TCOYF

This is what my night stand looks like.

As most of you know I was having awful side effects from my birth control. First it was just horrible periods and then it was headaches turned into migraines turned into daily migraines. My last attempt at the pill was the mini pill with a preventative for the migraine and I was having migraines every two days and awful side effects from the preventative I was on. So my doctor advised me and I totally was already there myself to stop hormonal birth control. My only other option (as my doctor's office apparently does not do diaphrams anymore) was a copper IUD.  A friend of mine told me a horror story about it and the cost and etc. I decided not to go that route.

So I went this route. My friend, Kat, uses this method and has been successful at both getting pregnant and not getting pregnant for several years so I thought I would take a look at it. I have borrowed the book and am reading it and starting to use the method and am excited about it.

Basically, the book educates you about your body and the whole ovulation process. So, in a nutshell you chart your waking tempature every morning before getting out of bed and chart it along with other signs your body is giving you to let you know if you are fertile or not. I have just started charting and I started mid cycle and right after getting off homromal birth control so I am going to give it a couple of months to totally rely on it once I can tell what my body is doing and be more comfortable with it.

I am excited about it for several reasons. The main one obiviosly is I am glad to be off hormonal birth control and not have so many migraines. My migraines are getting less frequent and will eventually stop once the effects of the hormonal birth control gets out of my body. Also, I am kind of a nerd and I am excited to be educated on my body and being able to know what it is doing.  Another thing I am excited about is normally I am pretty regular and I hope I will get back to that soon. Once you kind of have it down you can short cut the charting to a little over a week a month where you can track the fertile phase and then be done with it until the next one comes.

Yes, if I could just take a pill and not have to worry with it I would probably do that because that sounds so much easier. However, this method makes perfect sense. Once you have it down it really isn't that time consuming, I will know exactly what my body is doing and can use that info to both avoid pregnancy and possibly get pregnant again in the future.  An interesting fact the book talks about is that women are only fertile for a short while (about a week). Men are fertile twenty four seven but women most of the time have the hassle of birth control and all the other "side effects" that come along with it. Never thought of that before.