Giving Power Back to Women

I sat in the corner of the booth with a friend to my right and two friends across the table. They all stared sympathetically as I curled into a fetal position. They too had experienced one too many months of Aunt Flo cramping their style. But this time was different for me. This pain was indescribable. I couldn’t think straight. I had no idea how I was going to make it across campus in one piece. My girlfriends urged me to go back to my dorm and rest. 

And so, I ended up lying in bed for the remainder of the day, groaning and popping ibuprofen every four hours to numb the pain. So naturally, after several months of this scene playing out again and again – I paid a friendly visit to my OBGYN over Christmas break.

“I can write you a prescription for birth control” was the doctor’s suggestion upon learning my family history of ovarian cysts. 

“This daily pill that will lessen painful cramps and prevent the cyst from rupturing.” Which, in the several years I took the pill, my painful periods did vanish. She was right. The cyst that was growing on my ovary was no longer affecting me month after month. 

Except for the fact that, I traded those fetal-position-ibuprofen-days for a whole new deck of cards. What I got was a form of pregnancy prevention that only worked if I popped the same little pill day after day. AND it had to be taken at the same time each day. Yet, in those five years of pink-pill-popping, I could never find the perfect time of day where I was consistently available. 

Take the pill in the morning but slept in one day? It’s effectiveness just went down. Take the pill mid-afternoon but the boss calls for an impromptu meeting? Ineffective. Forgot to pack it in your purse for the day? Ineffective.

Sure, it was my responsibility to stay as consistent as possible with taking the pill. But in the end, I’m depending on something other than myself. In choosing a lifestyle of fertility awareness for my birth control, the effectiveness is completely dependent on me. The only person I have to “blame” for any ineffectiveness is myself. I’m not turning to a pharmaceutical company with complaints regarding its effectiveness. Instead, I look inward and depend on me, myself and I for how I control my family plan. 

And isn’t this what we truly crave as women? To be in control? To have true empowerment? To not need to depend on something other than ourselves (i.e. the old argument of women relying solely on men for everything). If you’re curious, google “who invented the birth control pill” and let me know how you feel about two men creating something that women have relied on for decades. 

If we are going to consider ourselves feminists, then let’s put the power back into the hands of women. 

A few months ago, I started studying to become an instructor with Fertility Education and Medical Management (FEMM). This women’s health program teaches women to understand their bodies & how to recognize hormonal and other vital signs of health. But most importantly: FEMM works to give women the confidence to make an informed choice regarding their health & reproductive goals. 

As I sit here cozy on my couch with Christmas around the corner, I am celebrating the completion of instructor classes. But I also have a ways to go with student teaching sessions to complete & a three hour final to study for. Despite being an instructor-in-training, I have already witnessed in the eyes of my practicum students, the sense of relief and empowerment with the knowledge I’ve provided to them. 

“Why wasn’t I taught this as a teenager?”

“Where was this information when I first got my period?!?”

“Holy schneikes. Now I get why my period has been so sporadic all these years.”

Now look, I’m not trying to go on and on like you’re reading FEMM’s review section on Amazon. But what I am trying to convey here is the process of empowerment that has unfolded before my eyes. I’m honored to be a part of a woman’s fertility awareness path. Since starting instructor classes, I’ve had the opportunity to serve a dozen women from all walks of life, at varying stages in their reproductive life.

The common denominator? They are empowered.

Next time they visit their doctor, they will have the confidence to work with their doctor for a treatment plan. Versus the stories I’ve heard from them regarding the ease with which they readily took their prescribed hormonal contraception. 

Throughout the FEMM course, we talk about the natural rhythm of our reproductive hormones and how that influences our health and well-being. But my favorite part? It’s working with women who broke up with hormonal contraceptives & watching them learn the true impact it had on their body. 

Instead of working against my body with the pill, I now work with my body in charting my cycle. 

But here’s the thing:

Empowerment requires a learning curve. 

When I eventually got off the pill, I looked around at the other options available to me. I had a wedding on the horizon, and natural birth control was my solution to achieving our family plan.

But WHOA, the search for the right fertility awareness method by use of the internet can be slightly overwhelming. I wrote a few of my thoughts here about how I eventually settled with FEMM. But the time span between quitting the pill & starting FEMM was a bumpy road. 

Because, as professor Google taught me about cervical fluid and mismatched information regarding ovulation – I had one question lingering above me. 

Isn’t there an easier way?

Fertility Awareness looked like school. It looked suuuuuper time consuming. It looked like it was for two camps of women: super religious or super hippy-dippy. 

And there I sat, smack in the middle of those two camps, trying to cut corners by notetaking from WebMD. And we all know how that site can very easily convince you that you have multiple disorders that your doctor will quickly disprove. 

So I decided to take a shortcut and use the Kindara App. As a period tracker app, it was user-friendly and super cute to use on a monthly basis. I relied on its predictive algorithm that placed stars in the future calendar to note my approximate time of ovulation. Essentially, it’s a modern day rhythm method. DON’T GET ME STARTED. 

It’s almost laughable how people turn their nose down to NFP/FAM by labeling its use of science to be the rhythm method. 

Yet, so many women (myself included) flock to these period tracker apps that help predict ovulation in the same way that the rhythm method does. 

LADIES LADIES LADIES. Don’t fall prey to the predictive shiny stars on Kindara. Why? Because two babies later, I no longer rely on those apps as my means of birth control. 

Cutting corners just wasn’t cutting it. 

And so, I found true empowerment in gaining the knowledge and confidence needed to have control in my health and reproductive goals. Because If we are going to consider ourselves feminists, then let’s put the power back into the hands of women.