Project 365 Day 14 + Biology

So, this post might be a little too strong for some readers. Not in a "bad" sort of way, but in a "too much information" kind of way. It is a subject near and dear to my heart and something that I am quite passionate about, for many reasons.

I read a lot on the internet. I read several message boards some geared towards women, some geared towards me, and some geared towards mothers. One thing that I found astounding is how few people have even the slightest clue about fertility or how the female reproductive system works.

I am not quite sure why so little seems to be known about it but I can say, until I became pregnant, I didn't really have much of a clue either. I had never really been taught how babies were made aside from the normal "sperm +egg = baby".

When I got pregnant I stumbled upon information. I became curious not only about HOW I got pregnant but how birth control was suppose to work. It had never occurred to me to find out how hormonal birth control was suppose to work. What I found was interesting and caused me to look deeper into fertility as a whole.

Both of my children were surprises and what struck me, especially with my son, was how people can try for years and be unable to become pregnant but I could be taking measures to prevent pregnancy and have it fail on me.

What I learned, not until 21 years old, was that birth control works by convincing your body that you are already pregnant so there is no need for it to release another egg. In the simplest terms, hormonal birth control works, primarily, by preventing ovulation.

For some women, it seems, these hormones aren't strong enough and the body doesn't believe that it is pregnant, so it releases an egg anyway. The secondary ways hormonal birth control are by thickening the mucous at the cervix (entrance to the reproductive tract) to make it hostile to sperm and by causing the lining of the uterus to thin so that it is hostile to a fertilized egg. Sometimes, again, the hormones aren't high enough to prevent these things either and a woman becomes pregnant despite the all of these ways that the hormones try to prevent it. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen.

From here I started to wonder how the female reproductive system actually works, so I started doing some research and I found some things that I thought to be shocking. I learned that in an entire cycle, there are only about seven or eight days that a woman is capable of becoming pregnant. Seven or eight. It makes all those unplanned pregnancies even more crazy doesn't it? Sperm can only really live in a woman for five days, some sources say up to six but that is stretching it. The egg only lives for 24 hours. So the seven or eight days a woman can get pregnant are the six days before ovulation, ovulation day, and the one day after ovulation.

The problem of course is that nature is nature. The purpose of existing, from a biological standpoint, is to reproduce and spread your genetics to another generation. This is something that happens beyond a conscious level, even people don't want children, but aren't on birth control, will usually see an increase in sex drive in the days leading up to ovulation, sometimes to a level that it can cause them to forget precautions they would otherwise normally take.

I read this book, Taking Charge of You Fertility. This book was a total eye opener and banished many of the myths that seem to surround female cycles. Not every woman has a 28 day cycle. Not every woman ovulates on day 14 of her cycle. This is what a perfectly normal cycle can look like.




Ovulation here didn't even happen until day 22 of the cycle. It is obvious by the thermal shift that happens after that day. The only normal "constant" from cycle to cycle is how many days between ovulation and the start of the menses, the day of ovulation can (and often does) change from one cycle to the next. This is why birth control like the "rhythm method" can be so ineffective.

I can't advocate reading Taking Charge of Your Fertility enough, I have a copy if anyone local wants to borrow it as well. It covers so much more than I could ever talk about in a blog post. The long and short of it, is that knowing your body and how it works can be incredibly empowering.

Women that track their fertility can know exactly when they can and can't get pregnant. This can work for both birth control (if strictly following the rules in the book) or as a way to become pregnant if trying. A woman that tracks her fertility is also not usually surprised by when her period shows up as noted above, there is usually a drop in temperature before the menses for that cycle begins.

Even if you continue to stay on hormonal birth control, which works wonderfully for some women (but as I learned twice, not for me), it is helpful to know how the reproductive cycle works, for both men and women.

If you have any questions or want to know more feel free to ask and I can either point you in the direction to gain that knowledge or share with you what I have learned in my journey.