

A 2024 study published in Fertility and Sterility found that women who tracked their fertility cycles (menstrual cycles) fell pregnant more quickly than those who didn’t. Understanding your fertility cycle helps you try for pregnancy at the right time.

What is cycle charting?

Charting your menstrual cycle is a way of improving your chances of getting pregnant each month. By tracking changes in your body, you can check the length of your menstrual cycle, your most fertile days, and predict when ovulation is likely to occur and therefore increase your chances of pregnancy.

Charting your cycle improves your fertility awareness and allows you to gain a better understanding of your reproductive cycle.

What is your fertility window?

Your fertility window begins about five days before ovulation and ends the day after ovulation. You need to have sex during these fertile days to have a chance of sperm meeting egg and getting pregnant. Knowing when you’re fertile allows you the best chance of achieving pregnancy.

How do you chart your cycle?

There are different ways to track your menstrual cycle, and you’ll need to choose the one that works best for you. You can use more than one method to improve the accuracy of your charting and boost your chance to get pregnant.

Ways to chart your cycle

Charting is a daily activity to monitor and record observations about your body. You can track the following changes:

• Cervical mucus changes
• Basal body temperature changes
• Ovulation prediction kit
• Saliva ovulation microscope
• Cervical position changes

Cervical mucus changes

Tracking your cervical mucus is one of the easiest, most affordable, and reliable ways to track your fertility. It doesn’t rely on fancy technology or a monthly subscription. Checking mucus can tell you your fertility status in the moment, making it an invaluable resource for those trying to achieve pregnancy.

Your cervical mucus changes throughout your menstrual cycle and this is evident in changes to your vaginal discharge. Tracking these changes in cervical mucus can help you identify where you are in your menstrual cycle.

Tracking your cervical mucus can be easily done. Wipe with toilet paper, as you would after having a wee, and then inspect the toilet paper for signs of discharge. Alternatively, you can insert a clean finger into your vagina and analyse the cervical mucus on your finger.

Infertile cervical mucus is usually tacky, flaky, sticky or dense. As you get closer to ovulation, your mucus will change and become creamy and cloudy. Around the time you ovulate, as you become fertile, cervical mucus has the consistency of egg white. This mucus is clear, slippery and wet. This helps the sperm to travel quickly to the waiting egg.

If you have cervical mucus, test it using your thumb and forefinger; fertile cervical mucus will stretch as you pull your forefinger and thumb apart.

To find out more about how to track your cervical mucus, look at BellyBelly’s article Cervical Mucus And Ovulation | Identify Your Fertile Period By Mucus.

Basal body temperature (BBT)

Your BBT is your resting temperature. Many women track their basal body temperature (BBT) when trying to conceive; small changes to your resting temperature throughout the month can give clues as to where you are in your cycle.

Using the same thermometer, you should take your temperature at the same time every day, after at least three hours of uninterrupted sleep, to get accurate results. If you haven’t had three uninterrupted hours of sleep, make a note on your daily record, as it could affect your results.

This method looks for small temperature changes in your body. It’s essential to use a basal body thermometer because it will give more accurate results than a general thermometer.

After ovulation, your temperature will increase by 0.5 to 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.22 to 0.56 degrees Celsius). This small change allows you to see when ovulation has occurred. Unfortunately, this method doesn’t alert you when you are ovulating; instead, it tells you after ovulation has occurred.

Tracking your basal body temperature over several months gives you a clear picture of how long your cycle is and allows you to predict when you will ovulate in the future. This method works best for women with regular cycles.

Ovulation Prediction Kits (OPK’s)

Ovulation prediction or test kits take the guesswork out of tracking your cycles, but they aren’t cheap. Ovulation tests work in a similar way to pregnancy tests, but instead of detecting the pregnancy hormone hCG, they detect the luteinizing hormone (LH) present at ovulation.

Your luteinizing hormone levels surge, triggering ovulation. By detecting this LH surge, ovulation kits can tell you you’re likely to ovulate within the next 24-48 hours, allowing you to schedule in a last-minute date night.

Ovulation prediction kits aren’t cheap, especially if you use them for several months. You should start using the tests about five days before you are expected to ovulate, although there is a risk you’ll miss it entirely, especially if you have irregular cycles.

Saliva Ovulation Microscope

Did you know your saliva changes when you’re fertile? Looking at your saliva through an ovulation mini microscope can tell you whether you’re ovulating or not. A 2020 article published in Clinical Epidemiology and Global Health found that saliva testing is a cost-effective way of detecting ovulation.

Using a dry saliva sample, a microscope will help you determine whether you’re ovulating. When you’re fertile, your saliva will take on a fern-like pattern (known as ‘ferning’).

Cervical Position changes

Your cervix moves throughout your cycle and can provide clues to charting your fertility. This method takes some mastering but can help you understand your body and fertility better.

When you first attempt this method, you’re unlikely to know whether your cervix is high or low. However, if you perform this method daily, you will soon be able to identify changes in the position and feel of your cervix.

It’s essential to check the position of your cervix at the same time each day. Always make sure you have clean hands before inserting fingers into your vagina.

If your cervix is low, hard, dry and closed, you are at your least fertile. If your cervix is high, soft, wet and open, you are most fertile and more likely to get pregnant

Checking the position of your cervix is best done at the same time each day, due to changes which occur throughout the day.

What is your menstrual cycle?

A menstrual cycle is made of 4 different phases (menses, follicular phase, ovulation and luteal phase). Typically the whole cycle lasts between 21 and 35 days. Some women might have varying lengths each month; others find their cycle stays the same length month to month. Your menstrual cycle begins on the first day of your period and ends the day before your next period. Your menstrual cycle features hormonal and physiological changes to prepare your body for a potential pregnancy; these changes happen even if you aren’t trying to conceive.

What is the best way to track your menstrual cycle?

A simple way to record your fertility is to note down the dates of each menstrual cycle. You can use a period tracker app or an old-fashioned paper diary to do this. Paying attention to your periods over a number of cycles allows you to calculate the length of your average cycle and predict when your next one is likely to be.

Using the methods mentioned above, such as tracking your cervical mucus, checking BBT and the position of the cervix, can help you improve the accuracy of your understanding of your fertility and lead to a successful pregnancy.

How do you properly calculate your period cycle?

To properly calculate your period, just note down some information such as; when it starts and stops. You might also want to keep track of other symptoms, such as; the colour of your mucus, cramps or mood changes, so you can better understand the impact your fertility has on your wider health.

If you choose to use any of the tracking methods mentioned above, such as basal body temperature,, mucus colour cervical mucus or cervix position, combining all of the information will provide a full picture of your reproductive health. This is useful because it allows you to spot changes that might require further investigation.

Charting online with an app

Fertility or period tracking apps have become increasingly popular in charting menstrual cycles. Rather than using paper, you simply note down the information in the app, and AI does most of the work for you. Each app is different, so choose the one that’s right for you. Be sure to check our reviews and look closely at what they do with your data before committing to a particular app.

How do I know whether my cycle is regular?

Tracking your fertility for a few months will give you a clear idea of whether you have regular cycles. If the length of your cycle is the same each month, your cycles are regular. If the length varies from month to month, you have irregular cycles, which can make it trickier to determine when your fertile window is likely to be.

If your cycle length is less than 21 days (shortest cycle) or more than 35 days (longest cycle) each month, speak to your healthcare providers. They might want to rule out underlying health problems that could be affecting your cycles.

What is considered a late period?

For your period to be considered ‘late’, will depend on the length of your cycle. If you have a normal 28-day cycle, you are considered late once you reach day 29. If you have a 33-day cycle (longest cycle), your period will typically be late by the time you reach day 34.

It gets complicated if your cycle lengths vary from month to month. Ovulation typically occurs about two weeks before your next menstrual period, although the exact length can vary between women. Tracking your fertility allows you to pinpoint ovulation and figure out when your next period is due.

What are the wet and dry days of your period?

You might have heard people discussing the ‘wet days’ of their cycle and wondered, ‘What are the wet days in my period?’ This term is used by people tracking their cervical mucus; ‘wet days’ refer to the days around ovulation when cervical mucus is wet and slippery.

Perhaps you’re wondering, ‘What are the dry days in my period?’ These refer to the least fertile days, when your cervical mucus is minimal and feels dry or tacky.

Does cycle charting work?

Yes, tracking your cycles is a valuable thing to do as it can increase fertility awareness. A 2025 article published in Seminars in Reproductive Medicine found that fertility tracking increased the likelihood of conception, allowed the detection of health concerns, and gave women a better understanding of their menstrual cycle.

Start charting to increase your fertility awareness, understand where you are in your cycle, time sex more effectively for successful ‘sperm meets egg’ moments, and you might conceive sooner.

All the best with charting your cycle conception, and may it help you achieve a faster pregnancy!