Charting Detective

As I was staring at my chart this morning (a regular activity for TTCers, especially in the 2ww when you have nothing better to do), something dawned on me. Sometimes when you're all caught up in the day to day of charting, you lose the forest for the trees. But as I sat back and looked at my current cycle, and last cycle's chart, it hit me that I had the O date wrong last cycle. Which would explain so much. It wouldn't explain anything of great import, but it would explain some of my cycle inconsistency.

If you are not a chart stalking geek, read no further, because this will not be particularly interesting unless you are as fascinated by charting as I am.

So, here's a snapshot of my chart as I had it previously. I zoomed in on ovulation:

The first open circle was because I slept like absolute crap. I also had had two large glasses of wine the night before, which I didn't think much of at the time, but now that I realize alcohol does spike my temp, I discarded it. The second open circle was because I woke up an hour early. The temp I recorded after I fell back asleep was two hours late, but I used that one because that's the one I "wanted" to use. So I switched it back to the early temp, which was probably the correct basal temp.

This moved my O date ahead one day to CD14. I actually think my O date was probably CD15, based on how similar it looks to my current cycle if you move my crosshairs up a day. But either way, this makes so much more sense to me now.

The cycle immediately after my miscarriage only had a 12 day luteal phase, which makes sense because that cycle is usually crazy for everyone. But my 17 day LP seemed too strange last cycle. I haven't charted that long, but I charted CM & FWP the cycle we conceived, and so I'm almost certain that I O'd on CD15 that cycle. And my cycles have usually been 30 days. So if you assume that my normal is probably O around CD15 and an LP of 15 or 16 as well, than everything falls into line. Then it means that I actually am pretty regular about Oing, my LP is normal, and that my body is probably back to normal after the miscarriage. I'm curious whether my theory will bear out this cycle. Of course hopefully I won't get AF for another 9 months and I'll have to wait quite a long time to find out if I'm right.