Ferility.

[s4angel]

I know that for me to concieve would be impossible ( I am not mary)

I just had this one question though.

My Grandmother pretty much raised me. she was a nurse in 1930’s and graduated Boston University College of Nursing.
I learned a lot from her. As she taught me it was a matter of numbers. My Cycle (at least it used to be, but I am nursing) is 27 days. She taught me to count out to day 14 and subtract to day 11 then void out out to day 16 after which I was pretty much sure not to get pregnant.

I used this through my life and honestly the only time I became pregnant was when I did not pay attention to “the count” or was trying to become pregnant. Through the years I kept track and now it has become second nature to me (I still do it) but on day 14 I always notice that I have umm more mucus? and by day 16 I have none. I have had a couple months through the years where my periods changed but always I could tell by the amount of mucus I discharged when my fertility was at an high.

My question is, is this what method was it she taught me? We called it “the count” and from my first period she taught me how to count it out and watch for what my body was telling me. Should I teach this to my girls?

 

[Eucharisted]

God can make anyone pregnant - even a virgin.

 

[ac_claire]

I know that for me to concieve would be impossible ( I am not mary)

I just had this one question though.

My Grandmother pretty much raised me. she was a nurse in 1930’s and graduated Boston University College of Nursing.
I learned a lot from her. As she taught me it was a matter of numbers. My Cycle (at least it used to be, but I am nursing) is 27 days. She taught me to count out to day 14 and subtract to day 11 then void out out to day 16 after which I was pretty much sure not to get pregnant.

so basically chart your cycle, and days 11-16 are considered the days to avoid if you’re trying to not get pregnant? I’m TTC so this is useful for me too.

ETA: as far as teaching it to your daughters, it sounds like a version of NFP so I don’t see the harm. Personally though, I would stress much more than this that they should be prudent and be ready to have a family when they find the right man and think they’re ready to be married.

 

[MercyMia]

This is exactly the method I use. At first, we used “official” techniques and I was taking my temp everyday, etc. Then I figured out that my cycle is VERY exact and not only can I just count the days but my cm is very obvious so I always know when I have ovulated. So, this is just an easy for those of use with a really exact cycle to take advantage of it…but I would highly reccomend better study and guidance for women who are just starting to chart or who have an irregular cycle.

 

[1ke]

Your grandmother taught you what she knew at the time-- the rhythm method. It’s based on averages and counting.

This might work for some women, but it is not nearly as accurate as the modern methods of natural family planning. The observation of fertility signs has come a long way since your grandmother’s day. Personally, I think you were lucky if you were relying on this method to avoid conception. It’s failure rate is about 25%.

The new methods (new in the last 40 years) are all based on actual observations of the signs of fertility, not counting days and averages.

I suggest you learn sympto-thermal, creighton, billings, or marquette models-- all based on scientific observation of fertility signs.

I would suggest teaching your daughters fertility appreciation based on one of these methods. Contact your diocesan family life or NFP office to find out about classes for yourself and also if they offer fertility appreciation classes (focus on woman’s body, not sex) for your daughters.

 

[CAmeliaD]

That is not a version of NFP, and I definitely don’t recommend you teach your children that method. It may work for you for the most part because you have a short cycle, but for anyone that has a 29-31 day cycle it wouldn’t work. I’m actually surprised it has worked for you at all. With a 31 day cycle, day 16 would still be 2 days before I ovulate, which means if I followed your “count” I’d be pregnant right away. You don’t know how long your daughters’ cycles will be, and this count is certainly not accurate. Look into NFP through the Couple to Couple League or BOMA to learn more about actually detecting fertile and infertile periods if you want your children to understand their fertility. They really don’t need to learn it until they are contemplating marriage, because the husband is supposed to be involved with charting and monitoring fertility.

 

[ac_claire]

That is not a version of NFP, and I definitely don’t recommend you teach your children that method. It may work for you for the most part because you have a short cycle, but for anyone that has a 29-31 day cycle it wouldn’t work. I’m actually surprised it has worked for you at all. With a 31 day cycle, day 16 would still be 2 days before I ovulate, which means if I followed your “count” I’d be pregnant right away. You don’t know how long your daughters’ cycles will be, and this count is certainly not accurate. Look into NFP through the Couple to Couple League or BOMA to learn more about actually detecting fertile and infertile periods if you want your children to understand their fertility. They really don’t need to learn it until they are contemplating marriage, because the husband is supposed to be involved with charting and monitoring fertility.

I read on wiki that the 14-day count is actually supposed to be backwards from the estimated start day of your next period. It does seem like this might only be effective if your cycles are as regular as a clock and you’re also using other methods of observation to determine when you’re ovulating.

 

[puzzleannie]

she taught you the basic principle as we were taught it years ago, and it still holds, that if you can determine your fertile period you can either abstain during that time if you wish to avoid pregnancy, or vice versa if you want to conceive. It was called the rhythm method and worked most of the time for women who had regular cycles, no hormonal disturbances or other underlying health issues, and usually resulted in pregnancies 2-3 years apart. If it worked for you, great, but it won’t work for everyone.

The difference between RM and NFP is that now we have much more reliable methods to determine fertility than calendar counting, methods that, especially when combined, are much more precise and work for women with those underlying problems of irregularity, POCS and other hormonal issues, lactation etc. With the new methods and aids reliability for committed couples thoroughly educated on the method and consistent in applying the method is much better than reliance on condoms alone, and comparable to hormonal methods of ABC, without the horrendous side effects.

 

[nodito]

Sounds like the basic calendar rhythm method. There are different ways of calculating the fertile period in different versions of rhythm, but all rely on a woman having regular cycles and ovulating at the same time each month. Calendar rhythm is predictive (it predicts when you will ovulate based on when you have ovulated in the past), whereas modern NFP is progressive (it determine fertility for each cycle as you progress through that cycle). Calendar rhythm is not bad, it’s just not as effective as modern methods of NFP because it cannot take into account cycle irregularities until after the cycle is over. And you don’t say whether you ever had cycles longer or shorter than 27 days, but if you had, calendar rhythm would have required you to recalculate your fertile periods and abstain for a longer period than just Day 11-16.

I would echo 1ke’s suggestion to teach your daughters fertility appreciation, not necessarily so they will know how to avoid pregnancy, but so they can appreciate the way their bodies were designed to work in their natural state.

 

[s4angel]

So what I was taught was the Rythm method?

I want to teach my girls the same things my grandmother taught me about my body and how to pay attention to it. When she taught me it wasn’t about not getting pregnant or getting pregnant it was more a thing about knowing your body and how it works. She was a very devout catholic woman who made me aware of the dangers but also gave me the keys to also live a life that was in harmony with Gods will. My eldest daughter should be starting her first monthly with in the next year or so and I want to start teaching her how to pay attention to what her body is telling her so if and when she marry’s it will be like second nature for her as it was for me.

 

[1ke]

I read on wiki that the 14-day count is actually supposed to be backwards from the estimated start day of your next period.

Yes, this is correct. It is based on the fact that the luteal phase (time between ovulation and next menstruation) is typically the same every cycle. But, even this is using estimates because (a) it is looking back and (b) not all luteal phases are 14 days. Mine, for example, is 12.

The time between onset of menstruation and ovulation can, and does, vary from cycle to cycle. And, it can vary substantially from month to month and over the years as hormones change.

So, this method is always looking at historical/predictive/estimation data, not actual data. And, that means that any change in the fertile phase can definitely result in abstaining on the wrong days-- hence the 25% failure rate.

 

[1ke]

So what I was taught was the Rythm method?

Yes.

I want to teach my girls the same things my grandmother taught me about my body and how to pay attention to it. When she taught me it wasn’t about not getting pregnant or getting pregnant it was more a thing about knowing your body and how it works.

That is why we are recommending you look into teaching Fertility Awareness using the more accurate methods of modern fertility observation.

If you teach your daughters what your grandmother taught you, you will be teaching them inaccurate information. The newer methods are much more precise and accurate with up to date knowledge of how the female hormones interrelate and operate. The info your grandmother was operating on is over 70 years old. It’s not as accurate as current information on how the female cycle works.

Teaching them “the same” information is unwise. Teaching them better information is advisable.

She was a very devout catholic woman who made me aware of the dangers but also gave me the keys to also live a life that was in harmony with Gods will.

The methods we are suggesting are in complete harmony with God’s will and the Church’s teachings. They are simply more up to date and more accurate.

My eldest daughter should be starting her first monthly with in the next year or so and I want to start teaching her how to pay attention to what her body is telling her so if and when she marry’s it will be like second nature for her as it was for me.

Then learn one of the methods we suggested and teach her that. Again, look to your diocesan family life office for resources on Fertility Awareness.

 

[Kit15]

The thing is that what your grandmother taught you isn’t going to work for part of the female population. It only works reliably if the woman has a regular cycle. It doesn’t have to be a 28-day cycle. But it has to have a consistent number of days to it. You can’t assume that just because you might have a regular cycle that your daughters will as well.

My mother ran like clockwork and she could afford to count days. I’m wildly irregular and this method absolutely won’t work for me. It does me no good to subtract 14 days from a 36 day cycle and apply that knowledge to my next cycle…which then turns out to be 63 days long. In order for me to be aware of what’s going on with my body, I needed to learn modern NFP techniques.

 

[manualman]

Are you going to teach your kids to replenish the ice in the icebox the way your grandma did too?

Refrigerators are a much more reliable and sanitary way of keeping food from spoiling, but work on the same principle as iceboxes (keep the food cold to retard bacterial growth).

Calender Rythym and modern NFP are analagous to the ice box and refrigerator. Calender rythym was a morally licit way to space children based on knowing and respecting the woman’s body and cultivating the virtue of temperence/chastity when it is necessary to avoid conception. Modern NFP retains all that was good about Rythym and makes it BETTER in that it relies upon the medical symptoms in the woman’s body (like that mucus you noticed) instead of merely counting days. Try reading up on the Billing Method of NFP. It is based entirely on mucus observations and I think you’ll very quickly recognize the truth of it based on your own experience.

(and though its slightly off topic, contraceptives would be analagous to freeze drying all your food and keeping it in the pantry! Yuck! I love analogies…)

 

[s4angel]

No, I was not planning on teaching them outdated information. I was wondering what it was she had taught me and if it was something that would be good to teach my girls, My grandmother was an awsome lady and would not take offence with me changing it to reflect new information Like I said she was a nurse.

I plan on teaching them one of the methods that I have seen posted here but am trying more for simplicity more of a way to teach them about thier body and how to watch for what thier body is doing the thing I want to pass on to my children from my grandma is a love for god and doing everything in your life according to his will and this includes fertility. Yes it worked for me as it worked for her. It may not work for my girls or for others who do not have an exact monthly.

So the question is which one is simple and that would be appropriate to teach my girls? I don’t mind learning how to chart and teaching my girls to do it but I think doing the temp thing is probably something that should be done between a husband and a wife and not me though I can teach them the theory behind it. If it were your girls which one would you recommend?

 

[Jennifer_J]

You know, for young girls just learning about their periods, they don’t need a big “fertility” talk, per say. You just need to help her figure out how long her cycles generally are so that she can predict when she will start bleeding. I think counting days and watching mucous would be fine for this. I know I just counted days and marked it on a calendar so I wasn’t surprised. I don’t think the fertility part needs to come in until she’s much older and then she can learn a more reliable method.

 

[kage_ar]

BTW - temp taking is something that your daughter will do every time she is sick, it is not a “husband and wife” thing

I would suggest you look at the Billings method.

You and your daughters will notice the changes in mucous, it take a few seconds each day.

woomb.org/

(BTW, my young adult son learned NFP basic theory when he was a teen. He may marry someday, and the idea of NFP will familiar to him.)

 

[s4angel]

Oh, wow that was actualy a lot like what my grandmother told me and what I observed myself. I do have to admit though on day 14 is when I almost always saw the mucus and figured I was very fertile on that day as aposed to the first day when the mucus dried up I guess I was lucky.

Ok so I am embarrased:blush: Now we know where I thought the temp was taken

When I first started I was very unregular for the first two years My grandmother told me what she had observed about the mucus and taught me what to look for so I would know when I was midway and know I would be having my period with in two weeks or so. It always worked no matter how long my periods were but now looking at this I believe I must have been one of the luckiest woman on the face of the earth. I don’t know if she ever connected the dots on the mucus and fertility and I wish now I could ask her.

Thank you for the link I do appreciate it.