What is a glass thermometer?
Most of us know thermometers as those little digital ones that go under your tongue and beep when ready. A glass thermometer is the kind your mother might have had when you were a child. It has mercury inside and takes 5 minutes to give a reading. The basal thermometer measures temperatures to 0.1 of a degree but sometimes the mercury will end up inbetween the two lines so I guess it’s 0.05 of a degree. This supposedly makes it more accurate than the digital one, but it’s kind of a pain because you have to leave it in so long. The mercury is also a hazard if the thermometer is broken. (More about that later.) The thermometer must be shaken down to below 96 each day. This takes practice. What is the point of this thing anyway? The concept of the basal thermometer is that you take your temperature every morning (at the same time) and chart it on a graph. If you are trying to get pregnant, it will help you to determine when you might be ovulating. If you are trying to not get pregnant, it
