Natural contraception

Also known as fertility awareness or natural family planning.

What is it?

Natural family planning is the term used to describe monitoring and measuring a woman’s fertility by using natural indicators. Natural family planning is quite complex, and requires a lot of commitment to make sure that it is being done correctly.

How does it work?

Natural family planning works by recording the details of 3 main fertility indicators throughout your menstrual cycle. Your temperature is taken and recorded each morning, as well as the appearance of your cervical mucous, and the length of your menstrual cycle recorded each month. It can take 3-6 months before you have a clear idea of how your menstrual cycle works and what times of the month you are at your least fertile.

How effective is it?

When carried out carefully and correctly, natural family planning can be up 98% effective in preventing pregnancy.

What are the advantages?

There are no side effects with natural family planning, and it helps you to learn more about your menstrual cycle and fertility.

It can also be used to help plan pregnancy if you are thinking about having a baby.

What are the downsides?

Natural family planning needs a lot of dedication and commitment from both partners to get right, and is a method that needs to be taught. Monitoring needs to take place everyday, and so it is not something that you can dip in and out of.

You can’t have unprotected sex during fertile periods, so it can make sex less spontaneous or mean that you need to use a barrier method, such as condoms, at this time.

Most importantly, natural family planning does not provide any protection against sexually transmitted infections or HIV like a condom does.

Things to bear in mind

If you are going to use natural family planning, it is important to consider what you might do if you do get pregnant. For this reason it may be for women who feel able to cope with a potential unplanned pregnancy.

Where can I get it from and how much does it cost?

Being taught well and getting good instruction for natural family planning is important, so if you are thinking of using this method you should speak to a doctor or nurse with specialist training in the field. To take your temperature daily you will need a special mercury fertility thermometer or a digital thermometer. It is also possible to buy fertility monitoring kits from pharmacies, which cost from around £60.