I’m considering going off of the Pill, and while I know the rhythm method is far from infallible, I was talking to a friend who said we’d have to use protection every single time we have sex, because theoretically a woman can get pregnant any day of the month.
True? I thought there was a window of 3-4 days, during ovulation, which is the only time a woman can conceive.
What’s the Straight Dope?
Thanks,
S.
How do you know when you’re ovulating? E-mail announcement? Trumpets blaring? A hand-delivered invitation to make a baby?
What I’m trying to say here, is that pin-pointing ovulation is almost impossible. Further, I believe that using the “rhythm method” has about the same pregnancy rate as using nothing at all - 80/100 women will be pregnant by the end of a year.
YMMV. However, unless the idea of having a bambino in the next 9 months to a year is particularly appealing, use protection other than rhythm.
That’s basically true, but the timing of that window isn’t always consistent. It is supposed to be about 12-16 days from the woman’s period but a number of factors can shift it around. Stress, weight loss, having recently ended use of the Pill, etc., can all affect when ovulation occurs.
It is possible to know within about 24 hours of when a woman ovulates using basal body temperature, cervical mucus, and cervix changes. If you want to know how, read “Taking Charge of Your Fertility” by Toni Weschler.
A woman should be considered fertile as long as she has fertile quality mucus, which can be as much as 5 days per cycle if she is a good producer, but averages more like 3 days. The typical woman ovulates on the 14th day after the onset of her last period, so days 11, 12, 13, and 14 would be the days to avoid unprotected sex. But I would never assume typical timing - there are huge variations in what is normal for any given woman.
IIRC, sperm can also live for several days, swimming around and having a good old time until an egg shows up. So even if you were able to detect ovulation with pinpoint accuracy, you still have a risk of pregnancy.
They can only do that if they have fertile quality mucus to swim in. The normal vaginal conditions without it are too caustic and they die. If you know how to read your mucus, you know when it is safe.
I may be a total freak, but I can tell when I’m ovulating; my ovary is sore for a couple days. (I use the ring for birth control, fwiw.)
And even condoms aren´t foolproof, due to quantum tunnelling. All the more scary as sperms can get to be as large as 60 feet! linky linky Just think about having one of those in contact with your delicate bits.
Clearly the only reasonable option is abstinance. If I hear one more story about a woman exploded by sudden onset of monster sperm, well, I think I might cry…
link supporting me. Rather TMI as it describes in detail the different kinds of mucus, so be warned.
Don’t confuse the “Rhythm Method” with “Natural Family Planning”. Rhythm Method assumes a cycle length of 28 days with the window of 3 to 4 days of fertility appearing on day 14. As gigi stated, that window is NOT consistent with each woman’s cycle. It could arrive on day 13 of one cycle and appear on day 20 the next. Also a woman’s cycle is never consistant. One cycle may be 28 days, but another could be as long as 38 or 40 days.
Don’t forget about the viability of sperm either (Which if I remember correctly was up to 6 days). When you factor that into the picture, you are really looking at a fertility window of more like 10 days or so.
Natural Family Planning is the method you want to research and learn about. It uses several physiological indicators to help you determine whether or not the woman’s body is in a fertile state. Those indicators are basal body temperature, presence and consistancy of cervical mucous, and position of the cervix. Looking at the changes in each of these indicators indicates when during the cycle that one is in that “fertility” window. When used properly, it will give you a 98% success rate for avoiding pregnancy (Comperable to using Condoms or the Pill).
According to this resource that has a great Palm Pilot program for keeping track of these changes “Taking Charge of Your Fertility” by Toni Weschler (1995, New York: HarperCollins) is the hands down best book for learning about this method. It also lists other good online resources* for learning NFP, including this site which has an online crash course for getting started.
So how is it that I, a GUY, would know so much about this method of birth control? My wife and I have been practicing it for over 10 years. We have 4 children and don’t plan on having any more and have been quite succesfull in that regard. I can say with absolute certainty that it does work.
*Some of these resources have a bit of a religious bent to them (Mainly because NFP is the only birth control method that fits in with the doctrine), but still have some great information about using NFP, so PLEASE don’t pass them up because they tend to be a little preachy.
One more link I found that sums up NFP very well and discusses the pros as well as the cons:
http://www.ivillage.co.uk/pregnancyandbaby/fertility/contraception/articles/0,,4_174551,00.html
Not to pick on you, but I doubt you can tell when you’re ovulating, since the NuvaRing inhibits ovulation.
Now, not to hijack or anything, but why would that be acceptable by the church? I thought they were 100% against birth control.
Sorry, I guess my OP wasn’t very clear.
I do know that ovulation doesn’t come & go like clockwork, but what my friend is saying is that it is possible to conceive ANY day of the month, even when a woman is menstruating.
I say it’s bullshit.
(I’m going off the pill because my body doesn’t like it anymore, after 15 years of being on it off & on, and while pregnancy right now would be fine, it would be more ideal in about 6 months or so, so we would probably use other methods of birth control in the meantime).
Thanks,
S.
It’s hard to disapprove of people not having sex. In fact not having sex is encouraged in many instances, such as when the two parties involved are not married.
I remember hearing long ago that there were some women who would ovulate after orgasm, throwing what would otherwise be their cycle off. Is this just unfounded gossip?
Well, theoretically, they are. The reason I heard (and it’s all unsubstantiated rumor) for all of this goes like so: the Catholic Church, at some point, comes out with the position that The Rhythm Method is acceptable; they feel perfectly safe in doing so, since TRM is also notoriously unreliable. Then, some pretty bright folks go and figure out a way to make it reliable (NFP), but the Catholic Church can’t then speak out against NFP, because they already said such stuff was okay.
No, as far as I know there are many days per cycle when conception cannot occur. The problem with using your period as a predictor, I’ve heard, is that maybe it’s not really your period; maybe it’s spotting that’s sometimes associated with ovulation.
As for me, personally, ever since the doctor took me off the pill almost two years ago, I do use birth control every single time we have sex, because using it is a lot less nerve-wracking than another pregnancy would be. YMMV.
I was informed that my brother was the result of unprotected sex the day after my mother finished her period–supposedly impossible, but apparently not so much so.
She and I come from a long line of women with insanely irregular cycles, which probably had a lot to do with it. Still, it goes to show that you really can get pregnant just about whenever.
For some women, their period and their ovulation dates aren’t correlated in the regular way - someone with a shorter or longer cycle could actually ovulate while they have flow happening.
Also, lots of women get heavy spotting around ovulation that isn’t actually a period and just assume they have a short cycle (if for instance, their cycle wasn’t 28 days, but 35 or 40 - one could be a period, the other could be ovulation, and she would have no idea.)
It’s bullshit.
I third? Forth? Reading “taking control of your fertility”. I did and gave it to my GF to read. It’s an excellent book even if you weren’t using it for fertility control.
See, the thing is, it is possible to get pregnant “while menstrating” because in certain instances you aren’t really having your period. Sometimes hormone levels are such that you don’t ovulate. Instead what happens is ovulation occurs very late in the cycle while you have a “fake” period (I’m recalling all from memory here and I know there’s a better term for it!). The period masks fertile cervical fluid so you can’t tell what’s up. If you really are menstrating then it is indeed impossible to become pregnant because ovulation would have occured 12 days before hand.
Taking waking body temp (spikes after ovulation) and tracking your fluid and cervix (changes just before ovulation) will give you an excellent picture of your ferility. The only real ‘guess’ work is how close to the upcoming ovulation date you want to have sex at. The book plays it safe with 5 days of buffer (although as it mentions, sperm generally don’t last more than 3).
What’s also cool about the book is the ability to pick the sex of your kid (with an 80% sucess rate!) and get accurate conception dates.
Another vote for Toni’s excellent book.
No, ovulation is not brought on by orgasm. That’s just weird. Perhaps your friend was thinking of some animals (rabbits, I believe?) that only ovulate when they have intercourse. Thank Og that’s not us! 
A woman cannot get pregnant at any and every time during her cycle. A woman can, however, not *know * when she can get pregnant. This is a very different situation. Most women (barring truly bizarre medical problems) *can learn * when they can get pregnant during their cycle.
Fertility Awareness Method and Natural Family Planning are identical except that in FAM, you may choose to have intercourse with a barrier method (condom, diaphragm, etc.) during your potentially fertile days. NFP, being a church sponsored spin on FAM, requires abstinence on your potentially fertile days.
FAM and NFP are really very simple, although it may seem a bit daunting at first. I love it because it removes the birth control from the intercourse - that is, we know long before the heat of the moment whether or not we’re “using something” this time, so most days we can just go for it and indulge like irresponsible teenagers! Also, it’s a great way to get your husband involved and even a little awed at the coolness that is the female body. Each morning, my hubby’s alarm goes off, he pops the thermometer in my mouth and then staggers to the bedroom to pee. When he comes back, he takes the thermometer out and I wake up just enough to record the temp. Since he understands the system just as well as I do, he doesn’t have to even ask if I’m fertile, we both know together.
What hasn’t been mentioned is how great FAM is for concieving. Tracking morning temps and other signs can help a trained doctor to root out the most common causes of infertility more quickly and cheaply.
We never had fertility problems, but after three years of using FAM as birth control, we decided to get pregnant. Because we were interested in bettering our odds for a girl, and because we were frankly curious if this FAM thing could be that reliable (maybe I just had hidden infertility?), we decided to have intercourse just once in two months, on a carefully chosen day. Sure enough, I got pregnant, very likely with a little girl.
Also, by taking my morning temps, I knew I was pregnant 11 days after conception - because my morning temp stayed elevated. That’s nearly two weeks sooner than most drugstore pregnancy tests work reliably!