Honoring Our Cycles: Using Fertility Awareness to Achieve or Avoid Pregnancy

By Katie Singer
Issue 117, March/April 2003

[Author's note: This article is only an introduction to Fertility Awareness. It does not provide adequate information about using charts to prevent pregnancy. Interested readers should take a class and/or read a comprehensive book, such as Toni Weschler's Taking Charge of Your Fertility. See For More Information at the end of the article.]

When Maria Simmons and Eric Hurley (not their real names) first got together, they didn't use birth control. "I thought I knew when I was fertile," Maria says. "I'd heard that the egg leaves your body with the slippery mucus in the middle of your cycle. And once the egg's gone, you can't get pregnant." Eric figured she knew what she was talking about; "I sure didn"t," he says. The couple's son, Brahm, was conceived within two months. After he was born, Maria and Eric, by then married, considered their options for birth control. Maria had had experience with the Pill and the diaphragm, and she didn't like either. "We weren't comfortable with the , either," Eric says. "So we used condoms. But we didn't like them much. We didn't have much sex."

Their midwife suggested Fertility Awareness (FA), a natural method based on daily charting of a woman's waking temperature and cervical fluid changes.1 Maria was skeptical: "I thought that was how I'd gotten pregnant," she says. "But my midwife had used FA herself for years and insisted the method could work for me, too."

Curious to learn more about her cycle, Maria started charting, and eventually the couple took a class in FA. Eric, who can read Maria's charts as well as she can, says, "Now I have a feeling of responsibility, because I know when Maria's in her fertile phase. We have intercourse only when she's infertile, since we don't want another child now. We're actually enjoying sex more, and I'm glad she's not using the Pill or . They're strong chemicals."

Maria adds, "I didn't want sex for a long time after Brahm was born. Once I could read my charts confidently, I realized that a big part of not wanting sex was that I feared getting pregnant again. Eric often felt unwanted and frustrated during that time, understandably so."

How Fertility Awareness Works

Like the earth's surface, a woman of childbearing age moves through cycles of heating and cooling, which in turn create moistening and drying, which in turn provide a fertile environment for life to evolve. Rocks, glaciers, plants, and animals (including humans) all evolve in concert with these processes. Just as a meteorologist can observe and measure cycles in the earth's surface to determine weather patterns, a woman can observe her daily waking temperature, cervical fluid, and the cervix's changes to gauge her gynecological health and to determine when she can and cannot conceive. According to Leah Morton, an MD with a family practice in Santa Fe, New Mexico, "The first step in being healthy is knowing about yourself and respecting nature. Fertility Awareness provides a way to learn these things."

By the time a female fetus is four months old, she has already produced all the eggs she will ever create in her lifetime. The eggs, which number about 1 million, are each encased in a sac called a follicle. With the onset of menses, a young woman begins a hormonal cycle that typically lasts about one month.

With each new cycle, estrogen causes about a dozen follicles (sacs holding unripe eggs) to mature in one of her ovaries. Besides heightening a woman's sexual desire, estrogen also works to produce cervical fluid, cool her body slightly, and open her cervix. These signals can all be observed by the daily charting of mucus, temperature, and the cervix itself. When a follicle is mature, the egg within it bursts out of the ovary, and the 's finger-like reach out and grab it. The ripe egg then lives at the outer edge of the tube for 12 to 24 hours. This process is called ovulation, and a fertility chart can confirm that it has taken place. It's important to note that being fertile is not the same as ovulating. Ovulation is the release of a ripe egg. A woman is fertile when she produces cervical fluid, which can keep sperm alive for up to five days. If there are sperm in the cervix, or if the couple has intercourse while an egg is alive in a fallopian tube, cervical fluid can carry sperm up through the uterus and the fallopian tube, where they try to fertilize the egg.

After ovulation, whether or not the egg is fertilized, the empty sac remains in the ovary and produces progesterone. This hormone dries up the woman's mucus, warms her body temperature, closes her cervix's opening (the os), and thickens her with blood. If an egg is fertilized, it takes about a week to travel down the fallopian tube before implanting itself in the newly lined uterus. If fertilization does not occur, the egg simply dissolves. Then, 12 to 16 days after ovulation, menstruation occurs and a new cycle begins. Typically, cervical fluid begins to build up a few days after the period ends, becoming tacky, moist, then creamy; it normally peaks at a stretchy, egg-white consistency seven to ten days after the period ends. After the period, any mucus or moist sensation at the vulva signals that the fertile phase has begun. Contrary to what Maria Simmons once thought, the egg does not leave the body via slippery cervical fluid; the mucus is actually a signal that ovulation is about to take place. After ovulation, the mucus has a drier consistency. A woman's waking temperature is typically cooler before ovulation and warmer after ovulation.