1. Chart Your Menstrual Cycle
Charting your menstrual cycle can help you predict when you are most likely to ovulate. Your cycle starts on the first day you get your period and lasts until you get it again. A normal menstrual cycle is 28 days. If that's how long your cycle is, then you will probably ovulate on the fourteenth day, give or take a couple of days in either direction. If you have a longer or shorter cycle count backwards 12 to 16 days from when you are supposed to get your next period to find your ovulation window.
2. Change in Vaginal Discharge
Though most women don't pay much attention to normal vaginal discharge, you may want to if you are trying to get pregnant. Vaginal discharge is usually cervical mucus, and the texture and consistency of your cervical mucus can tell you when you have ovulated. The function of cervical mucus is to serve as a barrier to the uterus. When an egg has been released and is ready for fertilization, however, that mucus changes to permit sperm to get through. Consequently, when your vaginal discharge thins out and becomes clear and stretchy like an egg white, that's an indication that you are fertile.
3. Take Your Temperature
When your body releases an egg, it also produces the hormone progesterone, which raises your body temperature once it's in your system for a day or two. If you chart your temperature over several months, you can see a pattern emerge that will indicate when you are ovulating. Your most fertile days are the few days before your body temperature reaches its high. The change in temperature is only .4 to 1.6 degrees F, so you need a basal body temperature thermometer that shows minute increments. To take chart your temperature this way, you have to use the thermometer every morning at the same time before you even get out of bed. If you do it right, you will be able to predict when your temperature will rise in subsequent months and when you will ovulate.
4. Feel for It
If you feel lower abdominal discomfort or pain around the time when you could be ovulating every month, you may be one of the 20 percent of women who can actually physically detect themselves ovulate. The severity of the pain can vary from woman to woman, but it is usually mild. An egg only lives for about 24 hours, so you only have about a day to try to get pregnant after you feel that pain.
5. Use an Ovulation Predictor Kit
Modern technology has made detecting your own ovulation much simpler with at-home ovulation predictor kits. These kits are available from any drugstore. They work by detecting how much luteinizing hormone (LH) you have in your urine. Just before you ovulate, this hormone surges. The kit tells you whether or not it detects that surge. These kits can produce false positives, however. Not all surges of LH coincide exactly with ovulation. It's important that you follow the kit's directions precisely to get the best results.
