Getting Pregnant While Breastfeeding

Many people don't think you can get pregnant while breastfeeding, let alone breastfeed a baby while pregnant with another.  I'm currently doing the latter (with no plans to stop) and did the former as well.

Some people know that you can get pregnant while breastfeeding, from um, say, personal, perhaps accidental, experience. 

While it's true that breastfeeding can provide you with natural birth control, you still can get pregnant.  I didn't want India to sleep through the night, and promoted lactational amennorhea, for at least the first year of her life.  If you nurse consistently, most likely your period won't return until you introduce solids and cut back on nursing.  Or if your baby sleeps through the night.  *Most likely.*  Don't send me hate mail if you are one of the "lucky" ones who gets their period back at three months postpartum.  I'm sorry, I really am!

My journey:

My period returned in May, at about 10 months postpartum, after India went through a phase of sleeping through the night and I wasn't waking her to nurse.  I wasn't happy about it because I have friends who go 15, 18, 23 months or even longer without a period and I was not feeling ready for another baby at that point!  

Since we use the Fertility Awareness Method (FAM), I sort of half-way began to look out for any signs of fertility to prevent pregnancy.  I say half-way, because I know my body pretty well and it doesn't take more than 30 seconds of daily observation for me to know if my body is ovulating or not.  To my amazement and gratefulness, there were no signs of fertility.  This continued through the summer.  

In September, when my daughter was coming up on 14 months old, I got a case of baby fever and I started to think about having another little munchkin.  But my body was still regulating and I wasn't ovulating yet.  I wasn't ready to wean my daughter in order to jump start my fertility.  I knew I just had to be patient, but I was starting to feel ready, which was a big shock because pregnancy wasn't kind to me.  I'm not one of those ladies who just loves being pregnant.  Nope.
 

Remember how I said we use Fertility Awareness Method (FAM) to track fertility signs and how much I love it?  Well, this is just one more little pat on FAM's back.   In October, I had all signs and symptoms that I normally do for ovulation, except I didn't seem to have a lot of cervical fluid.  If we didn't use FAM, I could have gone on for months trying to have a baby and perhaps been diagnosed with secondary infertility, when I just needed more cervical fluid - all because breastfeeding left me with very little.  I know women quite often have less cervical fluid while breastfeeding.  It's very common for breastfeeding mothers to feel, um, dry.  Well, in order to get pregnant, cervical fluid is a vital part of the process.  A quick Google search of "how to naturally increase cervical fluid" brought me to a common oil, Evening Primrose Oil, that is rich in essential fatty acids.  I had heard of it, but didn't know much about it, or that it was actually a cheap and readily available product.  Many woman use it near the end of their pregnancy and during menopause and many others use it to help with arthritis and eczema.  But it's also frequently used for increasing the amount and quality of cervical fluid.  Here's how it works.

I decided that I would take it the next cycle because I only wanted to try for a baby that month because that would give me a due date of late July or early August and I was OK with that.  As long as I wasn't pregnant the whole summer!  Getting pregnant in December or January wasn't an option because I didn't want a baby born in September or October because that would mean I would be VERY pregnant the WHOLE summer. 

So, I take the Evening Primrose Oil and well, whaddya know, I'm preggo the next month, November.  Maybe it was the Evening Primrose Oil (EPO), maybe my body just regulated itself, but from everything I could tell the EPO helped greatly!

I share all this because I have several friends who are still breastfeeding and have had some difficulty getting pregnant, so I figure there are many others who are in the same boat!  Maybe it's something as simple as increasing your cervical fluid.  :)

Image source

Remember that?

Remember when I said I had a bit of baby fever back in September?

Or do you remember when I posted that tutorial for that cute Christmas stocking that I made for India?

Oh, or the post about how well Natural Family Planning works?

Or how I had to spend so much time in bed at the Cockroach Motel?

Or how about when my husband took me away for a surprise birthday getaway in early November and got me some pretty cool stuff for my 30th birthday? 

Well, not only was I pampered with some pretty great stuff for my 30th birthday, I also got the absolute BEST birthday gift ever: 

Baby #2! 

                        Coming this summer, this world will be graced with a new little life!  

I'm not as sick as I was with India so I'm hoping that also means I won't be sick the entire 9 months this time as well!  :)  I've been lacking in blog posts, as it's easier for me to be horizontal from early afternoon on, and I'm amazed at how hard it is to type laying down!  

Image source

Similar to my pregnancy with India, eating helps me to not be as sick, so if you've seen me in public, most likely, I'm eating or drinking something or even chewing gum to even be able to chit chat with you.  This baby even lets me drink a little bit of water and eat some fruits and vegetables (I couldn't eat or drink those things with India, or else I'd get sick).

So, there you go!  Daddy and Mama are SO excited and India's just happy that someone else besides her is talking about a baby!  Above all, we are so grateful and covet any prayers of health and safety for our growing little family!

PS:  Are you wondering what that stocking has to do with having another baby?  Well, I started making a second one, with different colors, which hopefully I'll be finished with by next Christmas!

Natural Family Planning

Well, hello!  To add to the topics that make my family members embarrassed to call me their own and might even got some feathers ruffled, today I share with you some information on family planning.

Yes, family planning.

*waves hello to all the family members reading this post (you all can turn around now if this is TMI)*

My life has been a learning forum, and this blog, in part, is used to share useful information. 

Since I share candidly on this topic with friends and have even taught courses on it overseas, this is some information I may as well publicly share with the blogosphere.

Many of you remember that I've never been anxious for India to sleep through the night.  In fact, many times I set my alarm and woke her up to nurse, to keep my cycles at bay. That method of family planning, falls into the category of Lactational Ammenorrhea, and I was quite successful at it!  As cute as India was, I didn't want another little one running around.  Between nursing frequently and because I had previously tracked my cycles, I knew what signs normally meant my body was getting ready to ovulate.  I won't be covering lactational ammenorrhea in this post, but instead will focus on others methods of natural birth control.

Natural Family Planning (NFP), as it's most commonly known, is also known as the Fertility Awareness Method (FAM), sypmtothermal method, charting method, or the Pull 'n Pray method.  It can be a very effective tool for avoiding or achieving pregnancy.  For the ease of everyone, I'll refer to these symptom-based methods as FAM, since that's what method I'm familiar with.

In short, FAM is exactly what it's called: being aware of your body and your fertility.  Through a course of monitoring your body's signs you can know much about your body. 

Some people get headaches regularly, which can often be tracked back to ovulation.  Others can easily explain how, after using FAM, they were able to figure out their luteal phase was too short.  I've heard several stories of women who have tried to get pregnant, but didn't until they tracked their cycles.


How does it work?

Calendar-based: Based on the assumption that a woman's cycle is 28 days long, ovulation is estimated at Day 14.  Days 8-19 are considered fertile days.  While this has a 95% effective rate, I personally would have been pregnant years ago had I just gone off the calendar.
 
Symptothermal: Using a woman's cycle as the base of calculations, a combination of symptoms are observed: daily temperatures recorded upon waking, cervical mucous, cervical position and opening, and some consult ovulation tests for added confirmation.  It sounds like a lot of work but it really takes less than 5 minutes a day during your most fertile point.  As you approach ovulation, you either practice abstinence or take some sort of preventative measure.  Ovulation is confirmed with a rise in your basal body temperature.

Chart from http://www.fertilityfriend.com/layouts/ttc/help/chart_key.html.  You can see the direct rise in temperature, confirming ovulation.  Days 13 - 16 would either call for abstinence or a barrier method is preventing pregnancy.

Does it work?

If you do FAM guessing on dates, skip taking your temperatures and having lots of "oops" sex, the answer is: no.  There is a church in my town in which many of the newly married women practice some sort of calendar or symptoms based method.  I'm friends with several of these women and it became quite a joke as one by one, most got pregnant fairly quickly after getting married.  We'd laugh together as they would share their "oops" stories!  Many of them will tell you it doesn't work.  

However, if you are aware of your body (which after 3 - 4 months you will know your cycle VERY well), FAM can work well at preventing or achieving pregnancy.  Some studies have found that there is a 99.6% effectiveness rate!


Why not just take the pill? 

Because I wanted my body to function as intended (which includes ovulation), I wasn't comfortable taking the Pill, getting an IUD or taking any shots, and I chose FAM.  I wanted to be natural and aware of my body.  Suppressing ovulation, stopping something my body is supposed to do, didn't seem like a great idea to me.  I also wasn't comfortable with the fact that sometimes those methods of birth control fail and don't suppress ovulation.  When that happens, fertilization of an egg is possible, thus creating a little life.  However, the above methods of birth control make your uterine lining inhospitable, making it very difficult for the fertilized egg, or in my opinion, a new life, to implant and therefore, greatly increases your chance of spontaneous abortion.  Of course, we all hear stories and know women who get pregnant on the pill or with an IUD, and deliver a healthy baby.  There's a lot of ifs and thens, but because of these two reasons, I've decided to stick with FAM for the last 10 years.

Yes, 10 years.  So, yes, I'd say it's been very effective at preventing and achieving pregnancy!   Perhaps I'll post more on that in the future.  But for the people who say it's impossible: I'm here to tell you, it's not.

OK, so where do I start?

I think the best resource on any symptothermal method is Toni Weschler's book, Taking Charge of Your Fertility.  It's the most comprehensive guide and takes a very balanced approach (unlike traditional NFP which doesn't allow for barrier methods).  Reading this post or even reading Taking Charge of Your Fertility can seem so daunting, but really, it's not that difficult to grasp.  The first month or two, as you're learning your body, be sure to use some sort of barrier method unless you're absolutely positive you're not fertile.  As you get more comfortable with the course of your cycles, you'll quickly know, through observation and temping, when you're ovulating.  Many women also use Fertility Friend to easily monitor their cycles and I noticed they even have an easy online primer course to get started!

Knowing what your body is doing helps give explanation to so many other symptoms that occur in a woman's body.  This simple knowledge, that costs next to nothing and takes very little time, is something that every woman can easily know about her body if she wants.

Have you ever used or considered a symptothermal based method?