Yellow is my new favorite color!

I met with my Creighton Model FertilityCare Practitioner aka my NFP teacher on Sunday, and I came out skipping!

I now have yellow stamps!!!!

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Creighton Model, at your first meeting you get your own snazzy chart with lots of boxes on it. You also get different colored stickers to help record your observations. Red stickers indicate days of bleeding during your period or random break through days of bleeding; White stickers with little babies on them indicate peak type or fertile mucus; light green stickers with little babies on them represent days of drying up after the last day of peak type mucus; and plain green stickers indicate days of dryness before the presence of peak type mucus early in the cycle or after drying up post peak or after ovulation.

In a perfect world, things would always be textbook, and my mucus pattern would look normal. However, since I am still nursing Lucy, my pattern is all over the map. As I mentioned in this post , we abstained for the entire month last month because I had peak type mucus the entire time! If you looked at my chart, it was a solid wall of white baby stickers with two green baby stickers right before my period. Let me tell you, it was frustrating...

So when I met with my teacher on Sunday, we were able to sit down and determine when my mucus was estrogen related mucus aka the mucus related to ovulation. And let me just say:

The human body is AMAZING! God knew exactly what He was doing when he designed a woman's body.

It was so blatantly obvious on my chart when I had ovulated because the mucus was so different for a few days, and we were able to determine that all those white baby stickers and peak type mucus at the end of my cycle were basically irrelevant! So now I get to put yellow stickers on my chart instead of white ones, and our abstinence time just got cut in half!!

The next step will be to determine the significance of my pre peak mucus since it is starting on cycle day 5, and this cycle for example, I didn't ovulate until day 16 of what will likely be a 30 day cycle.

Have I mentioned that I love the Creighton Model? ;) It is so specific and detailed and scientific!

I have at least a few friends who use the Sympto Thermal method of NFP (it uses basal body temperature, mucus, and cervix softness/openness to determine fertility) which is what we started learning during our engagement, but I never really got the hang of it, and it was difficult for me to chart while nursing for various reasons. It is a very good model for some people, and it is very effective as well, but it wasn't the right fit for us.

When I start talking to friends about the Creighton Model, the first response is that I often get from women is that their mucus pattern is irregular so a mucus only model just wouldn't work for them.

I think this is the most common misconception about Creighton. The beauty of it is that it can work with all mucus patterns, and often, if a mucus pattern is irregular, it is a sign that something is out of balance that may even be affecting their fertility! And since Creighton is connected to NaPro Technology, the tools are right at their fingertips for addressing and correcting any fertility issues that arise!

Advocates for chemical contraceptives often go on about how women have been liberated since the introduction of the pill.

This lie has been shoved down women's throats for too long!

True freedom comes with understanding our bodies and our fertility, and when necessary taking steps to make us as healthy as we can be!

::stepping down off my soap box::

Happy Tuesday!

St. Monica, pray for us!