Toni Weschler

I first became aware of the information contained in this book way back in 1999 or so, though it was through a website or web forum. I used this information as my birth control for about 5 years. Using this knowledge, both times that I had unprotected sex while during my fertile period I got pregnant and outside of those two times, I did not get pregnant. I wasn't intentionally trying to get pregnant, but I also wasn't trying very hard to not conceive. This knowledge is useful for both avoiding pregnancy and increasing fertility and I highly recommend it in an era where there is the possibility that women will lose access to other forms of contraception, plus there is growing knowledge of the side effects of hormonal birth control.

Every single woman should own this book, in my opinion. Even if you, as a woman or vagina/uterus-owner, aren't sexually active with men, you need this book to understand more than the vast majority of ob/gyns about the menstrual cycle and how your reproductive parts work. It also has some information on the science and psychology of female sexual pleasure, though it is more of an overview.

The author of this book also has published a book with the menstrual cyle information & puberty geared toward teenagers, though I haven't read it. If you read my review & are searching for a book chiefly about the menstrual cycle & charting it & understanding it for teenagers, or this very, very fat book is just too many pages, you should go check that book out.… (mais)

Before trying to get pregnant, it seemed appropriate to learn more about how female fertility works. For that, I chose this book.

The first, and perhaps most important, thing to know about this book is that it is a book every woman should read. Whether you want to get pregnant or avoid pregnancy, whether you're taking birth control pills or attempting more manual methods of contraception, if you're a woman who cares about how her body actually works, you should read this book. (Note: I use "you" and "your" throughout this review because it's more conversational. I acknowledge that this may a bit awkward for any men reading this. Consider it an exercise in what it's like being in a situation whose "you" is not, in fact, you.)

It amazed me, when I started reading this book, how little I knew about my own fertility. While I think that birth control pills were the right contraceptive option for me during the years I wanted to avoid pregnancy — my ovulation cycle has always been much too irregular to depend on my physical signals — I am, in retrospect, sad that I spent a over a decade taking a drug without understanding the system it was regulating. Now that I am trying to become pregnant and having a hard time, I regret accepting the explanation from my doctor that the pill would "fix" my extremely irregular cycles. Yes, it suppressed the symptoms, but now that I actually want to get pregnant, I still have the same issues and no more knowledge of them than I did as a teen. (By the way, Weschler also wrote a book targeted at teens, which I haven't read.)

Now to the book itself. This book is centered around the Fertility Awareness Method. This can be seen as a natural birth control method or a technique for helping achieve pregnancy. I see it as a way to understand how your own body works. Part one discusses these different perspectives and encourages women to take charge of their own fertility. Part two contains background on a women's reproductive anatomy, menstrual cycle, primary fertility signs, and various types of irregular cycles. Parts three and four apply knowledge of the primary fertility signals to, respectively, birth control and pregnancy achievement. Part five discusses other practical benefits of charting your cycle, even if you don't care about the other two.

As a final note, if avoiding pregnancy is absolutely vital for you, I cannot recommend the Fertility Awareness Method as a standalone method of birth control. Even if you're extremely regular normally, stress, sickness, alcohol, and other life factors can make your signals less reliable. But I still recommend reading the book.… (mais)

Several friends recommended this book to me, and I would in turn recommend it to just about any woman who is interested in understanding her body better, whether or not she's searching for a method of natural birth control. It's very accessible and in no way pushy or preachy. I can't vouch for the sections on pregnancy achievement because I'm not quite ready for that :), but I can agree with the reactions of other reviewers who wish that the information about the reproductive cycle was made readily available to girls at a much younger age. Once I began charting, I was excited to discover that I could identify my peak day of fertility within less than a week!… (mais)