How to Use Fertility Awareness Method to Get Pregnant

how to get pregnant

The Fertility Awareness Method is based on your body, and how it functions, and is a reliable method of birth control, pregnancy achievement, and keeping track of your reproductive health.

Things You'll Need

• A basal body thermometer, glass, or digital
• A calendar, or other way to keep track of your cycles

Instructions

1. Get a basal body thermometer, either digital or glass. Keep it by your bed, and take your temperature every morning when you wake up. It is important to take your temperature at the same time every morning, and after at least three hours of sleep.

   Record your temperature every day, and watch for changes. Just after ovulation, your temperature will rise, and it will fall again just before or just after menstruation. You should be able to see a pattern of low and high temperatures.

2. Check and record your cervical fluid every day, preferably several times a day (when you are going to the bathroom is easiest). You can check with your hands or with a tissue. Try to feel the quality of the fluid: is it sticky or gummy, creamy or milky, or stretchy like an egg white?
   Fertile-quality cervical fluid is thick, clear, opaque or streaked, and stretchy like eggwhite.

3. As a secondary fertility sign, you can also keep track of your cervix. Check every day, and at the same time every day (in the shower is easiest); wash your hands beforehand.

   When you are not fertile, it will be firm, low, closed and dry. When you are fertile, it will be soft, high, open and wet (remember SHOW).

4. Use cervical fluid and cervix signs to determine when you are becoming fertile. When your cervical fluid starts getting wetter, and your cervix starts getting higher and softer, you are becoming fertile, and this is the opportune time.

5. When you are finished ovulating, your temperature will rise. That will be your sign that your fertile time is over for the cycle.

Tips & Warnings

• Read Toni Weschler's Taking Charge of Your Fertility for more information, and for her Fertility Charts.

• If your temperatures seem "muddy" while using a digital thermometer, try switching to a glass basal body thermometer.

• The time period after ovulation and before menstruation is called the luteal phase, and is typically between 12 and 16 days long; however, the luteal phase typically does not shift: if your luteal phase is 12 days, it will almost always be 12 days, occasionally it will be 11 or thirteen days.

• The time period after menstruation and before ovulation, however, can be affected by stress, travel, illness, or any number of other things, and can range from 5 days to months or years, in extreme cases. This is why it's important to look for the fertility signs; there is no set day that all women ovulate.

• Make sure you are using a basal body thermometer, especially if you are using a glass thermometer; regular thermometers are not accurate enough.

• Do not use past cycles to predict future cycles.

Resources

• Taking Charge of Your Fertility
• Toni Weschler's Taking Charge of Your Fertility