Fertility Awareness Method

What is the Fertility Awareness Method?

The Fertility Awareness Method (FAM) is a natural method of birth control and attempting conception. (See FAQ on Pregnancy Conception - Overview FAQ) It promotes the understanding of a woman’s reproductive health and, in terms of pregnancy, the tracking of a woman’s ovulation cycles to give the couple a better chance of conceiving. This FAQ focuses on the conception portion of this method.

What are FAM’s basic principles?

FAM is based on the presumption that most women and few men understand a women’s reproductive system and therefore, are acting without the necessary knowledge to conceive. If you know what your body is doing and why, you can use that knowledge to more easily conceive a child. Those that just plan to have a lot of sex will likely get more control over when and why they should be having sex using this method.

What will my partner and I have to do?

This method requires the most of the female, since it is her bodily functions that will need to be tracked. The male partner can be supportive by reading the literature and supporting and reminding his partner in her tracking efforts. Otherwise, it falls on the woman to make the effort. This effort will primarily consist of:

• Daily morning temperature taking and tracking to detect patterns
• Analysis of female discharge texture and consistency
• Regular analysis of changes in the feel and position of the woman’s cervix

While this may sound complicated or unsavory to some women, these are all things you can do yourself in the privacy of your own bathroom.

What do I need to practice the FAM?

You will likely need the related book, Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler, which includes diagrams and descriptions of what you should be looking for. You will also need a Basal Body Temperature thermometer. A normal thermometer will not show the small fluctuations in your body temperature you will need to track.

Does FAM work?

FAM alone often works for those couples that have no serious reproductive problems. It works best in cases where the women is ovulating on a regular basis, but is not aware of what her body is doing and therefore when conception is optimal. The other significant benefit of this method is that women get an in-depth education on their reproductive system, which many were never taught. This method does not work well if the couple has serious reproductive problems or untrackable and/or irregular cycles. However, one could try this method as a precursor to a doctor’s visit to make sure ovulation and efforts to conceive are happening at the right time. If that time can’t be tracked, perhaps there are other issues at play that need to be diagnosed by a medical professional.

What are some criticisms of this method?

Some common criticisms of this method are:

• It takes at least two full months to conceive because you have to track a full month’s cycle before knowing and predicting what your ovulation cycle will be the following month.
• This tracking effort can be hard work for some women and requires a consistent commitment to ensure the results are correct.
• You must take your daily body temperature first thing in the morning, before getting out of bed and before going to the bathroom. (These things can effect the incremental changes in your body temperature and throw off tracking efforts.)
• The beep, beep, beeping of the thermometer every morning can be annoying and some husbands find it an irritating and constant reminder that they are under pressure to conceive.
• Some women say that despite efforts, they just cannot detect a predictive pattern.

What are other popular methods of conception?

Many couples use the tried and true method of having sex every other day. It is true that sperm can live for 24 to 48 hours in the woman after sex. If you’re consistently having sex on that frequent basis, ovulation will eventually occur and conception should happen in that window of time. Obviously, this works only if the woman is ovulating properly and neither the man nor woman has reproductive health issues.

While this method may work for some couples, other couple’s lifestyle or desires may prevent this from being an effective method. For those couples, using ovulation kits may help considerably. (See FAQ on Ovulation Kits.) These easy to use kits tell the woman when she is ovulating so the couples’ sex activities can be more targeted to the appropriate timeframe.

Most doctor’s will tell you to try conceiving naturally for six months before you consider that there may be reproductive problems that require medical help. If this is the case, the use of ovulation stimulating drugs and invitro fertilization (IVF) are options you may want to discuss with your doctor. See In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) for more information.