Day 56 (CD1 of cycle #37)

When I took my temperature this morning, I immediately flung myself out of bed to the bathroom. After days of temps around 97.9 degrees, today's 97.3 could only mean one thing -- menstruation. Sure enough, within minutes, my period had arrived, and within an hour, the cramps had begun.

I was a bit disappointed at my 12 day luteal phase the past cycle. When I thought more about it, however, I realized that my sleeping patterns had been very inconsistent, and that there were a handful of nights in the luteal phase that I fell asleep on the couch for a few hours before actually going to bed with my eye mask on. Also, on a few nights, I've been waking up without my eye mask on -- looks like it's time to tighten up the velcro again. Hopefully next month I can be more consistent with that to try to get a longer luteal phase again.

Also, it should be noted that my period arrived the day before the new moon.

My plan for this cycle is to try to use light to trigger an earlier-than-normal ovulation on cycle day 18, so that my next period won't arrive at an undesirable time. We'll see how that works.