The 5 best things about using fertility awareness while trying to conceive

I talk a lot about fertility awareness as a tool for birth control, but there is a lot more to it than just birth control. One of my favorite things about it is the overall body awareness you get from the practice. And one of the biggest benefits is for those trying to conceive.

Since fertility awareness is simply the practice of observing and charting signs that tell you when you are potentially fertile and definitely infertile throughout your cycle, it can be used equally well as birth control or a window into when you are fertile for those trying to conceive.

Because of that, the biggest focus on how fertility awareness helps those trying to conceive is with timing.

Reason 1: Timing

There isn’t anything false about that. It’s very helpful to know when you should time intercourse for multiple reasons. I can hear some of you now “Why would someone worry about timing? Just HAVE SEX. DUH!” And to that I say, I’m guessing you have never tried to conceive or never taken very long to do so. I’ll tell you why in a bit.

Conventionally, women are often told a few things about timing.

• You ovulate around day 14
• You ovulate mid-cycle
• You ovulate about 2 weeks prior to your next expected period (getting close!)
• Time for when you see a temperature dip (I love that this uses fertility signs, but hate that it’s not helpful advice.)
• Time for when you see a positive LH test
• But these are either incorrect or not super helpful in terms of length of fertile phase they give you.

With the sympto-thermal method of fertility awareness, the fertility sign that is going to give you the most information into your fertility is cervical fluid. Cervical fluid tells you when your fertile window opens because when you begin producing cervical fluid sperm can survive inside of you and it indicates your estrogen levels are rising, which happens just before ovulation. Generally with cervical fluid you get about 3-5 days notice before ovulation.

Especially if you have irregular cycles, trying on cycle day 14 or mid-cycle is not going to be very helpful for you in most cases. While a good portion of people do ovulate about 2 weeks before their next period, some people do not. In addition, you have to KNOW when you’d be having your next period to know what -2 weeks from that would be (again, unhelpful with irregular cycles). Temperature dips are actually pretty rare to see on charts, and even if they were a thing, only knowing one day in advance would be unhelpful in many situations. LH tests can be very helpful, but also don’t give you a very long window before ovulation.

So back to that whole “Why would anyone worry about timing? Just have sex, duh!” thing. There are a lot of reasons that can make finding the perfect timing more important. Here are some examples:

• Some people prefer withdrawal or alternate sex, meaning they wouldn’t normally have penis in vagina or ejaculatory sex UNLESS they were specifically trying to conceive.
• When you have been trying to conceive for a while it can put a lot of pressure on sex, so having days to either enjoy sex and not be thinking about trying to conceive (the infertile days) or being able to focus only on the fertile days and give yourself a total break from sex during infertile times can be helpful for some couples.
• If you are trying to get pregnant through a means BEYOND penis in vagina/ejaculatory sex like insemination for someone who is pursuing single parenthood or couples who are not hetero/cis, it saves both money and stress to know when in your cycle you can get pregnant.

Reason 2: Hormonal Health

When you chart your fertility signs, you aren’t only getting knowledge about when exactly you start and stop being fertile during a cycle, but you are also getting a window into your hormonal health. Why? Because the fertility signs you track are directly related to your current hormone levels.

Cervical fluid is influenced by both estrogen and progesterone (higher estrogen levels create more fertile cervical fluid and progesterone levels being higher dry up cervical fluid). and temperature is primarily influenced by progesterone levels (higher progesterone levels raise temperature levels overall).

With the info in a chart, you can see when and IF you are ovulating, how long your luteal phase is, whether your progesterone levels might be low, if you have sufficient cervical fluid, whether you might have a thyroid issue, and much more.

Not only that, but if you are into trying to fix things holistically, you can try things and see, in real time, whether they are making any difference for your cycles without having to test and re-test hormone levels.

Reason 3: You have a better idea when to get outside help

When you chart your cycles you know if your timing is spot on, your cycles look completely regular or irregular, and if anything you are doing is helping any irregularity you might have. When you chart your cycles and are trying to conceive you have a much better idea if it’s the right time to get outside help or if it seems like you can hold off longer.

Reason 4: It can help with the stress of trying to conceive

Here is why:

You won’t be stressed that you aren’t getting the timing right, or that you can’t time quickly enough after you get a positive LH test.

You won’t feel stressed and “on” all of the time in terms of all intercourse being potential trying to conceive intercourse. This can be helpful so that you can either take a break and NOT have intercourse during your infertile time or you can take the mental load of hoping this will be your cycle/time off of the intercourse outside of the fertile window.

You also aren’t dealing with deciding when to test based on a guess of when your next period should come, you know how many days past ovulation you are and when you can actually realistically start testing and when it’s likely you’d see a positive test.

Although I will mention a disclaimer here, for some people the whole charting/keeping track of their cycles things makes them MORE stressed. They feel like they are constantly over-analyzing, playing a waiting game, thinking about it more than they have to, etc. If that is you, perhaps try backing off from the charting for a little while. Although, I SWEAR THIS ALWAYS HAPPENS, whenever someone goes from charting to not charting they tend to get a cycle way different than normal and then are mad at themselves they don’t have a way of figuring out what’s going on. Murphey’s law, man.

(Bonus) Reason 5: When you do get pregnant you know your exact dates

Irregular cycles? Not to worry, when you are charting your cycles there is no guess on your due date based on your last menstrual period, you know exactly when you ovulated and can set your due date based on ovulation instead (your due date would be 38 weeks from ovulation).

Those are my top five reasons to chart your cycles if you are trying to conceive or thinking about doing so soon. Have you charted while trying to conceive? What did you like best about the practice?