The word 'basal' denotes base and as such, Basal Body Temperature refers to the base temperature of your body or the temperature of your body at rest ie. when you first wake up in the morning and prior to any other activities. Basal Body Temperature is one of the most important fertility symptoms and unless there is a medical reason, you should observe BBT together with Cervical Mucus (CM),  which are the basis for Fertility Awareness Method (FAM), for clues on your ongoing fertility.

Your body temperature rises and falls in a consistent pattern. Ovulation causes your body temperature to remain elevated for about two weeks. GenderLabs™ looks for this rise to determine when post-ovulation infertility begins. Your body temperature is not a consistent 98.6° F / 37° C as most people think. These figures are the body's normal base high temperature during waking hours. After going to sleep at night, your body temperature gradually drops, reaching its lowest point in the early morning. As you get closer to your waking hours, your metabolism picks up again, raising your body temperature ever so gradually, and the cycle is repeated. The scale of the drop and rise of body temperature differs from person to person, but all people experience it to some degree or another (no pun intended).

When a woman ovulates, the shell containing the ovum ruptures, releasing the egg and the hormone progesterone into the body. This hormone has several effects, for our purposes not the least of which is the raising of the basal body temperature. This increase in temperature is significant and detectable, as it typically is about 0.4° Fahrenheit / 0.2° Celsius over the course of several days. To detect this change, you will need a basal thermometer, available from most pharmacies. A standard fever thermometer is not accurate enough for our purposes here, as even a change of 0.1° F / 0.05° C is important. Therefore, an important first step in the practice of Fertility Awareness Method (FAM) is to buy a Basal Thermometer. GenderLabs™ looks for three temperatures that rise at least 0.2° F / 0.1° C above the high of the previous six temperatures. A "coverline" is drawn 0.1° F / 0.05° C above the highest of these six temperatures and when three successive temperatures are above this line, a thermal shift is identified and there's a good chance that ovulation has already occurred.

The temperature sign gives us a great albeit late clue that ovulation has occurred. That’s not to say that it can’t help couples conceive, as if there is a statistically significant temperature rise compared with previous temperature observations, there is a good chance that ovulation has JUST taken place and that intercourse might be 'fruitful'. However, the primary purpose of the temperature sign is to confirm that ovulation has already occurred and to help estimate the actual date.

Basal Body Temperature should be taken at a consistent time each day, preferably upon first rising in the morning before engaging in any activity, eating, drinking, brushing your teeth, smoking etc. You should enter the normal time you would expect to rise and take your temperature in the box provided/

BBT Disturbance

Occasionally, your BBT can be inaccurate or 'disturbed' as the term used by us to describe out-of-the-norm BBT as a result of insufficient sleep (less than 4 hours), sickness (fever etc.), hangover etc.  GenderLabs™ is programmed to handle such circumstances, all you are required to do is to mark the out-of-the-norm temperatures as 'disturbed' and as temperatures rise in a predictable manner beginning early in the morning, thus disturbed temperatures can be 'fixed' with estimates of what they would have been had they been taken at the normal time.