FERTILITY AWARENESS, or WHY I GAVE UP MY IUD FOR A THERMOMETER

After our son was born (the abundant blessing of an extremely unplanned, out of wedlock pregnancy) I thought, "THAT can't happen again." By my 6-week post partum checkup, I had decided that the best prevention would be to opt for the extremely popular Mirena IUD. I was assured that the low-dose, local, progesterone-only implant would not affect my nursing relationship or my son. I felt comfortable knowing that its failure rate is 0.01%. I felt ambivalent about its possible mechanisms: (from mirena-us.com)

"* Block[ing] sperm from reaching or fertilizing [the] egg.
* Mak[ing] the lining of [the] uterus thin (this may also result in benefits like less menstrual bleeding over time)
*Stop[ing] the release of your egg from your ovary (but this may not be the way it works in most cases)."

And I felt thrilled that other than checking to make sure it was still in place once a month, it required zero mental effort or involvement to be effective.



However, in the two years since, I have met more and more women online in attachment and natural parenting communities who are opting out of "traditional" birth control methods altogether, in favor of something I had previously considered the domain of Catholics with 8 children and 1 one the way: Natural Family Planning. These women actually have small families. And most impressively, these women know waaaay more about their fertility and health than I was ever taught. When I first observed this, I was beyond curious; I was outright jealous.

So I bought a book that has turned out to be one of the most interesting reads of my life. Reading it changed how I thought about birth control, personal responsibility, the role of sex ed in classrooms, the natural rhythm of life, and overall, the value of connectedness. That book is TAKING CHARGE OF YOUR FERTILITY by Toni Weschler.

The book teaches about the body's fertility signals, and how to "read" them for use in both pregnancy prevention and achievement. Unlike the "Rhythm Method" whose failure rate is 25% (deducing an ovulation date based on the average length of your cycles, which can and do vary from woman to woman, and even for one woman, from month to month), the Sympto-Thermal Method (alternately known as Fertility Awareness) has a failure rate varying from 2-15%, depending on the practitioner's understanding and adherence to its rules. Fertility Awareness users observe and record three primary fertility signals: waking body temperature, cervical position and texture, and cervical fluid. This serves to highlight the part of the cycle where you must either use a form of contraception or abstain, or alternately, where you'd focus your babymaking efforts. You can look at a sample chart HERE.

As it turns out, my body is much less of a mystery than before. It's as if someone told me about a secret text encoded in me that I can now see, where before I saw nothing. Frankly, it's a bit of a thrill. I eventually came to regard the information in the book as so important that I bought my 17-year-old sister the teen counterpart, CYCLE SAVVY and she now has a basic understanding of her own fertility signals, something that comes in handy despite her abstinence for things like, say, knowing when to expect a period so she's not caught off guard in her ballet leotard.

Now I am so bowled over by the things we are NOT taught in sex ed. For example, I didn't know that given the proper conditions, sperm can survive in a woman's body up to FIVE DAYS. You can have sex on Monday and conceive on Friday. Leave me a comment if you were ever told that, please. I doubt any of us were. Obviously, this can impact conception, or lack thereof considerably. Beyond this, it's interesting to note that pregnancy due dates are also affected for women who don't chart. You may think, we had sex on such-and such date, and that did it. But it could have happened 5 days later. And what if your healthcare provider is one of the many who push induction for so-called post-maturity? What if they'll let labor commence naturally at 9 days "overdue" but not 14? Then you're looking at an elevated risk of hemmorrage and c-section, traceable in no small part back to a general lack of fertility awareness. Interesting stuff.



Ultimately, I came to a kind of decision that exemplifies the pith of what I want to accomplish now in my life: to be more connected, more responsible, more involved. So I had my IUD removed, and I chart my fertility signals. It's a different headspace than I was in before. And the work of knowledge is a blessing.