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I first heard the term "Natural Family Planning" when an author and public speaker came to my high school and spoke about abstinence. She was humorous, "cool" and effective.
I filed the name Natural Family Planning away in the recesses of my brain and pulled it out years later when consulting my family doctor a few months before my wedding. "What do you know about Natural Family Planning?" I asked. This was a man I trusted, a man who'd been diagnosing my ear infections for nearly twenty years. When he told me that NFP was for "women who wanted many children, well spaced", I didn't question him. When he told me that if I used NFP, I would be pregnant "like that", as he snapped his fingers, I wasted no time accepting the prescription he wrote up for the pill.

Five years later, I would rethink and question his view. I hated taking the pill. I wanted to start my family, but still had an undergraduate degree to finish. What could I do in the meantime? What was that Natural Family Planning about anyway?

Female Biology 101

Roughly during every 25-35 days, your body prepares itself for the possibility of hosting a child and either starts that process when you get pregnant, or terminates the process when you don't. Hormones that your body produces kicks all this into gear. Estrogen and progesterone are two of these all important hormones. During your period, they are at all time lows. After it ends, estrogen starts to build up. When it gets to a high enough level, your body produces LH, or Luteinizing hormone. This tells your ovary to release an egg.

After the egg is released, it takes a few days to make its' way down your fallopian tube.

The egg has to be fertilized while in the fallopian tube. If it's not fertilized then, it won't make it to the uterus; it will have dissolved before it got there. After the egg leaves the ovaries, a little blister-like spot is left. This is called the Corpus Luteum and it starts to produce progesterone. If the egg is fertilized, the progesterone helps sustain it. If not, the progesterone will only be produced for about 12 to 14 days. Then it drops and your period will arrive within a day or two.

Here's where the thermometer comes in. Don't roll your eyes now; it's not nearly as bad as you've heard.

Get yourself down to a drugstore and purchase a digital basal body thermometer. Basal thermometers are more sensitive and give readings in smaller increments.

Secondly, you'll need a chart to track the temperatures you will take with this thermometer.

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