Health & Science
Your Grandmother’s Birth Control Might Actually Work
The “fertility awareness method” could convince you to go off the pill.
Lately, our thinking about birth control seems to be shifting. Earlier this summer, the Guttmacher Institute released a study showing that proper use of the withdrawal method is nearly as effective as condoms, and, as Double X’s Jessica Grose pointed out, lots of young, educated women are using it. Meanwhile, abstinence-only education funding has been zeroed out, and Guttmacher just published another study that reveals young women often abandon birth control methods they don't like. Several different liberal media outlets have been hashing out options beyond the trusty condom.
So why has nobody mentioned the highly effective, completely natural fertility awareness method, or its Catholic sister, natural family planning?
I was introduced to FAM when sex became inexplicably painful for me after using the NuvaRing for several years. It took three doctors to figure out what was going on before one gynecologist realized the NuvaRing wasn’t correctly replacing my body’s estrogen. Instead, it was actually thinning my vaginal walls, menopause-style. I’m 25. This was not good.
“Shouldn’t I go off birth control?” I asked, horrified. “It’s never really vibed with my body.”
My doctor’s response? “Don’t go off the Ring! Just use this extra estrogen cream every day.”
But putting more hormones in my body seemed counterintuitive. There must be another way, I thought.
My partner never liked condoms, and diaphragms make me vulnerable to urinary tract infections. Since I didn’t like the idea of an invasive vaginal procedure, an IUD was out, too. That’s when a friend lent me Toni Weschler’s Taking Charge of Your Fertility. The book explains a scientific birth control method that allows a woman to know her six-day fertility window: When a woman is fertile, her morning basal temperature rises and her discharge is slippery and stretchy. Unlike the mythological rhythm method, which assumes all women ovulate on the 10th day of their periods, FAM and NFP rely on signs, not day-counting, although charting is part of the process. When the signs all match up, the woman knows not to have sex or use a barrier method.
NFP and FAM were developed in the '50s, when scientists began to better understand how the menstrual cycle worked. They’re side-effect free, virtually cost-free and can be 95 percent to 98 percent effective when done correctly (although those numbers can slip down to anywhere from 91 percent to as low as 80 percent, depending upon how thoroughly the couple practices the method). Their effectiveness is akin to condoms, which are 98 percent effective with perfect use and 85 percent effective with typical use.
Of course, these “organic” alternatives entail considerably more effort than simply rolling down a layer of latex. I decided to do some research on whether FAM/NFP was worth the effort, so I sent out an e-mail asking for testimonials from women who use those methods. I got dozens of responses within days. “Megan,” 33, loves FAM because “I’m in touch with exactly what my body is going through.” Others like that FAM can be a team effort between the woman and her partner, who needs to be clued into his mate’s biological signals—“Jane,” 30, thinks it can “erase the dynamic of ‘woman as all-knowing gatekeeper’ and ‘man as ignorant beggar’ ” when it comes to sex and pregnancy.
SNL: Equal Opportunity Objectifiers
Jon Hamm spent most of the Saturday Night Live episode he hosted last night shirtless.
Confessions of a Woman Comedy Writer
Allison Silverman accepts one from New York Women in Film & Television (and tells us why it's rare).
Comments
tiffany
By: tiffany77 | Thu, 09/24/2009 - 00:58
Tiffany Earrings Tiffany Earrings tiffany Earrings silver earrings silver earrings Tiffany Bracelets Tiffany Bracelets tiffany Bracelets Tiffany key ring Tiffany key ring tiffany key ring
PMS Relief
By: dsevv | Wed, 09/23/2009 - 15:47
Menstrual Cramp Relief
links london Friendship Bracelets
By: linksoflondon | Tue, 09/22/2009 - 20:36
links of london Sweetie Bracelets links of london Sweetie Bracelets links of london Sweetie Bracelets links of london Sweetie Bracelets links of london Sweetie Bracelets links of london Sweetie Bracelets links of london Sweetie Bracelets links of london Sweetie Bracelets links of london Sweetie Bracelets links of london Friendship Bracelets links of london Friendship Bracelets links of london Charms links of london Friendship Bracelets links of london Friendship Bracelets links of london Friendship Bracelets links of london Friendship Bracelets links of london Friendship Bracelets links of london jewellery links of london Friendship Bracelets
It's obvious that most of the
By: buggie | Thu, 09/03/2009 - 20:39
It's obvious that most of the people who have commented in favor of this method eventually want to get pregnant or would be ok with it happening by accident. That, to me, isn't "contraception." If you really don't want to get pregnant, you're going to pull out all the stops to prevent it. This is not even close to all the stops.
No method is perfect
By: TJ56082 | Thu, 09/03/2009 - 17:57
My mother has 4 children. One is planned, one is a "pill baby" one the diaphram, and the third was born with the IUD imbedded in her skin. When it came time for me to choose a a birth control method I could not trust any of those three options. We used FRM successfully and both my kids are planned with no surprises - in fact I knew within days that I was pregnant and estimated the due date to within 2 days for each. If you are willing to take responsibility then you need to pick what works for you - to bad so many of the people posting here take it personally. Maybe a little touchy about the choices they have made. I'm comfortable with the ones I have made.
I LOVE that book!
By: joss | Tue, 09/01/2009 - 17:03
It is in my Top Ten Books of All Time. I don't use the method (just withdrawal for several years) but reading it answered questions I hadn't even realized I had. Highly recommended.
Side note: please don't roundly condemn the effectiveness of something you've never tried and possibly don't even entirely understand. IT'S NOT THE RHYTHM METHOD. It does not require regular periods. (If you have irregular periods, that is all the more reason to pay attention to these signs because then you will know when your period is coming.)
um, so, what if you want to
By: buggie | Sat, 08/29/2009 - 01:35
um, so, what if you want to have sex during the fertile period?
I've been on the pill for ten years, since college, so I've never had sex without it. I'm on it for PCOS and PMDD issues, but I think it does have some negative effect on my body (interestingly, I often have a painful sex, I never thought it could be related to the pill...) but I'd never have sex without it. In fact, I even have issues with just using the pill alone without condoms. I'd never trust the fertility window thing. Among other things, I'd be afraid of being tempted to have sex when I was fertile. And it just doesn't seem reliable. Maybe I'm just more terrified of getting pregnant than the average woman (I'm so afraid of it, people have suggested I died of child birth in a previous life!), but I know I know I never want to be pregnant,even for so much as a day, and I want scientifically proven and physical methods to prevent it. And also- if you issues with PCOS and irregular periods and stuff, couldn't the "signs" be affected as well? Nothing ever seems to go as planned for my menstrual cycle, even on the pill.
In Ireland, the sale or
By: measured | Fri, 08/28/2009 - 10:38
In Ireland, the sale or importation of contraceptives was illegal until 1979. The country, essentially ruled by the Catholic Church, had an active promotion of this type of "family planning" as they called it and there were many community based clinics and services which taught this method of birth control and in fact the 1979 Act required the provision of teaching of this method whenever a person attempted to access contraceptives ("non-natural methods" had to be obtained by prescription). Despite this active promotion and teaching of the method women by their droves took the train to Belfast to smuggle condoms into the country since 1971 (the customs officials at that time did not confiscate them though attempt to import by post was cracked down upon) and doctors were prescribing the contraceptive pill on the grounds of it acting as a menstrual regulator to increasing amounts of women (48,000 women by the late 1970s, Ireland is a small country) because of the simple fact that the "natural methods" were not as effective as these other methods i.e. even with missing one pill it is still very unlikely a woman will get pregnant.
I think Ireland's experience of loosening regulation on contraception is instructive because before the mid-1960s the only method of birth control (either legally or illegally) was the natural one and indicates a substantial number of people found the method was risky either because of human lapse and/or error or because the method even used correctly has some risk associated with it.
While everyone has the right to choose this method, I would suggest only to do so if you are very committed to all the steps required of it, are in a serious relationship with little to no risk of infidelity and are willing to accept that there is a small but significant risk of pregnancy. For these reasons, I think that to actively promote this method to young people would be inappropriate.
Finally!
By: quite_rosie | Wed, 08/26/2009 - 11:12
I am so happy to see this very relevant and practical approach to birth control. We have used FAM since the beginning of 2006 to avoid and then achieve pregnancy. It really works if you have the drive to do it. We didn't get pregnant when we didn't want to, and when we did, we were able to pinpoint the best times to concieve, and now have a beautiful daughter. I feel SO much better than when I was on the pill!
statistics and citations, please?
By: lorikay4 | Wed, 08/26/2009 - 10:06
I have never heard of this side effect, but would be interested to hear some SCIENCE on the subject. What is the incidence rate of this very disturbing side effect? What does your doctor say about this?
"A terrible thing happened to me, and I know some other people who had this terrible thing happen as well." is not science.
No word on this in WebMD. Can you please supply something other than anecdotes on this?