How to Predict Your Menstrual Cycle

Many women want to predict their menstrual cycles. For women who are trying to become pregnant, they want to know when they are officially “late” so they can take a pregnancy test. Other women simply want to be able to plan their lives around an annoying visit from “Aunt Flo” and make sure that they are well stocked up on tampons or sanitary napkins. Predicting your menstrual cycle is fairly easy for most women. Here is how to predict your menstrual cycle.

Things You'll Need

• Calendar

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Instructions

• 1

  Set up a calendar for predicting your menstrual cycle. Write down the first day of your menstrual cycle onto your calendar. The first day of your menstrual cycle is the first day that you have a heavy flow. Do not count light spotting.

• 2

  Track your menstrual cycle for a few months. Write down the first day of your menstrual cycle each month onto your calendar. Then, count the number of days that passed from day one to day one. If that number stays consistently the same, then you can easily predict that your next menstrual cycle will begin after the same passage of time each month.

• 3

  Notice differences in time between menstrual cycles. If your menstrual cycle does not begin after the same number of days each month, track your menstrual cycles for several months. Notice how long the longest and shortest menstrual cycles were over a period of several months. This can help you predict your menstrual cycle within a range of several days. If your menstrual cycles vary by several weeks, talk with your doctor because this could be indicative of an underlying issue that is causing your menstrual cycles to be so unpredictable.

• 4

  Look for premenstrual syndrome (PMS) symptoms. Many women experience PMS symptoms such as bloating, headaches, sore breasts and irritability, for a week before their next menstrual cycle begins. When these symptoms ease, you can predict that your menstrual cycle is about to begin.

• 5

  Pay attention to your cervical mucus. When you ovulate, your cervical mucus changes in consistency, becoming more slippery and stringy. From the time you notice that your cervical mucus has changed, you can predict that your next menstrual cycle will begin in about 14 days, assuming that you do not become pregnant.