Cervical Mucus: A Love Story

Ft. The Story of How I Started Using the Fertility Awareness Method

This is the first of my paid subscribers only content. It’s a more personal story. Paid content will be released monthly, with a companion discussion accessible only to paid subscribers.

Photo by Meredith Whitman.

There was a time in my life when I couldn’t feel my pulse.

I’d run my finger tip up and down my wrist, up and down my neck, unable to feel the subtle movement I knew I was supposed to find there. It was all blank. No matter how I tried I couldn’t locate the rhythmic beating of blood that told me I was alive.

And to be perfectly honest, I didn’t feel very alive at the time. Chronic illness will do that.¹ But it was also that I didn’t feel alive in my body. My brain was making its aliveness very painfully clear. I wasn’t enjoying the experiences my brain was providing (anxiety, depression, intrusive thoughts) but there was no doubt it was active and alert.

My body though. At times it felt vegetative. I couldn’t find my pulse. I couldn’t access feeling in various parts of my body, particularly below the waist. They weren’t physically numb in the way your foot or hand might go numb. But my ability to take my awareness into those parts of my body was numb. Like blood being unable to reach your foot because you have your knee folded for too long, my awareness had been cut off from most of my body for so long I hardly noticed there wasn’t feeling there.

Except, that is, when I tried to do something that required feeling and awareness in my body.

It was at this time, when I couldn’t feel my pulse and I couldn’t feel my body, that I was trying to do fertility awareness “right.” I was trying to finally do it perfectly and use it for birth control, which I hadn’t yet done. I’d been ostensibly charting—the method for tracking provided by body—for several years but had yet to use the method to its full potential.

Because fertility awareness is about the body. It is by and for the experience of the body. And that was a place I didn’t live.

There are two necessary fertility signs in the method I’ve been using and interested in, the Symptothermal method. There is basal body temperature and cervical mucus. Temperature is easy enough. You take your temperature every morning and you chart it, watching for a rise in temps to tell you ovulation has occurred. The thermometer does most of the work for you. But cervical mucus? Mucus can’t be quantified by a device. It requires my own sensing and awareness.

And when you can’t feel your body, how exactly do you sense anything?

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Cervical mucus really doesn’t get enough airtime, I believe. It’s seldom explained or discussed. I think there’s a pretty good chance that there are many people who have made it all through their reproductive years, conceived and birthed children, and they don’t know their body produced cervical mucus, or what that mucus did for them. I have seen multiple gynecologists over the past fifteen years and not one has mentioned cervical mucus—a critical element of my gynecological health. As for sex education…I don’t know. I didn’t have any. It would be a lovely surprise if cervical mucus is mentioned in conventional sex ed courses.

“Mucus” is not normally an attractive word or concept, so I understand the hesitancy. But we talk about other materials coming out of other reproductive organs (i.e. semen) so why not cervical mucus? It can also be called cervical fluid, but personally I find it far more mucus-like than fluid. Mucus suggests something which can be held upon a finger, as the cervical type can. Fluid to me means something that sloshes out of a glass. And “bodily fluids” isn’t really everyone’s favorite term either, so I don’t know how calling it a fluid helps people’s perspectives much. Plus, the first time I heard it, it was called mucus. So, cervical mucus it is for me.

It’s produced, unsurprisingly, by crypts in the cervix, which is at the top of vagina. The cervix connects the vagina to the uterus. It’s a doorway. There are two kinds mucus it produces: fertile and infertile. Fertile mucus keeps sperm alive and has negative pressure channels that suck sperm up into the uterine tubes. Infertile mucus stops sperm from proceeding further. The two have entirely different, observable textures and appearances. Fertile mucus, at its peak, is like egg whites. Sometimes it makes its presence very much known by slipping out of the vagina. When not at its peak cervical mucus can look sticky, pasty, and/or creamy and be sensed as a dryness.

For the Symptothermal method of fertility awareness, cervical mucus helps us identify our fertile window. It can tells us when we can get pregnant and when we can’t, pretty much in real time.

Leading up to ovulation, cervical mucus texture changes and the quantity increases. When it reaches the notorious “egg white” consistency we know ovulation is afoot. Egg white mucus that is clear and can stretch is optimal for keeping sperm alive. After ovulation, the quantity wanes and the texture changes until there appears to be no mucus at all. This is how we know we’re infertile at that time.

We can access cervical mucus by wiping some toilet paper across the vulva and seeing what is on it, or by attuning our senses to that area of the body. It’s best to check for mucus several times a day, every day, so that we can see a pattern.

This is all information I had in my brain for years. I read it and re-read it in books, courses and blog posts. I could repeat it. I looked at plenty of pictures of what cervical mucus, fertile or infertile, should look like.

But I couldn’t find my own. It seemed to be invisible. And so for years I couldn’t properly use fertility awareness for birth control.

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This is the story of how I started using fertility awareness.

In my early twenties, I heard a little about something which I now know was likely “natural family planning,” a religiously-affiliated method of fertility awareness. A year or so later, I felt compelled to wrap my head around this concept of timing sex so that pregnancy didn’t occur. It turned out this concept had a name: the fertility awareness method.

Learning how to use this method felt necessary for my health and my life choices. I was in a committed relationship, but not ready to get pregnant, and I never found the Pill to be a viable option for me. I got engaged, and by the time I got married seventeen months later I’d started to tentatively do a little charting. I had a charting app called Kindara on my phone and their proprietary (and wildly expensive) smart basal body thermometer, wink, on my bedside table.² I’d read most of Taking Charge of Your Fertility, the classic fertility awareness method tome.

But Taking Charge of Your Fertility hadn’t made complete sense to me. Having re-read it since, I understand why—it really puts readers in the thick of it before they have the basics. And this was 2015. Instagram’s algorithm wasn’t yet showing me tons of fertility awareness educators or influencers. I wasn’t sure where to go for more information, trustworthy or otherwise.

So I also had a hormonal IUD, which was my main form of birth control. I got the IUD because I knew I didn’t know enough to trust fertility awareness or myself. In retrospect, I don’t think I really understood enough about the IUD either. The practitioners I saw didn’t provide much more information than what could be crammed into brochure, which I really don’t think is an adequate amount of details when one is choosing a method of birth control. Side effects, though perhaps explained, seemed a hazy reality because I didn’t even understand how my reproductive organs worked. There are questions I now know I should have asked, but at the time I had no words for them.

So I got the smallest IUD available at the time (now there are ones smaller yet), and it was stocked with the lowest dose of synthetic progesterone. It’s a strange thing, having a device inserted into your body. I tried not to think about it too much, though I regularly checked for the “strings” that told me it was still where it ought to be. Truthfully, I didn’t fully trust the IUD either. It was layer of protection, in sense, along with religious condoms use and being too nervous about an unplanned pregnancy to have sex. It was a doozy, and negatively impacted my life and relationship. I just didn’t know enough about my body to trust anything.

I comforted myself by taking my temperature daily, looking at my chart, and telling myself that one day I’d figure out my body and fertility awareness. I’d crack the code and I’d use only that for birth control.

The thing standing in my way was cervical mucus.

Everything I had read about fertility awareness, including Taking Chart of Your Fertility, hadn’t been able to make this make sense to me. I could take my temperature. I could check my cervical position (another, optional, fertility sign). But the mucus thing I could not get. I read descriptions of cervical mucus, where it is, and how to check it. It was like all of it was written in Chaucer’s English. I could sort of see what it was saying but in the end there was something lost in translation. So I would try to check it the way they said I should but it was as though my survey revealed no information.

And so, I couldn’t properly chart using the Sympothermal method. All I had were temperatures. And temperatures alone can tell you something. They are never predictive though.³ They only tell you that you have ovulated, which is good to know but it’s not the whole picture. And if I didn’t have the whole picture I rightly didn’t feel comfortable enough to trust the method.

Three years on from my first IUD insertion and the little device had run its course. I’d hoped that by then I wouldn’t need another but it seemed I did. So I went into my GYN for “a swap.” The old IUD was taken out and a new one put in.

Then a deep, deep depression arrived. It was very shortly after the second IUD was put in. I was suddenly yanked down in the darkest pit I’ve yet been in, and I’ve been in some dark ones. I couldn’t get the idea of ending my life out of my head; there wasn’t anything to live for, though I couldn’t explain why this was. It became clear that this sudden depression could only be because of the new IUD. When my first IUD was inserted, I had already been existed in a dark place, so if it happened then too it simply blended in.

I had the second IUD removed and within twenty-four hours I had stopped constantly sobbing and wanting to disappear without know why I wanted to disappear. Within a week I was out of the worst of it.

The GYN was visibly not thrilled to be removing my second IUD, which she’d only just put in. Moments after she removed it, moments after I screamed loud enough for the whole office to hear, she said coldly, “So. What are you going to use for contraception now?”

I can’t remember my answer. Sex and the potential consequences of it weren’t really my top concern at that moment. I was more interested in not feeling like my life was ending. I wanted my head to stop throbbing with pain and dark thoughts. I was more interested in feeling alive again. Contraceptives could figure themselves out later.

The GYN’s tone though seemed to say that I exhausted one of my limited options. If i wasn’t going to take the Pill or get an injection then what else was there for me?⁴ When I had told the GYN that I thought I was experiencing side effects from the IUD, she rejected this completely. She encouraged me to wait it out. When I didn’t I got the sense she thought I’d failed. Her office never followed up with me after the removal, even though I’d left the office crying and in pain. There was, it seemed, little else she could offer me and I was a hopeless, contraceptive-less case.

I didn’t go back to that GYN’s office (though I did call to let them know my side effects had vanished with the IUD no longer in place). Good quality condoms, it turns out, are actually quite serviceable when used correctly. I continued to track my temperature and figure out what I could from that. The feeling that I needed to finally, fully learn about fertility awareness—and my body—remained.

Clara Bailey’s Moon School—a six week online program for learning fertility awareness—kept coming up. Clara is a herbalist, naturopath and fertility awareness educator in Australia. She ran Moon School every spring and autumn.⁵ Two and a half years after the IUD removal, I was healing from years of chronic illness.⁶ It finally felt like the right time to sign up. To finally get my head around fertility awareness.

Getting my head around it was the simple part though.

I loved Moon School. Clara presented the information in a way that completely opened up my understanding. But when I got to the part of the course where it talked about cervical mucus I still struggled. I contacted Clara and told her I was having trouble with this part. It was the first time I really realized what was happening. I said it was like my brain didn’t “talk” or “relate” to “that area of my body” (my vulva and vagina) correctly, or like the sensors down there aren’t turn on. Clara reassured me first that this is very common and provided me with some further resources. But it was another year before I was able to chart my cervical mucus patterns.

What finally did it was being in my body.

Through a very fortunate series of events I learned about polyvagal theory and craniosacral therapy. By what now feels like a miracle, there happened to be a craniosacral therapist within walking distance of the house I’d just moved to. It took me weeks to make an appointment. I think I was shaking when I walked into the dim room lit mainly by purple Christmas lights and a star-shaped paper lantern. I had no idea what to expect.

I’m not sure it matters so much that it was craniosacral therapy specifically, though it is a wonderful modality. What mattered was the bodyworker and the support she gave me. Slowly, over the course of a year, I came into awareness of my body.

I cried the first dozen or so sessions. Every time I thought I wouldn’t and then I did. It was like blood rushing back to parts of the body gone numb— pins and needles of awareness. So much feeling flooding back to places overlooked. And my bodyworker would say: “Can you just let the tears be there?”

The set up for craniosacral is very simple. I lay on a massage table and bodyworker holds or “makes contacts” with various parts of my body, generally along my spine. The sacrum is a key location. There is no cracking or twisting, like in chiropractic. In the early day, my bodyworker also gently guided me through questions and prompts that helped me connect with my body. The whole thing is incredibly gentle—gentle touch, gentle words, gently bringing the body into focus.

And slowly, my body responded.

Feeling doesn’t come back to numb legs and arms at once. It fades it. This is how it was for returning awareness to my body. I wish I had more language for it than that but it’s one of the most mysterious processes I’ve ever gone through.

A year after completing Moon School and six years after I started charting with temperatures alone, I revisited the coursework provided by Clara. I started to try to find my cervical mucus each day when I visited the bathroom. And suddenly, there it was.

There it was sticky and creamy. There is was like egg whites stretching between my fingers. And there it went, disappearing and telling me I wasn’t fertile anymore. I saw the pattern and I charted it. I was able to identify when I could and couldn’t get pregnant. Fertility awareness clicked in my brain because I could also experience it in my body.

How do I say this? I think I love cervical mucus. Does that sound strange? Perhaps, but I do. It tells me so much about my body and gives me access to a side effect free method of birth control I feel confident in. Being able to read cervical mucus gives me autonomy over my body.

And under a microscope it is beautiful.

Fertile cervical mucus under a microscope, source.

Nearly seven years on, I’m able to use the method successfully for birth control. Was it an easy route, a simple solution? No. But it’s a solution I feel has benefited me in manifold ways. This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been able to fully inhabit my body and connect with every part of it. All the books, all the blog posts, all the videos in the world could not have made me live inside my body. I had to cultivate that relationship, which gives me more than being able to see my cervical mucus.

I can also feel my pulse now. When I tell my craniosacral therapist about something like that—about clearly feeling a physical sensation in my body—she likes to remind me of the wonder of it all. “Look at that,” she’ll say quietly, with shining eyes. “You’re alive.”

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1. I had what turned out to be Lyme disease and severe microbiome dysbiosis. But I didn’t know that for about a decade.

2. I would not recommend either of this now. Winks are no longer made, and Kindara turned out to have some privacy concerns. In my last couple months with the app, their support department also seemed to be unreachable. Now I would recommend Read Your Body and just a basic basal body thermometer that stores temps.

3. Do you hear me Natural Cycles and Daysy? *quietly fumes*

4. The Pill and other hormonal methods of birth control may be a viable option for some people. I just always knew the Pill wasn’t for me.

5. At the time of writing—March 2023–Clara doesn’t appear to be offering Moon School. There are many other similar six week FA training programs out there. If was looking for one now, I’d personally consider Whitney Miley Price’s and The Well’s.

6. I hadn’t had a single unplanned pregnancy, despite what my former GYN might have expected.