Selene

The Fertility Awareness iPhone app for serious women

Help

Selene is designed to track and chart all the important signs of your menstrual cycle, including the ones used to identify ovulation by the Fertility Awareness or Natural Family Planning methods. Log your basal body temperature and other symptoms and signs on the Day tab, and view your temperature shift and peak day on the Chart tab.

Selene is not intended as a tutorial for FAM or NFP. If you have not already learned one of those methods, we highly recommend the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler.

Index

1. Day tab
2. Chart tab
3. Automatic Fertility and Ovulation Detection
4. Calendar tab
5. History tab
6. Statistics tab
7. Note Settings tab
8. Other Settings
9. Free trial
10. Ask an Expert
11. Data Backup and Restore

Day tab

• Tap the temperature or any of the recorded observations (cervical fluid, etc) to record their values.
• Tap "days past ovulation" to tell Selene that you ovulated on this day, or to correct or override Selene's automatic estimate of ovulation.
• Tap the grey plus sign to add predefined notes, such as "late measurement" or "ovulatory pain". A list of circumstances you might like to track will be displayed. Tap any row to add that note to the current day; tap again to remove it.
• When you add an interference note, such as "sickness", Selene will ask if you want to exclude the temperature for the day. If you choose to exclude, the temperature will be drawn in grey on the chart, and the temperature line will be drawn skipping that point. It will also be ignored when calculating a cover line.
• Tap the large blue comment box at the bottom of the Day tab to type in any additional notes you like.
• Swipe left to jump to the next day or right to jump to the previous day.
• Tap the date at the top of the page to bring up a date picker and jump directly to any other day.

Chart tab

• Touch anywhere in the chart area to select a day and bring up a summary of the observations recorded that day. Drag your finger slowly side to side to change the selected point.
• Tap in the blue callout box to make it go away, or tap the blue circled-arrow button to switch to the full Day screen for that date.
• Swipe left or right to view your next or previous cycle, or tap the left- or right-pointing blue triangles.
• By default, the chart for each of your cycles is drawn with a temperature range selected to show the temperatures actually recorded in that cycle. If you would prefer a fixed temperature range for all charts (to make them more easily comparable to each other) you can choose that option in the "Selene" section of the main Settings app on your phone's Home screen.

Legend

Click to expand!

Automatic Fertility and Ovulation Detection

Selene can evaluate your chart by the rules of Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler. For more detail about what rules are evaluated, see Help: Fertility Detection.

• You can turn this feature on or off in the "Selene" section of the main Settings app on your iPhone's Home screen.
• On a cycle-by-cycle basis, you can override Selene's estimate of your ovulation day. On the Day tab, tap "days past ovulation", then enter your correction.

When fertility detection is on, Selene does the following:

• Detects your thermal shift, and draws a cover line on the chart when it occurs,
• Detects your peak day,
• Detects your ovulation day, and
• Draws shading on the chart and calendar to indicate your likely fertility day-by-day.

On the chart and calendar, the following background shading is used to indicate fertility:

• Unshaded: Most likely not fertile
• Dotted stripes : Most likely not fertile after 6 pm, if your signs don't change
• Thin stripes : May be fertile (regarded as not safe for contraceptive purposes)
• Thick stripes : Highest chance of fertility (recommended day for pregnancy achievement)
• Vertical bar : Most probable ovulation day

On the calendar, estimates of your upcoming ovulation days are marked with fuzzy circles. These are simply extrapolated from your history: if your own average period length is 27.3 days, and on average you ovulate on day 13, then Selene simply adds those numbers to mark your calendar. This is not a reliable method of predicting fertility for birth control or pregnancy achievement, and so these fuzzy future guesses marked on your calendar should not be used for these purposes. (For new users who haven't entered any history of their own yet, Selene assumes 29.1 days for period length and day 14 for ovulation.)

We highly recommend the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler to help you interpret your own signs. This app applies its rules blindly, and may have bugs -- the judgement of a knowledgeable user should always be applied as a check where matters as important as pregnancy are at stake.

Calendar tab

• Tap any day to jump to that day.
• Swipe left or right to view the next or previous month, or tap the left- or right-pointing blue triangles.

Calendar Legend

• Magenta shading on a day represents menstrual flow, with brighter shading showing heavier flow. Shading just in the bottom third of the box means 'spotting'.
• Fuzzy magenta circles mark Selene's best guesses at the start days of your upcoming periods. The more chart data you have entered, and the more consistent your periods, the better these guesses will become.
• Vertical magenta bars shows the start of new cycles.
• Lavender circles mark your ovulation days.
• Fuzzy lavender circles mark Selene's guesses at your upcoming ovulation days. (The more chart data you have entered, the better Selene's guess will be, but you should not depend on it for getting pregnant or avoiding conception.)
• Diagonal lavender stripes mark days when you may have been fertile; thicker stripes means more likely.
• Ovulation and fertility predictions are shown only if you have turned on Automatic Fertility Detection or have marked ovulation days manually.

History tab

• Tap on any cycle to jump to the Chart screen for that cycle.
• If your day of ovulation is identified for the cycle, History will show the date. When the cycle is complete, it will also show the length of your luteal phase.

Statistics tab

• Stats are calculated by averaging only the cycles where they can be determined. For instance, if Selene cannot identify your ovulation date for a cycle, that cycle will be ignored when calculating your average luteal phase, though it might be included when calculating your average period length or overall cycle length.
• Cycle length: total number of days in the cycle, from the beginning to the beginning of the next cycle.
• Menstrual period: number of days from the first to last of full flow (light or greater). Spotting days following the last day of full flow are not included -- for instance, if the first days of the cycle were medium, heavy, light, spotting, light, spotting, and then none, Selene would count that as a five-day period.
• Ovulation day: The cycle day on which ovulation was determined to occur.
• Luteal phase: The number of days following ovulation day before the start of your next period (the ovulation day is not included).
• Peak day: The last day of your best-quality cervical fluid.
• Thermal shift day: The day on which your temperature rise occurred.
• First eggwhite: The first day of the cycle on which you had eggwhite cervical fluid.

Note Settings tab

• Selene includes a long list of predefined note items for many possible signs, circumstances and events you might want to track. Select or unselect items you're interested in to control what shows up in the normal day-to-day note picker.
• For instance, if you're taking vitamins to help you try to conceive, you might turn on the options for tracking multivitamins and coQ10. Alternately, if you're tracking your cycles for contraception, you might never have any ovulation predictor kit results to record. Then you could unselect those options to hide them.
• You can also tap "Add new note..." under any category to define your own trackable note with icon. For instance, if you experience occasional migraines and want to log them, you could add an item under "Secondary Signs", and then you'd be able to record it with a tap like any other sign.

Other Settings

There are some options you can change in the "Selene" section of the main Settings app on your phone's Home screen:

• Change the temperature units (Celsius or Fahrenheit) and precision (1 or 2 decimal places).
• Set a fixed temperature range for your charts, so that every cycle is drawn to the same scale.
• Turn automatic fertility and ovulation detection on or off.

Free trial

The free trial version comes with two limitations:

• After 30 days, you will no longer be able to save new data.
• You cannot export your data by email.

To upgrade, visit the Upgrade tab.

Ask an Expert

If you have a question about your health or fertility or the meaning of your charts, inexpensive pre-paid consultations are available.

1. Go to the Ask an Expert tab.
2. Enter your question.
3. Choose whether to allow your data to be forwarded to the consultant. (It is not required to send your data, but if you don't, you will likely have to write much more to explain what your question is.)
4. Buy the consultation.
5. Tap the Next button to generate the message and open the Mail widget.
6. Tap Send in top right corner of the Mail widget.

You will receive a response from the expert consultant via email within a few days.

Note: If you have a technical question about Selene, or think it has plotted your data incorrectly, please email support@daringplan.com for free. Only health-related questions need a paid consultation.

Data Backup and Restore

Apple Device Backups

All Selene data is backed up every time your phone or tablet does a backup to iCloud or iTunes, so it is possible to recover lost data by restoring your whole device. Apple provides instructions.

Selene Data Backups

Selene also creates backup files in its File Sharing directory, which is accessible through iTunes:

1. Plug your device in by USB to your computer with iTunes. (If you are transferring your data to a new device, note you must connect here the old device, the one with your data on it.)
2. In iTunes, open the device page and go to the Apps tab.
3. Scroll down to the File Sharing section and click on Selene in the Apps list there.
4. Backup files are named like 'auto-backup-20130701.selenebk'.

Selene keeps rolling backups for about two weeks, but you can use the Save To... function in iTunes to make copies of these files and store them wherever you like.

If you lose your data in Selene, or wish to transfer it to a new device, you can restore a backup file:

1. Check that Selene is already installed on the device you want to restore to. If necessary, download it again from the App Store, then go to the Upgrade tab and restore your previous purchase of the app.
2. Send the backup file to your device, for instance by emailing it to yourself or using Dropbox or something similar to transfer it.
3. On the device, tap on the file to open it.
4. Tap on "Open in Selene".
5. Selene will open and present a Restore From Backup? screen. Tap Restore to proceed.
6. Selene will close after restoring; reopen the app to see the restored data.

Important Note: restoring a backup file will completely replace any existing data in Selene. If you go ahead with a backup and discover you overwrote something important, you can recover it from iTunes File Sharing again in the safety backup file named like 'backup-before-restore-20130617-1.selenebk'.