The temperature sign is simple to use and a great option for couples. As one couple told us last month, October 2019, “Prepregnancy, my husband and I primarily relied upon the thermal method, due to its simplicity.”
In the 1970s, my husband attended Fr. Paul Marx’s conferences on natural family planning and heard Dr. Billings say he dropped the temperature because women found the temperature sign so easy to use that they tended to ignore the mucus sign.
In our Home Study Course, we give the couple a pregnancy chart to interpret. We want them to learn that the three weeks of elevated temps indicate pregnancy. When they give the right answer, that the chart indicates pregnancy, I tell them that we picked the pregnancy chart for a reason. This chart is to teach you that the temperature sign is an excellent indicator of pregnancy and also of the age of the unborn baby. Our primary medical consultant called 3 weeks of elevated temps the best indicator for the estimated date of childbirth. You do not have to run out and buy pregnancy kits or age-of-unborn-baby kits. The chart gives you the answer. See page 70 in the manual for the details.
In addition, the temperature sign can also tell you when you are not pregnant. For example, when a very worried woman called about a possible pregnancy while using only the mucus sign, we told her to take her temp for five days and get back to us. From those temps, we could assure her she was most likely not pregnant, assuming that her temperature pattern was in the range typical for most women. This gave her peace of mind, and a subsequent menstruation confirmed our estimation.
For more information and research on the temperature sign, go to “Your Right to Know” on the home page or to http://www.nfpandmore.org/pdf/temperature_sign.pdf.
Sheila Kippley