As a fertility awareness educator, I have a pretty keen idea of what the most difficult parts of fertility awareness are for most women (hint: cervical fluid).
Like any good teacher, I have a repertoire of questions and explanations to help you understand your cervical fluid better.
Lucky for me, I’ve had really good success helping bunches of women understand their cervical fluid, but that doesn’t mean I’m not always on the lookout for more ways to make it an even simpler transition (you know, the one from having no idea what cervical fluid is to using it to understand when you are fertile and what’s going on with your hormones).
What you really need to understand when you learn about your cervical fluid is 2 things:
- When you enter your fertile phase (often called the “point of change”).
- What cervical fluid is “peak” and what is “non-peak” (this helps you identify something called your “peak-day” and you do a count from that to end your fertile phase).
It’s actually a pretty simple couple of things to be looking for, but in the beginning it can still feel tricky as hell when you are first starting.
Hence, the experiments. I think I’m a scientist at heart (I did graduate from college with a science degree, after all).
I have done multiple experiments ranging from taking my temperature with 2 thermometers simultaneously to seeing how certain diet or lifestyle changes effected my cycle.
My latest was no exception in the creativity department.
When I’m looking for an experiment, I’m not looking for something to take over as a way to track your fertility signs, but a way to better understand them. Keep that one in mind.
With this one, since your cervical fluid changes in pH during your cycle (which is part of the reason it works as a fertility sign – sperm can’t live with of the help of the higher pH cervical fluid and die fast in the normally acidic vaginal environment), I thought “pH strips! I can get an objective measure of how some aspect of cervical fluid is changing. Sweet.”
So I get the strips and am super excited to start using them and testing. I started out early in my cycle and had basically nothing. I noticed that the pH strip really didn’t change colors and thought that maybe it’s either not getting it wet enough or maybe it was just the pH that wouldn’t change the strip color.
But days passed and I continued to try. My cervical fluid got wetter and extremely fertile. Certainly there should be a change now, yes?
Still, the strips are showing nothing. At this point, I start testing saliva and urine to make sure I didn’t get bum strips. Nien, the strips are fine and turning colors.
Conclusion: Cervical fluid does not measure on home pH strips and/or the variation in pH isn’t enough to read on home pH strips.
I share this with you for 3 reasons
1.) So you know that pH strips aren’t going to help you decipher your cervical fluid.
2.) So you know that I am not magical and not everything I do works.
3.) Because I want you to know that you can experiment, too.
The last one is particularly important. If you choose to learn via book you will probably need to do your fair share of experimentation before you really understand everything (if you get help from an instructor we are really good at asking the right questions and giving you little tips that will make it way easier to understand).
But when an experiment doesn’t go the way you planned, it can still be useful. For instance, I know not to tell any clients to try using pH strips if they just aren’t understanding their cervical fluid. I also know I can write a post about it and help other people trying to make their way charting their cycles.
Despite the fact that we know the science of fertility awareness really well, why it works, and how well it works, I think there is always room for improvement in how to help women, like you, understand and interpret their cycles more easily. This is super important for me since I teach women to use the method, but we get more and more information from more women talking about what’s worked for them (and of course, good ‘ol scientific studies).
I want to hear from you. Have you done any experiments? Were there parts of fertility awareness that were difficult for you to understand at first (and how did you figure it out)? If you haven’t learned yet, is the fear of not understanding holding you back (and what would help you feel confident)?
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Hannah! I loved this post. You have such great ideas!
Thanks! Wish this one worked. Haha.
Truthfully, I found cervical fluid monitoring super easy during my 20’s and 30’s. I learned from Toni Wechsler’s book and it a was all the info I needed to start using NFP. It wasn’t until my mid 40’s that temp charting and assessment of cervical fluid became a real cat and mouse game! Anovulatory cycles (no temp rise) and cervical fluid that doesn’t easily fall into definable criteria all made it much more complicated. When I think back to charting in my 20’s and 30’s it was easy street! I would never have thought of pH strips to test fluid but, hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Good for you for trying this experiment. If you can think of something to help sort out confusing cervical fluid consistencies for we ladies going through the change, we’d be most welcome!!
You were one of the lucky few! I find that a certain percentage of people fit perfectly into the descriptions in Taking Charge of Your Fertility and for others… Not so much. I was one of the not so much people, so I had to do a lot of work to refine how I understood my cervical fluid. I’m happy for it now because it helps me know how to help people understand their cervical fluid better, but it was obnoxious when I started.
I’d love to hear more about the specific confusions for you. Can you email me? You can even send pics/videos along with descriptions.
I’m really glad you tried this! I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but never got around to it. I’ve also considered getting a more sophisticated PH meter to try it out (though those are pretty expensive). Still, it’s good to know that regular old PH strips are no help =)
Totally. I’m sure a more sophisticated pH meter would work, but wouldn’t be feasible for the average person to buy if it did work, ya know? The pH strips were only $5 on amazon so I was excited about that being a potential solution.
And of course they have the clear blue fertility monitor now, but I wouldn’t trust or recommend it because of this article: http://lifeissues.net/writers/feh/feh_19fertilephase.html
I believe the fertility monitor missed the beginning of the fertile phase in 40% of cases… Yikes. No thanks, I’d rather a bit longer of a fertile phase that is actually accurate.
I love the geekiness of this!
I dont bother with CF because it is too qualitative. Isnt using temperature sufficient?
I wonder if more people were introduced to FAM as BBT only if there would be better uptake…
Thanks for the comment, Melissa!
The problem with temp only is twofold: 1.) If you are only using temp you should only be using the end part of your cycle as infertile, so it cuts down on infertile days. Boo! and 2.) Temperature is actually less accurate than cervical fluid, in terms of finding when you ovulate.
And, though temp is quantitative and cervical fluid is qualitative, temp can be thrown off more easily without you realizing it.
It’s definitely more popular to rely heavily on temp, partially because it’s so straightforward and partially because a lot of people who learn the method these days learn via Taking Charge of Your Fertility, which unfortunately under emphasizes cervical fluid importance and gives boxes that a lot of people’s cervical fluid doesn’t fit into (hence: confusion). I think more people need to work with instructors to figure out their cervical fluid, for most people it’s not immediately obvious.
Plus, if your thermometer broke mid-month you would have no means of measuring you temp accurately (new thermometers wouldn’t be calibrated the same).
Makes sense. Its been a while since I *understood* what I am doing with FAM. These days I am just doing it habitually without remembering the science behind it. I keep telling myself that I ought to re-read TCOYF, but perhaps its time for some new literature…
You also have me thinking about the ‘safe’ days at the beginning of my cycle, which I have cut down to 3 thanks to having short 25 day cycles often enough. Maybe its time to re-explore the CF.
The thing with CF is I worry that you can give yourself a false negative. Like how thoroughly should you sample your vagina? (saying that makes me laugh!) I remember in TCYOF instructing for just the opening, which seemed ripe for false negatives. Anyway, some more reading for me. Do you have any recommendations of good reading?
Haha, that made me laugh, too.
Opening is fine. Generally when people do internal checks they end up thinking they have more fluid than they have because they confuse it with other things.
Some of my favorite books are listed here, though most of them aren’t FA teaching books. One of the more cervical fluid focused books is the Justisse one, but keep in mind that their system for categorizing cervical fluid is not what most women want to do. It’s great for seeing a kind of different perspective/description of cervical fluid than the typical stuff you see in most FA books (which I think cheat most women out of really understanding it). https://holistichormonalhealth.com/recommended-reading/
Hi Hannah,
I used pH strips and did see changes reflected. The ones I used were actually not individual strips, but a roll of pH testing paper. It’s called “Body Rescue.” I don’t use the pH to determine the beginning of fertile phase, because I rely on texture and presence of CF for that as well as cervical position, but it is interesting to see how my fluid goes from around 5 to 6.2 or 6.3 as I near ovulation. It’s funny, I tested my most fertile secretions next to raw eggwhite (because they are so similar in consistency and appearance) and the eggwhite turned the strip a deep blue/purple, with a pH of 8. In contrast, my “eggwhite” CF only turned the slightest blue-y tinge to the yellow test paper. It indicated between 6 and 7 pH at my most fertile but I would say around 6.3 to be fair. It’s not reliable as a way to determine fertility but it was a cool experiment!
Neat! Glad to hear it worked with something else. Was the stuff you used precise enough to get those decimal places, too?
Yes the package of the pH testing paper gives different shades for the different decimal points. I also have an electronic pH meter that I will probably try sometime, but the darkening of the strips was obvious from days 10-14 of my cycle.
Cool! Mine went by integers only, no decimals.