How to Start Charting Your Fertility Cycle (Episode 340)

Full Transcript: Episode 340

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

This is the Fertility Friday Podcast, episode number 340. Welcome to the Fertility Friday Podcast, your source for information about the Fertility Awareness Method and all things fertility. I’m your host, Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. I’m the author of the fifth vital sign and the fertility awareness mastery charting journal. I’m a certified fertility awareness educator and holistic reproductive health practitioner with nearly 20 years of experience teaching women to connect to their fifth vital sign through menstrual cycle charting, balancing hormonal health, and optimizing the menstrual cycle without hormones. I’m outspoken about hormonal birth control and its impact on fertility and overall health because you have the right to know how your body works and how artificial hormones disrupt that natural process.

I host live coaching programs to help you achieve optimal fertility and health because it’s important to have healthy menstrual cycles regardless of whether or not you want to have babies. I’m also a wife and mother of two beautiful boys. I know, I know, I’m a busy girl, but I managed to fit it all in. This podcast is designed to empower you to take full control of your cycles, your fertility, and your overall health. And I’m so excited that you’re here with us today. Today I wanted to spend some time talking about fertility awareness and addressing one of the most common questions that I receive about it, which is, what do you do? What do you want to learn? Where do you start? What steps do you take?

And what does this process really look like? And so of course, one of the best ways to discover what this process really looks like is to tune into the Fertility Awareness Reality series that I’ve been sharing with you over the years. And I’m not even sure how many episodes are in there, but fertilityfriday.com /reality is where you will find those. And so those are my on-air client sessions where I’m interviewing actual clients real-time in the midst of their own fertility awareness journey. And so today I wanted to talk about basically the steps that are involved when you’re learning fertility awareness either on your own or also if you are learning with an instructor or if that’s going to be part of your journey.

And I also want to take a couple minutes to talk about some of the specifics, specific things to know and to watch out for if you are planning to learn right off the pill, so coming off the pill to learn, or also if you’re in postpartum. Because those are the two scenarios that I really get the most questions about. And so I wanted to give each of them their own, I guess, moment in the sun, you could say. I’ll be going through the four steps to learning fertility awareness. And so I’m sure that these aren’t the only things that you could do. But these are the four main aspects as far as I’m concerned. So the first is learn the basics. And so we’ll cover a few of those basics today. But that’s, of course, the first and most one of the most important steps, I would say, making sure that you actually take the time you need to understand what’s going on in the background.

Number two is start charting. It’s really important to actually jump in there, move from the theoretical to the practical because the actual chart is what is going to teach you the most. The most things come from actually charting, paying attention to what’s happening in your body, noting any changes that you’re making, and seeing how your body responds to that. So that’s huge, huge, huge central aspect of this whole process. Number three is consider taking a class. And of course, there are women who teach themselves how to chart, but at bare minimum, it’s really helpful to find a source of mentorship or women who are experienced charters because inevitably everyone who learns how to chart has questions and encounters situations outside of their understanding and perhaps outside of what are the common situations that are even covered in some of the books in the reading materials.

So really helpful to get support, especially when you are planning to use fertility awareness as your primary birth control method, or if you have challenges and you’re trying to conceive and you’re really wanting a deeper understanding of what’s happening in your cycle. And so that leads us then to number four, which is once you have the basic understanding and you’ve started turning, That is actually, it’s only then when I would recommend starting using the method particularly for birth control. So you wanna develop some confidence with actually charting and interpreting what you’re seeing before you jump in and start actively using fertility awareness for birth control. So you’ll notice that there’s several things that I listed before actually using fertility awareness as a method.

A good place to start, I think, is fertility awareness because, of course, this is the Fertility Friday podcast where we talk about fertility awareness all the time. And so I throw around that word a lot. And the other day, I had a post on Instagram, and I don’t remember exactly. I think I was posting some responses or something like that. And I had all these questions in my inbox that were saying what was FAM. So many of the posts just had the abbreviation “FAM Fertility Awareness Method.” And so for anyone a bit newer to the podcast, I’ll just take a moment to share what fertility awareness is so that we kind of get some of those basic ideas down. And I think a good place to start is just with the menstrual cycle.

So if I briefly were to take you through the menstrual cycle, the first day of your cycle is the first day of your period, of course. And then once your period is over, we are in your pre-ovulatory phase. And so during that phase, what happens after your period is often that there’s a few days, we call them dry days until you start to see your cervical fluid, which can look like creamy white hand lotion or clear stretchy raw egg whites. And as you approach ovulation and your estrogen is rising, you’re going to start to see cervical fluid. And of course, this is assuming that you’re not on birth control that you’re cycling normally so you typically see anywhere from about two to seven days of cervical fluid as you approach ovulation and then at some point you ovulate and then once you ovulate you start making progesterone which suppresses your cervical fluid production and you go back to dry days in a typical normal healthy cycle until your next period.

And so what’s really helpful to know is that fertility awareness involves understanding basically that whole cycle and understanding the three main fertile signs, which are the cervical fluid, your basal body temperature and your cervical position. And by understanding the changes in these three main fertile signs, that’s how you can identify when in your cycle, your fertile, when in your cycle, you’re not fertile. And from there, so I would say fertility awareness in the general sense is just understanding that, so just understanding and so to briefly go through, I discussed the cervical fluid and so you’re producing that as you approach ovulation with your basal body temperature, your temperature actually significantly rises, so your resting metabolism or your, you know, if you take your temperature first thing in the morning before you get out about a bed, so that rises after ovulation because of progesterone, and so essentially when you’re taking your temperature every day, it doesn’t help you to predict when you’re going to ovulate, but it helps you to confirm ovulation.

And the cervical fluid helps you to know when you’re in your fertile window, and then the cervical position changes, so your cervix, the end of your uterus, if you were to insert your finger into your vagina and feel around, that’s the only thing you’re going to feel, because basically that’s what’s there at the end of your vagina. And so the cervix actually changes. It’s typically softer, higher, and it may feel a bit more open. The opening may be a bit more pronounced during the fertile window and outside of the fertile window. It’s typically a bit firmer, lower, and the opening, you typically don’t feel it or it’s not as pronounced. So once you put those three signs together, you just have these great tools to be able to identify where you are in your cycle.

So, that is the super quick overview because I know many of you have been listeners for a long time and so this is completely a review for many of you. But that basically is the first step of learning fertility awareness for the purpose. And so, many women discover fertility awareness when they’re looking for an effective non-hormonal method of birth control. And fertility word is certainly can be used as a effective contraceptive method. And when used correctly, the symptom thermal method of fertility word is trading. So involving the three main signs that I shared with you, the efficacy is as high as 99.6%, putting it on par with other hormonal contraceptive methods. And of course, the typical use can be as high as sometimes lower than 90 % and it really depends on the method that the person is using, how much time they really took to understand the method and of course whether or not they are following the rules.

So of course the main difference between fertility awareness methods for birth control is that it’s entirely user dependent and it’s really up to you to know what you’re doing, to do it correctly, to do your observations and to really correctly interpret what you’re seeing. So, for whether you’re using fertility awareness for birth control or conception, there’s a few things that you want to learn. And I would stress that it’s when you’re wanting to transition to a non-hormonal method. We talk about this all the time. It’s really important to take the necessary time to learn the method when, you know, with all the information I share and put out my hope for all women who discover this method for whom it really resonates with is that you are able to use it effectively, you’re able to trust it, and to really minimize the chance that you wouldn’t be successful in using it, meaning that minimizing the chance that you would have an unplanned pregnancy if you’re trying to avoid, and of course wanting to use it correctly if you’re trying to conceive.

And so step one, learn the basics. So we just did a brief run through of the cycle and the three main fertile signs. And basically, the first step to learning fertility awareness is to educate yourself. So of course, this podcast is really helpful. I know I get a lot of great feedback for women who discover the podcast, and maybe this is their first foray into the rabbit hole that is fertility awareness. And so certainly there’s a lot of really great information here. Many different interviews and podcast episodes and like I mentioned the reality series to give you just you know what is this look beyond even just the information but what does this really look like you know when you are using the method what does it look like for women who are transitioning from the pill what does it look like for women who are using the method postpartum so there’s a lot of real women who are sharing their experience with it and so there’s there’s that as a resource but also most women who are serious about fertility awareness, get themselves some reading material.

So of course, my book, The Fifidal Sign, Tony Weschler’s book, Taking Charge of Your Fertility, Taking Charge of Your Fertility is the most popular way for women to learn about fertility awareness. We call it the Fertility Awareness Bible for a reason. And certainly, having those resources and taking the time to really read through them. And starting to understand the basics is really, really important. And so, I mean, the great thing about fertility awareness, I would say is that it’s based on biology. And so essentially what we’re doing when we’re taking the time to read and to learn and to do our research and to really get comfortable with all of this is we’re filling in the gaps from our education when we went to school. as we learned a lot.

I know I learned a lot about all the different parts of the body. I remember learning a lot about my eyes and my ears and bugs and cells and all kinds of interesting things in science class. But what I didn’t learn about was the in-depth reproductive cycle. And I didn’t learn a lot of, I didn’t learn anything about cervical fluid. I didn’t know that it was even a thing. I didn’t learn about the luteal phase or a lot of information about ovulation. Really, it seemed as though they just spent a few minutes basically just giving us the most rudimentary overview. And it’s one of the most fascinating aspects of the human body. I mean, I’ve been studying it for 20 years. So there’s plenty more to know than what we were taught in our high school education class.

But one of the things that I share with all of my clients, I always start with the basic understanding of the hormone cycle. And I know for many of you who are comfortable and confident with fertility awareness charting, it might seem kind of, you know, like basic to have to go back to that. But really, the hormones are what drive all of the reactions that we’re observing. And so understanding the interplay between estrogen in the pre-ovulatory phase and progesterone in the post-ovulatory phase, how those hormones affect our cervical mucus, how they affect our uterus, our cervix, how it affects our metabolism, particularly in the post-ovulatory phase when we’re making progesterone, really helps us to understand that the cycle is not random, that this is a biological them.

That is extremely elegant. And I wouldn’t say predictable, but it is cyclical. And so what’s really, I think one of the best ways to understand what’s happening in your body is actually, you know, once you have your basic understanding of everything from that hormonal standpoint, and once you understand the biology is to actually start charting. So we’ll get to that aspect of it, but what I mean by that is that because this is cyclical, you know, at first it can feel like a lot. It can feel overwhelming. You know, there’s all these signs, all these things are happening, there’s all these moving parts. I don’t feel very confident in interpreting what I’m seeing. And especially if you are coming off the pill or something experiencing a different health challenge where your cycle isn’t exactly the textbook 20-day kind of situation, then of course it can feel really overwhelming.

But the great thing about charting your cycles is that it’s cyclical. So whenever you’re approaching ovulation, your body’s going to do a few things in response to estrogen rising. And so once you start to see the patterns, then you start to recognize that these patterns basically repeat. So it’s not to say that it’s always going to happen on the same day or at the same time or in the exact same way. But the fact that it is a cycle means that you have many opportunities throughout your life to monitor these patterns and to monitor these fertile signs and to really gain that confidence because what you’re doing is you’re simply observing a natural biological phenomenon in your body. And I think that anybody who’s as much of a kind of science nerd about this stuff as I am, it’s really fascinating just to see that you can actually monitor and interpret such a really unique process that our bodies have.

So anyways, I feel like I’m going on a tangent, so I’ll just leave it there. So number one, learn the basics. And like I said, there’s many different ways to do that. And so for those of you who are newer to the show, I also have some resources, some free courses and things you can head over to fertilityfriday slash freebies. I have a course, an introduction to fertility awareness course that is completely free and also a conceiving with fertility awareness course over there to really give you an understanding of the basics. Get your feet wet and start diving into this incredible world of fertility awareness cycle charting. Now in terms of how long you’ll stay in stage one or step one, which is learning, that’s really going to be up to you.

Some women will really just dive in and immerse themselves for, you know, a couple of weeks or a couple of months, buy all the reading materials, do some binge listening to the podcast, and really then jump in quite quickly. I know when I first discovered fertility awareness, I definitely dove and pretty much immediately it was like a fish to water. I ran out and bought taking charge of your fertility and I read the whole book. I’m pretty sure I read the whole book or at least most of the book and basically filled my head with as much as I could in a fairly short period of time just because I was really interested in it at the time and then jumped into charting whereas I know other women will listen, read and binge listen and really kind of watch and learn for long periods of time, whether that’s months, even sometimes a year or more before they’re ready to jump in.

So, I mean, if you want to do it, I would say that jumping in is a good thing. I would say that there’s no right or wrong way to do this, but I wouldn’t kind of overthink it if you know what I’m saying. And when I say jump in, I mean jump in to step two, which is start charting. So when I say charting, I mean monitor your signs and write them on your chart or put them in your app. So, you know, the first step before you actually do anything, before you start relying on fertility awareness as a birth control method is literally just to write these things down. And so this is a really, really important step. One of the questions I get quite a bit when it comes to the pill, you know, is should I chart while I’m still on it?

Things like that. So we’ll talk a little bit more about the post pill transition in a bit. But for now, I would say, I mean, certainly you can do it for the sense of like, if you’re still on hormonal contraception, you can chart just to get a sense of what that’s like, but you’re not going to get any really useful information in that sense. There’s not going to be a temperature shift when you’re on hormonal contraception, because for the most part, most hormonal birth control methods prevent you from ovulating. They suppress ovulation, so you’re not going to see a temperature shift. You’re not going to see cervical fluid because one of the main modes of action is to actually suppress cervical fluid.

This is why the method works. This is why hormonal contraceptives are so effective because they prevent you from ovulating and they prevent you from having cervical fluid. I mean, if you were ovulating and having cervical fluid, you could get pregnant so that it wouldn’t be much of a birth control method. So something to keep in mind. But when you’re not on hormonal contraceptives and you’re cycling naturally, then certainly it is worthwhile to start actually tracking and charting. And so if you’re brand, brand new and, you know, to the method and it all seems a little bit daunting, then certainly you just start by tracking your periods. That’s kind of a good way just to get in there without even having to look into any of the other details.

But once you start to learn, like once you’ve gone through the first part, you’ve done your research, you’ve got a couple books, and you’re starting to understand how this all works, then certainly starting to just pay attention to your cervical fluid, noting what you can, noting what makes sense, starting to pay attention to your temperatures. So tracking your temperatures to the best of your ability and trying to put those two main signs together. So putting the cervical fluid together with the temperature rise and starting to pay attention to all of those signs. And of course, the cervical position is optional. Some women check it all the time. Some women don’t check it. Some women check it sometimes.

So it’s really up to you. But just starting to get comfortable and starting to chart. And so when you’re planning to use fertility awareness for birth control, my recommendation is a minimum of three full cycles charted. So meaning period, ovulation and period. So going through the full cycle three whole times before you consider using the method for birth control, if you are not working with an instructor. So if you’re self taught, you’re learning it entirely on your own, then a minimum of three cycles and three to six cycles is a good kind of timeframe. And the reason for that is because there’s certain things that, you know, if you don’t have an instructor to guide you through the different challenges that could come up, particularly if you, your cycles are not immediately just totally straightforward.

If there’s certain challenges there, then it does take time just to get a sense of what this whole charting thing is about similar to driving, you know, it’s such a good analogy, which is why I use it so much to, you know, the analogy of learning to drive compared to charting, because you know that you can’t just get in a car for the first time if you’ve never driven before and drive across town. You know, it’s not like driving is so hard. It’s just that it takes some time to get used to everything, to get used to this whole new thing. And so I would say that learning to chart is much the same way. There’s just certain things you can only learn from experience. And so some of those things include the fact that your cycle fluctuates.

So even if you’re really regular, there will always be cycle fluctuations. So no one ovulates on day 14 every time. There’s no woman alive. I mean, prove me wrong, please show me the charts. But there’s no woman alive that I’ve ever seen that from January to December, every single menstrual cycle is ovulation on day 14 and a 28-day cycle. That’s not a thing. It doesn’t mean that some women don’t have extremely regular cycles. But if you actually start charting, you’ll see for yourself that even if your cycles are extremely regular, you might fluctuate between 27 days and 29 days and 31 days and 28 days and 32 and whatever. And in a 12 month period, there’s likely to be at least one cycle that’s a little bit off because we’re human and because there’s stressors in our lives and because we have bad days at work and because people have exciting events, they move, they get married, they change jobs and no matter how happy some of those events could be, they’re still often stressful.

And so our body responds in kind. And so one of the things that I’m always reminded with in my client work, because I mean, I’ve been doing this for such a long time that it’s second nature to me. But for many of my clients, it’s their first time that they’re seeing this with their own eyes. The first time that they’re actually seeing that when they have a significant event in their life, sometimes it delays ovulation a lot. Sometimes it shortens their luteal phase, the second half of the cycle between ovulation and their period. And to actually see that and to not freak out and to kind of take it as it comes and to also be able to interpret what that means. And these are the things that you can’t learn from a book.

So the books are great, of course, but these are the things that you have to experience to see for yourself. And these are, this is the whole point, right? This is the whole concept of. listening. But when you start charting, then it can become a two-way conversation. So you can start to see that, oh my gosh, when I drink six cups of coffee every day and I don’t get enough sleep, or if I don’t eat enough food, or if I don’t take care of myself, or whatever it is, then my cycle starts to go a little wonky. And then I remember how important it is for me to get enough sleep, or for me to eat, you know, three meals a day, or, you know, for me not to drink six cups of coffee in a day. So those are just hypotheticals, but I think you know what I mean But so when you start to see that your cycle actually responds potentially negatively to some of those things and you correct it And you see your cycle fall into line and you see some positive changes now you’ve entered into a two-way dialogue So this is all before you start using it as a method of birth control So this is I guess my point so we’re still on step two which is start charting And basically what I’m saying is, you know, if you’re not working with an instructor, a minimum of three cycles, because all of this stuff, we just, you just need a little bit of time to get used to it.

Now, if you’re working with an instructor, that can be truncated to anywhere from about one to three cycles, depending on your comfort level. So I’ve certainly worked with clients who after one full cycle of charting, they feel confident to move on to actually using the method for birth control. Now, I think I’ve detailed this in some previous episodes, I’ll make sure to link some of the previous episodes. So, you know, when you’re approaching this, okay, I’m going to use this method for birth control. Step one, you know, learn step two chart. When you actually start to feel confident and comfortable, there are steps to take even within that nobody learns fertility awareness by jumping in and having sex at all parts of their cycle at one time.

So we’ll get to that in step four a little bit more. But I just want to kind of seed that out that even when you’re ready, the first step after you start to feel comfortable and confident is to actually start with the post-ovulatory phase and gain your confidence there for several months before you consider moving into the pre-ov. So just some food for thought there. But the charting is really, really important and helpful. And so then while you’re charting, if you are avoiding pregnancy, that’s going to involve using a non-hormonal method of birth control. So whether it’s condoms, whether it’s a diaphragm, whether it’s withdrawal, whether it’s a combination of those, whether it’s abstinence, there’s some if you have not yet gotten to that stage where you are ready to actually start using the method for birth control, you really need to have a backup method in the meantime.

So let’s move on to step three. So consider taking a class. So I’ve alluded to why this can be helpful, you know, in step two and for the record, when I started my journey for fertility awareness, I did go out and buy taking charge of your fertility, but very soon along in my personal journey, I encountered an amazing group of women who are on my university campus, many of whom were certified educators. And I learned to chart my cycles among these women. And very quickly, I became a member of the group. So I started coming all the time. And then I became one of the members. And then at some point, I started, you know, I took a training class. But the point of this is, well, obviously, it wasn’t an accident.

I look back and I think, well, it was obviously meant to be. So how many people can look back and say, okay, there was this amazing group on my campus that taught charting. But furthermore, I didn’t really have the experience of being completely self-taught. And when I was in that environment, there was so much that I learned because I was around women who had charting experience. And like I said, it wasn’t just experience. Many were also trained educators, some were training. And so in that environment, there’s all these things that you learn that you wouldn’t know if no one told you. And one of the key great examples in my case was that when I first started training, my cycles were super long. They were an average of 38 days.

That was the average. And so they were kind of hover between like 40 days and like I rarely had a cycle that was under 35 days. And so in retrospect, I know why that is I had an undiagnosed issue with my thyroid and I’m I’m definitely on the spectrum or scale or something for having metabolic issues. So I could give myself diabetes. I’m pretty sure if I wanted to, my body does not respond well to sugar. So I think it was a combination of those two things in case you’re curious. But what happened was I was new to charting. I was charting my cycles. I read in Tony Weschler’s book that people could have long cycles or short cycles or, you know, regular cycles. And so I was like, Oh, sweet, I have long cycles.

I’m Lisa and I have long cycles. This is just like another expression of myself or something. And my, fortunately for me, my charting instructor looked at my charts, and she was like, Yeah, Lisa, your temperatures are too low, your cycles are too long, I think you should get your thyroid tested. And so that experience would not have occurred had I been charting on my own. So of course, the health aspect of it is certainly one big kind of part of it. But in addition to that, there’s a lot of specific method related topics that I wouldn’t have learned either. And so I wouldn’t have learned a specific strategy for identifying and understanding cervical fluid in a way that is not confusing, in a way that is very easy to understand and very easy to interpret.

I wouldn’t have learned the rules in such depth as you can kind of only learn in that respect. With that said, there are plenty of options. So number three, consider taking class. There’s a lot of different ways to do this. So some women will join a class like one of my classes, like the Fertility Awareness Mastery Live Group Program, which is super fun and really thorough. Of course, some women will opt for a few sessions with an instructor, which is another great option, particularly if you’ve been charting on your own for a while and you just have a few questions. So sometimes that option can work really well. And of course now it’s very different to when I started charting, because now there are groups on social media platforms of thousands of women who chart their cycles.

And so there’s plenty of groups now that are a bit more established where you can actually go and get some helpful information. Of course, the challenge though, when you’re not working with someone who’s specified in a specific method is that there are multiple fertility awareness based methods that all share similar components that are all a bit different, like in sometimes smaller ways or things like that. And it’s really interesting being part of the community because you can kind of like the fertility awareness community because you can see that there’s all these different ways to basically do the same thing. But basically what happens is if you’re going into a group and everybody has their own experiences or people have been trained in different ways of doing it, then you can ask certain questions and get lots of different answers.

And it can be really confusing. Like, no, this is how you have to interpret temperatures. No, this is how you have to interpret me, kiss. No, no, it’s like this. No, it’s like that. Oh, that’s not important, although that’s so important. So it can be a bit confusing depending on the situation. So everyone has to make this call for them. And just from my work over the years, every woman kind of knows. So I get a lot of clients telling me, I knew that I just wanted the shortcut. Like I just wanted to go and to get the download basically, so that I could just be off to the races within a couple of months without having to actually like go through meander around and kind of search for information. And I just wanted to go to the source.

So it really depends on your situation, your comfort level and all those things. But I certainly do recommend that when you are planning to use this method for birth control, that you do consider seeking support from a trained instructor, someone who’s been certified in a particular method, even if it’s just for a couple of sessions, so that you can ask your questions. Because I would say the biggest part of all of the programs that I do are the questions, All these little things, all the little things, the little things that come up with Mika, little things that come up with temperature and having the ability to sort that out ahead of time. Yeah, it’s just, I guess you could say that it just alleviates a lot of the fear around it because that’s a really big part of this whole transition to fertility awareness.

So that leads me to number four, which is once you develop confidence, start the method. Now, that’s kind of a loaded statement because there’s a lot of pieces to this. And I would say, you know, actually, when I was recording this podcast before I started, I had a category listed as deep program yourself, but I didn’t know that I didn’t know if that should be its own category. So I decided to add it to when I’m talking about starting the method. So what I’ve noticed, and I’m fairly and I’ve shared this a couple of times on the podcast is that the, I feel that the, um, the landscape for women today is very different than it was when I was 18 and kind of going out into the world. What I mean by that is that when I was just at a high school contemplating what I was going to use for birth control when I entered into my first serious relationship, and I was about to be sexually active.

I didn’t have it in my mind that if I wasn’t on birth control, I would definitely get pregnant. It was just a matter of time. I didn’t have this idea in my mind that I wouldn’t be able to avoid pregnancies successfully if I wasn’t on a hormonal method. Because when I had learned about contraceptive options, condoms were really heavily stressed. And I remember learning that they were 98 % effective when used correctly, because they are 98 % effective when used correctly. And that stuck with me. And I remember thinking, well, that’s not that much different than a hormonal method, which were touted as 99.9 or 98.8 or whatever they’re touted to be. So for me, it wasn’t this kind of either or mentality. So before I even knew about fertility awareness, I decided I was going to use condoms because I had some concerns about my cycle and I wanted to just see if I could figure it out.

So I had really painful periods, really heavy periods, and I was just, I had some concerns and I kind of wanted to see if I could figure those out on my own. So anyways, I just want to start by saying that. So I feel that it’s very different for women in this time that we’re in now because many of the clients that I work with are super, super terrified of the thought, at the thought of coming off of birth control, because they’ve been programmed so heavily to be afraid to believe that if they’re not on birth control, it’s just a matter of time and you’re fertile every day. And it’s just guaranteed that pregnancy is just going to happen. And this is a different challenge, I would say. This is a specific challenge, because not only do you have to learn the method, start charting, and start understanding the rules, you also now have to overcome this fear of basically being fertile all the time.

And so there’s different levels of this. I mean, you can learn from a intellectual kind of knowledge perspective as much data as you want. Like you can put as much data in your head as you can. You can read the books, you can read the studies, you can And logically, that pregnancy is not possible outside the fertile window because the cervix is blocked by Mika’s plug that prevents the sperm from transferring through the cervix and the vagina is really, you can learn all of this data and you can understand it intellectually, but it doesn’t actually get rid of the fear because even though you get it, it’s a theoretical concept really. And so until you actually test the theory in a real world experiment of actually learning and getting to the point that you feel comfortable and then, you know, having unprotected sex outside of your fertile window post-ovulatory when you’re first learning, and then you get your period and you realize that it works and then you do it again and then your period comes again.

So until you actually have that real world experience, it’s still a theoretical concept. So I just want to acknowledge that this is an additional barrier that I’ve witnessed women having to hurdle through the barrier of fear, essentially, because of the inaccurate programming that we’ve been given. Yes, so that’s just an observation that I’ve made. And certainly, yes, that is a big challenge. So when you’re going to number four, so you’ve already done the first three steps, you’ve learned, you’ve charted, maybe you’ve decided to take a couple of classes with an instructor or a couple of sessions, or maybe you’ve taken a class, but either way, you have enough cycles under your belt now that you get it, you know what’s going on, you’re confident confirming ovulation, you’re confident identifying when you’re in the post-ovulatory and fertile phase, you’re confident understanding which days are fertile compared to which aren’t, because you’ve charted enough that you actually get it.

So this is the part you’ve, you know, you’ve arrived, you’ve graduated. This is the part where you can start. So I mentioned it before, but I do recommend phasing it in. So you know, step one, after you’ve learned and you’re, you’re ready to start using the method for birth control. So of course, I’m talking specifically for birth control because if you’re trying to conceive, you don’t need to wait multiple cycles to get it. You just want to understand how to identify the fertile one and you can kind of jump in and make sure that you’re timing sex correctly. But there’s obviously, it’s not the same. There’s no need to wait. But I think it’s self-explanatory why this would be helpful to make sure that you have enough charting under your belt before you start having unprotected sex when you’re using this as your method.

So Anyways, so now that you’ve developed your confidence, the first time that you have unprotected sex or the first time that you consider actually trying the method, using the method, would be in the post-tobulatory phase. And the reason for that is because if we were to divide the cycle in half, the first half of the cycle is the only point of your cycle where pregnancy is possible. And that’s because in the first half of your cycle, that is when your estrogen is rising, That’s when you’re producing cervical fluid, and that is when the ovary releases the egg that happens in the pre ovulatory phase before you ovulate. And so once ovulation happens, the egg only survives for 12 to 24 hours. So back to the science and the biology.

And after that, if it is not fertilized, it disintegrates and is essentially reabsorbed. And your cervix goes back into this closed position. The vagina is acidic. there’s no egg, so there’s no chance of getting pregnant. So in the second half of your cycle after you’ve confirmed ovulation, and I recommend confirming by doing a cross check between your cervical fluid and your basal body temperature. So once you’ve confirmed those signs, pregnancy cannot happen. You cannot get pregnant from sex after you have confirmed ovulation. And, and I mean that by using the rules and being very specific with whichever method that you’re using. But it’s impossible. So with that in mind, it makes sense that the second half of the cycle would be the first opportunity that you start when you’re jumping into the method, once you start to feel confident.

And many of my clients, and I know I mentioned this in a previous episode, will for the very first time, if they’re especially nervous, they’ll even wait until a couple of days before their period is scheduled to arrive. And even that is nerve wracking and terrifying. but ultimately this is how you build your confidence. So you don’t just jump in all the days, but you start with the post-ovulatory for several cycles until you feel really confident. And then whichever method that you are using, you take the time you need to learn the rules to understand how it all works before you even consider having unprotected sex in the pre-ovulatory phase on those infertile dry days. And so that basically brings me through the four steps.

So learn the basics, start charting, consider taking class, and then only then start using the method. And it’s still very helpful to have some sort of support in there, even if you choose not to work with an instructor, because there’s always just going to be questions that come up. So there’s some sort of mentorship that some sort of an experienced person who’s charted their cycles, someone to be able to rely on and ask questions. I feel that it’s essential, but of course, considering what I do, it makes sense that I would have that perspective. Okay. So before we wrap up today, I did want to take a couple of moments to talk about specifics, post pill, and specifics, postpartum. So what does this look like when you are planning to learn fertility awareness?

So the same steps apply, obviously. So the same four steps apply to both of these situations. But there’s a few different aspects of it that you want to be aware of. So if you are planning to come off the pill and start learning fertility awareness, of course, you know, the same applies, you want to make sure that you have a backup method, because pregnancy is possible in any cycle with ovulation. And so it’s really important post pill to have a backup method just right off the bat. So that’s the first thing. With the pill, I would say some of the things that are specific just to know and that are different are that once you come off the pill, particularly if you’ve used the pill long term, so in most of the scientific studies, long term is defined as two or more years of continuous use.

And so if you’ve used the pill or other hormonal contraceptives for a while, then then you want to know that you can expect there to be temporary transition phase, basically. And so it doesn’t look the same in all women, but there are certain tenants of it that are often quite similar. So one is when are you going to have your first ovulation? So some women will ovulate 14 days after they come off the pill, and then they’ll have their period 20 days later. So some women certainly fall into that category. And I would say you’re most likely to fall into that category if you had regular, normal, uncomplicated periods before you went on it. You did not go on it for any type of period problem. You went on it because you needed birth control.

And that was it. And you can’t really remember having any issues with your cycle. So what I found in my work is that women who fall into that category whose cycles were just normal and they were not put on the pill, they went on the pill just for birth control. They didn’t have any issues with their cycle. They are often the ones to get their periods back just like right up right away. It’s not to say that that anyone else can’t. I’m just sharing some of the observations that I’ve made over the years. So for women who did have challenges with their cycle, that’s kind of the first part of it, which is that we’re not exactly sure when the first ovulation is going to happen. So some women, it’s going to happen 14 days after other women, maybe a month or two months or three, sometimes four, sometimes five, it’s more on the rare side that it’s gonna take like a year.

Those situations are different because that would be an underlying issue that was being masked. And so if a woman had HA or if she had PCOS, the pill is gonna mask those symptoms. So in that case, the pill is not causing her not to have her period. It’s just that the pill was masking the underlying issue. So that’s the first thing, because when you first come off the pill, sometimes it can take a while, sometimes it comes back right away. So you just kind of have to be open, I guess, to what happens and then kind of roll with it, whatever occurs. And of course, in the meantime, you could be supporting your body in a number of different ways to encourage the return of normal cycling. Okay, so that’s the first aspect.

So when you do start to ovulate again, when you do start to cycle again, some of the things that can be a bit challenging right off the bat are that it’s it’s pretty common for a certain percentage of women, a pretty decent percentage of women to have cervical fluid pattern abnormalities of some kind. And so that could be that you don’t really have a lot of mucus at all. A certain percentage of women, I would say from my, this is not scientific, this is just my observations from the work that I do. But certainly, you know, 15 to 20 % of women who I see come off the pill and have at least one or two cycles where they have very little, if not no, mucus. So that’s something that you might experience where you might think, “Oh my goodness, there’s something wrong.

I’m not seeing any mucus or I’m not seeing very much.” But typically after a couple of cycles, your body kind of heals, hormones normalize, and mucus patterns do happen. So I’ve never seen it where someone comes off the pill and just never has mucus again. But certainly for the first couple of cycles, I’ve seen that trend and that can make it a bit challenging to chart, especially when a big part of the charting is often looking at the mucus and interpreting it alongside the other signs. So that’s something to be aware of. There can be other challenges. The pill can suppress thyroid function, so some women will come off the pill and notice differences in their temperature or certain changes. And again, you know, is this just the post pill transition?

Is this just your body normalizing? Or is there’s an actual challenge that you should be looking deeper into? And so in situations like that, it can be a bit challenging, especially if you are hoping to have more of a textbook cycle if you’ve done a lot of reading and you know exactly what you should be seeing, but it’s not showing up exactly the same. So those are some of the situations that can make it a bit challenging. So it does not mean that you can’t chart your cycles. It does not mean that you can’t use the method. But of course, I would say that before you use the method, it is really important to chart several cycles. And sometimes it’s really helpful and important to wait until your cycles have started to normalize, until you can start to rely on that cervical fluid, until you can start to make sense of your temperatures obviously until you start ovulating again.

And so there’s just a few pieces of that puzzle that I just wanted to highlight. Okay, so that’s post pill. And in addition, if you’re coming off the pill to conceive at some point in the near future, then it would be in addition to just the charting for the charting sake and understanding your cycle, it would be a good idea to consider learning about the specific nutrients that are depleted on the pill. So from B vitamins to zinc, to coenzyme Q10, magnesium, selenium, you know, there’s a number of different nutrients that are depleted. Folate is a big one. And so taking some time to actually replenish your body and prepare for conception, those types of things. So that I’ll kind of leave that. I’m sure I could talk about the pill for a lot longer, but I’ll leave it there.

So hopefully that gives you just a good sense of some of the particular challenges. But I don’t say these things to discourage you, because often when you’re coming off the pill, these are the things that you see kind of immediately off the pill. And once your body starts to normalize, once everything starts to your hormone production normalizes, everything, your ovarian reserve parameters normalize, you know, once everything starts to go back into a regular groove, typically, it does become a bit more straightforward. Typically, you do start to see those cycles normalized, but what the research tells us is it can take some time. So it can take anywhere from nine to 12 cycles before all the parameters normalized, but certainly it doesn’t mean you can’t chart throughout that.

And you’ll learn a lot about your body and about this process by charting throughout. So you can kind of compare what your first couple of cycles were like compared to what they’re like after you get through month six, six months, seven months, eight, etc. And so postpartum, I mean, that’s a big topic for its own podcast, but I just thought I would share a couple of the differences for postpartum charting, because this is another specific topic that I get a ton of questions about pretty much all the time. So with postpartum charting, we could divide that, you know, into two general phases. So the period from when you have your baby until your first ovulation, so basically potentially very long pre-ovulatory phase, particularly if you’re breastfeeding because breastfeeding can suppress your ovulation for a period of time, and it’s variable.

Some women will have it suppressed for a few months, whereas others will have it suppressed even for a year or even a bit longer than a year. And then we have, once you actually ovulate and start cycling again, so then you kind of get back into more of a normal cycling pattern, but certainly postpartum, immediately postpartum, but until you start cycling again, it’s different. So of course, one of the big differences with postpartum charting is that you do not have a cycle. You’re essentially stuck in a long preovulatory phase, particularly if you’re breastfeeding for a while. And so it can be months of this. And so how do you manage it? How do you manage this long pre-ovulatory phase. And so certainly a big part of it is to understand your cervical fluid and understand the difference between your dry days and your amicus days so that you can really identify when you switch into that fertile window.

And so that’s a bit of a different strategy for a lot of women because I know a lot of women, when they’re charting normally, a lot of women rely really heavily on their basal body temperature, which makes perfect sense because it can be this very definitive sign. I mean, it’s a number on a thermometer, so it can be very definite and it can be very reassuring to see the three high temperatures in a row and to be able to confirm it in a very specific and detailed way. Whereas, for a lot of women, mucus is not as straightforward and they’re not as easily able to interpret it. So in the postpartum, many women are then kind of thrown into mucus charting because essentially the temperature doesn’t help you until after you start ovulating again, because the temperature doesn’t help you to predict ovulation.

It just tells you that you have ovulated. So if you’re waiting for the temperature to go out postpartum, it’s too late. By the time the temperature went up, you already ovulated. So if you were having unprotected sex, there’s a chance that you could be pregnant. And if you’re trying to avoid pregnancy or to space your children, obviously, that is not the strategy that you’re going to want to take. A big part of postpartum training is understanding cervical fluid. But there are certain But there are some women for whom mucous charting postpartum doesn’t work as well. Women who are seeing mucous all the time, women who have certain challenging mucous patterns, and so that’s when other methods like the Marquette method, which relies specifically on hormone testing can be useful.

But the bottom line is that it is possible to chart postpartum successfully. There are many different ways to do Um, even if you have a challenge with interpreting cervical fluid, there’s still other options for you that are highly effective. And so postpartum is a time when I do recommend for you to consider working with someone taking class, even just having a few sessions, even for women who have experienced charting already. So they were charting and they used fertility where it’s for birth control before they ever had their baby. It’s often very helpful to have just a few additional questions, just to get your questions answered and to kind of get your head around this different way of charting and having a bit more of a strategy and a plan for how to manage it.

And again, the reason for all of this is that not because it’s so unbelievably hard, but because I work with women every day. And so all I do, basically, behind the scenes, like when you don’t hear me on the podcast, I’m having conversations with women basically every day about charting and about organizing all of this stuff, about figuring out how to make this work in their lives. And so if there’s one thing I can tell you just from my experience is that we all have questions. There’s things that we need to know. There’s things that come up. There’s different situations that come up. And charts are not always so easy to interpret, especially when you’re newer to the process. And it’s just helpful, I guess.

And all of this comes from my desire to empower you to be able to have this as an option. So plenty, plenty of us want to have a non hormonal option that we can rely on. Plenty of us want to be able to feel really comfortable and confident using it. And of course, if you’re relying on it for birth control, you want it to work and you don’t want to have an unplanned pregnancy when you’re not ready. I mean, depending on where you are on the intention scale. And so the best way that I know to do that is to really encourage you to seek support when you need it. And so there’s different parts of your life where maybe when it’s not postpartum and when things are a lot more straightforward, but when you do find yourself having questions and not really sure about, you know, what to do and where to turn, it is really important to consider that.

So certainly for postpartum, that’s one of those situations where I do recommend it because you want to just make sure that you are set up for success. Ah, okay. So I feel like that was a lot. I feel like we went through a lot today. So just a quick, quick recap today. We talked about the four steps to learning fertility awareness as far as I’m concerned. So learning the basics, actually training. So getting your training experience, consider working with someone taking a class or at least finding a mentor, someone who has a lot of training experience to support you so that you have a place to answer, ask your questions, and for then that’s when you actually start using the method. And then we also talked about some specific considerations for post-pill and post-partum.

And I’ll be sure to link the podcast episodes that I’ve recorded on these various topics, so post-pill and post-partum, so that you can take a deeper dive if you want to. And so you’ll find the show notes for those episodes over at fertilityfriday.com /340. Wow, that’s a lot of episodes. I don’t know why I keep saying that at the end, but I’m realizing that I’m getting up to big numbers now ’cause I’m almost at 350. I’m like, wow, that’s a lot of podcast episodes. This episode is really seeing end of November and I’m coming up on my six year anniversary for podcasting, so I’m really excited about that. It is actually wild to think that I started podcasting six years ago. It’s just been such an incredible experience.

And so around this time of year, I always kind of think about it and just like to, I don’t know, it’s just, it’s, it’s really incredible because I can, I can remember. So back then I recorded, I think eight episodes, I think I started with eight in the bag. And I remember thinking like, Like I wonder if anyone’s gonna listen. And I remember even the first couple of episodes, I had a couple of listeners and every now and then I’ll have someone in my class or I’ll have a conversation with someone who’ll tell me like I was one of the first listeners. I found you back in 2014 and I was listening to your podcast. So shout out to all the longtime listeners that have been hanging out with me for six years.

That’s a lot of Lisa’s voice, to be honest. That’s like a lot of my voice. But it’s just really, really incredible. So thank you all for being part of the Fertility Friday community. Thank you all for continuing to share episodes with friends and patients and clients and family members, because this is legitimately like this is the grassroots project. This is, I can thank the reach that I’ve had and the new listeners that always find me, to all of you out there spreading the word. And so here I am, six years later, basically talking about the same thing because it’s funny, I listened to one of my first episodes, I think I did that last year. And I remember like laughing to myself thinking, oh my goodness, I’ve literally been saying a lot of the same things because the fertility awareness knowledge doesn’t change.

But I suppose what changes is the landscape around us. And I’m so pleased and happy to see that six years later, fertility. in our cycles and how to manage our fertility in all ways. And of course, not that non-hormonal methods are the only way, but that we see them as a valid option and we’re all provided with all the information to make informed choices. So that is my vision, that was my vision when I started and I’m so happy to see that continuing. So thank you for allowing me to ramble on a little bit. And of course, as Always, until next time, be well and happy charting.