I was put on birth control when I was in 7th grade for the severity of my cramps and how much school I was missing because of my periods and migraines. My mother had asked the doctors several times if it could be endometriosis but the doctors often dismissed us and just said either I can get on the birth control pill or have a baby. That's when I got on the birth control pill and don't get me wrong, for the first few years it worked really well. I had no pain and starting my pill-bleed was easy as it ever had been. But after a couple of years it did start to ware off and I was back to missing college classes and my friends coming to check on me to see if they could get me any food because I couldn't get off of the floor.
Then one of my close female cousins had a stroke and was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that dealt with clotting issues. My doctor then decided it would be best if I should be on the mini-pill rather than the combination pill (although, I should've been on this from the beginning since I had the migraines with auras which naturally increase your chances of stroke on the combination pill). This mini-pill sent me into a downward spiral of depression and after 3 months I was done.
So it has been officially a year since I've come off of hormonal birth control and I am pretty damn proud of myself for how far I've come in 2019. A year ago, I decided to get off hormonal birth control and discover what my body is capable of. At this time, I knew a little about FAM but Natural Cycles was continually crossing my radar so that was the method of birth control that I decided to go with. Of course I was dismissed by several of my doctors, friends, and family but I still used it and never had any issues with the app. Until I discovered that I wanted more, I wanted more knowledge about my menstrual cycle and the power it gives me.
I also learned pretty quickly that doctors put young girls on birth control because they don't want to or don't have access to the information for the issues they are experiencing. Like me, I had horrific cramps and I was missing school but instead of the doctor looking deeper into the problem she just put me on the pill. I have nothing against hormonal birth control but my issue with it is when we go to our doctors with issues regarding our menstrual cycles, they don't know how to respond so they hand out this birth control pill like it's cheap gold. I knew I deserved answers to what I was going through and that it wasn't normal. I took charge of my own health.
I read, Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Tony Weischler, and discovered that the thing with apps is that they don't teach you much about your body. Yes, they tell you when you can and can't have sex because of ovulation but it doesn't teach you several things:
How to interpret your cervical fluid
When you are in your luteal or follicular phase
Writing down my cramps & mood changes
To look for hormonal imbalances
The app also predicts when you ovulate based off of past cycles which can be a bit dangerous in someways. This is because our cycles are not stagnate they can change greatly depending on what is going on in our lives. When someone says, "my period is late." Its actually not an entirely accurate statement. In our follicular phase, before we ovulate, this is the only time and length that can change. Things that can affect this are things like illness, stress, or travel. So if you usually ovulate anywhere between 14-16 days each menstrual cycle, but this month you've travelled to Europe then that follicular phase might be more like 18-21 days. But your luteal phase, second part of your cycle, will never range more than what you are typically used to (11 or 12 days long). This is information that I would not gain from Natural Cycles.
Or I also have a a short luteal phase, only about 9-10 days where ideally, a healthy luteal phase is between 12-14 days. I notice that in my chart, during this stage my temperatures sometimes stay near the cover line which is a sign of low progesterone. These are things I learned by furthering my education about tracking and understanding my cycle, not from Natural Cycles which was supposed to keep me from getting pregnant.
That's when I started actually taking out the time every single day to track my cycle on a piece of paper and understand what I was looking at. I was self-taught at first but then I decided to take a course with Femmehead on the sympto-thermal method because I wanted to ensure I was doing everything correctly. Which I am so glad that I did because I was missing so many important parts of tracking my cycle! From the cover line, to when I should stop having unprotected sex in my follicular phase, to when I was actually safe to have unprotected sex again after ovulation! I definitely recommend taking a course if you are self-taught, just to ensure that you have all the important points to charting your cycle appropriately.
The sympto-themal method is the method of tacking your temperature and your cervical fluid and this is what works best for me! I would love to integrate checking my cervix but this is something that I am still getting used to feeling and whether or not it's open or closed or softer or harder.
So here we are, a year later: no pregnancies, no abortions, and only complete happiness with my decision to get off of hormonal birth control! If you have any questions love, let me know in the comments or email. Thanks for visiting.
Lots of love,
Moonli
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