Male friends and readers (all two of you), you'll want to click away now. I don't say this often, but when I do, I mean it. So go on now, click on out of here.
I've made mention of the fact that we practice Natural Family Planning, but I've not really gone into much detail on how or why. Briefly - when D was a newborn, I tried out the mini-pill as a birth control solution because the regular Pill would have interfered with my milk supply. Three days on the mini-pill and I noticed it was making me a little, um, crazy. Way crazier than usual. It was not a good choice for me. Some light research led me to Taking Charge of Your Fertility, a book which I believe every single woman should read at some point in her life. Immediately I embraced the idea of hormone-free birth control.
When I first took up this practice, I loved doing the charts and the temps. I felt so in tune with my body. Many months and many cycles later the novelty has long since worn off, and I have to confess I've gotten sorta lazy with the charting.
Enter my newest favorite find (a discovery made possible for me by Simple Mom via Twitter): Mon.thly
Because of all of the months of legitimate charting, I really am quite in sync with my body's rhythms, so I usually have a general idea of when I'm ovulating and when to expect Aunt Flo to come stomping by again. The awesome and amazing thing about Mon.thly is that all I had to do was enter in some of my recent start dates, and ta-da! It tells me all kinds of helpful info.
For example, would you like to know that I'm currently on day 13 of this month's cycle, and that my cycles are averaging 32 days each? Perhaps you might like to know that I'm currently in the follicular phase. Perhaps a little too much information for you about me? Perhaps. But what I'm trying to tell you is that Mon.thly helps me to know all of that stuff at a glance. It will also email me two days before my projected ovulation date and two days before my expected start date . . . just as a friendly little heads-up. Best part? ALL FREE.
Easy-peasy monthly cycle management totally works for me.
