Taking Charge of Your Fertility

I was so surprise about how little I knew about my body before reading TCOYF. I'm on my 3rd pregnancy now and conceived on the first try. When I first read the book I followed all the steps; temps, charting, cervical fluid, etc. It took 2 months to get pregnant the first time. Now I know my body so well, that I was able to get pregnant the first month by just watching my cervical fluid.
It's a great book that I recommend to anyone who is trying to conceive or not to. My husband and I use the natural family planning method for birth control also. We are clearly fertile, but haven't had any surprises.
Good luck.

1 mom found this helpful

I have never read the book, but I have confidence that I know my own body well enough (in comparison to the book). I know exactly when I am ovulating, when my period is coming, etc. My first child took me 9 months to get pregnant and I didn't understand why I wasn't getting pregnant. Then I did start reading a ton on the internet about fertility and conceiving and starting paying attention more to my body. With my second and third child literally my husband and I had sex 1 time after we decided we were going to try for another baby and got pregnant both times. With my second I thought oh that was just luck, but with my 3rd I paid attention to my body and again only had sex 1 time and was pregnant due to the 1 time of having sex. So, with that, I firmly believe if you listen to your body you can figure out the best time to conceive.

I would recommend reading the book and also read about natural family planning (which my husband and I believe in - instead of using birth control).

Good Luck!!

1 mom found this helpful

I read it and it worked for me. I used the first month to get used to the method. The second month I was away during my fertile period, and the third month I got pregnant. I did also have an unplanned pregnancy using the method; but that's a failure of mine. What I mean is, there are very clear rules to follow for preventing pregnancy and I did not follow them. People who don't understand this method will tell you it is ineffective. As you read the book, you will see that it makes sense scientifically. The method can't really cite stats for effectiveness, because it is only as effective as your willingness to follow the rules. If you follow the rules, it works very well.

Love this book and FAM method! It is not difficult at all to get used to. While it may take a couple of cycles to really feel comfortable with what you are doing and confident enough with your interpretation of what's going on, it really is so simple that it just becomes second nature. I so much prefer it to any of the types of birth control I've used in the past. And after having my first three children conceived on birth control (different types, and yes I was using it correctly! lol), I can say that FAM is absolutely more effective when practiced correctly!!

Another big benefit is that knowing your body so well really helps if you do run into problems. It's amazing how much your body can tell you just by changes in cycles. With my last two babies it was taking a while to conceive, but by the time I contacted my dr about it I had months of charts to back up what I was sure my issues were (I was correct), which saved me a lot of test taking to diagnosis what "might be" wrong, and the typical dr response of "let's try and track the next few cycles and see how those are going". It saved a lot of the time that is typically wasted just doing analysis.

I started charting in october. By december- i was pregnant. it wasnt difficult at all. you will catch on quickly.

I've read parts of it, as well as a lot of other things. Just held a friend's baby recently after she read it. She had been having lots of trouble prior to that. It's pretty basic stuff. Not so sure for preventing, though. I have two friends who tried for that and both have unplanned babies. Both chose to do something else for that. GL!

My 2 month old son proves that it's easy to get the hang of charting, and yes, it's effective. There's a great website online that is very helpful with charting as well - www.fertilityfriend.com I loved the book b/c my cycles have always been irregular and varied in length, and b/w the temps, egg-white cervical mucus, and ovulation predictor kits, I could pinpoint when I was going to ovulate and when I was due to get a period. The one thing I would suggest if you're charting to get pregnant is to definitely get a digital basal body temperature thermometer (they have them at Walgreens, Target, Walmart, etc) and do the baby dance (aka timed intercourse) the day before you ovulate, the day after, and perhaps for 2 days after as well. More is more. Good luck!

I tried it and really liked it. We actually had issues getting pregnant with it, not becuase of the book, but because of other issues we didn't know we had at the time. However, because we followed that book and what not I was able to tell the doctor exactly what was happening everymonth we tried. That helped a lot, and with doctor imput after seeing patterns from the book, we were able to get pregnant! Good luck!

I read and followed the book to success. We had tried to conceive for six months before using the book and then got pregnant within one or two months using the method. It really isn't that hard to take your temp in the morning, though you do need to get the right thermometer (I found mine at Walgreens). I knew before I took the pregnancy test that I was pregnant just by following my temperature chart.

I was skeptical before using it but I think that it has its merits and it worked for us.

Read the book and suggest to any and all women I know even those who aren't interested in pregnancy.
It was so easy to get the hang of and that included taking temps every morning. I normally had my husband barely wake me at the same time every morning cause he was already up and he would hand me the thermometer. I took my temp and then went back to sleep. I had the type that stores the last temp taken and when I actually got out of bed later I would write it down.
With my second son I knew the exact weekend I got pregnant with him. My chart even showed I was pregnant before a urine test did. When I went in for a blood test the nurse said it would be too soon. I told her no and to just please run the test. Low and behold I was right and was barely 2 weeks pregnant.

It's great! I bought it when we were trying to get pregnant with my youngest child. It took a bit to get the hang of but it ended up being easy. One thing I never did was take my temp. I know, if I were really serious I would have, but it was just not easy for me to remember.

I've never used it instead of birth control for preventing pregnancy, though. I'm interested to hear from others who have! I've thought about using it for contraception recently.

I used it in conjunction with www.fertilityfriend.com to chart BBT and notate cervical mucus. Within 4 months I was pregnant. The month I got pregnant, I was on day 46 of a cycle. Understanding how the menstrual cycle works and how it is unique for every woman can definitely assist you!