What I Learned Self-Teaching Fertility Awareness Methods (and what made it click)
Teaching myself fertility awareness was overwhelming. I spent a lot of time reading blogs, social media posts, and watching youtube videos just to have a ~ vague ~ idea of how to chart. It felt lonely and uncertain. How could I trust what I read on the internet to PREVENT PREGNANCY??
Finally investing in an instructor changed all that uncertainty.
I had recently married my favorite boy when I first heard of fertility awareness methods. We knew that, even though we wanted babies someday, this was not the day. Or year. The pill didn’t seem to be working for me though. I wasn’t certain I could blame hormonal birth control, but my emotions were hard to handle. I wanted to get off the pill because if that was causing my anxiety and irritability, it was something I could change right away.
So I started looking for a comfortable alternative to hormonal birth control. “Comfortable” meant easily accessible, as effective as hormonal birth control, but non-hormonal. And of course, something my partner could agree with - which wasn't hard because he trusts me beyond belief on this, thank goodness.
I considered a diaphragm, but the required spermicides can be irritating to the delicate vagina. I considered an IUD, but I definitely wanted the non-hormonal copper IUD. It’s easy to find horror stories on the internet of painful insertions, debilitating cramps, and heavy bleeding, but that was the path I was going down anyway - making phone calls to get an appointment and make sure our insurance would cover the costs.
Until. One spring day. Youtube. Victoria with FemmeHead told me, specifically, about fertility awareness methods.
She has an awesome channel, and it was a great resource for me to learn about FAM - the basics of FAM - but she made it clear that she could not teach someone to use FAM on Youtube. She has an online self-paced course, but it was not for me at the time. I wasn’t ready to invest in an instructor, and I thought I could learn for myself everything that would be available in a self-paced course. I was pretty determined to self-teach for *free. Charting seemed so simple - and it is - but you’ll soon see from my experience why self-teaching FAM is not always great.
I felt like the perfect candidate to teach myself fertility awareness.
I have a bachelor's degree in biology, so I’ve studied and even tutored other people in anatomy and physiology. I have been interested in reproductive health since middle school. I thought I had a leg up already. I’m a self-starter and was so motivated to learn FAM. I also had plenty of free time since I had just graduated from college.
Victoria from FemmeHead recommends the book Taking Chart of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler. So the first thing I did was try to check out the ebook from the library but was put on the waitlist. I went to www.tcoyf.com to download the free charts. I found more charters on youtube and got into Facebook groups where I learned the basics of charting with a symptothermal method, like how to take my basal body temperature and what the different types of cervical mucus look like.
I quickly bought a basal thermometer and began taking my temperature the morning after my last birth control pill. Thus began my temperature-only charting (not recommended).
It wasn’t that I didn’t check for cervical fluid when I wiped. I just NEVER saw anything. I thought I was doing it wrong. I thought I would try checking with my fingers instead of toilet paper. I thought I should check further inside my vagina. I had three cycles with a clear temperature rise that met the rules I understood from somewhere on the internet, and my bleeding started the appropriate number of days after the temp rise. I thought that since I wasn’t seeing cervical mucus but the temperatures made sense, cervical mucus must NOT be important. I was so wrong.
A significant portion of my self-education so far had been in the Facebook groups and on the community tab of the charting app Kindara. Others would post their chart and crowdsource to make sure they had placed their coverline correctly or identified peak or hadn’t had a risky encounter with sperm.
I hadn’t shared my charts for the whole three-plus months that I was creeping on other people’s. In my third cycle though, I had a temp shift that met the temp rules in TCOYF (I had finally gotten the copy from the library and combed it through carefully). I felt ready to use the method and have unprotected sex. But just to be sure... I shared my chart on the Kindara app to get the crowd’s opinion. When I got two responses saying cervical mucus observations are required to confirm ovulation, I got angry and defensive. I wasn’t seeing any! So how could cervical mucus be so important?
Needless to say, we couldn’t use the method (huh? what method?) that cycle, and we didn’t have unprotected sex.
The free content from FAM educators on Instagram is plentiful. This is where I turned to learn more about cervical mucus. Several educators including Nathalie from Fertility Awareness Project, Megan from Famtastic Fertility, Allison from Blue Poppy Health, and Jessie from Fertility Charting have free content that helped me learn about the different mucus types and functions and how to become aware of the feeling of mucus inside the vagina just like you can be aware of whether your mouth feels damp or dry.
About 6 months of self-teaching, and believe me, I had learned a TON. But I still didn’t have enough information to observe my biomarkers clearly and feel confident using FAM as birth control.
Soon after my Kindara-crowdsourcing incident, I found the saving grace for my fertility awareness practice. I came across a wonderful instructor-in-training who was offering a group course for the fertility awareness method SymptoPro. Working with Susann was sooo valuable. She helped to confirm or correct what I had already taught myself. She guided me through learning vaginal sensation as a way to track cervical mucus - a complete game-changer for my charting. She listened to my concerns and fears about starting to trust FAM for birth control. She brought together each piece of charting that I had previously only vaguely understood, and she made FAM feel cohesive and TOTALLY effective for preventing pregnancy.
My self-teaching journey was fun, and I feel like I understand depths of FAM that I wouldn’t have learned by working with only one method from the start. That’s the beauty of learning about different methods and from all the different instructors on the internet. I learned several likely reasons why I wasn’t seeing as much mucus as I expected. But to actually use fertility awareness as a method of birth control, I had to work with an instructor personally. Susann helped me find a way to assess mucus that worked with my body, and she did so in a succinct way that could have helped me tune into my body and be confident using the method in fewer cycles.
Don’t think self-teaching is right for you?
If you can relate to the feeling of overwhelm and loneliness in your fertility awareness journey, and you want to work with someone who has already studied the ins and outs, schedule a consult call with me today. Together we can simplify the learning process and get you started charting right away.
