This is newish territory for me, but after our third baby we’re looking at trying a little harder to wait a little longer before getting pregnant again. We’d prefer to use fertility awareness/natural family planning, and I just downloaded the Kindara app, which has loads of charting options. I may try another one or two as well. Since I’m already part of this community, I thought I’d ask here first: if you’ve done it this way, how and when do you begin charting again postpartum before your period returns? [name_f]My[/name_f] daughter is 11 weeks. [name_f]My[/name_f] period returned with regularity at 9 months and 8 months after my sons’ births. I’ve breastfed all three.
2 Likes
I absolutely love this podcast in general but this is great info in this episode.
First bit of advice is don’t use an app until you’re back into cycling. Algorithms… just don’t. There’s no predicting anything and your phone or computer will lie to you.
Use a CM based method, as opposed to full sympto-thermal… as in don’t bother with temps… Temps are so hard to get consistent when you’re not sleeping consistently. The biggest thing is to watch for CM.
My CM came back 1.5 months before my first period. I didn’t ovulate that cycle, but my body was clearly gearing up with heightened estrogen levels, and then the CM pattern returned a month later 2 weeks before my first period… when I did ovulate and therefore had a full healthy bleed during my period. Exclusively breastfed.
Now 1mo postpartum again and not temping, just looking at the TP when I wipe… always watching for CM. It probably won’t be for months but still, everytime I wipe, I look. I used FAM (specifically justisse method) for 5 sexually active years before my first pregnancy and for the 3 years between my pregnancies without experiencing pregnancy when I didn’t want to… and happily conceived both times on the first try. I believe wholeheartedly in the effectiveness of fertility awareness, even postpartum when things are wonky.
1 Like
Kindara is a great resource, but can be buggy from time to time. I switched to the [name_u]Read[/name_u] Your Body app when it came out, and it’s excellent.
Most post-partum FAMers I know have opted for wearable thermometers, such as Tempdrop, because it negates all the disturbances to your sleep, etc, which make normal temping hard.
[name_u]Read[/name_u] Your Body is already customised to integrate with Tempdrop, so it’s a solid app choice, if you want to go that way.
2 Likes
@hyacinthbucket thank you so much! I listened to the podcast this morning, and it’s just the starting point I needed. When I’m cycling normally, since I’m quite regular I at least have an idea what’s happening when, but I was at a bit of a loss postpartum. I do have a habit of looking at CM anyway (I’m not one of the dry types), and I’ve looked for patterns before and have certainly noticed the egg-white effect. I have been very far from rigorous because it hasn’t been terribly important to us before; we wanted a bit of space between pregnancies, and I conceived our second 1 year postpartum and our third 11 months postpartum, which was ok in our minds. Now, with this prolapse, we may need to avoid pregnancy more carefully and for longer than we would have planned to otherwise. It hasn’t resolved with a month of PT, so I’m continuing to do that (which has straightened my pelvis and spine considerably) and have also set an appointment with a gynecologist in another month for an actual diagnosis and more information.
@_thelittlefairywren thank you! I’ll look into [name_u]Read[/name_u] Your Body as well. I hadn’t known about the wearable thermometers till I started looking at the apps.
2 Likes