Why I became a fertility awareness educator (Part 2: The search for education)

This is the second part of a series, if you have not read part 1 check that out here first.

 

My cycles confused me.

It wasn’t a particularly dangerous confusion, I knew enough to know that if I wasn’t sure about something to consider myself fertile. And, oddly, that made me feel much more in control than when I had my copper IUD.

But at the same time I didn’t know why I seemed to have so many days with what was considered to be “egg white cervical fluid” based on the book I read.

I didn’t know why my temperatures kept dropping below what is called a “cover line,” and they didn’t seem to stay up where they were supposed to.

I didn’t feel that sense of confidence and ease that I felt I should.

And worst of all? I didn’t know what kind of implication what I was seeing had on my hormonal health.

 

And then there was the issue of whether my husband trusted or not, which seemed like a clear ‘not’ in the beginning. I’m sure he logically trusted it (he’s a logical dude), but not fully understanding how everything worked he didn’t actually want to use it yet and was firmly content doing his own part by using withdrawal all of the time.

 

As I continued to chart my cycles I would examine everything about my charts and experiment to learn more, as well as google everything like crazy (though there was not much information online at this time). I started reading more books and with time slowly became more confident with my cycles, though it wasn’t perfect yet.

I really loved the method, though, I thought it was so cool that I could tell so much about what was going on with my cycles (even with my limited understanding). Since I was so aghast that there were not more qualified fertility awareness educators, I decided that I should become one myself (with the intent to teach online, in particular, so that more people could have access to a good education in the method).

 

I wasn’t exactly sure how people BECAME fertility awareness educators, though. Considering I didn’t even have anyone in my area to teach me how to use the method myself, how in the world was I going to find someone to teach me how to teach other people?

Back to google. I start searching how to become a certified fertility awareness educator and I find two things.

One was a pre-existing course (Online! Ka-ching!), but it cost $5000 and I was living in my parents garage (true story), so that didn’t seem very likely.

The other thing I found was a bunch of resources talking about what you should know, gave a huge reading list, and talked about going through this book of questions and working with a certified fertility awareness educator to get your certification.

Since I figured that one might be less than $5000, I decided to start trying to figure out what to do.

First of all, I devoured most of the books on that reading list. Some of them were actually fertility awareness books, other were on tangentially related topics like sexuality, women’s health, hormonal health, and the like.

In the mean-time I needed to find a certified fertility awareness educator, so I paid something like $5 to get a list of certified fertility awareness educators through something called the fertility awareness network (still in existence and I’m a part of it, but it has a new name and we are going through a bunch of changes).

I could probably find this list somewhere in my email or on my computer, but there were like 12-15 women on it. I was disappointed. When I got it I got it along with an email saying that there weren’t any educators in my area (I figured that one out already), but that many would work with me by phone to learn the method.

I sent a little email back saying: Actually, I am looking to become a fertility awareness educator. I saw one program for $5000 but that’s a little steep for me right now so I am hoping to do the method where I go through this book and review it with a certified fertility awareness educator.

I am sure she was on the other side of the country laughing at me through her computer, because she said “Unfortunately, with the amount of hours that takes you will also be paying about $5000 for that education, too”

But she also gave me some potential good news, another certification course was in the process of being developed by a teacher in the network and soon to be available for people to enroll in. She gave me the contact info for the person developing it and off I went.

When I contacted her she let me know that she imagined it’d be significantly less expensive than the other course and that it would be available for application in about 6 months. So I waited. And I read and researched as much as possible.

 

By this time I had a good understanding of what was going on with my cycles, but it had been about 6 months of charting and I still wasn’t 100% sure on some things. I could tell my hormonal health was getting better due to changes in diet and lifestyle, but I still seemed to have excessive amounts of cervical fluid that I was curious about.

I knew one thing, though, I was extremely grateful for all of this body feedback I was getting and extremely committed to learning everything I could about the fertility awareness method and beginning to teach it myself.

… To be continued