Fertility Awareness: Secondary Symptoms
Along with temperature changes,changed in the cervical fluids, and physical changes in the cervix, a woman’s body actually gives off other signals during ovulation as well. Not every woman will experience each one of them, but when you are in tune with what your body is doing, you may actually be able to sense them a bit more often. Charting how your body feels, as well as your emotions, can give a good look to the inside workings of your cycle.
Secondary Ovulation Symptoms:
- Breast fullness or tenderness starting the week of ovulation
- Light cramping during the fertile phase
- Cramping on one side when you actually ovulate. May last a few minutes when the egg is released or may last the whole day.
- Bowel changes as your hormones surge
- A feeling of heightened sexual desire (did you know the word estrogen stem from Latin roots that mean creating mad desire?)
- Some positions during intercourse may not be as comfortable since your cervix changes position
- All of a sudden being high energy or feeling highly productive.
- Clear, soft skin
- Happiness or all around feeling great, increased confidence
Month by month, you may actually find more ovulation signals as you chart your body changes along with your temps or fluids. Keeping track is a great way to actually pin point the moment of ovulation instead of relying on a guess of when ovulation took place during a whole day, since the egg start to deteriorate after about 12 hours.
*anyone else have other ovulation signals I may have missed that you experience?
The fertility awareness portion of the Natural Fertility 101 series is brought to you by Fertility Flower. Fertility Flower is a recently-launched website that helps couples grow their families or practice natural birth control using the sympto-thermal method.
Unique features of Fertility Flower: it offers a unique way of displaying the primary fertility signs in one charting space that emphasizes the relationship between them, allows for cycle comparisons with chart overlay and is a fully mobile natural family planning website (unlike abbreviated mobile apps which offer limited capability).
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About donielle
Donielle is an amateur herbalist and natural momma to two littles (with another babe in heaven) after struggling with infertility. She has a passion for nourishing nutrition, natural living, and spreading the word on how food truly affects our health. Her blog Naturally Knocked Up focuses on fertility and reproductive health and her book on natural fertility will be available in June 2012. She also runs a local blog (Grand Rapids Natural Living) and is active the local community in order to provide the area with resources and information for natural families.
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Nope, those are all the ones that I know of. Good list! It’s great to be able to remind myself of all this stuff, as it’s been awhile since I’ve been in the groove of NFP (pg, nursing, etc.).
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Wouldn’t it be great if we could have those “symptoms” all the time! Clear skin! Happiness! Increased energy! Horniness! Ahhhh. Too bad its just a day a month
ICLW
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Those are all that I know of. Too bad we only get 1 day to figure it out each month.
ICLW.
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Those are the only ones that I have experienced.
ICLW
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Good reminders! Thanks!
ICLW.
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I was so out of tune with my body – when I got naturally knocked up after 12 years infertility and didn’t even know it.
Great list by the way.Pity the symptoms aren’t as clear as two lines on a stick.
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Good list! Thanks!
(ICLW)
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I'm currently doing NFP to prevent pregnancy, charting mucus, temps and such. But my #1 signs that is always a dead give away I'm about to ovulate is increased sexual desire. I may have wanted nothing to do with sex a few days before, but the day before/of ovulation I want sex!
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I ALWAYS get hiccups a day or 2 before ovulation. I thought at first it was a coincidence but I’ve had it happen for the last 2 years consistently.I looked it up and it has to do with the body producing different hormones.
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Great list. All my usual NFP signs are still wacky (and I follow sympto-thermal by CCLI) and temp is the only thing that tells me for sure (but after the fact!) I get lots of those things you list when fertility is real. Glad to have some other alerts when my body is still figuring out cylces again after long amenorhea! Only wish this breast tenderness wasn’t quite so bad though. I have a nursing 22mo and it makes me want to wean!
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My mom, a very wise woman, told me when I was a teenager that she figured God designed women to be more likely to want sex when they were ovulating. She thought that was a good explanation of why so many girls got pregnant the first time they had sex. It made sense in my mind and from that point on, I could usually tell when I was ovulating (along with some cramping on one side as well). She had absolutely no research to back it up, but just a theory. I always knew she was smart!
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About a two pound weight gain coinciding with the LH surge. Anotherwords two pounds gained right before ovulation. Something in the homones I guess…water weight that is gone the next day. I have PCOS, so my hormones are always a little off:) Anyone else notice this?
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I don’t have any great clues like that–or I’m too dumb to notice! But my mom had a great one: she would get a rash under her wedding band (of all things!) during her fertile phase! Isn’t that a hoot?
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donielle Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
@Regina, Ha! That’s pretty funnny…and ironic!
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