Why (and how) I quit hormonal birth control forever
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Mid-2018 I decided I wanted to quit hormonal birth control. Since I had started it about four years prior, I felt like I had been moody and anxious and generally just didn’t feel like myself. For a long time I attributed these changes to life circumstances—starting my first job, moving to a new city, working long hours, flying multiple times a week for work, having a long-distance boyfriend and then fiancé, planning a wedding, then getting married, looking for a new job, learning a new job, moving across the country… the list was endless. But after four years of making excuses, I wanted to take my reproductive health into my own hands. Only, I didn’t know where to start.
If you’re like me, and probably at least 95% of other American women, you’ve never really been educated on your reproductive and hormonal health. Many of us received sex-education in school, others of us were lucky enough to have parents who gave us the time and resources to understand our bodies a little more thoroughly. But even the most fortunately-educated among us still rarely have a good grasp of women’s health. Sadly, like many other women, I was originally put on a hormonal birth control pill because I had painful periods. To 21-year-old me, this seemed great. Take a tiny pill every morning, and painful and unpredictable periods would be a thing of the past. I had no information about the effect of synthetic hormones on the body or what might actually be causing my pain. Doesn’t it sound crazy to mask symptoms and ignore a potential underlying problem? Unfortunately this is exactly what hormonal birth control does.
So in 2018, I was ready to break this cycle. I’d started to recognize the effect that hormonal birth control was having on my body, and while I didn’t fully understand why or what needed to change, I knew that something had to. I remembered a fellow military spouse I met when our husbands were in flight school together talking about naturally managing her cycles, and while it seemed a little hippie to me at the time, she was the only woman I knew who had taken the time to educate herself on her reproductive health. I reached out to her, and she recommended the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility.
To be completely honest, I started this journey as an extreme skeptic. All my doctors had been completely comfortable with me taking hormonal birth control, so it couldn’t actually be that bad for me, right? And you can only track your cycles if you’re super regular. And even if you are regular, no cycle tracking is foolproof, so you’re just asking for an “oops” baby, right? And if hormonal birth control made my periods manageable, then it must be fixing any problems I had. But, I knew that I at least needed a little bit more education about my options, so I begrudgingly ordered the book and cracked it open. It took one chapter for me to be fully engrossed as my eyes were opened to the vast expanse of information rarely provided to women about our own bodies. To this day, TCOYF remains my “reproductive Bible” and I recommend it to all my friends who are tired of conventional birth control.
I am not a medical expert, so if you’re interested in learning more about your body, I strongly recommend reading the book yourself. But here are a few facts that convinced me to never go back to conventional birth control:
Conventional birth control, such as the pill or an IUD, does not actually “cure” the problems that cause painful or annoying period symptoms. They just mask them and ultimately can delay treatment of very serious conditions.
Statistically, conventional birth control is no more effective than Fertility Awareness Method (FAM), or tracking your cycles and timing sex around your fertile window, when done correctly. Here’s how you can think about this…
The average hormonal birth control pill claims to be 99% effective at preventing pregnancy; however, these statistics don’t take into account that a woman can only get pregnant a few days a month.
Assuming a woman has a regular cycle of 28 days, and that she has a long, 5-day period of fertile-quality cervical mucus, she can only get pregnant about 18% of the time. So really pregnancy already will be prevented 82% of the time, just because of her fertile window.
This assumes that she has a 100% chance of getting pregnant if she has sex on one of those 5 days, which is just not true! Statistically, even on her most fertile 3 days, she only has at most a 30% chance of getting pregnant. For arguments’ sake, then, let’s assume that she has a 30% chance on 3 days and a 20% chance on two days. This means that without any form of prevention, having sex whenever she wants during a month, she only has about a 4.5% chance to get pregnant. This form of “non-birth control” is 95.5% effective, only 3.5% less than using the pill.
If she uses FAM to be aware of her fertile window and avoids intercourse or uses condoms during it, you can easily see how FAM is just as effective as the pill.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to have regular cycles to do FAM.
FAM is very straightforward and quickly becomes second nature.
We are still learning about long-term health consequences of long-term use of synthetic hormones, i.e. hormonal birth control. While the medical studies are still catching up, anecdotally there is evidence of significant health impacts. While I am not a medical professional, I personally believe that pumping our bodies fully of synthetic hormones for years likely wreaks havoc on us. For myself, I am just not willing to risk the potential impacts.
Now, years later, I can confidently say that getting off birth control and naturally tracking my cycles has been an outstanding decision for my mental and physical health. FAM has worked great for us for both preventing pregnancy and getting pregnant. I am so in-tune to the way my body works, I can always tell if something is even slightly off. Read the book and make your own decision. It might not be the same as mine, and that’s ok! But I urge you to at least take the time to be educated about your own body so that you can make a decision that you are confident in.
You might be thinking, “This all sounds great, but how do I actually do FAM?” Again, I urge you to find a professional resource to educate yourself, such as TCOYF like I did, or even a class (just google it and you’ll find a lot of options). I do want to share how it has worked for me, though, because I know hearing someone else’s experience can make it a little less daunting.
The primary fertility indicators I focus on are:
Basal body temperature (BBT)
I take my oral temperature every morning when I first wake up (I use this thermometer). While it’s ideal to take your temperature at the same time every morning, it’s most important to take it after your longest stretch of sleep. So if I wake early, I’ll take it then, even if it’s a couple hours earlier than usual. You should see an increase in your BBT after ovulation–typically within the first 12 hours, but definitely within 3 days. Note that the increase might be small–even around just 0.3 degrees F, but it should be a noticeable shift if you’re charting it. It should then remain elevated until your period starts or throughout pregnancy. Keep in mind that BBT doesn’t increase until after ovulation, so it is not a good predictor of when to avoid sex (or have sex, if you’re wanting to get pregnant); it’s just a good indicator that ovulation has indeed occurred. There are a number of reasons your temperature may not shift, such as an anovulatory cycle (cycle when you don’t ovulate), a progesterone deficiency, or a thyroid imbalance, so if you don’t notice a shift for a couple cycles it’s important to meet with a medical professional, ideally one well-versed in women’s health who will actually get to the bottom of the issue.Cervical mucus
Leading up to ovulation, a rise in estrogen causes an increase in cervical mucus, which shows up as vaginal discharge. Once this starts you’re considered to be in your fertile window. Your first reaction might be “ewww gross!,” But society has just trained us to think that this (and honestly, most female body processes) are disgusting. In reality, it is so cool. The vaginal canal is a relatively hostile environment for sperm. Cervical mucus protects and actually nourishes sperm as they make their way to the egg released during ovulation. In fact, in the presence of cervical mucus, sperm can actually survive for up to 5-6 days–meaning you could get pregnant by having sex 4-5 days before you ovulate. For most women, cervical mucus increases in the few days leading up to ovulation, peaking with what many refer to as “egg white cervical mucus” because of its consistency. Once you see this, you know ovulation is near.
In addition, here are a few tips when you’re first starting out:
Tracking apps are great, but I also liked tracking on paper at first so I could have a longer view of my cycles side by side. I now use the Premom app (just the free version), but I used the paper charts available at TCOYF.com when I was first learning.
Use condoms for the first few months if you really don’t want to get pregnant, while you learn about your cycles and tracking. Keep in mind that most condoms have a lot of toxic chemicals. I have heard good things about the Lola brand.
You can use ovulation test strips to be extra careful if you don’t want to get pregnant, or to be extra proactive if you do. I use the Easy@Home strips in conjunction with the Premom app.
Obviously tracking your cycles and being in-tune with your body is helpful both when trying to prevent pregnancy and when trying to conceive. Knowing your fertile window serves both purposes quite well! If you are considering trying to conceive, I encourage you to check out the TTC blog for more information.