Wellness Wednesday: Charting Your Cycle, How to Get Pregnant (or not) Naturally

Aunt Flo. Dot. My monthly friend or the beast from the East. Most women, from the time they hit puberty, are ruled by the cyclical nature of their bodies.

Some of us, for a time, are obsessed with avoiding pregnancy. Then all of a sudden we hit a certain age and ALL we can think about is making babies. But what do any of us really know about working with our bodies to plan a family?

I realized, only recently, that even though I've had 3 children, I was still in the dark about the inner workings of my lady parts. I don't think I'm in the minority here.

I know many women who wouldn't know how to pick out their vagina in a line-up, much less be able to recognize when she is ovulating. But, as we all know, knowledge is power. Whether you are trying to get pregnant or your baby making factory has closed it's doors, understanding how your body works so that you can work with it is essential.

After having my third son I decided that I was no longer going to pump myself full of crazy making hormones. I'd been on birth control from age 17 to 29, with a brief time off for kid number 2 when I was 25. That's a whole lot of artificial chemicals being pumped into one body.

Since embracing a more natural way of living I told myself I was done with the birth control and had to find another way to get in tune with my body (and avoid having a 4th boy!) It was only after attending a La Leche League meeting that I realized there was another way.

So, if you are not yet ready to read about things like fertile mucus and cervical positioning you might want to bookmark this page and save it for later.

At this meeting was when I first learned that exclusive breast feeding can be up to 99% percent effective in preventing pregnancy as long as:

1. Your baby is less than six months old
2. Your menstrual periods have not yet returned
3. Baby is breastfeeding on cue (both day & night), and gets nothing but breast milk or only token amounts of other foods. (from Kellymom.com)

Why didn't ANYONE, not my midwife, OB, or even mother tell me this! If I wasn't already convinced of the benefits of breast feeding for me and my baby, this certainly sealed the deal.

At that meeting I also learned that the discharge coming from your vagina is a natural indicator of when you are fertile. My mind was seriously blown!

Natural family planning has become a lost art. We are so used to a pill, injection, or implant to regulate our periods, help us get pregnant, or not, that we've become detached from the wisdom our body can teach us.

It was so great when I found out this was the featured topic at the most recent Holistic Moms Network meeting I attend, entitled: Everything you should have learned in Sex Ed.

Our guest speaker, acupuncturist and fellow crunchy momma, Johanna Herget, got down to the nitty-gritty details pertaining to how we can really get to know our bodies. She explained the most useful tool in getting to know your cycle is by charting 3 things: your temperature, cervical fluid, and the position of your cervix.

Temperature

During your window of fertility, there will be a significant spike in your waking body temperature, about .4 degrees. When keeping a record of your temps make sure to get a reading the moment you wake up. Any change in position or movement will raise your reading, so make sure you thermometer is right next to your bed and you are taking it the same time every day. 

Cervical Fluid

The moisture that is going on downtown is one of the clearest indicators of when you are fertile. About 7 days from the end of your period discharge from your vagina begins. It can vary in texture, consistency, and color, but knowing what fertile mucus looks like can tell you when you may be ovulating.

After your period ends you will have some dry days, which means unless sexually aroused you will not have any discharge. The quality of cervical mucus is on a continuum from dryer (less fertile) to wetter (more fertile) as ovulation approaches. A woman's Peak Day of fertility is the last day of a slippery fluid.

Position of the Cervix

This can be the most challenging technique to use, but with a little practice can get easier. Basically as you get closer to ovulation your cervix will got from a low, closed position, to a higher more open position. The Baby Corner has an in-depth how-to description for getting to know your cervix.

Below is an example on how you would chart each item.

Chart Example

Once you've got these 3 techniques down here are the Four Family Rules for Natural Birth Control:

1. First 5 Days Rule

It's safe to have sex the first 5 days of your menstrual cycle if you have had an obvious shift in temperature 12-16 days before.

2. Dry Day Rule

Before ovulation, you are safe the evening of a dry day. (Sperm cannot survive in a dry vaginal environment)

3. Temperature Shift Rule

You are safe the evening of the 3rd consecutive day your temperature is above your coverline. A coverline is the point on your chart where there has been a noticeable shift (.2 degrees) in your temperature. If following temps are above the coverline for at least three days, ovulation is assumed to have taken place and you are no longer fertile.

4. Peak Day Rule

You are safe the evening of the 4th consecutive day after your Peak Day, or the day you are most fertile.

I know this is a lot to take in, but getting to know your body is one of the most important steps in being able to naturally plan your family. Luckily technology has provided easy tools like the Period Tracker app to help us out. If that's not for you, you can download a blank chart here.

Have you tried natural family planning? Has menstrual charting helped you get pregnant or not get pregnant? Share in the comments section below!

Naturally Knowing My Body in Granolaville,

Natural Mom Monday: Holistic Fertility Healing

Conceiving a child is one of the most miraculous and exciting events to occur in many couples' lives. But for  6.1 million women in the US facing infertility issues, the process can be emotionally and physically trying.

In an age where you can determine the gender of your child through sperm manipulation, have a woman be the vessel of your already fertilized egg, and the term "too posh to push" has become a part of the collective zeitgeist, it would not be unfounded to conclude that conceiving a child has become the first stop on a train of unnecessary medical interventions.

Couples are willing to do just about anything to have a "natural" child. However, it becomes painfully ironic when they seek treatments, injections, and hormonal manipulations-- conceiving their child is anything but natural.

IVF, or in-vitro fertilization, has become the immediate answer for those facing difficulty getting pregnant, or maintaining a pregnancy. But with success rates only around 30-35% in women under the age of 35 and a recent study published in the journal Human Reproduction showing that women who received IVF treatment were 2 times more likely to have ovarian cancer, perhaps we need to reevaluate our approach.

Julia Indichova is doing just that.

Nearly 20 years ago, after being diagnosed with an "untreatable" hormonal condition, 42-year-old Julia Indichova was told by doctors that she would never have a child of her own. Refusing to believe that this was the end of her journey she began to look outside the medical community to find a way to have the child she dreamed of. Not only was she able to have a healthy pregnancy and baby, but today she is a sought after author and leads workshops in Woodstock, NY,  helping hundreds of couples achieve their own impossible dream through a Fertile Heart.

 Your first book Inconceivable was based on your own personal experiences?

Yes, in 1992, at the age of forty two, I was diagnosed with an allegedly “untreatable” hormonal problem,  At the time I went to see a number of reproductive endocrinologists and pretty much all of them agreed that my that my last good egg was gone, and there was nothing I could do about it.  I think the most upsetting part was that they said it with such certainty; it paralyzed me for along time. But looking back, in many ways the fact that the medical world pronounced me untreatable, was really my saving grace.

How so?

It was the first time in my life that I dared to have an opinion on a medical condition that was different from that of the authority figures, experts and even more importantly, I followed through on that opinion by acting on it. In some way it feels as though that was the first time I really started to do my own thinking. And soon enough I was immersed in the most exciting research project in which I was the lab and the subject of the experiment, and the head of the project. In Inconceivable I wanted to take the reader through that experience with me--the progression from total despair to a place where I started to trust myself, and how that eventually led to conceiving my daughter without medical intervention.

Could you describe some of the things you did that helped you conceive?

It began with experimenting with food. Pretty much overnight I went from being a sugar and caffeine addict to juicing every morning. I started to become more and more aware of what I was putting in my mouth, and why, whether the food on my plate was going to help my body get stronger, or was it something that will deplete me of energy.  That part was easier than I would’ve thought, mostly because I could see changes almost instantly. 

The emotional and spiritual piece of the work took a lot more courage.  It meant admitting to myself that as much as I longed for another child, I had a lot of “inner orphans” that didn’t think I deserved to have what I longed for, orphans that I later realized have been stopping me from moving forward in my life for as long as I could remember. I did a great deal of soul searching and later developed specific imagery and body work,  that helped me change those self-defeating inner images I’ve lived with for so much of my life. And gradually I changed my views on what was possible.  I realized that I had a lot of power to create changes in my body and in my life.  And amazingly later I found that the same tools helped hundreds of other women to work through their inner obstacles. 

What prompted you to write the Fertile Female?

After Inconceivable was published, women from around the world – Australia, South Africa, Denmark – began to write to me.  Many of them used Inconceivable as a guide and now had miracles of their own and many others were asking for more guidance. The Fertile Female documents the work that emerged in response to those letters. It’s an in depth exploration of the tools I teach in the Fertile Heart ™ Conceptions workshops and weaved into the narrative are the many stories of the women I worked with. The book also has a detailed practice section with recipes, imagery exercises, guidance for dream reading, and movement sequences.

Could you give us an example of working with some of these tools?

Fertile Heart ™ Imagery is a very specific way of working with images, quite different from the popular "visualization" techniques, many of which are focused on relaxation. It is is about using images to identify the inner obstacles that contribute to our difficulties.  It’s an effective way to change our inner reality, to recognize destructive behavior and self-defeating beliefs that so many of us live with without realizing it. For example, there is an exercise I call The Room of Fear, which helps people access hidden fears of pregnancy, or parenting. One of my clients who was adopted at birth, found that she had a lot of unresolved painful feelings about her own birth. As she allowed herself to move through those feelings and started changing her inner reality she conceived naturally after five years of unsuccessful medical treatment.

Body Truth ™ is also about physicalizing inconvenient feelings of anger, frustration, hopelessness, because it takes a great deal of energy to keep such emotions from surfacing.  Sometimes we need to experiment with the movement before we can access the feeling. We’ve been conditioned, many of us, to view anger or rage as an unacceptable feeling. As they get expressed and released, a great deal of energy becomes available to create new life.


The idea of the mind body connection, of staying positive and reducing stress has become more widely accepted. How does the Fertile Heart work incorporate those principles? 

There seems to be a great deal of confusion around the principles of mind body connection, and positive thinking. The term itself is confusing. There really is no mind body connection because there’s never been a mind body separation. So many people I meet say, I know I’m suppose to be positive  but I can’t help feeling this treatment isn’t going to work and  it’s going to be my fault. Real healing happens when we create a safe space to hear whatever truth rises up in us at any moment.  Labeling our feelings as positive and negative means that is some way we are going to stop ourselves; that we will censor what we feel.  

The Fertile Heart work is about allowing ourselves to be as truthful as we can and then choosing to act in our own best interests, to be militantly on our own side no matter what. When we don’t do that, the Truth will find expression through our dreams, or through physical symptom, or through events that will suddenly present themselves.  And the treatment might fail in part because we become so “clenched” and spend so much energy on pretending that we’re “positive” thinkers. It’s true that we have enormous power as co-creators, and it’s important to harness our co-creative ability, but it’s a much deeper and more mysterious process than just “being positive.”

 What are your thoughts on the fertility industry?

Technology is an immensely powerful tool, but like any tool, it depends on how we use it. In what I call the “Infertility Industrial Complex” the line between medicine and business is obscured.  Almost daily there is some new “breakthrough” procedure that lures people into thinking that it will save them. The promise of a ‘quick fix’ from an outside powerful authority figure, and the panic of the racing biological clock drives women toward desperate action. 

They’re reaching for a miracle cure, without truly understanding the myriad of causes that can delay conception. And when the first treatment fails, what they walk away with is “wow, if I couldn’t get pregnant with all this help, there must be something really wrong with me. 

Very often it’s a message that’s reiterated by their physicians, and gradually it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I see women taking hormone stimulants for as many as seven, ten, even twenty treatment cycles. They keep thinking the next one will work. The long term effect of these drugs is still largely unknown.

How do you explain the fact that so many of the women you’ve worked with conceived naturally after years of failed high tech treatment?

A desire for a child is also an immensely powerful motivator. The baby is for many of us that one shiny apple we will do anything to reach.  What I aim to do is encourage people to directly experience and observe how much power they have to create change in their bodies, and how much the hidden images they carry, influence their hormone levels and biology. 

Once they begin to really see it for themselves, they become inspired to do more. And many of them overcome incredible odds, often after years of failed treatment.  But as wonderful as it is for me to see women conceive, the essence of the work is to make sure that this challenge doesn’t leave them feeling victimized, or bitter. 

The central piece of my work is to inspire people to discover that they can turn this difficulty into the absolutely best thing that ever happened to them, regardless of the outcome.

It sounds like the tools you describe can be used to birth not only a child but anything ?

Absolutely, these were the same tools that helped me birth the two books, and the website, and pretty much everything else in my life.  A few years ago, I’ve begun to teach workshops that are about other creative endeavors. We humans are the greatest untapped resource  on earth, and this is the time when we can no longer allow it to remain untapped. 

For more information about Julia Indichova and her Fertile Heart workshops visit her website.