It all started after I read Taking Charge of Your Fertility and decided I had the most fertile type of cervical fluid from day 6 of my cycle onward.
Then I started having friends asking me about things that they read in it that they didn’t understand (while I was in my certification program to become a fertility awareness teacher).
Then I had hoards of clients and readers asking me about things they didn’t understand.
My conclusion is one of two things: Either books don’t teach fertility awareness super well (entirely possible and probably true for most people) or this book just needs some edits right now.
Since the first can’t be stopped, I decided that I needed to compile some of the most common things I hear from people after they read Taking Charge of Your Fertility so that this resource exists.
Disclaimer: I love this book. I recommend it all of the time for people who aren’t quite ready to invest in a complete fertility awareness course like the one I have online here at Holistic Hormonal Health.
But I find myself always wanting to give a mini-course along with it. So now I am creating that mini-course I want to give as a public resource. All of the most common misconceptions wrapped into one…
My cervical fluid looks nothing like that.. I think there’s something wrong with me.
Damn right it doesn’t look like that. There are very few people whose cervical fluid looks like the pictures in Taking Charge of Your Fertility exactly, fits perfectly into the categories, and follows exactly the specified sticky->creamy->eggwhite pattern that’s outlined. At least most people who talk to me and show me their charts don’t. There may be an alternate cervical fluid world I don’t know about, though :)
I’m not seeing any cervical fluid, do you think I’m infertile?
Check after you use the bathroom. I can’t say this enough. Most people see most, if not all, of their cervical fluid after using the bathroom. Taking Charge of Your Fertility only specifies checking before going to the bathroom and it freaks so many people out when they don’t see fluid before going to the bathroom.
Temperature is more important than cervical fluid.
No, it’s not. I really don’t even know where this comes from because I don’t think that Taking Charge of Your Fertility really says this, but cervical fluid is 5000% (statistically accurate) more important than temperature. Without cervical fluid you have a terrible method of birth control, without temperature you still have amazing body awareness and a really great birth control method. Not to mention if you are trying to get pregnant. Cervical fluid is necessary!
I always have “egg-white” cervical fluid, am I estrogen dominant or something?
Maybe, but is your “egg-white cervical fluid” just a little stretchy? Or just super thin? Taking Charge of Your Fertility explains egg-white cervical fluid (her name for the most fertile type of cervical fluid) as stretchy, primarily, and a lot of people get hung up on this (I was one of those people myself, don’t feel bad).
It may be that some is just a teeny bit stretchy and shouldn’t be in that category at all. So don’t freak out! I definitely recommend taking a course with a certified fertility awareness educator if you don’t have a handle on your cervical fluid. Remember, it’s the most important piece of the fertility pie.
So there you have it. If all you are going to do is read Taking Charge of Your Fertility keep this all in mind so that you don’t stay confused for your first year of charting your cycles like me. And if you need even more help, I definitely recommend working with me (or another certified fertility awareness educator) because we can help you understand what you are seeing.
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This is so needed Hannah! I struggled for years to chart my cervical fluid based on the sticky-creamy-eggwhite continuum and it just resulted in me guessing because my cervical fluid rarely matched the categories! Now I just describe what I see with my own words and it has made charting so much more enjoyable.
Awesome, Anna, I agree. Luckily I didn’t stick with it for too long, but I feel like it doesn’t work for most of the women I come into contact with (and it doesn’t mean much as a classification, either).
I would just like to ask you why you think that only charting your BBT is inequal to only charting your cervical fluid.
“cervical fluid is 5000% (statistically accurate) more important than temperature. Without cervical fluid you have a terrible method of birth control, without temperature you still have amazing body awareness and a really great birth control method”
I’m not going to ask you about the 5000% claim because obviously it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, but where are you getting this from? I’m definitely open for discussion as I am currently weighing my options for non-hormonal contraception, I would just like to know what you are basing this on. For instance, I am contemplating buying the Lady Comp and several studies confirm that the usage of Lady Comp only ensures a 99.3% effiacy in preventing pregnancy.
Hi Jenny! Thanks for the comment. You are right about 5000% being a joke ;) Scientific studies put cervical fluid as a more accurate predictor of when ovulation actually happened (Reference: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16021061 Sorry, I have the full text, but it’s on my computer in PDF form, not sure if you can find the full text free online).
But that’s not the most important part, the most important part is that cervical fluid is used to open the fertile window because it is made with increasing levels of estrogen (which happens before ovulation) and is what actually keeps sperm alive in your reproductive tract. Temperature tells you only after you ovulate and because of that there has to be some amount of calculation based on previous cycles.
Lady comp has been studied to be that effective and I don’t dispute their studies (though I have heard they did not have women with irregular cycle in their studies, but could not find information to confirm either way), but they have a statistically longer fertile window in order to achieve that efficacy. I wrote an article about Lady Comp and studies that I have read about the fertile phase determination here: https://holistichormonalhealth.com/is-the-lady-comppearly-worth-it/
Obviously, I love and recommend the sympto-thermal method (which is why I teach it), but for some women Lady-Comp is right for them. Plus, STM has a higher efficacy, regardless (reference: http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/5/1310.full)
Hope this helps :)
Thank you for providing me with these links :) It really helps to have a source and although I’m a curious person, obviously there are more curious people than me, lol (namely you, because I google a heck of a lot and I haven’t found what you have found before)!
I think that for me, Lady Comp will be a viable, safe option. My cycles are consistently regular and they always have been. Whenever my cycle hasn’t been “on the clock” (meaning they ALWAYS are exactly the same length, no day less, no day more), it has only deviated from the standard maximum 3 days and it has never been shorter, only longer. Whenever Lady Comp predicts your ovulation (you can check days ahead to see a prediction), it never confirms it beforehand. If the computer sees that your temperatures are not what they usually are at ovulation time, it will continue to be cautious and keep giving you red lights until it is clear that ovulation has occured.
For me, the extended fertile period is worth it. I have read the TCOYF book very carefully, I’m a member on their website and I have googled tons about this subject. STILL I do not feel comfortable trusting that what I’m seeing (sticky, milky, dry etc.) is the proper definition. What the heck does dry mean anyway? And sticky? I would love to see a FAM-practitioner, someone who actually works with this, but I really don’t think there are any here where I live. I live in Sweden which is a very small country compared to the US, both in population and umm… How should I phrase this? Development, I guess? We both live in wealthy countries but due to the fact that there is less market demand here in general (naturally), certain things just can’t be found. Sure enough, you can find a humungous plethora of brands for certain products, but you CANNOT find certain services that you would be willing to pay for, certain classes. Sweden has a lot to offer but the biggest things are always only offered in the biggest countries :)
99.3% effiacy is plenty enough for me :) Besides, I’m their prime customer, I have regular periods and I always have had. Maybe when I’m more experienced and knowledgeable about cervical fluid will I try to implement it in my contraception method. Even though I’m confident with choosing Lady Comp, there’s definitely no harm in trying to narrow down the fertile period and bump up the effiacy a tiny bit more in the future. Thank you for being so helpful :)
Ha, well it is my work, so it’s not surprising the amount of studies I read about this stuff ;)
You can work with most fertility awareness educators (including myself) via skype!
I think it’s just down to what your comfy with. I wouldn’t be comfy with the machine, but am with using sympto-thermal (including cervical fluid), but some people do not feel confident and want to trust the machine. Everyone is different, as long as you understand the pros and cons (sounds like you do!).
Just out of curiosity, how would a skype session go about? You pay beforehand and then you skype, is it mostly talking or is it umm… How do you actually teach about the cervical fluid? Because as you wrote, women many times don’t follow the classic pattern when t comes to CF and fertility/infertility.
Sorry if I’m totally off-base here, but do you collect some CF that’s present and stick it up to the camera lens, lol? To show the instructor I mean, and talk about the characteristics. Haha I feel so rude and inappropriate asking this question! I just need to know what I’d possibly be paying for, I know a lot of stuff already so I’d need to make sure I wouldn’t be wasting my time. It’s the identification of what quality the CF is that is the hardest for me, it’s not that I don’t know CF is a big indicator of where you’re at in your cycle.
In your case you should take pictures/videos of your cervical fluid throughout a cycle (or two, if you feel like it’s different from cycle to cycle) and showing them. Usually we do it without pics or videos, though, we just ask lots of questions about what you are seeing :)
It’s a lot about knowing what questions to ask (for the educator). Do you pay a lot of attention to the water content and how that changes in your cervical fluid? Or the actual feeling (either between your fingers or just sensation at the vaginal opening)? Those could be better indicators for you (they are for most people). Really the whole sticky/creamy/eggwhite thing doesn’t work for many women.
P.S. Not rude or inappropriate at all!
Nice try on the question of how to Check for Mucus, Hannah, but I say FAM teachers need to be even more graphic. You say “check after going to the bathroom.”, and Thank You, b’cus thats even more than some books say.
Going further still wld be helpful to many students who might be shy to ask for details. Justisse teachers emphasize wiping with toilet tissue as the key strategy in the Observational Routine for finding mucus. We say “Look a the tissue after wiping when you pee.”, we say “after a bowel movement is a good time to find some b’cus …” we say “wipe before peeing in case….” We say as many of these types of instructions as necessary to get our student visualizing themselves sitting on the can and looking at that tissue. Then we move on to discuss the various types of mucus they may see and how to describe in on their chart. During a follow up, we ask the new charter “are u wiping front to back?” are u using a flat layer of tissue?” etc, b’cus we want to ensure the Observation Routine is solid so we’re getting good data for the chart. I wrote an essay for Geraldine about how Checking is taught by various methods including TCYF and agree with you that it needs to be better explained.
Thanks for the comment, Lisa. I obviously go into detail in my courses, though the purposes of the blog (right now anyway) is not to teach people how to check their cervical fluid, because I don’t really think that a blog post without follow-up is good for that (I am sure you agree, here).
I hope that those that need more help do work with certified teachers! Cervical fluid is definitely a tough point for most people when they learn via book.
One day I googled “natural birth control” and lo and behold I stumbled upon TCOYF. Just like the book says, it was confusing and seemed overwhelming at first, but I got the hang of it! I was certain that I wanted to use it as birth control so I didn’t care about the time it took to learn. I read the entire book, then charted 3 cycles (this is a rule according to the book), and it has been great for me. I still go back to re-read certain sections as questions come up. I use the TCOYF website often. The FREE online charting is SOOO helpful. The categories for cervical fluid are much easier to use.
I have learned SO MUCH about my body and how it works. The sympto-thermal method was confusing and still is confusing at times because my chart won’t follow the progress of cervical fluid, or my temperature will be kinda weird for a few days, or I won’t even be sure about the firmness of my cervix- BUT, the book has strict and conservative rules that must match before being certain that the fertility window is over so I am always sure.
I used to use condoms as the only birth control, and I would often get stressed over a late period- honestly for no reason. Now that I know how to chart temperature and cervical fluid AND my luteal phase, I never worry. I just think “Oh yeah, my period will be in about 2-3 more days” etc. :) I feel like such a smarty pants. I’ve been charting for about 7 months now.
My partner and I used condoms during my fertile window. We started getting tired of condoms and I researched about withdrawal as a “real” form of birth control (including on your site). So we’ll now use withdrawal during my fertile phase. I took the reigns on contraception by learning about and applying Fertility Awareness, and now he must take control during the fertile phase. We both have more knowledge about our own and each other’s body. There is more trust- which there should be in a relationship!
I also agree that all people must find the best birth control for themselves- and for me this is it. I didn’t want to use any hormonal birth control to change my biology in order to not get pregnant. I want to be as natural as possible. Our bodies have all these signs to tell us what’s happening. We just have to pay attention. I like that TCOYF calls this “The Fertility Awareness Method.” It’s a scientific and natural way to know about our reproductive health (birth control, pregnancy achievement, and general health).
Thank you for your work and your weekly emails. I hope to become a certified fertility awareness instructor in a few years. I want to share this with the world. :)
Awesome, Ana, love your enthusiasm for it. It’s definitely amazing all that it does for you when you really understand everything :)