How does Natural Cycles detect pregnancy?
After ovulation, your temperature rises due to the release of the hormone progesterone. If conception has occurred, progesterone continues to be produced to help with the development of the fetus. This causes the temperature to remain elevated after the expected period.
If that happens to you, Natural Cycles recognizes that conception has possibly occurred and will prompt you to take a pregnancy test for confirmation (whether you are using NC° Plan Pregnancy or NC° Birth Control).
Once you log a positive pregnancy test, your fertility status data will switch to blue (starting from the conception date) to indicate a pregnancy.
A graph of an NC° Plan Pregnancy user who logged a positive pregnancy test.
How does Natural Cycles determine the conception date?
The conception date is the date of your last detected ovulation, as this is when conception happened (when the sperm cell met the egg cell). Traditionally, conception dates are based on period data, but since Natural Cycles allows you to know exactly when you ovulate, using the ovulation date as the conception date gives you the exact date that you conceived.
What happens when I log a positive pregnancy test?
The pregnancy marks the start of a new cycle for your body, so if you log a positive pregnancy test in the app, the algorithm will start a pregnancy cycle starting from the day after your last detected ovulation (that day will show as Cycle Day 1).
If you are using NC° Plan Pregnancy, once you log a positive pregnancy test (from the Add Data page), you will be switched to NC° Follow Pregnancy, where the app will guide you through your pregnancy by providing useful and interesting information about the development stages of your baby.
If you were using NC° Birth Control, once you log a positive pregnancy test (from the Add Data page > scroll down to Emergency contraception & tests), the pregnancy will be acknowledged and your pregnancy data will show in blue. However, you will have to manually select NC° Follow Pregnancy (from the menu or from the questionnaire) if you want to be switched to that mode.
The Today view on NC° Follow Pregnancy.
How should I log implantation bleeding?
Some may experience implantation bleeding, which can happen roughly 10-14 days after ovulation, around the same time as when your period would normally be due. Implantation bleeding is often lighter than a menstrual flow and can be more pink or brown in color. This can be logged as Spotting in the app, and you can use the Notes section of the Add Data page to describe the bleeding if you want to.
Head over to our blog post to read more about implantation.
To find out how Natural Cycles calculates pregnancy weeks, click here.