November 2010 Weddings
LindsMullinix
member
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
**zaramarie**
Is there a book you would recommend for Natural Family Planning? I'd like to look into the possibility and was hoping you could recommend a book, or website where I could do some research.
If anyone else happens to read this that is using a form of natural family planning I'd love your input too 
Thanks!
-Linds
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Re: **zaramarie**
Not Zara, but H and I are doing Natural Family Planning.
"Taking Charge of your Fertility" by Toni Weschler is AMAZING! www.tcoyf.com
I'd also recommend "Fertility, Cycles and Nutrition" by Marilyn Shannon
As part of my marriage prep, I took a course taught by Couple to Couple League -- it's religion based, so I don't know if you'd be interested in that. The book that came with that course was the Art of Natural Family Planning. TCOYF is not religion based.
I've read all three and definitely recommend the first two. She makes it so easy to understand and does not come at you in a condescending way for using BCP (AoNFP does in my opinion).
EDIT: TCOYF also covers a wide range of issues, like if your basal body temperature doesn't fit the standard pattern, she gives you examples of patterns that could fit.
If you do switch to it, the first two to three months coming off the Pill will make your cycles look really weird. Your temps will be all over the place, and you may not even ovulate. Don't worry, they usually even out after 3 months according to everything I read. Mine were screwed for the first two cycles.
Hope that helps!
Taking Charge of Your Fertility is the one that gets recommended over and over (and over and over) again 'round these parts!
Eat.Drink.BeMarried. Blog.
Linds - Catarntina has given some good thoughts/resources here! I too have heard "The Art of Natural Family Planning" highly recommended as well as "Taking Charge of Your Fertility." (Although I must admit, I've read neither!).
There are also different styles of charting (same science behind all of them; choosing a method has more to do with what works for you personally than anything else). Catarntina uses the Symto-thermal method which includes recording basal body temps. I get the impression many like this method (both my sisters use it too!).
Hubby and I use the Creighton method (http://www.fertilitycare.org/). This worked best for our needs because you learn this method one-on-one with a teacher (who is often a nurse). We probably needed that extra instruction regardless of method and found security in how the practitioner manages your specific case, correcting your charts to make sure you are doing it right. This method also helps with pinpointing and treating fertility problems.
Books read in 2012: 21/50
I think it's good to read up on it before you try to have babies. That way you can see what's going on with your body before you try. It can help see where potential issues are.
If you start charting now, it can save months off your time when you do TTC if you can't get pregnant. NFP tells you whether you're ovulating, whether your body is making certain characteristics that are needed to conceive, whether your luteal phase is sufficient to sustain pregnancy, whether you are making enough progesterone, whether you have too much estrogen, or not enough... it's very helpful in diagnosing a wide variety of health issues.
It can tell you whether you are conceiving but miscarrying. For instance, if your chart says you have an 18 day luteal phase then got your period, it most likely means that you got pregnant but miscarried. If you didn't chart, you could think that you hadn't even gotten pregnant at all. Miscarriages are treated differently than infertility.
H and I are using it to avoid pregnancy right now and I can, with great confidence, say on any given day what my odds are that I'll get pregnant. It's pretty awesome. I'm not freaking out about when I need to order my next batch of pills or if we have condoms. Since I got off BCP I've been feeling better, too. Sex drive has gone up, I have more energy, I'm not depressed.
My doctor also practices NFP and I told her I was charting to avoid. She said she had only ever gotten pregnant while trying -- this made me even more confident. I told her I had a short luteal phase, and she gave me some tips on how to fix it. I couldn't be happier with my choice of BC.
BTW, the TCOYF book was only $19 on amazon. And you can get a BBT for $5. So the total cost is $24 and some paper and a pencil for lifetime of birth control.
Be careful Linds!!
Married 11/6/10
No... see how it works... You chart and see when you're about to ovulate. Then you abstain (or use condoms/spermicide) during that period right before ovulation and a few days after. Then you can have as much sex as you want until your period. The principle is that you can't get pregnant if there is no egg to fertilize.
So if you have irregular periods, it doesn't matter. Say for instance you don't ovulate til day 24 you can have sex up until *about* day 18 of your cycle if there is no sign of fluid...then from day 27 until you get AF.
Then the next month, you chart and you see fluid on day 10 day. You abstain until 3 days after ovulation -- say day 17. No pregnancy.
This is not the old fashioned rhythm method where you count days from your last period. It's much much more scientific than that. The rhythm method assumes you ovulate day 14 and that's why people get pregnant because they might not be ovulating till day 24. It's not the rhythm method at all. You chart cervical fluid, body temperature, your cervix position. It's way more scientific and works very well for people with irregular cycles.
Catarntina, you explained this well! Yes, no worries this is not rhythm. NFP is actually wonderful for irregular cycles because it helps you know *your* body. Each woman is different! Even those of us with regular cycles. (And women with fertility troubles often have irregular cycles, and it's these women who often seek NFP specifically to diagnose their problem. Doctors can even correct some irregular cycles)!
That's the thing... it feels so good to just know what's going on with your body! H actually keeps our chart and it has relaxed him immensely too because he knows what's going on with me all the time. If I am super edgy, he is like "Well, yeah, it's day 21! You need to go take a bath and read a book!" (I have short cycles so day 21 is hellish lol).
K ladies...I researched this a bit online and found something that said this:
"To avoid pregnancy, don't have sex (unless you use a backup method of birth control) from the last day of your period until three days after the increase in temperature."
Is this true?? If so (and I used to often skip months between periods), then a woman like me can go for a long time abstaining.
I don't mean to sound ignorant, so thank you for explaining this to me, I'm just truly wondering if someone like me can be successful on this type of BC.
Also, perhaps I do not know what type of "fluid" I would be looking for, but wouldn't this fluid get mixed up from the *other* type of fluid from intercourse??
Also found:
Because ovulation is so hard to identify, natural family planning methods do not work as well as other types of birth control. They prevent pregnancy about 75 percent of the time. This means that one out of every four couples who rely only on natural family planning will get pregnant.
And one more tidbit (which for sure eliminates this method for someone like me):
Having a fever, drinking alcohol, smoking or sleeping poorly can affect basal body temperature.
Married 11/6/10
I'm also wondering about something with this method:
All the women in my family have gotten pregnant VERY easily. As in they didn't use any BC and got pregnant on the first try (well, not necessarily "try"). My mom always said she was pregnant with me within a week after stopping BCPs, and she didn't go back on since she was breastfeeding and was pregnant again almost immediately. Most of my relatives have been the same. I assume they can't all have been ovulating when they stopped using BC, so can't some people get pregnant at any point in their cycle?
temurlang...
You have to ovulate to get pregnant. Every time. Because ovulation is the release of a mature egg and you need both an egg and sperm to have a baby.
An egg only lives a max of 24 hours after being released. Now, you can be fertile for longer than 24 hours because sperm can live in a woman's body for several days if you have healthy, estrogen-type mucus. Regardless, you have to have living sperm and living egg come in contact to have a baby and sperm and egg have limited life spans so no, you can't be fertile all the time or any time.
There are some women who are "super-fertile." These women just have a lot of fertility factors going for them like healthy mucus, but even these women are only fertile a few days out of their entire cycle! Now, the women in your fam may just have shorter cycles with nice healthy ovulation. If that's the case, then sure, you can just decide you want a baby and within a matter of days to weeks be pregnant. (After all, a typical cycle is only 28 days... so if you're healthy and ovulating well, the wait to TTC isn't long but the window still remains quite small. Does that make sense?).
Sorry, to clarify the part about sperm living a few days.. basically the sperm can just sit and wait for the egg for several days prior to ovulation. So this means you don't have to have intercourse the very same hour the egg is released. That's why there is a window of time when intercourse can result in pregnancy even though an egg may only live say, 12 hours. But still, that window is only a matter of days, not weeks or an entire month.
"To avoid pregnancy, don't have sex (unless you use a backup method of birth control) from the last day of your period until three days after the increase in temperature."
Is this true?? If so (and I used to often skip months between periods), then a woman like me can go for a long time abstaining.
This is false, false, false. Your period ends, then you start charting cervical fluid. The first day you see cervical fluid is the first day you start to abstain from sex. Then you abstain until 3 days after you ovulate.
HOWEVER! If your body is gearing up to ovulate and you see fluid, but you don't see a temperature shift and you dry back up (not to be crude, you really dry back up). You can have sex again 3 days after you dry up even though you have not technically ovulated. Just so long as you haven't seen fluid for 3 days. As soon as you see it again, start abstaining again.
You will typically not be abstaining for more than 10 days max.
So for you, if you have 90 day cycles, you may not ovulate until day 76. You can have sex every day until you see cervical fluid around day 72-ish.
The type of fluid can get confusing. The books I recommended explain tricks to determine if it's really cervical fluid or seminal residue or arousal fluid. They also recommend that while learning to have sex every other day during pre-ovulation in case you can't determine the difference between seminal residue and cervical fluid. After 3 days after ovulation, you can have sex every single day without worry until AF.
And it's also 99% effective when you follow the rules -- as with any form of BC. If you forgot to take a pill, the effectiveness goes down. If you saw cervical fluid but said, "Whatever, we're ok." You're gonna get pregnant. You have to follow the rules.
As far as your last statement -- if you don't get regular sleep, it may be hard at first to chart BBT. But since you are regularly getting irregular sleep, you may still see a pattern form.
Rachel -
Okay, first of all there are several methods of NFP. Not all use basal body temps. It IS true that basal temps can sometimes fail you.. this is why methods that use basal temps also cross-check with other signs. (Sympto-thermal... this means you track symptoms like fluid AND temp to cross-check).
Secondly, research shows that NFP is 94 - 96 percent effective (99 if there was no such thing as user error). Ovulation/fertility for most women is just not that hard to pinpoint with our scientific knowledge now (and worst comes to worse, you can use OTC ovulation kits to pinpoint it if you can't figure your chart out). The user however is in control with how much they are open to pregnancy... some folks will have intercourse knowing they are easing into their fertile phase but they are willing to risk it! I've yet to meet an NFP user who got pregnant and couldn't figure out why.
They know their fertility. Some know the hour they conceived!
You asked if you can have intercourse most times due to your cycle. Yes, women are infertile the vast majority of their cycle. Even those of us with regular cycles. The key is knowing when you are fertile.
In regards to fluid... once you learn how to chart, no it's not hard to identify.
If you ever decide you want to use NFP, the Creighton model tracks fluid only (no temps). The teachers are fantastic at teaching you how to read all the fluids, how to properly identify and eliminate seminal fluid and arousal fluid, etc. We've been charting for 5 months now, and it's quite do-able!
IF you don't have any fluid to chart... something is wrong. Fertility depends quite a bit actually on healthy cervical mucus. (Sexy, huh?
)
Oh sorry Rachel I thought you were asking if you could be active for long periods of time, not abstaining for long periods of time!!! Catarntina is correct... you are only fertile a few days per cycle. It may take someone with an irregular cycle longer to identify that fertile phase but that egg has a very short life.
And ditto Zara.
There are other methods that ignore BBT completely, such as Creighton method. If you not getting regular sleep and can't rely on temperature, creighton is good for that. Cervical Fluid is the most important thing to chart across all methods of NFP.
Temperature only method is not reliable as it only tells you that you have already ovulated and not that you are about to ovulate.
OMG! This is all so complicated!
My doctor actually wanted to give me an implant (Implanon I think it's called)... but I'm vain LOL and it would show under the skin!
I have to say though that worrying about NOT getting pregnant still seems easier than worrying about TTC!Lol... sorry, it can be a bit daunting to go into all the anatomy and physiology of fertility on a forum.
NFP really is not terribly hard to use though because it really is about your unique body and how you work. I think reading the books catarntina recommended helps.
Each woman is so different... for me TTC is a concern (I am hoping it all goes easily). Avoiding at this point could be helpful but not necessary for us.
Thanks for the clearing up ladies. Obviously, the internet is not always the smartest place to get accurate info.
Personally, this sounds like more work than I am up for at the moment (that's why having an IUD is so nice), but...when I need to take the thing out and am getting closer to TTC, I may indeed be inclined to look into this. I'm sure once you get a pattern down, it becomes second nature.
Married 11/6/10
Yep. It's definitely not for everyone. I honestly thought the church was crazy when they told me I needed to take a class on NFP in order to get married ("Yeah right! I'm not having 17 kids!") but I felt much more confident about it when my doctor told me she uses it with great success. It can be a lot of work, it requires a lot of discipline, so I think people definitely have to do what is right for their current circumstances.
Once you're over the learning curve, it really is 2nd nature though. To me, after 9 months of charting, it's as easy as poppin a pill right after brushing my teeth.
17 kids, lol. I freaked my brother in law out when I kept joking about 10 kids (I was SO kidding the poor guy thought I was for real!). But I agree, you have to invest some effort into learning but yes it does become 2nd nature too. I personally love love love the health/medical benefits of it and how it much it has helped H understand me better. I wish I had learned more about fertility and how it works earlier in life.
If you want to be extremely accurate, yes, you chart every day. However, many couples who use NFP just to avoid pregnancy (and not for say, gaining a complex medical diagnosis) find that once they get the concepts and complete a bunch of cycles successfully, they can more casually read the signs of their own body without being super strict about daily charting. There is always a little added risk with lax charting though.
And some folks who have irregular cycles or other medical issues (or if you have reason to believe your hormones have majorly shifted, like you just had a baby) will need to be more diligent.
I honestly have to say it becomes a habit and is not a burden for me. At some point, it may be nice to just be more casual about recording stuff, but I don't find our more strict charting right now to be hard!
That book I linked, TCOYF, actually has a whole chapter dedicated to "Shortcuts: Minimum Charting with Maximum Reliability." But she also has right on the first page of the chapter, "For those of you who just skipped ahead to this page, don't even think of using the rules in this chapter until you've charted several complete cycles."
After I've confirmed ovulation, I pay less attention to fluid. I check my temperature every day though, because it tells me if I'm going to get my period that day. It honestly takes about 1-2 minutes out of the day to observe the signs and chart it all down, so it doesn't bother me.
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Just be cautious the first 2-3 months going off the Pill. Your chart may be hard to read as fertility might not return right away, or it will be slightly confusing.
They recommend to use a backup method for 3 months while your body is adjusting to being off the Pill, you start ovulating again, and you figure out what the different fluids look like.
Good luck! Let me know if you have any questions. I'll help if I can
I hope it helps! I was personally so amazed at the human body when I learned more of the science of fertility (I learned in a couple college classes, which is the only reason I've never read these books. TCOYF sounds great.
).
I am actually in the process of applying to an Allied Health program to become an NFP teacher. Just sat down yesterday to start filling the forms out. Nervous to go through with the application process, but our teacher is really encouraging me. So like, catarntina said, if you have any questions or want to discuss it more, feel free to ask!