My husband and I have been married for almost eight years and we have 4 beautiful children. We don't use any form of artificial contraception and have been using NFP but not to the letter due to me being a befuddled mess. I constantly lose charts, forget dates of cycles and temping just isn't working.

I have ADD so I have tried to read and reread the book over and over and have a hard time paying attention. I get the basic gist of it. I have been paying attention to my CM, etc. but I haven't been taking my temperatures for a long time because they were so unreliable before. We live in a small house with no central ac/heat so the temperature in our house fluctuates a great deal. We'll go to bed hot and wake up freezing cold and vice versa.

I also suffer from insomnia, and have two kids who wake up throughout the night, which makes waking up at the exact same time every morning and taking a decent temperature reading near impossible. When I had tried taking it before, it was all over the place.

I'm not trying to make excuses for doing anything other than NFP. I'm just wondering if it's possible to do NFP effectively long term without taking temperatures everyday, in other words just going by charting my CM, menses and ovulation pain, etc.

I am also wondering if there are any approved resources available for those who would prefer not to use paper charts. I've heard of software for those trying to conceive (couldn't it be used to chart for NFP purposes?) and of fertility machines like LadyComp/BabyComp and was wondering what your opinions are on such devices.

God bless.

The Ovulation Method (BOMA) and the Creighton model---both NFP methods--do not rely on temperatures at all and only chart the CM. Try one of these: boma-usa@msn.com; popepaulvi.com.

The fertility monitors tell you when your maximum chances of conceiving occur, but they are not very accurate in identifying the lesser fertile times at the beginning and end of Phase 2--so they are no reliable for postpooning a pregnancy.

Thanks for writing.

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