Locate your fertile days
Oct 31, 2006
MANY Ugandan women do not know their menstrual cycle days. Moon Beads will certainly help but at sh6,000, I doubt if rural folk will not have better opportunity costs. Yet a woman who knows her most fertile days of the month can plan to avoid pregnancy or take appropriate measures to conceive.
By Herbert J. Mugarura
MANY Ugandan women do not know their menstrual cycle days. Moon Beads will certainly help but at sh6,000, I doubt if rural folk will not have better opportunity costs. Yet a woman who knows her most fertile days of the month can plan to avoid pregnancy or take appropriate measures to conceive.
For those who won’t get the Moon Beads and those whose cycles are irregular, you can locate your fertile days with some measure of accuracy by noting changes in your body over a period of time. If your cycle is irregular, regular observation and recording for eight to 12 months will help you locate the days. It may take time and effort; require considerable commitment, calculation and self-control by both the woman and her partner.
Calculation
A woman can use the record of her past menstrual cycles as a guide and estimates future fertile dates. Usually the first day of menstrual bleeding is counted as day one.
By subtracting 18 days from the shortest cycle gives an approximation of the first fertile day and by deducting 11 days from the longest cycle gives the end of the last fertile day. For example if the menstrual cycle of February was 29 days; March - 26 days (Shortest cycle); April - 30 days; May 31 days ( Longest cycle ) and June 30 days then, your shortest cycle was 26 days and the longest, 31 days.
By subtracting 18 from 26, you get 8th as the first unsafe day, subtracting 11 from 31 to get 20 as the last unsafe day. This gives days 8th to 20th as the fertile days. A woman's fertile time ("unsafe days" if she wants to avoid pregnancy) is thus about one-third of her cycle. The woman can make a chart representing about 8 months of her menstrual cycles with short and longest cycles.
Cervical Mucus
Mucus plays a vital role in fertilisation of the egg. It aids the sperms swimming up to the fallopian tubes where fertilisation usually takes place. It serves as a survival media for the sperms inside the woman's body.
The cervical mucus changes consistency during the course of her menstrual cycle. In a ‘typical’ cycle, there are 3 - 4 ‘dry’ days, 5 days after menstruation. This is followed by sticky, cloudy, whitish, or yellowish secretions. The wetness increases to a peak level of abundant, slippery, clear and very stretchy (like egg white) mucus secretions. It is believed ovulation occurs somewhere two days before or up to two days after the peak day of stretchy mucus secretions.
However, other substances like pessaries, foams, gels and semen can affect the mucus and make it difficult to identify the changes.
Cervical Changes
Using the clean middle finger you can feel the cervical changes (position-high or low, soft or firm, open or closed, and wetness) over the course of the menstrual cycle. The cervix is rather low and firm in the first few days after menstruation, then it begins to move up and becomes more soft wet and open, it is ovulation time. After ovulation it descends down, becomes firm and closed.
Body Temperature
A daily record of the morning rectal basal body temperature just before getting out of bed with a digital thermometer can help to identify post-ovulatory infertile (safe) days. Normally, there is a brief drop in a few tenths of degrees immediately before ovulation followed by a rise in basal body temperature within 12 hours of ovulation. If it remains high almost on the same level for like three days, then it is most likely the fertile days are over and the safe days ensued. It can remain high till the next cyclic uterine bleeding takes place.
However, other factors like flue, lack of sleep, drug use or alcohol can influence the basal body temperature readings.
Lower Discomfort
Some women will experience a slight one-sided pain or cramp in the area of an ovary in the lower abdomen, spotting, and breast tenderness physical around the time of ovulation.
All methods of family planning require attention and commitment. For these natural methods, both the woman and her partner should co-operate in order to have the children they can afford.
The author is a medical doctor
mugarrajk@doctor.com
MANY Ugandan women do not know their menstrual cycle days. Moon Beads will certainly help but at sh6,000, I doubt if rural folk will not have better opportunity costs. Yet a woman who knows her most fertile days of the month can plan to avoid pregnancy or take appropriate measures to conceive.
For those who won’t get the Moon Beads and those whose cycles are irregular, you can locate your fertile days with some measure of accuracy by noting changes in your body over a period of time. If your cycle is irregular, regular observation and recording for eight to 12 months will help you locate the days. It may take time and effort; require considerable commitment, calculation and self-control by both the woman and her partner.
Calculation
A woman can use the record of her past menstrual cycles as a guide and estimates future fertile dates. Usually the first day of menstrual bleeding is counted as day one.
By subtracting 18 days from the shortest cycle gives an approximation of the first fertile day and by deducting 11 days from the longest cycle gives the end of the last fertile day. For example if the menstrual cycle of February was 29 days; March - 26 days (Shortest cycle); April - 30 days; May 31 days ( Longest cycle ) and June 30 days then, your shortest cycle was 26 days and the longest, 31 days.
By subtracting 18 from 26, you get 8th as the first unsafe day, subtracting 11 from 31 to get 20 as the last unsafe day. This gives days 8th to 20th as the fertile days. A woman's fertile time ("unsafe days" if she wants to avoid pregnancy) is thus about one-third of her cycle. The woman can make a chart representing about 8 months of her menstrual cycles with short and longest cycles.
Cervical Mucus
Mucus plays a vital role in fertilisation of the egg. It aids the sperms swimming up to the fallopian tubes where fertilisation usually takes place. It serves as a survival media for the sperms inside the woman's body.
The cervical mucus changes consistency during the course of her menstrual cycle. In a ‘typical’ cycle, there are 3 - 4 ‘dry’ days, 5 days after menstruation. This is followed by sticky, cloudy, whitish, or yellowish secretions. The wetness increases to a peak level of abundant, slippery, clear and very stretchy (like egg white) mucus secretions. It is believed ovulation occurs somewhere two days before or up to two days after the peak day of stretchy mucus secretions.
However, other substances like pessaries, foams, gels and semen can affect the mucus and make it difficult to identify the changes.
Cervical Changes
Using the clean middle finger you can feel the cervical changes (position-high or low, soft or firm, open or closed, and wetness) over the course of the menstrual cycle. The cervix is rather low and firm in the first few days after menstruation, then it begins to move up and becomes more soft wet and open, it is ovulation time. After ovulation it descends down, becomes firm and closed.
Body Temperature
A daily record of the morning rectal basal body temperature just before getting out of bed with a digital thermometer can help to identify post-ovulatory infertile (safe) days. Normally, there is a brief drop in a few tenths of degrees immediately before ovulation followed by a rise in basal body temperature within 12 hours of ovulation. If it remains high almost on the same level for like three days, then it is most likely the fertile days are over and the safe days ensued. It can remain high till the next cyclic uterine bleeding takes place.
However, other factors like flue, lack of sleep, drug use or alcohol can influence the basal body temperature readings.
Lower Discomfort
Some women will experience a slight one-sided pain or cramp in the area of an ovary in the lower abdomen, spotting, and breast tenderness physical around the time of ovulation.
All methods of family planning require attention and commitment. For these natural methods, both the woman and her partner should co-operate in order to have the children they can afford.
The author is a medical doctor
mugarrajk@doctor.com