Health

Fertility Awareness

With only a couple of minutes a day, you can acquire abundant practical information about your fertility. You have the key to unlock the mystery of your own menstrual cycle and reveal an entire aspect of life that few women are aware of.

The fertility awareness method (FAM) is scientifically proven to prevent pregnancy as well as achieve it. With it, you can:

Feel in control when we see our health care providers.
Understand the difference between healthy cervical fluid and abnormal discharge from an infection.
Become more in touch with our cycles, which can give us a head start on predicting everything from pregnancy to menopause.

FAM is a method of birth control with no hormones, chemicals, prescriptions, fittings or side effects; it is completely controlled by you and has practically no cost. When practiced carefully and correctly, fertility awareness is almost as effective as most hormonal methods of birth control and is more effective than barrier methods. If used perfectly and you abstain from intercourse during fertile phases, FAM has about a 2% failure rate. Fertility awareness is easier on your body than any other birth control method.

FAM is also a wonderful method for women who are trying to achieve pregnancy naturally. Fertility awareness can help women who believed they were infertile become pregnant without chemical intervention. FAM can pinpoint the perfect time to introduce sperm, which can be especially helpful to women who do not have easy access to sperm.

Key Points of Fertility Awareness

There are two basic pieces to FAM charting. These are cervical mucus charting and basal body temperature charting. Cervical mucus (mucus produced by the cervix) can tell us where we are in our menstrual cycle. It is important to know the difference between vaginal discharge and cervical mucus. If you were to put vaginal discharge in water it will dissipate, cervical mucus will not. A stringy, slippery and egg-whitey mucus means that you have fertile mucus present. If you were to introduce sperm at this point, you would be more likely to get pregnant. If cervical mucus is sticky, tacky or has the consistency of glue (or not there at all) you are most likely not at a fertile point in your cycle and would be less likely to get pregnant. You may have already noticed a pattern to your cervical mucus since most women have a specific time in each cycle when their mucus is more abundant.

Basal Body Temperature (BBT) is the temperature of your body at rest. There are specific thermometers that must be used to take a BBT, they can read a temperature to a 10th of a degree. These are usually called family planning or fertility thermometers. When taking BBT's for FA you must take your temperature when you wake up in the morning before you do anything else. Charting BBT's is a hindsight method; you cannot tell you have ovulated until after the fact. With the combination of cervical mucus charting and BBT charting, you can determine the time of your menstrual cycle in which you are fertile.

Ask your healthworker about the fertility awareness workshops held every other month at CWHC.