I know I have talked about how central cervical fluid is to using fertility awareness here, but I’m not sure I could ever talk about it enough since cervical fluid is so important, so you get more :)
My journey with cervical fluid started just like my journey with the rest of fertility awareness: with a book. I learned a lot about cervical fluid in that book. Everything I knew, in fact.
I definitely thought cervical fluid was neat and could definitely tell when I had cervical fluid, but I also thought I had tons of cervical fluid that was super fertile and didn’t really understand my cervical fluid very well. In fact, I look back on my first year of charting and cringe at my lack of understanding, but I thought I had mastered it at the time.
My problem was that I was not really understanding the differences between different cervical fluid types, and even though I was conservative at the time and it didn’t pose an extra risk when it came to pregnancy, once I started learning more about cervical fluid I realized I didn’t know my body quite as well as I had thought.
When I didn’t understand cervical fluid, and this is the same with most people, I erred on the side of caution. That’s a good thing, for sure, but I became so much better at fertility awareness and reading my body when I really got a hang of how my cervical fluid worked.
These are some of the reasons an increased understanding of my cervical fluid helped me (and would also help you):
- Knowing your correct cervical fluid pattern will help you know what’s actually going on hormonally
- You will feel more empowered in using fertility awareness and more capable of deciding how you want to use it (Do you feel comfortable with the dry day rule? Do you want to have as many safe days as possible while still being careful?)
- You won’t feel reliant on anything else. You know that if your thermometer breaks you’ll be ok.
- You won’t over-rely on temperatures, especially when they are jumping around and more likely to be changed by outside circumstances.
So many people already practice fertility awareness that are just like me when I started. They check their cervical fluid but don’t really have a full handle on it.
Since I had a type of cervical fluid that not a lot of people gave credence to in their teaching it took me learning from a few different teachers and learning about all the questions you can ask about cervical fluid to really start getting a handle on mine.
And once I did? That was when I finally realized that I didn’t know anything when I started. It was kind of a humbling experience.
I recently realized how many people want additional information about cervical fluid and I’m excitied to let you know that I will soon (within the next couple of weeks) have a cervical fluid only course available (it’s done, I just have some people testing it to make sure it’s perfectly AWESOME for you) for anyone who already knows the method but wants more information about cervical fluid. (Update! It’s here: http://herfertility.com/cervical-fluid-masterclass/)
Be on the lookout and there will be more information soon! In the meantime, let me know what your big confusions with cervical fluid are in the comments. If it’s not already in the course I would be happy to add it in :)
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My biggest issue that I had with cervic fluid is that once I ovulated, I expected to go dry. That happened for two cycles (once I got off my hormonal birth control). After that, I would go “creamy”. I was very confused. In would have maybe 2 dry days in my entire luteal phase. It made me very uncomfortable to have unprotected sex, even though I had confirmed ovulation through my temperature. This has gone on for seven cycles, and I’ve just come to terms that my “creamy” days are really my dry days, after confirmed Ov.
From internal checks?
I’d like to know why I only get to the watery cm stage and not ewcm, what could be wrong and what I can do about it. Thanks!!
Ohh… I actually want to cover a couple different aspects of this. Thanks for the comment!
I get a lot of gummy cervical fluid that I don’t quite know how to categorize. It’s kind of like jelly, very springy, but not particularly stretchy. It gets wetter and wetter until it’s eggwhite. and I don’t always get creamy in between. At first I thought the jelly mucus would be sticky, but it feels weird marking that I go straight from sticky to eggwhite.
That stuff is actually so common, and that’s one of the reasons I hate the whole “sticky, creamy, eggwhite” classification system. There is nothing about that system that is a linear progression or necessarily what women see! I don’t really have creamy, either.
I have just discovered your website and I have stupidly asked before I had a proper look around and found your other posts about cervical mucus.
I have read all I could find but everyone always uses the sticky creamy eqqwhite categories and they really don’t work for me. I thought I was doing it wrong. So thank you so much, now I know to trust myself on this.
Yep! If you join the Cervical Fluid course I have coming out you’ll learn more about this!
I’m curious as to whether I can know I’m pregnant by the state of my cervical fluid.
Additionally, I rarely have dry days. It seems there’s always *something* coming out!
You may have either a basic infertile pattern *or* it’s the way that you are checking hat makes you think you have something all of the time. You’d definitely learn more about this is the class I have coming out soon.
I think I’m visibly excited about ya’ll being able to get your questions answered with this course. It’s so cool.
And the pregnancy question?
Yeah sorry don’t ask me how I missed that. lol.
Are you talking about in what would normally be your luteal phase before you can test?
There have been speculations from various people but I haven’t seen anything concrete.
I think that’s what I’m asking! *grin*
Just in general, does cervical fluid stop or change once fertilization happens. Can you use the appearance or absence of it to tell whether you’re pregnant.
Usually you’ll still have fluid. There isn’t any conclusive way to know based on cervical fluid :) Since your hormones are still the same until implantation I wouldn’t expect anything to be different before that.
My biggest issue is that I have what I think is egg white CM for a week then when it turns to creamy I usually have a temp shift in a couple days and I never have a completely dry day after ovulation. I thought that ovulation happened during egg white CM and then you are supposed to dry up. Ive been off BC 6 months and my periods are regular. I started charting after my first period off BC . Ive ovulated each time. Sometimes it can be really confusing.
It’s common to not dry right up after ovulation! Your progesterone levels are still going up and don’t always immediately dry up your cervical fluid in the beginning.
So Im not a weirdo after all! Haha Thanks! What you’re doing for women is really amazing and such an inspiration!