Fertility Awareness Method, Part 2

All that orgasm talk to say that I hate most forms of birth control. This is a problem if you're going to go around being eggy and put yourself in direct contact with semen on a fairly regular basis.

Read my disclaimers first.*

Every once in a while I have considered options besides condoms. But they're all so so so fucking awful. I do not care how safe doctors say the pill is, I have talked to too many women who just lost interest in having sex at all once they'd been on it for a while. While not having sex is a very effective way to avoid pregnancy, it's not my preferred way. So that cuts out the pill, the patch, the nuvaring, and shots.

Then you've got the poisons. This has always been difficult for me to wrap my head around. So you want me to take this film/jelly/jam/sponge/froth full of a noxious substance and put it in continuous contact with a semi-permeable membrane and highly sensitive part of my body? The one time I used a sponge, my partner’s mouth went numb after he went down on me. Sexy.

As a class, the poisons are more horrifying to me than jabbing my ass muscle full of hormones. Moo. Horrifying like the thought of eating a chili dog from the 7-11 is horrifying. Sure people do it, and have every right to do it, but jesus god, do you know what you’re putting inside yourself?

I got excited about the cervical cap and diaphragm for about 10 seconds until I realized I would have to use a poison to make them decently effective.

I also occasionally have the same blip of excitement for the IUD/IUS (the Intrauterine System). Not many side-effects any more. Not poisonous. The IUD doesn’t involve hormones and is supposed to keep you on your usual/unusual cycle. But something always kind of horrified me about it too. Maybe the idea of uterine perforation? And heavier crampier periods? Eesh. Not to mention that we’re a little fuzzy on how the copper ones work. They create an environment inhospitable for implantation. I don’t really want any part of my body to be inhospitable.

All of these options require me to treat my body like it is the enemy. Yeah, sure, there are times where I feel like that, but taking that as a business rule for my day-to-day operations? It is diametrically opposed to the way I have managed to develop myself as a sexual being. It is detrimental to my further growth as a happy, creative, satisfied sexual being.

All those forms of birth control would lead to behaviour patterns that would make me a bad lay.

So. That leaves condoms. And sure, I like condoms, you know, they're fine. Mostly. As I've gotten older, my skin has gotten more sensitive and lube that was fine is now not fine, and condoms have always dried me out, necessitating the fairly generous application of lube.

I've tried the female condom and it's a decent option, but it's a $4 fuck and I'm always worried that it's slipped in. You cannot worry and come at the same time. Probably if I used them more, I’d get over that. I dunno. And I’m not sure why I think that great sex isn’t worth $4, but there you go. There is something about the price-point that deters me.

If I’m going to be honest, sometimes I just want to feel some skin up in there.

You might think I’d exhausted the options. However.

Years ago now, I heard of this other thing called the Fertility Awareness Method. I read a few books, went to a seminar, read a bunch of websites. I read that it involves checking your temperature every morning, checking the position of your cervix once a day, and noting what kind of cervical fluid you’ve got going on about 3 x a day. I read that you need to chart for 3 to 6 months before you can trust it as a form of birth control.

In other words, I read that it was too damn complicated for me to manage. And too time consuming, and not enough immediate gratification. Six months? I’m all for planning ahead, but really. Not to mention the potential for human error. What if I interpreted the results wrong? What if I said my cervical fluid was sticky when really it was creamy?

As with any form of contraception, its only as effective as the people using it, and there are a lot more details to fuck up with this system than rolling on a condom. But hell, I've been using condoms on their own for years, and their effectiveness rate with typical use is only 88%. Obviously, I can live with a pretty high margin of error.

The other thing that kind of put me off about FAM are the people who advocate its use. They're a little evangelical. Like yoga people. They rave about FAM like it’s the best thing that ever happened to anyone. That puts me off. Like it put me off yoga until I became one of those yoga evangelicals.

My decision to join the wave has probably been happening gradually, but this fall, the tide of “No because. No because, no because…” seemed to recede suddenly and definitively. While I was with the Great Dater last fall, I thought, I’m going to start charting.

But never did. There were two things that had to change before I went from "yes, I will do this" to actually getting my shit together.

I decided that FAM would likely never be an all or nothing form of contraception for me. I would likely use it to limit the number of days I used condoms, and would be very conservative about which days I would consider infertile.

I decided, most importantly, that I would only start FAM if I were doing it for myself. If my primary motivation was to better understand the inner workings of my body, the 6 month goal was not relevant, because every day would either tell me something new or confirm what I already knew. This would likely make me want to treat my body better in general, and would certainly add to the store of information that makes me have orgasms. Thus, the main motivating factor would not just be codomless fucking, and thus would not be dependent on whether I had a male partner or not.

These things clicked. Though weirdly, the third part is that after all the "I’m doing it for myself!" I started dating Eric, who is a kind and thoughtful person. He was genuinely interested when I told him I was starting. He asked questions about it. He read up on it. He asks for the temperature report. We look at my chart together and he asks me questions about how my body works. It’s endearing beyond belief. He blows off my wonderment at his interest by saying he’s got a vested interest, but I’ve had other partners who had a vested interest and wouldn’t have really cared to know the ins and outs of my beautiful cycle of renewal (thanks to Steve for that phrase).

The stars thus aligned, I printed off a chart and bought myself a basal thermometer 6 weeks ago.

It’s pink because it’s for the ladies.

Every morning, my alarm goes off at 6 am. I almost wake up, paw around for my thermometer, stick it in my mouth and hit the on button. It beeps once. I clamp my jaw shut and fall back asleep until it beeps belligerently. I take the thermometer out, turn on the light, check the numbers and scribble them down on the back of the chart, which is tri-folded and placed under the pen, just so, on my night table. I turn the light off and fall back asleep for an hour or so.

Through the day, I wash my hands before I go into the stall, put my fingers up my cunt and see what the fluid around my cervix is like. I decide how the fluid should be classified and make a mental note. At the same time, I check how high my cervix is and how soft it is. I’m still trying to figure out what feeling is equal to SHOW (soft high open wet) which means DANGER! FERTILITY!

FAM also involves charts, which I like.

But in the end, this is what has converted me: even after only a month, I’m starting to get a better handle on how my body works. I look forward to learning what my temperature pattern is. Checking my fluids 3x per day keeps me in touch with my vag instead of ignoring it unless it's feeling really good or really bad.

I think I may take to FAM the way I took to the Wahl. I may be an FAM convert the way that I’m a yoga convert.



Resources:
Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood Ottawa (call them for info, they're lovely)
Canadian Federation of Sexual Health
Fertility UK
Justisse
sexualityandu.ca**


*One, this is only an issue when I find someone longer term. Condoms and dams go without saying for people with whom I'm only spending a few hours. Two, what follows below is only what’s right for me. Women have the right to choose the birth control that works best for them. And they have the right to base that decision on having access to complete information about every type of contraception before they make that decision.

**This site is good for straight up STI and contraceptive info, but DO NOT read it for info on FAM. They only talk about “Natural Family Planning,” which is close but not the same, and while the pill is presented as 99% effective, NFP is presented as 2% ineffective. Seems to be the only one where the smaller number is the number given. How many people are going to gloss that and think, Wow, only two percent? What are those hippies thinking? As well, the only link the website provides is to a group called Serena that has “teacher-couples” (hyphenated, I kid you not) and seems geared oppressively towards straight people and states that “The respect for individuals and for human life from conception is central to our philosophy.” Read: anti-choice. I’m not sure I would get along so well with them.

Fertility Awareness Method, Part 1

As far as orgasms go, I was a pretty late bloomer. When my first one hit, I'd been having sex of various sorts for years, thinking I was having orgasms. I mean, I was having fun, right? My body felt good, right? During sex, I'd go pretty deep into myself, getting lost in the sensations, kind of trancing out. So when my high-school friends asked "Does he make you come, like, every time?" I said, "Well, not *every* time."

I had no idea what I was talking about.

See, I am a hard-wired girl. So it's not that I hadn't had an orgasm with a partner. It's that I hadn't had an orgasm. Not for lack of exploration, either. My earliest masturbation memory is from about 3 years old. There's a bit of a gap in terms of memory, but then I remember it being a pretty regular part of my life from about 10 on. It felt really good. Having sex as a teenager felt that good too. Different good, but good good.

When I realized I hadn't had an orgasm, I was 20. My ex-nasty had a waterbed, which for sleeping was far more comfortable than I'd expected and for sex was pretty interesting. Changing positions is much more fluid on a wobbly mattress. Took me a while to get used to regular ones again.

But anyway. We were on the waterbed and doing stuff we normally did. It was feeling good and fun, like normal good and fun. And then I got this other feeling, like a pretty far-away sound and maybe that's the 6 o'clock train. But maybe not, because it's never sounded quite like that before, but oh, who knows, maybe with the fog and the wind. You won't be surprised to find out that it got louder and closer and louder and certainly, without doubt or hesitation, I can tell you it was the 6 o'clock train rushing through my clit and up my spine.

Holy fuck, I thought, and probably yelled. Right, this is what people have been talking about. A boy managed what I hadn't been able to in all those hours with my hands down my pants.

I would love to be able to say that everything was easy from there, and that I started coming all the time and developed a whole new and loving relationship with my body.

I did not. And I did not.

Over the next few years I had a few random orgasms. They always snuck up on me. And the x-n grew resentful of me trying. So I gave up.

It is probably not a coincidence that I got the fucker out of my life not long after I bought myself a vibrator.

My first vibrator was an expensive, battery-operated piece of crap. But I managed to figure out how to get myself off with it a few times in the month before it broke. When it gave up the ghost, I was living in Toronto where a feminist sex-store called Good For Her had just openend up. I went there instead of the swooshy Yorkville place I'd gotten the other model. GFH had posted a sign, one I can still picture, about the differences between battery operated and electric vibrators. I spent about $10 more than I had on the shitty battery operated one and came home with an electric one: the Wahl Warm'n'Gentle. I still have it today, 9 years later.

To say that it changed my life is an understatement. From the first time I used it, I was able to consistently give myself strong orgasms. That is a kind of power I do not take lightly and I do not take for granted. Being able to have an orgasm whenever you want? Not having to depend on a fuckwit for your own pleasure?

I was 23 years old, and it felt like someone had just taken me to the best grown-up candy store ever.

Again, I'd love to say that it was all orgasms all the time after that. That every time I had sex, I came with the same kind of force provided by the Wahl. But that wasn't the case. It has been an uphill battle. My body has been a confusing and fraught territory for me, with a lot of emotional wreckage piling up on various shores. Its needs have seemed tempestuous and strange, even to me. I was too afraid to let myself go in front of people, for fear of another evisceration.

It's only in the past year that I've dealt with enough of the wreckage, learned enough about my body and gotten up enough confidence to vocalize what I need in order to come. This has happened partially through masturbation, and partially through talking a lot about sex to a lot of people. And partially through finding people who genuinely want me to feel good while we’re fooling around.

Another turning point was a conversation with a lover I had for a couple years in between my x-n and Mike. Nile and I hooked up in Toronto about a month before I left for Halifax. It was a stellar end to My Year of No Action. After I left, we talked a lot on the phone and through email. I’d see him when I went back to TO, and he came to visit me once in Halifax. With the passion of lovers who had been separated for 5 months, he walked into my apartment, pushed me onto the couch and we were off. Later, he mentioned one part in particular being hot.

"Really?" I said. "I was actually feeling a little embarrassed about that. I kind of lost it."

"Uh, yeah," he replied. "You did. That was the part that was hot."

"Funny. B always felt like I was using him when I got like that."

"Yeah. You were. That was the part that was hot."

"Really?"

"Yeah. What kind of a jackass doesn't like it when the girl he's fucking loses her mind fucking him? That's just bullshit."

"Really."

For years, when I was with someone and started to feel weird about starting to lose myself, I would remember that. Bullshit, I'd think, and go under. It took a while, but it became habit, and now, oh wow. I don’t have to think it, it just comes natural. Like it’s my right to get lost and like I am strong enough to haul myself back.

*

Okay, that’s it for now. I have a Special Project to work on and it’s getting late. There’s a whole other part to this that I’ll post tomorrow or Monday.