Hey guys! Welcome back to my channel.
For those of you who don't know me, my name
is Caty, and on this channel we talk
about everything to do with fitness, food,
lifestyle, and health. And in my opinion,
one of the most crucial and important
things to be talking about in the health
atmosphere is birth control. Today, we are
gonna be talking about the birth control
method that I have been using for the
past... eight years now? I had no idea it
had been that long! We are gonna be
talking about the fertility awareness
method of birth control. The specific
fertility awareness method that I have
been using for nearly a decade now is
called the sympto-thermal method of birth
control. It is extremely effective, and it
is completely natural. So if you are at
all curious about going down the natural
birth control rabbit hole, then keep watching.
Okay, so a couple disclaimers
before we really get started: first of
all, I am willing to bet that YouTube is
not gonna be a big fan about me talking
about sex and birth control and
everything in between. So because of that,
I feel like there's gonna be a rather
high chance that this video is gonna be
demonetised. So if you find this video at
all helpful or informative or anything
like that, I would appreciate it so
much if you could maybe consider buying me
a coffee. There's a link provided in the
description bar below where you can do
that, as well as the pinned comment in
the comment section. Zero pressure
either way, I just thought I'd throw that
out there because I know that YouTube is
not gonna like this.
Disclaimer number two: I am not a doctor,
I'm not a health professional. To be
totally honest, I am just somebody who is
fascinated by sex, by sexual health, as
well as somebody who just loves
researching a lot of stuff. I'm kind of a
nerd, so that is something to keep in
mind as you are watching this video.
Number three: this is just gonna be a
very brief overview of this method of
birth control. There is a ton of
information to get through, there's a lot
of ground to cover, so just keep that in
mind: this is just an overview of
everything. Now a couple of quick
disclaimers about this specific method
of birth control. Number one: this video
is intended for two groups of people: one
of those groups of people are people who
are interested in learning
about effective natural forms of birth
control. The other group of people are
people who might just want to learn a
little bit more about their bodies.
Number two: this method of birth control
will not work for people who cannot
commit to learning about and diligently
implementing the rules that this method
requires. If you are somebody who cannot
commit to doing something consistently
or who maybe like skirts the rules a
little bit every so often, this method is
not gonna work for you. It is so
important that you guys realize that you
cannot use this single video as an
overall guide for how to do this method.
Like I said, this is just a brief
overview, and it is so important that you
do not take this video and run with it.
You have to do a lot of research. I'm
gonna provide a ton of resources in the
description bar below if you're curious
and want to do more research.
I'll commonly see people comment on
videos like this saying something like
"everybody reading this comment right now:
don't listen to this video, she doesn't
know what she's talking about,
I got pregnant doing this, don't do it,
etc. etc." And more likely than not, to the
people who experience those things, even
though they thought they did, it's much
more likely that they just didn't follow
the rules correctly. So it is extremely
important that you read about it, you
research it, and you follow the rules to
a tee, otherwise this method isn't gonna
work for you. The fertility awareness
method does not protect you against STDs
and STIs, so if you have multiple
partners, this method probably isn't
gonna work for you. And finally, I do not
support and I cannot condone anybody
using this method of birth control if
you have not read "Taking Charge of your
Fertility." It's a book by Toni Weschler,
and it is kind of the Bible when it
comes to fertility awareness methods of
birth control. I'm gonna leave a link to
that book in the description bar below,
as well as all resources that I'm gonna
be discussing in this video, so like I
said, if you want to research more, if you
want to dive into the world of fertility
awareness, please check out the
description bar for more information.
I was on hormonal birth control for pretty
much all of high school and I didn't
like it. I didn't like how I felt on it,
and I wanted to find a non hormonal
alternative. I was originally going to
get the copper IUD, however my doctor at
the time basically said I wouldn't
be a good candidate for it. I ended up
having a slight mental breakdown because
I felt like I was trapped. I wanted
something that was non hormonal, but I
also didn't want to have to rely on
condoms for the rest of my life until I
wanted to have a baby. So I started to do
more research, and I eventually came
across the book Taking Charge of your
Fertility.
I ordered the book and I read it
pretty much overnight. It's this thick, it
was a lot of reading, but it completely
changed my life because until reading
that book, I thought I knew what was
going on in my body. And I highly highly
recommend anybody who has a uterus, who
has ovaries, to read the book Taking
Charge of your Fertility. Again, I've
linked it in the description bar below.
You can get a pretty cheap on Amazon,
that's where I got mine. I actually have
a paper version, a physical book, and I
also have the Kindle version so I always
have it with me. It's completely
enlightening if you are wanting to have
a baby, if you're trying to conceive, if
you're trying to prevent pregnancy
naturally, or if you just want to know
what the heck is going on inside your
body every single month. So what is the
fertility awareness method of birth
control? The fertility awareness method
of birth control is actually an umbrella
term that refers to a lot of different
birth control methods that are designed
to basically allow you to answer the
question: "Am I fertile today? Can I get
pregnant today?" Just for the sake of this
video, if you hear me referring to the
fertility awareness method, I'm using
that term to refer to the sympto-thermal method
of birth control.
There's a lot of different methods that
fall into this umbrella term, and some of
them are not effective at all. Based on
the information provided in Taking
Charge of your Fertility, the sympto-thermal
method specifically is 98% effective,
and there's even a German meta study
that put it at 99.6%
effective, which means it's
basically right up there with hormonal
methods of birth control in terms of
effectiveness. Typical failure rates are
a lot harder to pinpoint for kind of a
couple reasons. A lot of couples
might "cheat" the rules a little bit.
Some of them might cut corners a little
bit, and unfortunately, a lot of couples
find themselves dealing with the
consequence of an unintended pregnancy
because they weren't following the rules
as they should have been. The other issue
that is really common that you might run
into when it comes to reporting failure
rates is that
studies will often times lump all
fertility awareness methods together in
the same bucket, which isn't an accurate
way of describing how effective the
sympto-thermal method specifically is,
because in that instance you have people
comparing the rhythm method and calendar
method and cycle beads all together to
the sympto-thermal method and the billings
method, both of which are very highly
effective methods of birth control. They
are all technically fertility awareness
methods, but some of them are way less
effective than others. There's actually
an entire chapter dedicated to the
effectiveness of fertility awareness
methods in Taking Charge of your
Fertility: it's in appendix D, and the
title is "The Contraceptive Effectiveness
of Natural Birth Control" if you want to
do a little bit more reading and
research for yourself. So let's get into
the basics of what we learned in health
class. I don't know about any of you guys,
but I was taught that it is possible to
get pregnant every single day you have
unprotected sex. I was terrified in high
school because obviously I wasn't in a
position to have a baby, and that's what
eventually led me to hormonal birth
control at the time, because I thought I
could get pregnant every single time I
had sex. But it turns out, that's not
actually true. There are only about six
days in a typical cycle when a person
can get pregnant. This is because an egg
is released from the ovary and the egg
will survive between 12 and 24 hours.
Only in that 12 to 24 hour period can
that egg be fertilized. So where do the
other five days come in? Well, it turns
out when a woman is in her fertile phase,
sperm within semen can survive for up to
five days inside a woman's body. So you
add that all up together and there's
approximately a six day window when
somebody can get pregnant. That was one
of the first things I learned reading
this book, and that by itself blew my
mind because I felt lied to my entire
life. And that little nugget of knowledge
made me so much more confident and
comfortable with what was going on with
my body. So getting back to the subject
of the fertility awareness method: how
can you tell when you're fertile and
when you're not fertile? As it turns out,
there are actually several cues that a
woman can pick up on, and patterns that
change throughout the month that can
help somebody determine whether or not
they can get pregnant.
The two primary cues that can be observed
and recorded are the consistency and
amount of cervical fluid, as well as the
differences in her basal body
temperature. There are also a couple
other cues that can be picked up on,
however, those are the two main ones that
we're gonna be talking about in this
video. So let's first talk about the
cervical fluid changes. I'm sure that a
lot of us have experienced this, but
sometimes when you're out and about, you
might feel a little bit more slippery
down there, or sometimes, TMI, you can feel
some things gushing out of you a little
bit, and you're like "What the heck is
happening to me?!" and then other times
nothing happens at all. Throughout a
woman's cycle, there are changes that can
be observed in the consistency of
cervical fluid. Usually these changes
start with dry cervical fluid, aka it
just feels like there's nothing there,
and then as days go on, as you head
toward ovulation, it'll get a little bit
sticky or gummy, then it'll get a little
bit more lotion-y or creamier, and then
right around the time you ovulate, you
have a lot of it, and it's more of an egg
white consistency than anything else.
Then you might dry up again and you
might not notice your cervical fluid at
all until you get your period again. This
is actually a pattern that can be
observed and written down and used to
help you determine whether or not you're
fertile or not. Contrary to what you may
have been taught in health class, sperm
cannot actually survive within a uterus
or vaginal canal unless there is fertile
cervical fluid present. Semen provides a
little bit of it, but the sperm need a
medium that they can swim through in
order to reach the egg, and as it turns
out, that egg white cervical fluid is the
best medium out there in order for the
sperm to reach the egg. Another
observation that somebody might notice
about their body in order to help
determine whether or not they're fertile
is their basal body temperature.
The basal body temperature is actually the
lowest body temperature that a body
experiences within a 24-hour period.
Usually, the basal body temperature is
experienced in the middle of the night
when we're sleeping, and most people have
to sleep between three and five hours on
a nightly basis in order to experience
consistent basal body temperatures.
However, the cool thing is right when you
wake up first thing in the morning,
before you roll out of bed, before you
get your coffee, before you even speak to
anybody, if you take your temperature right
then with a basal body thermometer, you
can record that temperature. And the
typical pattern that the basal body
temperature presents itself in is it
starts out very low in the follicular
phase of a woman's cycle. (By the way,
there's gonna be definitions and
diagrams that you can research in the
description bar below.)
During the follicular phase, the basal
body temperature is low, and it stays low
until ovulation occurs. Once ovulation
occurs, because of the huge spike in
progesterone in a woman's body, the basal
body temperature actually spikes as well,
and it remains high until the woman gets
her period. So how can you interpret this
information to use as birth control?
A woman begins her fertile phase when
there is the first presence of fertile
cervical fluid in her body, and the
fertile phase actually lasts until a few
days after the temperature spike.
The temperature spike indicates that
ovulation has occurred, and the fertile
cervical fluid indicates that ovulation
is coming. Once you know this information,
and once you know and understand and
internalize the rules that I'm about to
lay out for you, you can use this
information to have unprotected sex when
you're infertile, and a backup method
when you're fertile. Does that make sense?
Okay, let's move on. So how do you
actually keep track of these fertile
signs within your body?
People who follow the fertility
awareness method actually do this thing
called "charting," and charting is
literally taking a chart, and on that
chart, they record their basal body
temperature every single day, as well as
the changes that they experience in
their cervical fluid throughout their
cycle every single day. Okay, so now we
are going to get into the rules that you
have to follow if you want to use the
fertility awareness method of birth
control. Again, please do not take these
rules and run with them. Use this
information and research it further.
The first rule of fertility awareness is
called the "First Five Days Rule" and that
rule basically says that you are
generally considered safe to have
unprotected sex the first five days of
your menstrual cycle if you notice a
temperature shift 12 to 16 days prior.
So what this basically says is if you
notice a temperature spike in the
previous cycle, that's an indication
ovulation occurred in that previous
cycle, and therefore you can have
unprotected sex the first five days of
your menstrual cycle, only if that
happened. There is a caveat to this rule
however: if you have ever had a cycle
that is less than 25 days long total, it
turns into the three-day rule. In that
instance, you are only safe to have
unprotected sex the first three days of
your cycle. Again, only if you observed a
temperature shift 12-16 days prior.
The second rule of the fertility
awareness method of birth control is
called the "Dry Day Rule" and this rule
says that you are generally considered
safe to have unprotected sex the evening
of every dry day. "Dry" is referring to the
lack of cervical fluid that you
experience that day. Something that needs
to be considered in relation to this
rule, however, is that the following day
needs to be considered potentially
fertile if there is residual semen in
your vaginal canal, because residual
semen can sometimes block or mask
fertile cervical fluid, so just something
to keep in mind. So those first two rules
both have to do with the beginning phase
of your cycle. This is before ovulation
occurs in your follicular phase.
These next two rules have to do with
after ovulation, or your luteal phase.
The third rule is called the "Temperature
Shift Rule" or "Temp + 3" to make it
easy to understand. This rule states that
you are generally considered safe to
have unprotected sex the evening of the
third consecutive day that you have a
high temperature, as long as the
temperatures remain high. If the
temperatures have dropped back down
again, you need to start the count over
again, so that is something else to keep in mind.
And the last rule is called the
"Peak Day Rule" or "Peak + 4". The peak
day is the last day that you observe
fertile cervical fluid. Not the day that
you observe the most cervical fluid, but
the last day that you observe cervical
fluid. That day is considered your peak
day, and this rule states that you are
generally considered safe to have
unprotected sex the evening of the
fourth day after your peak day. And just
to be extra conservative and safe,
there's actually an optional fifth rule
that you can follow that I personally
follow, that's called the "Double-Check Rule."
The double-check rule essentially
says you need to wait until both your
temp + 3 day and your peak + 4 day are
both indicating
that you're infertile again. Not one or
the other, but both of them together.
How do you implement these rules? So I'm
gonna walk you through what I personally
do. Every morning, I have an alarm set on
my phone for 6:30 in the morning.
Even on the weekends, even on events that
I might be going through, I have an alarm
to wake me up at 6:30 in the morning.
When 6:30 rolls around and I'm woken up,
I immediately take my temperature. I wait
for my thermometer to tell me my
temperature, and I go back to sleep.
My thermometer actually remembers this
temperature so I don't need to record it
right away, I can record it when I'm
ready to get up for real for the day.
There's actually two apps that I use,
which is really helpful just for added
recording, and those two apps are "Kindara"
as well as "Natural Cycles." Natural Cycles
is being talked about a lot on the
internet right now, but they're not
paying me, nobody's sponsored this video.
I actually prefer the interface of Natural
Cycles more, but on Kindara you can
record more information. Natural Cycles
is nice because when I take my
temperature, it can immediately tell me
if I'm fertile or not.
However, Natural Cycles does not have a
place where it can also take into
account your cervical fluid, and because
also knowing your cervical fluid is
incredibly necessary and needed if you
want to abide by the sympto-thermal rules, I take
their predictions a little bit more
conservatively. If it tells me on Natural
Cycles that I am okay to have sex that
day unprotected, I'm gonna check that
information against the information that
I also have on Kindara, just to
double-check. The Kindara interface is a
little bit more clunky, but like I said,
you can record a lot more information on
it. So I'm gonna leave a link to both of
these apps in the description bar below
if you're interested in both of them.
Highly recommend checking them out. I
love them and it's really nice when you
don't have to write on a paper chart.
Once I've recorded my basal body
temperature, I make a note of my cervical
fluid all throughout the day. This might
get TMI, but just so you know, every time
I go to the bathroom, I look at my
underwear. Is there any cervical fluid on
my underwear? How are things feeling down
there today? Is it slippery? Does it feel
dry? I'm not gonna go in-depth in this
specific video about the consistencies
of cervical fluid and ways that you can
look at it and observe it, but if that's
something you're interested in,
definitely let me know and I can turn
that into a video. I also
talk with my partner about what is going
on. We always have a conversation before
we have sex. Do we need a condom today?
How are your charts looking today? What
kind of information is going on with
your body and how can we interpret that
information as a couple to figure out
whether or not we should have
unprotected sex today?
I've actually loved this method of birth
control because this method encourages
my partner to also be equally as
included in what is going on in my body.
He likes to look at my charts, I like to
show him the information, he reminds me
to take my temperature, all of these
things make my partner feel a lot more
involved, which is really incredible
because so many birth control methods
out there are super one-sided. So, that is
about all the information I have as a
brief overview of the fertility
awareness method of birth control. A
couple notes to end on: like I said do
not rely on this method of birth control
until you have at least read Taking
Charge of your Fertility. If you have any
specific comments or questions on this
method of birth control, be sure to leave
those in the comments down below and who
knows, I might make dedicated videos
specifically talking about those things
because there are so many things to talk
about. In the comments down below, tell me
what your preferred method of birth
control is. What are you using for birth
control? How do you like it? Would you
recommend it to anybody who might be
reading the comments? Let me know in the
comments down below, and I hope you guys
enjoyed this video, if you did make sure
you give it a big thumbs up and
subscribe if you haven't already, and I
will see you next time.
Bye!