This article covers the following topics. To jump to a specific section, click on the links in the table of contents:
- Overview
- New users and NC° Plan Pregnancy
- What about irregular cycles?
- Important tips to remember when using NC° Plan Pregnancy
Overview
Whether you want to get pregnant now or in the near future, Natural Cycles can help you on your fertility journey as a pregnancy planning app. NC° Plan Pregnancy is the Natural Cycles mode you can use to help conceive a pregnancy.
If you’ve been using NC° Birth Control, you can switch to NC° Plan Pregnancy whenever you are ready to start trying to conceive. To learn more about switching from NC° Birth Control to NC° Plan Pregnancy, please read here. If you’re new to Natural Cycles, you can sign up (here) and choose to start using the NC° Plan Pregnancy mode.
To use NC° Plan Pregnancy, you need to measure your body temperature and input your temperature and period data. Then, the Natural Cycles algorithm will provide you with your daily fertility status. In NC° Plan Pregnancy, the fertile window is presented in a scale of red colors, where the most fertile day has the darkest shade of red, and the lightest red color indicates that fertility is unlikely. Non-fertile days have a light green color.
Brown Days are days on which more data is needed for the algorithm to provide a fertility status. It means that you need to keep measuring for the coming days. Non-fertile days are presented in light green.
In the pictures below, you can see the scale of colors in the Today and Calendar tabs.
There are 2-3 days per cycle during which you have the highest chances of conceiving (around ovulation day), even though the fertile window is six days in total.
The ovulation day is when an egg (oocyte) is released from the ovaries and can be fertilized by sperm. To increase your chances of conception, the Natural Cycles algorithm can find your ovulation day and the days when you are the most likely to get pregnant by analyzing body temperature and (optional) LH levels.
Natural Cycles gives you the information you need to time intercourse and maximize your chances of conceiving. Our research shows that, on average, it takes three cycles or less to become pregnant using NC° Plan Pregnancy.
The graph view is helpful to get an overview of your temperature data. The red color changes from light to dark according to your peak fertility.
When using NC° Plan Pregnancy, in addition to seeing your daily fertility status, you can also add extra information like cycle symptoms, changes to your mood, and sex data to learn even more about the pattern of your unique cycle.
You will also be able to log ovulation test results, which, although optional, may increase the chances for the algorithm to narrow down your most fertile days. LH levels surge 24-48 hours prior to ovulation, triggered by the increase in levels of estrogen in the body. Therefore, your LH levels can be a good indicator of the most fertile days in the cycle. Ovulation tests measure the level of LH in the urine and can be bought in the app, webshop, or your local pharmacy.
The picture above shows the Add data page, where you can log your temperature, period data, cycle symptoms, changes to your mood, and log if you took an optional ovulation test.
The app also sends reminders to help you learn more about your body, such as when it's time for a breast self-examination.
New users and NC° Plan Pregnancy
If you’re a new user of NC° Plan Pregnancy, it’s important to note that for the first cycles, when the algorithm doesn't have much information on when you usually ovulate and how much that varies, the algorithm will give a broader range for your fertile window. However, if you measure your daily temperature and input your data regularly, this window will narrow after 1-3 cycles.
What about irregular cycles?
Thanks to all the data you add to the app, Natural Cycles will get to know you and your unique cycle and adapt accordingly. If you have irregular cycles, you may experience more Brown Days because of the larger variation in the ovulation day. This just means there will be a larger window during which you should attempt to conceive in your cycle.
Important tips to remember when using NC° Plan Pregnancy
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If you’re coming from hormonal contraception, you must finish it before starting with NC°. The hormones in hormonal contraception, whether it's the pill, patch, shot, or hormonal IUD, usually work to inhibit ovulation. Please refer here to when you can start using Natural Cycles after quitting hormonal birth control.
- Check your fertility status each day in the Today view. Your fertility status will be presented on a scale of red colors, where the most fertile day has the darkest shade of red, and the lightest red color indicates that fertility is unlikely. Non-fertile days have a light green color. You should always check your Today view to see your fertility status for that day.
- You can see predictions for your coming days but don’t take the predictions as guaranteed outcomes. On the Calendar tab, you can see predictions for your coming six months. Remember that predictions in the Calendar tab are a forecast based on your historical data and are subject to change each day as you input new temperature data, ovulation test results and/or period data. Please make sure you always check the Today view to see your daily fertility status each day.
If you intend to use Natural Cycles as birth control or are not planning on getting pregnant anytime soon, it’s important that you switch to the NC° Birth Control option. NC° Birth Control and NC° Plan Pregnancy work slightly differently. Detecting ovulation is the same for both products, but there are differences in the risk profile. For NC° Birth Control, the algorithm is optimized to have a very low risk of wrongly attributing a Green (safe) Day in the fertile window. In contrast, NC° Plan Pregnancy is optimized to better isolate the fertile window and the most fertile days. While using NC° Birth Control, the user gets either Green (non-fertile) or Red (use protection) Days. On the other hand, NC° Plan Pregnancy users get a fertility scale ranging from green (not fertile) to the darkest shade of red (peak fertility). To summarize, if you’re looking to prevent pregnancy, make sure that you’re using NC° Birth Control which is set up to help you do so.