Fertility Awareness Method or FAM is a method of birth control where a woman or couple keeps track of all of her fertility signs and using another form of birth control when the woman is fertile. This method is also used for women who desire pregnancy.
FAM is not the calendar method, which assumes ahat all women have 28 day cycles and ovulate on the 14th day. Women have a lot of variants in the menstrual cycle and they have learned nothing about their own fertility by using the calendar method without additionally investigating their own fertility signals.
FAM is very similar to natural family planning. The difference is that natural family planning users advocate abstinence during fertile times usually because of religious reasons. In one way, FAM can be thought of as the sexually liberated form of natural family planning.
Note: A woman who is on a birth control pill or any other hormone based birth control method will not notice any fertility signals.
A fertile woman will have a rise in temperature after she ovulates due to the release of hormones when the female egg cell is disintegrating. The basal body temperature must be taken first thing in the morning. This rise in temperature occurs if the egg cell is fertilized or not. If the egg is fertilized, the fertile egg will eventually send the signal for the body to keep the temperature high which is necessary to stay pregnant. Therefore, a rise in temperature when you first wake up means you are past your fertile stage. However, fertility counselors suggest waiting three days of consistant temperature rising before using this as a form of birth control. If you maintain high temperatures without starting menstration, it is likely that you are pregnant. The disadvantage of temperature charting is that some women have sporadic temperatures, women who work the night shift are disadvantaged, and the temperature method does not help for the time between your menstration and ovulation. Other benefits include being able to indicate thyroid problems from consistantly lower temperatures, being able to tell the difference between menstration and ovulation bleeding which happens for some women (women who may claim that they got pregnent during menstruation), and being able to find out if the time between ovulation and menstration is too short for you to support a pregnance without outside medical help.
By using 1-3 of the methods above a woman can tell which days she needs to use additional protection, like a barrier method, or she may choose to abstain from intercourse entirely and possible use other methods of sexual stimulation that avoids male and female genital contact.
FAM does not protect against sexually transmitted diseases. Condoms should always be used unless both partners have been previously tested for disease and are both committed to each other with no other partners. Temperature Charting, Basal Body Temperature
Cervical fluid charting
This method is to keep track of cervical fluid everyday. When ovulation starts to occur, the cervical fluid will go from dry or sticky to creamy like a lotion and finally become like egg white. Note that the egg white mucous is much thicker than a woman's normal lubricating fluid. A woman is most fertile during the egg white phase. Sperm can only survive in the vagina for more than a few hours if the egg white mucous is available for the sperm to survive in. However, it is good idea to use other methods of birth control when a woman notices the lotion like fluid. Women are only fertile for a few days out of each cycle unlike the man who is always fertile. Unfortunately, most birth control is left up to the woman to take care of.Cervical position
With a clean finger, a woman can tell how fertile she is by feeling her cervix. When a woman is not fertile, the cervix feels like a hard little knob (like the tip of your nose) with a very small opening on it. The cervix will be low during unfertile times. As the woman's body prepares for ovulation, the cervix rises, becomes softer, and the hole opens. Sometimes it rises so high it is difficult to find. After ovulation passes, the cervix lowers and closes up again. It is best to feel your cervix when you are not sexually stimulated. The cervix tends to change shape during sexual stimulation.
