Natural Family Planning (NFP) - Natural Birth Control
Method & Option
Family planning is the method practiced by
women to know when they could get more fertile and therefore, decide to avoid
pregnancy or even achieve pregnancy. This is perhaps the best method of birth
control method where women is in complete control to decide if she is really prepared
for pregnancy or it is time to avoid it. it also makes woman very knowledgeable
to know her body and chart out the changes she notices.
What you must
know about the fertility?
- An egg (ovum) can reside a woman's body for 12-24
hours. As it is difficult to predict actual time of fertility, we presume 48 hours
in case more than one egg is released.
- Sperm lives upto 5 days in women's
body after intercourse though it lives in 2 days more often.
- Pregnancy is
most likely to be expected if intercourse is occurred anywhere before 3 days of
ovulation or 2-3 days after ovulation.
- Since exact time of ovulation can
not be predicted, we presume it will be 2 or 3 days in the beginning or end.
- Usually one-third of women's cycle time is determined as the most fertile or
unsafe days for being pregnant.
How to avoid pregnancy through family
planning?
The best method is to avoid sexual intercourse during the most "unsafe
days" or use male condoms, female condoms to avoid sperm penetrate into. If woman
has more regular periods, she will understand about fertility awareness more better.
Calculating Chart
Women can use Calculating Chart to know exactly
about unsafe dates of pregnancy. She can use the past menstrual cycle as her guide
and count the future days accordingly. These cycle periods may be shortest and
longest cycles over the past several months.
You can calculate those unsafe
days by doing some maths on your menstrual cycle records. It is better to keep
last 12 months record of menstrual cycle to determine the future months cycles.
Count the first day of menstruation i.e the first bleeding. This will be your
first day of the menstrual cycle. Now, you need to record your longest and shortest
cycles. Subtract 18 days from the shortest cycles days and subtract 11 days from
the longest cycles days.
Lets understand this with illustration. Count
the number of days between Day 1 of one period and Day 1 of the next period.
| January | 29
days |
| February | 26
days |
| March | 30
days |
| April | 31
days |
| May | 30
days |
here, January and February are shortest cycles and other
months are longest cycles. Hence, 26 is shortest and 31 is the longest cycle.
Based on the above assumption, subtract 18 days from 26 i.e 8th day will be the
unsafe day or more fertile day. Similarly, subtract 11 from 31 and you get 20
as the last unsafe days. So, the conclusion is that 8-20 days are the most unsafe
days or fertile days for being pregnant.
Each month you can add the number
of days between periods to the chart and re-calculate the next unsafe or fertile
days.
