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COPYRIGHT 2003 Mothering Magazine
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This article is only an introduction to Fertility Awareness. It does not provide adequate information about using charts to prevent pregnancy. Interested readers should sign up for a class and/or read a comprehensive book, such as Toni Weschler's Taking Charge of Your Fertility. Refer to "For More Information" at the end of the article.
When Maria Simmons and Eric Hurley (not their real names) first got together, they didn't use any birth control. "I thought that I knew when I was fertile," Maria says. "I'd heard that the egg leaves your body with the slippery mucus in the middle of your cycle. And once the egg's gone, you can't get pregnant." Eric figured she knew what she was talking about; "I sure didn't," he says.
The couple's son, Brahm, was conceived within two months. After he was born, Maria and Eric, by then married, considered their options for birth control. Maria had had experience with the Pill and the diaphragm, and she didn't like either. "We weren't comfortable with the IUD, either," Eric says. "So we used condoms. But we didn't like them much. We didn't have much sex."
Their midwife suggested Fertility Awareness (FA), a natural method based on daily charting of a woman's waking temperature and cervical fluid changes. (1) Maria was skeptical: "I thought that was how I'd gotten pregnant," she says. "But my midwife had used FA herself for years and insisted the method could work for me, too."
Curious to learn more about her cycle, Maria started charting, and eventually the couple took a class in FA. Eric, who can read Maria's charts as well as she can, says, "Now I have a feeling of responsibility, because I know when Maria's in her fertile phase. We have intercourse only...
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