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Fertility Awareness – How To
Fertility Awareness, or Natural Family Planning, is the most natural way to prevent pregnancy or to attempt pregnancy. The amazing thing is, anybody can do it. The most important thing you need to use it as a method of birth control? Knowledge. A Woman’s Cycle As you know, the female body works in reproductive cycles. Though it may vary from person to person, let’s use the average 28-day cycle as a point of reference. The first day of menses is day 1. It is also the same day that the follicular phase begins; in other words, the time when an egg is maturing. Estrogen is the key player during this…
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Fertility Awareness Part 4 – Our Continuing Story
This is the conclusion to a four part article on Fertility Awareness. Part 1 – The Beginning of Our Story Part 2 – Birth Control and its Effects on Reproduction Part 3 – Personal Interviews I believe in fertility awareness and know that it works. There isn’t a day that goes by that I am not grateful for the choice that Kevin and I made. It has brought a depth of respect to our sex life that has resulted from the shared responsibility and consistent communication. It also gave me a peace knowing that when we did have children, whether planned or unplanned, my body would be in its natural,…
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Fertility Awareness Part 3 – Personal Interviews
These personal interviews were conducted in 2014. I have changed the individual’s names, except for the case of Dr. Reiff, for the sake of privacy. Don’t miss Part 1 – The Beginning of our Story and Part 2 – Birth Control and its Effects on Reproduction. John and Katie The abortive nature of birth control was the ultimate reason why John did not want his soon-to-be-wife, Katie, on birth control in the first place. He explained to me, “I didn’t want her to be on the pill at all. In fact, I bought her a Taking Charge of Your Fertility book.” I must have raised my eyebrow or something, because he grinned…
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Fertility Awareness Part 2 – Birth Control and its Effect on Reproduction
Since I wrote this article 4 years ago, some of the information I had quoted directly from sources has changed. I believe this is because of biases in media shifting the way information about birth control is presented, which I find actually pretty scary. I decided to keep some of the old information there, so you can see the shifts for yourself. Brand new information is italicized. I totally believe that women have the right to know about their bodies and be correctly informed. That’s why I wrote this article in the first place, and that’s why I’m including it here. Spoiler alert: I believe that life begins at…
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Fertility Awareness Part 1 – The Beginning of Our Story
Several years ago, while an eager graduate student, I was tasked to write an in-depth article about something that I was passionate about. I chose to write about fertility awareness and birth control. I conducted interviews, put out an informal survey, and researched and wrote and revised until it resulted in a 6,000 word essay that I thought nobody would read. But the reality is, there’s still not much out there about Fertility Awareness or Natural Family Planning. After writing the piece, which was well-received by my professor and skeptical peers, I published it on my hobby blog. I only promoted it to the women who helped me by…
