Planning your family size can be as low-tech as taking your temperature every morning before you step out of bed to as complex as surgical sterilization. Technology today makes it fairly easy to monitor your fertility and attempt to achieve or avoid pregnancy. Whether you want two children, five children or wish to remain childless, learning about your family planning options is a good place to start.
Benefits
Understanding your fertility with the goal of planning your family size helps you make informed decisions. When you plan your pregnancies, you are often able to space your children apart in a way that fits with your family goals, such as focusing on your career goals and getting ready financially. If you desire to avoid pregnancy for a time, using natural family planning methods or artificial means of birth control gives you that option. Monitoring your ovulation pattern helps you become sensitive to cyclical changes that can alert you to potential fertility problems. (See Reference 1)
Types
Fertility awareness and knowing when ovulation occurs can help you avoid pregnancy. The Mayo Clinic lists other forms of birth control such as barrier methods like condoms, sponges and diaphragms; hormonal methods such as the pill, contraceptive shots or patches; and intrauterine devices like an IUD. Sterilization and abstinence are two additional ways to control your family size.
Side Effects
According to the American Pregnancy Association, there are no risks to your health when you use natural family planning. Other forms of birth control, however, have side effects. The website FamilyDoctor.org explains that hormonal contraceptives can cause increased blood pressure and headaches; you or your partner might be allergic to condoms; the IUD carries risks of heavy bleeding; and sterilization requires surgery. When considering how to plan your family, also think about the long-term effect your choice might have on your health.
Strategies
Use natural family planning to monitor your fertility signs to get pregnant. Monitoring your fertility allows you to target intercourse during the most fertile time of your cycle, at ovulation. Use a thermometer to take your temperature before you get out of bed every morning, and watch for your temperature to shift up by several tenths of a degree to confirm ovulation. Use ovulation predictor kits to anticipate ovulation, and learn how to monitor changes in your cervical mucus. Have intercourse the four days before you ovulate, on ovulation day and one day after ovulation to increase your chances of pregnancy. Avoid pregnancy by not being intimate during your fertile period or using other forms of birth control that week.
Considerations
No birth control method is 100 percent effective. According to the National Women's Health Information Center, for every 100 couples who use natural family planning to avoid pregnancy, 25 will become pregnant. Other forms of birth control range from less than a 1 percent failure rate for sterilization, to 5 percent for oral contraceptives and between 11 percent to 16 percent for condom use. Only complete abstinence and barrier methods provide protection from sexually transmitted diseases.
References
- Family PACT: Benefits of Family Planning
- MayoClinic.com: Birth Control Options: Things to Consider
- American Pregnancy Association: Fertility Awareness: Natural Family Planning
- FamilyDoctor.org: Birth Control Options
- Center for Young Women's Health: Natural Family Planning: Fertility Awareness Method
