“The BVTMB is getting real this week about a sometimes taboo, but important topic…S-E-X! Our team is sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly…and maybe the humorous and kinky too… about sex after kids in hopes that some of you can relate.”
In our family we practice Natural Family Planning or NFP.
I find this is commonly used to conceive but it can also be used as a natural form of spacing your children. I was on birth control for approximately half a decade and during that time I had no idea what my body was doing. Since stopping birth control to prepare my body to conceive, I learned SO MUCH. I have chosen not to go back on artificial contraception for personal and religious reasons as I’ve grown in my faith and in understanding my own womanhood. I feel more healthy, in touch with my feminine nature, and have come to find a great appreciation in my body’s reproductive abilities.
The first thing I noticed when I stopped taking BCP (birth control pills) was a huge increase in libido! Because I was going through my natural cycle of ovulation I could tell when my body was saying “HEY! If you tried, you could totally get pregnant right now!“. This is definitely an indicator symptom for me of a fertile period. Another indicator I have is Mittelschmerz or “Middle pain” . Mittelschmerz is one-sided, lower abdominal pain in women. It occurs at or around the time of an egg is released from the ovaries (ovulation). I never noticed this before starting NFP but I feel it almost monthly now.
Two other factors that weren’t so obvious were fluctuations in basal temperature and mucous production. Tracking these two indicators really helped me to plot my cycle more precisely and show me fertile and infertile periods.
There are several methods of NFP but most of them rely heavily on finding your peak cycle day (Peak day is the highest statistically likely day of ovulation) and the observation of your changing fertile cervical mucus. Depending on if you are trying to conceive or not, you can plan to have lots of sex during your fertile cycle or none. Because NFP requires you to make routine observations about your body, you will find you will become very in tune with your cycle.
Cycle length does not affect NFP effectivenessThis is just the tip of the iceberg! There are many more details that go into NFP (hormone levels, using ovulation strips, etc). Below are several methods of practicing NFP and their requirements.
Billings Ovulation Method – Mucus-only
Creighton Method (CrMS) – Mucus-only, help for infertile women
Here are a few highly rated apps:
