The Female Body

If I have any gentlemen readers, I’m afraid that the content of this post may not be as titillating as the title might lead you to believe.  If this is the case, please let me offer the following link as an alternative:  The Pin-up Files

I got pregnant for the first time at 36.  This really didn’t involve lots of thought; I had never tried to get pregnant until that time, and my choice of birth control proved effective until then.  But I suspected that simply going off birth control does not a baby make.  There needed to be a little planning beyond just that, so I picked up a copy of Taking Charge of Your Fertility: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health.  As I read the book, I actually felt dumber and dumber.  As I finished, I had gained plenty of insight, but was deeply embarrassed that I had never learned this stuff, which was actually so basic to the female body and its cycles.  No high school health class/sex ed, no women’s health guide, nothing that I had heard or read before this book had laid out the fertility cycles, its signs, and all of the variations and interpretations of these signs.  As a woman, I had certainly observed a lot of these signs, but never had the knowledge base to interpret them.

This seems like a very personal topic, and it is, in a way, but also so very universal.  So I posit a question: how the heck does any female in this world grow up to 36 without knowing this stuff?  Let alone a female who has a tendency to want to seek out information, to learn, to know?  The conventional wisdom that I grew up with was “you can get pregnant at any time of the month, so you must always practice birth control if you do not wish to become pregnant”.  The translation seems to be: “Always use protection; that’s all you really need to know”.  But seriously, read this book.  There is so much more to know.  At any point in your reproductive years, no matter your plans or lack thereof, we all should know this stuff.  This book should be required reading.