Taking Charge of Your Fertility

**Disclaimer: this blog talks lots about ladies issues...if this bothers you, move on!**

Fertility, pregnancy prevention, and even women's health can be tricky issues to wrestle with. As women, early on we are (hopefully) taught that our bodies are complex machines. Potentially baby making machines. Whether we like it or not, it's something we are pretty much constantly having to be aware of. 

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but growing up, I sadly did not know much about my own body. I was put on birth control when I was 16 for multiple reasons, and I didn't question it at all until after I was married. 

I came to realize that birth control pills (or any kind of extra estrogen really) raised my blood pressure to unhealthy levels and I couldn't take them anymore. At first I was really upset. How else would I prevent pregnancies (besides just using condoms all the time)?  My good friend referred me to this book. Taking Charge of Your Fertility. She said in it, I would find a natural way to prevent pregnancy and hopefully be able to achieve it easily when I was ready. I honestly thought she was a little crazy but I was desperate, so I bought the book and read it. 

I was blown away. Not just about finding a new natural way to prevent pregnancy, but in finding out that I didn't even know my own body well enough to have educated conversations with my doctor about my own care. I felt ashamed and immediately determined to never feel that way again. 

Since then I have become very passionate about encouraging women to educate themselves on their bodies and trying to learn its natural flow. If for no other reason than to just know when/if something goes wrong. 

I used this book to prevent pregnancy for two years. Never once did we have a scare. It took me awhile to get into the groove of it and learning my body's natural rhythm, but once I did, it was a piece of cake. The book has three methods of tracking your ovulation. Once you know you're ovulating, you can either abstain or use protection to prevent pregnancy, or you can get to it if you're wanting to become pregnant. The book discusses basal temperature, cervical position and cervical fluid. It has a pretty complicated chart you can use to map out all three of these and you can watch on the chart for patterns your body is creating. Or you can be like me and use just cervical fluid. I know it sounds gross, but hey, this is your body and you might as well get comfy and cozy with it. Especially if you plan on becoming pregnant and birthing a child. 

Anyway, using what I knew about cervical fluid and my own body's pattern I was able to predict when I was ovulating and avoid getting pregnant during that time for two years. Then, one magical day, we decided to stop preventing and start achieving. I got pregnant that same day. I kid you not. Using this book and my own knowledge about my body, I got pregnant immediately three times. Unfortunately for me, two ended in miscarriage due to other issues I had. But the good news is that I successfully got myself knocked up when I wanted to. All because I took the initiative to educate myself about my body.

So ladies, please....I don't care if you never want to have children or hell, even if you're not sexually active. This book is for everyone with a uterus. There's no excuse for not being proactive about your health. Especially your reproductive health. A lot of what can go wrong can be easily fixed if caught early enough. So pay attention to wheat your body is telling you. I can't stress the importance of this enough! I hope this book does wonders for you like it has for me!