QuestionQUESTION: My husband and I are using FAM to avoid pregnancy. According to the rules of Fam, your peak day is the wettest quality cervical fluid. Also according to the rules your cover line should be drawn after your waking temp rises two tenths degrees or more. These two things have happened in my cycle, but I never got the really wet drippy cf (which I usually do)and my temp only rose exactly two tenths degrees (it usually jumps five tenths or so). I'm wondering if I'm experiencing delayed ovulation and should therefore wait to start counting days after my peak day until I have the usual signs..or wait to have sex until my cycle is over?? I'm on day 18, and my cycles are 28-31 days long. Thanks for your reply.
ANSWER: Certainly you should be conservative if you have a really strong reason not to get pregnant at this time. I don't think you have to avoid intercourse entirely but over the next few days I'm sure you will have concurring signs to indicate whether ovulation was delayed or perhaps you are having an anovulator cycle.
If that is the case, your mucus and temperature signs will probably go back to pre-ovulation patterns and that will be obvious to you as you are charting those signs.
Depending on your age and health, you could be experiencing a missed period due to normal aging, too. Just with Calendar Charting, you should be free to engage in sexual activity after 3 more days.
The ambiguity around this description is why we call it the "ARt of Natural Family Planning" and why we need the historical record and careful patient appraisal of the chart and our situation each month. I hope this helps. NFP or FAM helps one grow in patience and acceptance of life's wandering paths.
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QUESTION: I am 35...if I'm having a cycle without ovulation/ missed period due to age, what exactly is my course of action? Let's say my signs are for the next three days no wet cf and temps around the same as they have been or lower...am I "safe" after that? Do I treat the rest of the cycle as pre-ovulatory (watching carefully for cf etc.)? Is that what you meant by "free to engage in sexual activity after three more days"? Just want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly. Thanks so much.
AnswerIf your signs are going back to the 'non-fertile' type, you could decide that it's OK to have sexual intercourse. I can't say for you what level of "wanting to avoid getting pregnant" you are at, compared with your need/desire for sex. If your desire to avoid pregnancy is a lot higher than your desire for sex, you should probably avoid sex until you are certain about what is going on.
If you are not so highly concerned about avoiding pregnancy and higher on desire for sex, you could take the risk that getting pregnant is a possibility. I don't think it is a good possibility, but I'm not you and I'm not going to have to live with the consequences of this decision.
It would really depend on how many cycles you've been charting. FAM and NFP practitioners develop more confidence in their decision making the longer they have charted their cycles. Once you see various patterns and the final results of those patterns, you will know what to do.
Hopefully, the next 2-3 days will give you a better indication of what's going on. If mucus dries up, you are probably infertile. If your temperatures don't go .4 degrees above the former (pre-ovulatory) temperatures, then you probably didn't ovulate. NFP uses .4 degrees rise and you mentioned that you usually have a .5 degree rise. That's important information for you. Notice the patterns like that and make your best decision. You'll do fine.
