1 ~ NFP deepens your relationship with your partner
With so many other methods of contraception, we organise and action it alone without any involvement from our partners. NFP is inherently different because our partner also needs to understand it. Whether as a couple you are looking to achieve or prevent pregnancy, it is in his best interest to understand when you are fertile and infertile. One of the huge benefits of NFP is that it requires his interest and education in our fertility cycle.
The success of NFP does ultimately depend on how invested and knowledgeable our partner is in it. If you are using the practice as a form of contraception, he will need to know and respect your fertile phase in a whole new way. If you are using the practice to conceive, you will be able to work together to understand when your highly fertile window arrives and focus your efforts together on that time. Either way, he naturally becomes more of an equal partner when it comes to making choices about your fertility. It no longer falls solely on you and over time, fertility becomes a shared responsibility.
Over time, this shared fertility responsibility builds a solid foundation of trust and respect between partners. It cultivates a feeling of being a team when it comes to decisions around your bodies and your life going forward.
The other incredible benefit NFP brings is the daily communication it centres around our cycle. It is radical to be talking about our menstrual cycle in our homes because it’s still pretty taboo in our culture and is largely invisible in our key relationships and everyday life.
Any sort of menstrual cycle awareness practice, where you know where you are in your cycle each day and therefore understand what you are experiencing in yourself as a result, has a huge impact on how well we are able to look after ourselves each day. We then understand that we are cyclical with a far longer hormone cycle than the 24 hour male hormone cycle (which by the way, the culture is geared towards).
When we understand the innate, biological differences between us it makes relating on a daily basis far easier. When your partner understands this too, it transforms the way he can connect and relate to you each day of your cycle for the better. With NFP in place, you can connect and relate with the realities of your cycle and the responsibility of your shared fertility choices firmly centred in the relationship.
2 ~ Develops and deepens your connection with your body
NFP shifts our daily focus towards our cycle and our body. First thing in the morning, we take our temperature and write on our chart. Then throughout the day we look for our fertility signs at our vulva and cervix. Looking for and recording our signs of fertility each day is a daily ritual of giving our attention back to our body. Over time this deepens and develops a connection to our cycle and our body
We live in a culture that values our mind, our ability to think and be productive so this daily ritual focusing on our body has a profound effect on how connected we feel to ourselves. It helps get us out of our head and into our innate biology. The choice to pay attention to our body through tracking our cycle everyday is a step back to ourselves.
3 ~ Builds menstrual awareness and fertility empowerment
Menstrual cycle awareness is built into NFP because as we chart, we know exactly which day of our cycle we are on all of the time. Looking for signs of fertility each day is a basic form of menstrual awareness but we can choose to take this further by tracking things like our mood, our sleep, our willingness to do things etc on our charts. By doing this we can gather a lot of information about ourselves throughout our hormone cycle to help us know what we need at each menstrual phase. Menstrual cycle awareness is life changing for most women and menstruators because our hormones work in a distinct repeating pattern that we can really rely on as a map through our fertile life.
Fertility empowerment means knowing how fertile we are or not each day and using that information to make empowered and informed decisions that are right for us regarding our fertility. When it comes to fertility, knowledge is power and I want all women and menstruators to have fertility empowerment. Charting our fertility using NFP gives this to us.
4 ~ Maintains and enhances healthy ovulation with no side effects from hormonal contraception
Imagine a life free of hormonal contraception and all it brings? Well with NFP it is totally possible!
The hormones present in hormonal contraception such as the pill, the coil, injection or implant aren’t the same as the hormones the body naturally produces. These are synthetic look-alikes that are designed to trick the brain in order to suppress the HPO axis (the delicate axis of communication between the hypothalamus, pituitary gland and ovaries) and disrupt our natural fertility cycle. The job of these synthetic hormones is to prevent pregnancy either by preventing ovulation entirely or to prevent an egg from implanting in the lining of the womb.
Any bleeding you experience on hormonal contraception isn’t a true bleed and is instead known as ‘breakthrough bleeding’ because it is bleeding without ovulation. The time it takes for your natural cycle to return after coming off hormonal contraception varies depending on your age and how long you were taking it for. Statistics tell us that around half of us will have our cycle return immediately but for the rest of us it can take up to a year for it to return fully.
5 ~ Our menstrual cycle improves our overall health
The dominant narrative is that we don’t need to ovulate unless we need to make a baby but I beg to differ!
Why is it important for our health that we ovulate naturally?
Regular ovulation as part of a natural hormone cycle is how we produce and release the hormones oestrogen and progesterone into our bodies. These sex hormones have many other benefits to our health in addition to helping us make a baby. They are particularly helpful for keeping our brain, cardiovascular system, muscles and bones healthy. Oestrogen is an anabolic hormone which means that it also helps us with our metabolic pathways so is important for building muscle and regulating energy levels.
Why is it important for the world that we ovulate?
When we ovulate we unlock the superpowers of expression, aligned productivity and community. The world need us in these superpowers!
How do you think men would respond if we offered them a hormonal contraception to suppress testosterone production? Yeah, enough said!
6 ~ You can become totally self reliant for your contraception needs and free from the medical system and pharmaceutical companies
The practice of NFP allows us to have an effective method of contraception that we manage ourselves from our own homes. All you need is your body, a paper chart, a thermometer and a pen. No more medical professionals advising us on what they think we need, no more doctors appointments or drugs required! We can become entirely self-sufficient with our contraception.
7 ~ Cultivates presence and daily ritual
Let’s face it, modern life is often too fast paced for our body. There is a drug, an app and a fast paced solution for everything. One of the things I absolutely love about NFP paper charting is how it slows me down and gives me something repetitive to do each day.
I like to put my chart somewhere visible and special so that it becomes a daily ritual for me to go to it to fill it in. I believe modern humans need as much ritual as we can get to slow our pace and bring more presence to our daily routine.
Over time, charting with NFP does become a daily ritual which is why I intentionally call it a ‘practice’, rather than a ‘method’. It slows us down to observe what’s happening with our cycle. It gets us noticing things about our body and ourselves that we wouldn’t otherwise notice.
8 ~ Deepens your connection to the wider lunar and natural cycles we are intimately connected to as menstruators
I started making my first menstrual cycle charts back in 2016 when I realised that my housemate and I were bleeding together just after each full moon.
Have you ever noticed your cycle aligning to the moon?
The waters of our womb are influenced by lunar cycles in the same way the tides of the ocean are. Not everyone has a 28-30 day cycle of course. Healthy regular cycles can vary between 23 and 35 days but can still follow their own lunar pattern.
Charting our cycle alongside the phases of the moon can be total magic. It reminds us that our body is connected to the larger natural cycles in the world we’re a part of. It can be a huge comfort and cultivate a sense of ancient belonging to know that we are so in tune with the moon.
It is important for us to do what feels right for our body and our individual needs.
Remember that it’s always ok to ask to help and it’s always ok to ask for more information before making a decision about what is best for you.
Take your time to explore the contraceptive options that are available for you with your partner(s) and your medical provider if appropriate. You can reach out to talk to me about this too.
This process will support you to feel empowered on your fertility journey and give you the information and solutions that are best for your individual needs.