We hear about contraception all the time, invasive unnatural contraception that may have really unpleasant outcomes, while knowing literally nothing about our bodies. I don’t know a tool for any area in life better that observation. By observing our feelings, moods, body reactions, tracking it all, we may come to understand ourselves way better, especially if we also get some informational support from books. In part I’d love to know about fertility awareness when I was starting my sexual life, it would literally change everything for me.
Lack of education
It’s incredible how little necessary knowledge we get before we grow up, and how much unnecessary stuff fills our heads. All my sex education came down to a single lecture on menstruation at school by who knows whom, where I learned that it’s ‘not something that comes out of me like a faucet’, as well as some free condoms at festivals, which I carefully carried in my purse on in case someone needs it. I have visited many gynecologists in my life, every second one talked about contraception, and none of them ever mentioned any natural methods. I didn’t even know about their existence before pregnancy.
Well, humanity always needs 100 years to expand, and it just reaches a hundred somewhere. How different my life could be if I had the right education: I would not be afraid of motherhood and I would not perceive humanity exclusively as leprosy on the face of the earth. Perhaps I would like more than anything to start a family and would perceive the ability to give life as a gift rather than a curse. Instead, everything was a shambles, and the horizon began to clear only with the occasional appearance of my little Alien. Could he have come into this world differently? With the sinking of the heart and the trembling expectation that here, on this night, the mystery of the creation of a new man can happen?
Fertility awareness methods
There is no completely reliable and safe contraceptive, isn’t this information enough to replace them with knowledge about your own body? I am quite impulsive, naturally or as a result of stress, I find a special charm in the awareness of my own actions, in my opinion, this is from the series of ‘being here and now’ and ‘building trust’. Yes, indeed, the biggest problem with the natural method is to hold back sometimes when you want to. But now, having gone through all the methods, I understand that there are no real alternatives and what’s more, naturally + knowing what you’re doing feels right.
Zoreslava Horodenchuk, one of the ardent supporters of the natural method, a general doctor from Lviv and co-author of several books important for every family, writes the following in her post on this topic:
“The method was developed and implemented in the 1960s by a couple of doctors, John and Evelyn Billings, who lived and worked in Australia at the time. During communication with the Australian aborigines, they discovered an interesting thing: children in the families of this community were born with long breaks, after several years. Asking how this can be achieved, they learned that women know how to recognize the fertile and infertile periods of their cycle based on the feeling they have in the vagina: they interpret the feeling of moisture or phlegm as fertility, on the other hand, the feeling of dryness as infertility. The girls received this knowledge from their mothers during puberty. At the same time, in this community, adolescent boys were also informed about this feature of the female body, and the fact that if you want to postpone conception, you should refrain from sexual relations in the fertile phase of the cycle, young men perceived it as quite normal.”
The two most effective methods of recognizing fertility
The sympto-thermal method consists in observing the basal body temperature, mucus and changes in the state of the uterus. This method also pays attention to changes in the physical and psychological state of a woman, for example, breast swelling or a stress factor.
The Craigton method involves only very, very detailed observation of the mucus.
These methods contribute to the closeness of partners, because they involve closer intimate communication and do not create any physical (including hormonal) barriers between partners. They are also helpful not only as contraception, but also help couples conceive a child. The error of these methods, with meticulous adherence to the protocol, is much smaller than that of any other means of contraception, that is, there is no more reliable method. I feel that very soon science will reach the level of a bracelet on the arm, which will simply tell us whether there is a chance of getting pregnant today or not. And besides, let’s not make fun of our bodies and psyches, let’s study how our bodies work, let’s use this knowledge.
Lactational amenorrhea
Finally, I would like to add something meaningful for skeptics about the method of lactational amenorrhea (when a woman does not become pregnant while breastfeeding): it works. This is confirmed by the example of the Kung tribe, where children literally live on their mothers and eat for 2 minutes every 15 minutes, that is, it is most likely a matter of frequency of feeding. The difference between children in that tribe is three years. So, the method of lactational amenorrhea is still a method, it’s just that it’s not forever, and you have to start using another method in time if you don’t want to get pregnant again, and, of course, in our conditions and culture, it’s hard to imagine the practicality of such a method. But don’t say it doesn’t work)
