You’re Doing WHAT As Your Birth Control?!
TMI ALERT, IF YOU DON’T LIKE TALKING ABOUT BIRTH CONTROL AND PERIODS THIS ISN’T FOR YOU 😂
This week marks one year of going off “the pill” for me. This week also marks my first year ever of having a full 12 periods. My most fertile year ever, and my most “unprotected” year ever. Sooo how come I don’t have a baby right now?
Let me start at the beginning:
I went on the pill several months before getting married, and the initial to-be-expected symptoms from it wore off in about 3 months. But then, my health began a slow and steady decline. At about 5 months on hormonal birth control I started to experience severe dizziness, exhaustion, joint pain, heart palpitations, brain fog, and multiple different kinds of sickness and infections. It felt like my body was just shutting down. I remember cooking dinner one night and having to take breaks to sit down and regain my balance because I felt like I was going to pass out. I went to the doctor and he tested me for pretty much anything he could think of. The tests came back normal, so he suggested that maybe it was my birth control, something my sis-in-law had also suggested it could be from. So Trev and I agreed that I should at least try and see if going off the pill would help anything. Let me tell you, it helped everything. All of my symptoms went away slowly over the next few months as my hormones went back to their original settings. I couldn’t believe that all of those things could have come from my hormonal birth control. I decided that I was done with hormone manipulation. I didn’t even want to try other brands of the pill or implants or shots. Can you blame me? I wanted to avoid ever feeling like that again. So I read a book that changed everything, called “Taking Charge of Your Fertility”.
It’s almost embarrassing how little I knew about my body before reading this book. I learned that there’s only one day out of the month that I can get pregnant, and only in the 5 days before that can sperm live for longer than 2 hours in my body. This book showed me how to essentially be my own birth control, simply by knowing the signs my body naturally communicates throughout the month while also charting my body temperature every morning. I had to be studious for a while and learn all the ~ins and outs~ of this method of birth control. I wouldn’t recommend this method to someone who isn’t willing to put in the time to learn. The fun part of this method is that you get to understand what your body is doing day to day, not just blindly writing down your temperature every day and waiting for the green light to show up on your app. So the research part is important.
After numerous free trials with different cycle charting apps, I finally ended up on the extremely user friendly Natural Cycles app. This app’s algorithm calculates what days I’m fertile (need protection) and what days I’m not fertile (yay no protection!) simply based off my day-to-day body temperature. We’ve been using this app as our birth control method for a year now and it’s the best health decision Trev and I could have made.
If this all sounds confusing to you, but you also are sick of being on hormonal birth control, I highly recommend you reading that book. If anything, you will learn some amazing facts about your body, and understand how it all works. I even found myself in tears learning about all the intricacies of my reproductive system and how God is so so detailed and in control of it all. The female body is not only beautiful on the outside, but a beautiful design on the inside too.
Lots of people are skeptical about this method, not because it doesn’t work but because people don’t do it correctly. This is why you have to learn how it works and let that information ~penetrate deeply~ enough to where you can know without a doubt that you could or couldn’t get pregnant at any moment!
I could talk about this stuff 👏🏻all👏🏻freakin👏🏻day so if you have any questions please message me. * Thanks for reading, feel free to share with a friend!
If you want a sweet deal on a subscription to that app I talked about use my link:
*One big question is “What if my cycles aren’t regular?” The app still works 100%. You may just not get as many “not fertile AKA don’t need protection” days. My cycles have always been extremely irregular, but this year I decided to be diligent about taking the supplements my body needs to be regular. I discovered a natural supplement that helped with my cycle regularity called Inositol. If you have irregular periods you may want to look into trying this as well. It’s been a total game changer for me!*
And here’s a link to that supplement: https://www.amazon.com/Jarrow-Formulas-Inositol-Supports-Function/dp/B0013OUKPC
And here’s an article on why it works: