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I’m not currently trying to get pregnant, so why do I care when I’m ovulating?

Why would I bother charting and tracking my fertile signs when I have no intention of conceiving?

Your fertility is so much more than making babies. It’s about eliminating the need for artificial hormones that have their own set of side effects, and relying on your own body to tell you everything you need to know to avoid pregnancy with a natural method of birth control that’s equally as effective as the pill!

You can use your observations and your symptoms to address underlying health issues before they show up as other more serious symptoms in your body. You can take your chart to a healthcare professional and figure out what your body needs to rebalance your hormones and regulate your periods.

And finally, you can use this knowledge at every stage of life – birth control, pregnancy, post-partum and while breastfeeding all the way through until menopause.

The best part? You only have to learn it once!

 

Here’s what we cover in this episode:

• Charting for natural birth control
• How charting can give you valuable information about your health
• How you can use your knowledge and skills for your lifetime

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Hello, and welcome to episode 34 of The Mana Women’s Wellness Podcast. I’m your host, Rachel and today I’m answering a question that I hear from women all the time. I’m not currently trying to get pregnant, so why do I care when I’m ovulating? Why would I bother charting and tracking my fertile signs when I have no intention of conceiving?

And really, it’s a pretty reasonable question. But…

Charting your menstrual cycle and using this knowledge to get pregnant is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s one of the final pieces of the puzzle and really one of the last steps in understanding a basic bodily function that happens month after month. Aren’t you just a teeny bit curious to know what’s going on beyond just bleeding? If you’ve been listening to this podcast then I’m going to take a bold guess that yes, you are curious, and so whether you’re currently trying to conceive or not, in this episode I’m going to share some very important reasons why really every single menstruating woman should be tracking what happens in her body every single month – pregnancy goals or not.

Reason #1 – Natural Birth Control

Let’s start with the most obvious reason for charting if you’re not actively trying to get pregnant – and that’s avoiding pregnancy, using charting and your fertile signs as a natural method of birth control to avoid getting pregnant.

 

Achieving or avoiding pregnancy using a method of fertility awareness uses exactly the same knowledge and understanding. The only thing that changes is when you have sex. When you can identify your fertile window and confirm ovulation, and you want to get pregnant, well this is when you have sex. If you want to avoid pregnancy, you’ll need to know when you’re fertile and when you have ovulated so that you can avoid sex or make sure you use an alternative method of contraception during that fertile window. Then, for the rest of your cycle, when you know that pregnancy is impossible, well you don’t have to worry about contraception. If you want to know more about your options for non-hormonal birth control, have a listen to Episode 30 of the podcast.

 

Not having to rely on artificial hormones for birth control is a game changer for your health. Not having to be constantly stressed about your fear of unplanned pregnancy. Not having to use a condom or a barrier method every time you have sex with your partner because you know you’re not fertile at the moment. This knowledge improves your relationship. Quite frankly, you enjoy sex more because there isn’t that fear lingering in the back of your mind that you might get pregnant. And the difference this makes is incredible.

Charting your menstrual cycle and following the basic rules of natural birth control is 99.4% effective at preventing pregnancy. This is equal to the pill and to sterilisation. Sterilisation isn’t even 100% effective at avoiding pregnancy, and charting is a little less dramatic and a little less permanent. In fact, there are zero side effects. No artificial hormones, nothing foreign in our bodies at all! It’s all about our understanding.

 

It doesn’t matter how irregular or unpredictable your cycles are either. We’re not following a set algorithm like apps and the rhythm method (you can hear my rant about apps on Episode 32). We’re not dependent on anything else, just the messages our bodies are sending us. It doesn’t matter if your phone dies. It doesn’t matter if you’re travelling around the world. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the middle of the Amazon jungle with nothing but the clothes on your back. You will still be able to tell whether or not you’re fertile on any given day. And that’s pretty cool.

Reason #2 – Charting gives you valuable information about your health

Your menstrual cycle and period can be described as one of your body’s vital signs. Just like heart rate and blood pressure, your menstrual cycle is showing you what is happening inside your body in real time – you just have to know how to understand what it is trying to tell you! Changes to your menstrual cycle are likely the very first signs and symptoms you’re going to get about your overall health. This is where it shows up first! And the sooner you can identify anything a bit wonky, the sooner you can seek help and do something about it.

Extreme or irregular symptoms during a period might be indicating that something in your health needs attention. So many women accept pain, acne, headaches, cramps and heavy bleeding as normal and just something they have to put up with every month, but these may actually be signs that your overall health is affecting your menstrual cycle. Instead of ignoring or simply putting up with these symptoms, it is worth investigating what could be going on inside your body that is causing them.

A late period could be a sign that your body is under stress which could be affecting if and when you ovulate. I’ve talked a lot about the huge effects that stress can have on your menstrual cycle in Episode 5. Stress affects hormone balance, it affects when you ovulate, if you ovulate and these factors obviously have an effect on the predictability and timing of your menstrual cycle. If we don’t ovulate, we’re not going to get a period. Everything is interconnected and if we’re oblivious to this, then we can’t do anything to fix it until the problem potentially gets worse and other new symptoms start popping up. And we don’t want that.

You might also have a nutrient deficiency or hormonal imbalance. Excessive cramping and pain may also indicate a hormonal imbalance caused by high oestrogen levels, or another issue with your reproductive health. Ignoring these signs now could cause problems later, especially when you are ready to have a baby.

Remember that your symptoms are not the underlying health problem – they are the messages your body is sending you to make you aware of a problem you cannot see or feel, but that is causing these symptoms. And unfortunately, this is why so many women are prescribed the contraceptive pill – not for contraception, but to mask these symptoms and not actually address the underlying cause.

Let’s say for example your oestrogen levels were being affected by a health condition. This could be a thyroid condition, being overweight or being underweight and having really low body fat, like an athlete, and your oestrogen levels are very low compared to what we would expect for a menstruating female.

Our oestrogen levels rise during the first half of the menstrual cycle and peak just before ovulation. Rising oestrogen levels cause thickening of the lining of the uterus, the endometrium, in preparation for implantation of the fertilised egg. When levels peak, when levels reach a threshold level, oestrogen then triggers the release of the hormones LH and FSH, which are actually the hormones responsible for ovulation – not oestrogen itself. These hormones trigger release of the mature egg from a follicle in the ovary (exactly why it’s called follicle stimulating hormone) and this causes ovulation. When the egg is released from the follicle, what remains behind becomes the corpus luteum, which produces progesterone, and this is why progesterone rises in the second half of the cycle. When the corpus luteum breaks down and stops producing progesterone, when pregnancy hasn’t happened in that cycle, the drop in the progesterone is what causes the endometrium to break down and it’s shed along with the unfertilised egg as your next period.

So if we were to think about a health condition where oestrogen levels are lower than expected, oestrogen levels will rise as we approach ovulation, but they may never reach the levels needed to then trigger FSH and LH to do their job, so ovulation doesn’t happen. This could happen multiple times through a menstrual cycle. And ovulation might be successful eventually, after a couple of attempts, or the body might just give up. Oestrogen levels are still triggering thickening of the endometrium so it’s getting thicker and thicker and thicker but ovulation’s not happening to then trigger pregnancy and implantation, or breakdown of the lining and menstruation. So eventually, the lining becomes so thick that you’ll start to notice spotting or real bleeding and you’re going to assume it’s just your next period being unpredictable as per usual. But maybe you’ve never ovulated, which means you won’t menstruate, and this is just a bleed because the lining built up to a point that it needed to break down and be released.

This is called anovulatory bleeding, which means bleeding without ovulation. And how could you possibly know the difference between a normal menstrual cycle and anovulatory bleeding? By charting. By watching your fertile signs every day, by being able to confirm whether or not ovulation actually happened. Charting will tell you exactly when ovulation happened, if the body had to attempt it a couple of times first, or if it ever happened at all.

Another example is spotting during ovulation. Some women experience significant spotting and bleeding at ovulation. If you’re not tracking your cycle and you see bleeding every 2 weeks or so, you’re going to think you had a really short cycle and that your periods alternated between light and heavy. But if you were charting, you would be able to see those clear signs of ovulation and know that the lighter bleeding is ovulation spotting, while the heavier bleeding was your period.

Reason #3 – You can use this knowledge for your lifetime

Let’s say you’ve recently come off the pill. You’re not ready for pregnancy right now, maybe in a year or 2, but you want to start preparing your body now and putting yourself in the best possible position to conceive quickly and naturally. You’re going to need a non-hormonal method of birth control until you decide it’s baby making time. Then, you already have a really good grasp of the charting process and you’re confident identifying your fertile window and confirming ovulation. You’re maximising your chances of conceiving. In fact, couples who use fertility awareness to conceive compared to couples who have no idea and literally just cross their fingers and hope they got the timing right…well they generally conceive in half the time. An average of 6 months instead of 12 months.

Then, after you’ve had your baby, whether you’re breastfeeding or not, unless you want to get pregnant straight away, you’re going to need a non-hormonal method of birth control all over again. There are a couple of extra rules when it comes to breastfeeding, but post-partum charting allows you to track the return of your fertility, which can take some time. You’re not just blindly waiting around for your period to return; you’re watching your fertile signs every day and seeing when ovulation happens again.

And if you have daughters, you can pass this knowledge on to them so they’re not having to go through the same struggles you’ve gone through trying to figure it all out for yourself! And finally, whether you’ve had kids or not, you’re going to experience menopause. Your periods will start to change again, they’ll become more irregular and it will be harder to know when you’re fertile and when you’re not. Change of life babies happen. And it’s not until you have reached menopause, when your final menstrual period was 1 year ago, that you can safely say you’re no longer fertile. But the average length of peri-menopause, as your menstrual cycle winds down is 7 years. And 7 years is a long long time to be confused by your body.

And if you started to chart now and continued until menopause – I think it’s pretty safe to say that it will be second nature by then and you won’t actually have to put pen to paper and write it all down, you’ll just know.

So as you move through every single season of your life, you can take this exact same knowledge with you. You just tweak how you apply it based on your reproductive goals.

And so, I hope it’s really clear to you that charting and understanding your fertility is so much more than making babies. It’s about eliminating the need for artificial hormones that have their own set of side effects, and relying on your own body to tell you everything you need to know to avoid pregnancy with a natural method of birth control that’s equally as effective as the pill and sterilisation!

You can use your observations and your symptoms to address underlying health issues before they show up as other more serious symptoms in your body. You can take your chart to a healthcare professional and figure out what your body needs to rebalance your hormones and regulate your periods.

And finally, you can use this knowledge at every stage of life – birth control, pregnancy, post-partum and while breastfeeding all the way through until menopause. And you only have to learn it once!

If you found this episode useful or if you’d love to chat more about your own reasons for charting, I’d love to hear from you! Send me an Instagram DM and let’s chat!

I will see you in next week’s episode, where I’ll be teaching you everything you need to know about implantation, what happens after the egg is fertilised and before we can pee on the stick.

 

Ok, bye for now and don’t forget that knowledge is power!

When you truly understand your body, you are empowered to make informed decisions and take control of your health!

Until next time.

LINKS & RESOURCES

Want to say goodbye to hormonal contraceptives and their weird and unpleasant side effects?

Want to improve your chances of conceiving quickly and naturally?

You need my Fertility Roadmap – My simple 3-step system to understanding your body’s natural fertile signs and pinpointing ovulation day so that you can use this knowledge to achieve (or avoid) pregnancy.

Related Episodes:

Episode 1 – Menstrual Cycle 101

Episode 2 – Am I Ovulating? The One Check You Can Do Every Day to Know For Sure When You’re Fertile

Episode 5 – Stress and Your Menstrual Cycle: Why Your Period is Irregular and Your Hormones Are Haywire (And What You Can Do To Fix It)

Episode 12 – The Menstrual Phase – Menstrual Cycle Masterclass Part 1

Episode 13 – The Follicular Phase – Menstrual Cycle Masterclass Part 2

Episode 14 – The Ovulatory Phase – Menstrual Cycle Masterclass Part 3

Episode 15 – The Luteal Phase – Menstrual Cycle Masterclass Part 4

Episode 19 – Coming Off The Pill (Part I)

Episode 20 – Coming Off The Pill (Part II)

Episode 23 – Why Is My Period Late?

Episode 24 – Household Items That May Be Affecting Your Fertility

Episode 30 – Your Hormone-Free Options for Birth Control

OTHER FREE RESOURCES

Does your pelvic floor need a little extra TLC? Take the Pelvic Floor Quiz and find out how to start strengthening your pelvic floor today!

Want to make sure you’re exercising safely during your pregnancy? Get your Free Guide: 10 Exercises to Avoid During Pregnancy.

ENJOYED THIS EPISODE?

If you enjoyed this episode and the Fertility Co. Podcast generally, I have a favour. Please take two minutes to subscribe, and to write a rating and a review. You can do that on Apple Podcasts right now by clicking here. If you are an Android user, you can follow the podcast on Spotify here. Those actions will help the podcast reach more people, and I would be truly grateful. Thank you so much.

 

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