How fertility awareness helps “infertile” women get pregnant

Infertility and fertility awareness Natural Womanhood

Conception is a complicated process. Anyone who has ever tried and tried again to become pregnant knows it’s not as simple as it should be. An astonishing 22 percent of couples who aren’t doing anything to contracept or render themselves infertile actually have trouble conceiving. That’s a lot of couples left waiting, hoping and wondering, a lot of women frustrated, confused and saddened every month.

The knee-jerk reaction to problems conceiving is to go get checked out by a doctor, an ob/gyn, a fertility specialist, etc. But let’s slow down and look at the basics first. How well do you and your partner understand your cycle? Do you really know how your cycle length, characteristics of your menstrual flow, body temperature, cervical mucus or even your actual cervix relate to your fertility? Can you tell if one day is more fertile than the next? Can you pinpoint your day of peak fertility?

Answering these questions gives you clues to the underlying reason for delayed conception. Your fertility doctor is probably a busy guy (or gal). Doctors don’t have time to explain how all of the above affect your chances of becoming pregnant. However, the information is key to ruling out common and very treatable conditions that affect ovulation and implantation.

Women who document the monthly changes in their bodies are arming themselves with information that can boost the effectiveness of treatment of certain conditions that limit fertility .

Endometriosis, as one example, is a common cause of infertility. In this painful condition, for some unknown reason uterine tissue has decided to grow in places other than the uterus. These extraneous tissues still respond to monthly hormonal shifts. They grow in response to rising estrogen, become secretory in response to progesterone, and attempt to bleed (slough) when progesterone drops off – just in all the wrong places.

Cycle charting, self-monitoring of cervical discharge and changes in basal body temperature are essential to the woman with endometriosis because it gives her doctor information about the best times to administer treatments, perform surgeries, or diagnosis procedures. Using this information increases the effectiveness of the management of this particular cause of infertility.

Artificial hormones are often prescribed to women with endometriosis to help them manage their painful symptoms. Although this may alleviate some pain, it takes away the woman’s ability to chart her natural cycle; she doesn’t have a natural cycle to chart while on the Pill!  Synthetic hormones can also cause inflammation of the cervix, reducing its ability to produce mucus that is supportive of sperm survival.

In other words, the natural function of the woman’s body is rendered defunct.

I picked one of the more complicated causes to illustrate how fertility awareness can help in more frustrating cases. More frequently, cycle charting uncovers simpler problems, like a short post-ovulatory phase or the simple lack of good cervical mucus, that are easily treated. There are even all-natural, non-pharmaceutical ways to improve the quality of cervical mucus.

Your doctor is definitely very important in your journey to becoming parents. Choose a doctor who understands your chart and uses it as a key tool in the diagnosis and management of the root cause of your infertility. Before jumping to artificial (expensive!) fixes, rule out simpler, more natural and cost-effective solutions like learning fertility awareness.

Certain methods of fertility awareness are three times more effective at achieving pregnancy than artificial means of fertilization. Imagine how gratifying it would feel as a woman, how affirming to you as a couple, to know that you could conceive naturally with just a little instruction from your fertility awareness practitioner?

On this topic, see also How charting helped me beat infertility

Have you read our Medical Update about Fertility Awareness Based Methods? You can download it for free here.

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