Among the top 10 public health achievements of the 20th century, which include things like airbags and vaccines, is family planning. The ability to choose your family size, the spacing, and the timing of family building has led to incredible benefits, and you want to figure out which family planning road is best for you.
There are many ways we can help you prevent an unplanned pregnancy through birth control, but you’d like a more natural approach that doesn’t rely on medications or devices.
Fertility awareness methods certainly check these boxes and can be effective for preventing pregnancy — and efficacy ratings fall between 77% and 98%.
The reason for the range of effectiveness is because it depends a good deal on how well you execute the fertility awareness methods, and we can help you with that. With that in mind, Dr. Gary Willen and the team here Tahoe Women’s Care pulled together a few best practices for managing your fertility awareness.
At the heart of fertility awareness is tracking your menstrual cycles so you can identify when your fertility is at its peak. That way you can plan your sexual activity accordingly.
Under normal circumstances, your ovaries release an egg every 26 to 32 days, on average, and understanding when this occurs can help you avoid becoming pregnant, as these are your most fertile days. On these ovulation days, you can avoid sex or use protection, such as a condom, to prevent sperm from reaching your egg.
An important point to understand about fertility awareness is that it takes some work on your end to make sure that you're tracking your fertility well. There are several ways you can do this, including:
A basic approach to fertility awareness includes tracking your menstrual cycles. After a period, women typically ovulate again about 11-14 days later. After ovulation, the egg’s fertilization window is pretty small — it needs to be fertilized within 12-24 hours after release.
While that window is tight, you should also consider that sperm can live in your body for up to five days. This means that you should not only avoid having intercourse when you ovulate, but you should also avoid sperm for five days before you ovulate. So, your fertility window is a good deal larger than the lifespan of your egg.
Another way to track your ovulation is by taking your temperature in the mornings before you get out of bed. To do this, you need to establish your basal body temperature with a sensitive thermometer over the course of several menstrual cycles. You’ll see a bump in temperature for 3-4 days, which occurs because of the hormone surge associated with ovulation.
Once you establish your baseline, you can determine which days you’re ovulating and take precautions.
When you ovulate, the mucus around your cervix becomes thinner, stretchier, and stringier than normal. This approach requires a good deal of practice in identifying when the mucus around your cervix changes during ovulation.
There’s a large margin of error when it comes to fertility awareness methods, so we want to go over a few strategies.
For starters, we recommend that you practice your fertility awareness for at least six months before relying on it fully. This time allows you to establish critical baselines and gives you time to really figure out your ovulation process.
We also recommend using all three of the methods we describe above for the best results. This means tracking your fertility days using the calendar, but also using temperature readings and cervical mucus examinations as back-ups. With each method you use, you boost your protection against pregnancy.
When we refer to the margin of error that’s associated with fertility awareness, it often boils down to user error. So, before you get started, we suggest you come see us to discuss how to move forward with fertility awareness methods. We can teach you how to “read” your cervical mucus and track your ovulation, as well as advise you on what equipment to keep on hand to help (for example, a thermometer).
To learn more about family planning through fertility awareness, please contact our office in Carson City, Nevada, to schedule a consultation.
