Angela, a stay-home mom of one, has been using fertility awareness since giving birth to her daughter. She’s been tracking her periods and learning when in her cycle she’s most fertile.
Rather than using condoms (or another barrier method), Angela chooses to not have sex during her most fertile times. She feels closer to her partner and enjoys sex more without a condom, so she’d just rather wait until she’s in the clear.
Angela knows that fertility awareness can be less reliable than hormonal methods of birth control, but she’s sticking with it, tracking her cycles as accurately as she can.
I’m a stay-at-home mom. I go to the park. I spend a lot of time with my daughter. We do a lot of play date activities, household chores – home body. I use the tracking method for my birth control. It’s a method where you’re in tune with your body. You track your periods, and you don’t have sex on the points where you’ve ovulating. You just stay abstinent, or you – you can use condoms, but I prefer not to. I heard about the tracking method from my midwife before I’d had my daughter. We were talking about different types of birth control that I could use after my pregnancy. I like the fact that it forces you to get in tune with your own body and it forces you to understand, you know, when you’re ovulating. You know when you’re going through those spikes of hormones, you know. But I think it’s really important for women to understand about themselves. I don’t like the fact that it can be unreliable. It’s not as reliable as pharmaceutical forms of birth control. There are times when, you know, you can make a mistake. But again, I’ve been on it, like I’ve been constantly tracking. Another thing I like about the tracking method is I don’t have to use condoms. There’s not a barrier there, so I can enjoy sex more with my partner. My name is Angela. I’m 22 years old, and I use the tracking method for birth control.