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Home › Articles › Tracking Your Fertility › Fertility Awareness

Fertility Awareness

What You Should Know and Why You Probably Don't

An excerpt from:Taking Charge of Your Fertility (Revised Edition) The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health

By Toni Weschler MPH

Pages:  1  2  3  

It is true that many religious people have discovered the benefits of Fertility Awareness, though they may technically practice "Natural Family Planning" (NFP). The primary distinction between FAM and NFP is that those who use NFP choose to abstain rather than use barrier methods of contraception during the woman's fertile phase. But regardless of the differing values that often divide users of FAM and NFP all are drawn by the desire for a natural method of effective contraception.

FAM's Conspicuous Absence from Medical School
If FAM has so many benefits as a method of birth control (and as an aid to pregnancy achievement, as you will later read), why, then, is it not better known? One of the most critical and mystifying reasons that people have rarely heard of it is that doctors are still seldom taught a comprehensive version of this scientific method in medical school. It is amazing to think that women who practice the Fertility Awareness Method are often more knowledgeable about their own fertility than gynecologists who are trained to be experts in female physiology!

Years ago when I taught at a women's clinic, the entire staff except one doctor took my seminar to use FAM as a method of contraception. One day, the one who had never attended pulled me aside and whispered, "Toni, I'll be honest with you. I don't refer my patients to your classes." "Oh really, why is that?" I casually asked, trying not to act surprised. "I got pregnant using your method and haven't trusted it since," she replied. "You're kidding! What rules did you use?"

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