Sympto-Thermal Method: SymptoPro
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- Tell us a little about yourself.My husband and I met at a (very) small "Catholic" (pretty much in name only now unfortunately) university. Dated for 4 months, got engaged, married 11 months after engagement, and that was about 2.5 years ago now! I am a first grade teacher and hubby is a financial advisor on his way to be a CFP (certified financial planner) at his dad's small wealth management firm. We just built our first house, and live here happily with our 2 pups. Had said we were going to avoid pregnancy for the first couple years of marriage to get our financials in place while we lived in his parents' basements and saved up. I love Disney (call me a Disney adult) and it might look like Mickey threw up in my house but I could care less, ha! My husband and I are both introverts and love nights in with each other, but appreciate the occasional fun night with close friends too!
- What effects has fertility awareness had on your relationship?FA has been stressful in our 2.5 years of marriage. My husband wants a lot of kids and wanted them the day before we got married pretty much. FA has also been a blessing, though. A few short months after getting married, it helped us uncover some reproductive/menstrual issues I have and helped bring us closer together as we work towards healing my body and restoring my cycle. We were, at first, great about sharing charting, but when my cycles got even more out of whack, charting fell to the wayside because it felt pointless (and I also used a couple apps on my phone to help keep track of things, so paper charting got lax). It caused us to learn to communicate more, and better, about how I'm feeling, and where we're at with family planning.
- How did you find your instructor?We signed up for a class through our diocese (they have an Office of Natural Family Planning), so got to select a class based on what method we wanted to learn, and what dates/locations worked for our schedule. I believe the class fee was $135ish. We took the full course, which included lots of follow-up appointments, and when I started having some cycle irregularities a few months into marriage, I would text our instructor to ask questions and have her assistance in interpreting my charts. When it went beyond her knowledge, she recommended that I talk with my doctor (a NaPro office here locally).
- Describe your daily charting routine.I have been charting for almost 4 years. I track my BBT (using an oral thermometer and a Tempdrop device) each morning, my cervical mucus throughout the day, and my cervical sensation throughout the day. Occasionally I track my cervix position, but that was proving to be difficult and confusing, so I haven't done that in quite a few months. Charting is somewhat annoying, mainly because of my irregular cycles, so I am not as "on top of it" as I should be. I don't include my husband as much as I should anymore because of the stress of my health issues, so that adds stress to our marriage and sexual intimacy.
- What made you choose this method?Honestly, a friend, who had been married in the church for 10+ years at the time I believe, told me during my engagement/process of signing up for a class, to go with the symptothermal method. I trusted him, so we went with symptothermal. It seemed the most budget-friendly for us, and we got engaged our senior year of college, so budget was big on our minds (and with hubby, then fiance, being in the finance world, it just seemed to make sense).
- Has charting helped you to understand your overall health?Charting has been crucial in understanding my overall health. I always thought I had "weird" cycles growing up, but chalked it up to being a teenager. Once some other symptoms made their appearance the summer after we got married, everything clicked, and it was easy to see that things hadn't ever really been "normal" for me. Without charting and my knowledge of the women's cycle/systems, I probably wouldn't have really thought anything about it too much.
