Cervical Fluid

I'm midway through my second chart. I've basically gotten into the swing of things but cervical fluid is proving to be a bit tricky- as in, I am not confident that I'd know when I'm fertile or not based just on the fluid (but of course I am not only relying only on that since I am taking daily temps and also sometimes checking my cervix...but more on that later). I feel like I had a "peak day" of cervical fluid about a week ago (I'm not looking at the chart right now so I'm estimating) and then some dry days. Then the past two days c.f. reappeared in a wet, white form. My temperature also shot up about three days ago, so I know things are shifting as they should be. My question right now is regarding the fluid that is present when one is aroused. Because that fluid is clear and has an egg-white sort of consistency (well, I felt like it was thinner than egg-white but still very stretchy). This is not the kind of fluid I observed during the day but it is what I notice just before sex. So I know that I'm not noting this pre-sex/aroused-state fluid on my chart, but it made me think, well, if I weren't using a condom right now, wouldn't this fluid be ripe for transporting sperm?

Post-pill period and Whatcha lookin at?

Last week was my first post-pill period. I was not one of those girls that was excited the first time she got her period. By the time I got it, I was 14, in eighth grade and felt like well, I guess it had to happen. What a drag. But last week, when I got my first period since going off the pill a month before, I was very happy. It was only about a week later than it would have been if I were on the pill. I think there was more blood than had been the case while on the pill, though it was also a little tricky to tell because now I am using The Keeper and can actually see how much there is (as opposed to with tampons). When I woke up that morning, my temperature had dropped from 97.9 the previous morning to 97.5 and I had a good guess that something was up.

Now I am on chart #2, the temps are back down to the low 97's (and some freakish 96.6, 96.8). I am still doing my best to figure out this cervical fluid thing. I pay attention but sometimes I'm not sure exactly what I'm observing. Is that wet? Is that "dry"? Is that sticky? Is that egg white? I'll figure it out eventually.

I went for a walk with my boyfriend this morning and he said, "Geez, a lot of people have been checking you out today." I said it was probably the tight running clothes I was wearing. (Ah, the joys of exercising in the open air as a woman. You just have to get used to the comments about your ass. In college I would've give all these guys the finger, but I've mellowed.) Then I remembered the story my teacher had told us about how some women say that when they are fertile, men pay much more attention to them, hit on them, their partners are more interested in sex, etc. As my boyfriend pointed out, this is merely anecdotal and some studies would need to be done to prove if this is really true. I do know of one study involving strippers and the amount of tips they received from clients. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20070920-000007.html

So where's the birth control?

One of my friends recently wrote to me, "So what are you using for birth control- where is the post on that? or are you not using any? hmmm..."

She's not the only one to ask the question. Unless she was asking because she knows that until I get the pill out of my system (a matter of a few months to a year... I'll wait to see when I can determine patterns in my cycles), I will need to use a barrier method of birth control, then she cannot see the forest for the trees. FAM is birth control. Perhaps it's the "fertility" part of the name that trips people up, or perhaps it's just the fact that you really don't use any thing to prevent pregnancy-- instead, the method relies upon intangible knowledge (unless you count the charts as tangible data). This is quite a leap for most of us who have been conditioned to think that we must use barrier methods (condoms, diaphragms, etc.) or drugs (pills, nuva ring, etc.) to prevent pregnancy. All that FAM gives you is intimate knowledge of the workings of your body. It's not based on guessing, or estimates, or new agey-hocus pocus. It's based on the science of how the human body works (both male and female, that is).

Now, as I said, to answer my friend's question, for now, I am charting and using condoms until I can rely upon my charts (that is, my body) to fall back into its natural cycling. Once that happens, either I can choose to have sex when I'm fertile (using a condom or some other kind of birth control) or, to practice FAM most effectively, I can abstain from sex completely on the days when I know I am most fertile (the amount of days will vary from woman to woman, and cycle to cycle). Then on the days when I know I am not fertile at all (again, I will know not by guessing or some kind of vague feeling but because I will be referring to data on temperature and cervical fluid that I have observed and recorded), I can have sex without using a condom. In that case, I'll be practicing a method of birth control. It sounds risky at first, I suppose. But so is a thin piece of rubber between your egg and his sperm, especially when you're having sex during your most fertile times (when the environment in your body is most hospitable to sperm, as it encourages fertilization). And if you're just using condoms and not charting, which many people do all the time, sometimes you're having sex during these most fertile days and sometimes you're using a condom when there is zero chance of you becoming pregnant anyway. You just aren't aware of the difference.

I suppose that to many people the idea of having to abstain from sex at certain times sounds like giving up too much. This starts to remind us of religious practices (like Judaism's nida) and I think a lot of women my age would balk at having to "give something up". Though by the time my generation was taking the pill it was much less politicized, I've always been aware of the fact that it allows for a kind of freedom, liberation from the burden of our bodies, if you will. Practicing FAM requires a shift in this kind of thinking-- if you consider not having sex when you're most fertile bowing down to the burden of your body, then it's not for you. If you think of it as educating yourself about the natural rhythms of your body, and respecting these rhythms, then it becomes more than a method of birth control-- it also becomes part of the way you live your life as a conscious, informed, liberated woman.

The Keeper

I have to just put in a plug (!) for The Keeper (listed in the links to the left). I had been meaning to buy one for quite some time, but it's so easy to not bother (just like getting off the pill) and just go to the drugstore for some more tampons. But since I was taking FAM, I figured, what the hell, might as well go all the way here.

I used it during my last period on the pill- a sort of farewell celebration of sorts.

It was great! It took a little practice getting used to putting it in and taking it out. For the first day or so I was aware of the little tip at the bottom, but I think by the last day, it had found it's right resting place in my body.

And when I explain to my friends that in fact it is a little cup that collects the blood, which you remove and then pour into the toilet they mostly say, "Gross!". Let me tell you, once you do this, you will think tampons are gross. Pulling out a tampon is like removing a dead animal. Removing a little cup full of vivid red blood is, well, kind of beautiful. I know it sounds corny and a little over the top but using this device made me rethink my period. As opposed to a plugged up wound, it's a natural shedding. I bought the "moon cup" one actually, only because it is made of silicon and so is clear and I wanted to see what I was dealing with. It's nice to be able to measure your flow in this way. Also, on days when you are not bleeding much, it's not as uncomfortable as tugging on a mostly-dry tampon.

So for those of you who are still thinking "Gross! I'll have to put my fingers up there!", I say, get over it. I think it's an excellent alternative to shoving bleached-soaked wads of cotton up there (which I might point out, are wasteful and if you go to The Keeper's website you can see a year's worth of tampon boxes and be horrified at how much waste you are contributing) and reconnect you with your body in a basic, tangible way.

Learning as I go

I found out that by starting a blog about FAM, I am learning two things at once-- how to practice FAM and how to blog.

So there was a brief hiatus there, during which time I moved, finished teaching for the year and started taking some courses (chemistry!) at Hunter. In the meantime, I've been charting.

So now I am on day 23 of my cycle. Which means I've been off the pill for about a month. All the things I feared would happen so far have not-- I did not break out into a giant pimply mess, my breasts did not retreat to their pre-pubescent state and I did not grow a beard. Basically, I thought I would become a pimple faced man once I got off the pill. It had become, over the past eleven years, so much a part of my identity as a woman. Ironic, I know, since it actually stopped a lot of my most womanly functions.

I saw cervical fluid! On day 14. I am still debating about how much detail I want to go into on the blog about nature of my bodily fluids, but I will tell you that when you have gone a decade without anything, and then you see something, it's something. I thought, Hey! Something is working down there! It's waking up! Then of course, it went back to sleep...but I have to give this time as I get the pill out of my system.

Now I am trying to figure out how to describe the other kinds of cervical fluid I am seeing or not seeing. The sample charts we have looked at in class say things like "creamy", "lotiony", "clumpy", "eggwhite", "lots", "dry"... It may sound obvious and from what I understand, after a few weeks/months of this, it'll become obvious, but for right now, I am never quite sure what I am looking at. I do my best to describe it but find that I would like more space than the chart provides. At this point, I need footnotes to expound upon all the ways I attempt to describe the fluid. Also, our teacher pointed out that at the beginning we should write down everything because we don't really know yet what things are determining factors of our fertility. So I am writing down how much I sleep, I recorded the two days where I was really tired (despite enough sleep) and had really weird and vivid dreams, I recorded a day when I drank wine but forgot to write down the day I drake saki. Of course I also record when I have sex.

Now I am just waiting to see when I get my period again. I'm sure my body is still saying "Pill? Pill? Anybody got a pill?"

My boyfriend has taken to asking me about my temperature on a daily basis (even when we don't speak on the phone until 7:00pm-- and the temperature is always taken upon waking). My temps were generally between 97.1 and 97.4 for about two weeks and then in the past two or three days have risen slightly to 97.7.

I still have that moment many nights before bed where I think to myself, "I forgot to take my pill!"

Tonight was actually the last night of our class. I'll have a private follow up visit in about two months. I feel like I am at the point I got to in learning French- after four years in high school, I had a lot of vocabulary and I had learned all the verb tenses. Then I had to put it all together in order to become a fluent speaker. I didn't do it. I guess I just didn't practice enough, I was shy about speaking, I got distracted with other things. The FAM class and books have given me a lot of vocabulary and I consider the various parts of charting to be verb tenses-- now I'll need to practice to become fluent in the language of my own body. This time shyness, distraction and lack of practice are pitfalls I'll be careful to avoid.

Day one

In retrospect, it was naive of me to think that somehow the pill didn't have any effect on my body other than preventing me from getting pregnant. My period came on the same day, every month, every year, for ten years (except for that one month when I was gloriously stressed out), I bled less, my skin looked pretty good, my breasts grew (at the start of taking the pill, that is)- these were the physical aspects I observed and they were all just fine by me. And I never worried about when I was fertile or not because, well, I was always not. Why didn't I stop to think about what it actually means to be infertile? I never thought of it in bodily terms, but rather, in a more abstract way. I only thought about what my life looks like now and I how a pregnancy would be rather inconvenient, to say the least. But I didn't think about what was actually going on (or NOT going on) in my body.

I'll take 50% of the responsibility for not asking more. I lay 50% on my doctors and the drug companies behind them. The dermatologist I saw when I was a teenager prescribed the pill. Why is there not a class, a booklet, a conversation, even, that is required to take place when a woman first begins taking the pill? Isn't it our right and responsibility to know exactly what the drug does? But then again, I guess a lot of us would rather not know. We just want to know that it works. That was all I ever heard from my gynecologists any time I proposed getting off the pill- if you don't want to be pregnant then you need to be on the pill. And the conversation would end there. Here's where I realize I could have pressed. I could have said, but I don't really know what's happening. Can you explain it to me? But sitting in a doctor's office, wrapped in a paper gown, I always ended up feeling like I was worrying needlessly. Didn't I feel fine? Wasn't it "working"? Don't doctors have a better understanding of our bodies than we do?

This morning was my first charting day. I woke up, took my temperature and recorded it on the chart. It felt like progress.

The last one

Tonight is Sunday, in the fourth week of a pill pack, which means placebos. So essentially, I am officially done, having taken my last pill last night. I'll admit that I am sad to see them go. It has been really easy to file all my thoughts about cycles and risk of pregnancy under "Of Little Concern" for the past eleven years. I always felt that being on the pill was the responsible thing to do. Now, I find I am dealing with a paradigm shift- I feel that getting off the pill is the responsible thing to do. But make no mistake, it is not a shift easily or carelessly made. I'm operating under the hope that it'll be worth it once the initial fear has subsided. As strange as it may sound, I feel like in the coming months I will be re-introduced to my body and I'm wondering if I will recognize it as my own.