After being happy on the pill for some time, and enjoying not only reliable contraception but also such side benefits as clearer skin, more regular/less painful/lighter periods, and a slightly inflated cup size, sometimes I wonder myself. As an OB nurse, I have an awareness of and access to the wide variety of contraceptive options out there. If I was sick of the pill, I could have opted for the patch, the ring, an IUD, a female condom...but I didn't.
There is no one reason, nothing that came to me like a bolt of lightening. Instead, it was a series of gradual realizations. One was that as I started to believe more and more in natural birth--in the idea that synthetic oxytocin isn't as good as the real thing, that the body and its hormones have powers and purposes beyond our current comprehension--the more that idea seemed applicable to the regular old menstrual cycle, too. What bodily wisdom was I defying by eliminating such an ancient and mysterious cycle?
The more I sought to avoid hormones in my milk and yogurt, the less sense it made to be swallowing them twenty-one out of every twenty-eight mornings.
The more we thought about having kids in the next few years, the more sense it made to try to let my body do what came instinctively instead of artificially regulating my cycles. I've tried to go largely organic and stopped eating fish high in mercury with the hopes that I will keep from bioaccumulating too many toxins--toxins which naturally concentrate themselves in the human placenta and breastmilk--did it make sense to be downing synthetic estrogen and progesterone up until such time as I was ready to have a baby?
And as we grapple with how to keep sex in marriage exciting, the idea of regular "courtship and honeymoon" periods (as one book put it), coupled with an increase in communication as well as a true partnership when it came to birth control, appealed to us.
We've also become crunchy, frugal do-it-ourself-ers, meaning that if there's something we can make or do at home, we're loathe to pay for somebody (or something) else to do it for us.
Take all of this together and then enter the books at right, which we came across on a shelf at our favorite used bookstore one evening, and presto: an idea whose time had come.
There is no one reason, nothing that came to me like a bolt of lightening. Instead, it was a series of gradual realizations. One was that as I started to believe more and more in natural birth--in the idea that synthetic oxytocin isn't as good as the real thing, that the body and its hormones have powers and purposes beyond our current comprehension--the more that idea seemed applicable to the regular old menstrual cycle, too. What bodily wisdom was I defying by eliminating such an ancient and mysterious cycle?
The more I sought to avoid hormones in my milk and yogurt, the less sense it made to be swallowing them twenty-one out of every twenty-eight mornings.
The more we thought about having kids in the next few years, the more sense it made to try to let my body do what came instinctively instead of artificially regulating my cycles. I've tried to go largely organic and stopped eating fish high in mercury with the hopes that I will keep from bioaccumulating too many toxins--toxins which naturally concentrate themselves in the human placenta and breastmilk--did it make sense to be downing synthetic estrogen and progesterone up until such time as I was ready to have a baby?
And as we grapple with how to keep sex in marriage exciting, the idea of regular "courtship and honeymoon" periods (as one book put it), coupled with an increase in communication as well as a true partnership when it came to birth control, appealed to us.
We've also become crunchy, frugal do-it-ourself-ers, meaning that if there's something we can make or do at home, we're loathe to pay for somebody (or something) else to do it for us.
Take all of this together and then enter the books at right, which we came across on a shelf at our favorite used bookstore one evening, and presto: an idea whose time had come.
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