Ep. 142: Cervical Mucus for Fertility Awareness
Caitlin:
Welcome to the Woven Well Podcast. I'm your host, Caitlin Estes. I'm a certified fertility care practitioner with a master of divinity degree. Each episode will cover a topic that helps educate and empower you and your fertility while honoring the deep connection your fertility has with your faith. Let's get started.
Caitlin:
Welcome back to the Woven Well Podcast! Cervical mucus. What is it? Why is it so important and how can it be used to better understand our reproductive health and fertility? That's what today's episode is all about. We're talking about cervical mucus because it's one of the primary reproductive biomarkers created by a woman's body. We here at Woven Well believe that every woman deserves to understand how her body functions and how she can prioritize her reproductive health through natural restorative approaches for most. The best and easiest way to begin that journey is to begin tracking her cycle through a formal method of fertility awareness. You may have heard of these before. Cycle awareness, fertility tracking, natural family planning, just one of the many names for it. Fertility awareness methods utilize the female body's natural biomarkers like cervical mucus, basal body temperature, cervical position, or hormone production to reveal whether a woman is fertile or infertile that day, how healthy her menstrual cycle is, and even when to expect her next period to begin.
Caitlin:
Very practical. So it truly is a method of fertility awareness, or you may sometimes hear it even called fertility appreciation because it allows you to work with your own reproductive system to improve your health and plan your family. There are methods built around each of the reproductive biomarkers that I just mentioned, and if you're looking for our take on choosing a method, then be sure to check out our previous episode on choosing a method of natural family planning. Today's episode though is focusing specifically on the use of cervical mucus, so let's talk about what it is and where it comes from. Right underneath the uterus is an organ called the cervix. Most of us don't hear or think much about the cervix until we hope that it's dilating during delivery of pregnancy, but the cervix is working day after day throughout each menstrual cycle from your very first until your very last.
Caitlin:
The cervix absorbs whatever reproductive hormones are dominant during that particular phase of the menstrual cycle and then produces a cervical mucus based on that hormone. The cervix itself is capable of creating many different forms of mucus, all with different tasks to help inside and outside of pregnancy. Full disclosure, I'm a huge fan of cervical mucus. Okay, I could talk about it for quite a while and I've learned a lot about it over the years. So I had to be really intentional to make this a short episode. Today it's just so often undervalued, and yet it's incredibly helpful and kind of amazing. So the more I learn about it, the more I amazed I seem to be, and maybe that'll be true for you too. For instance, the mucus created in the cervix is incredibly versatile. Depending on where a woman is in her cycle, the cervix will create different mucus that serves different purposes.
Caitlin:
So when estrogen is rising in preparation for ovulation, two types of mucus work together to create a healthy highway for sperm travel. Get this mucus under just the right kind of microscope, and you'll see that it's formed with tiny little channels that are the perfect size for that sperm transportation. This mucus is designed to get the sperm moving efficiently to the fallopian tubes, where maybe an egg will be fertilized, but not just any kind of sperm. This mucus works to filter out abnormal sperm to give you the best chance at a healthy pregnancy. Isn't that amazing? I absolutely love learning about how the reproductive system is working on all fronts to create the best possibility of a healthy pregnancy. Because let's be clear, even if your goal isn't to conceive a pregnancy, that's what your reproductive system is designed to do, and when it's able to function fully and function well, you usually feel your best too, and that matters.
Caitlin:
But cervical mucus isn't just amazing for pregnancy preparation. It's also working hard after ovulation when pregnancy isn't even possible. Now it's forming yet another type of cervical mucus that prevents sperm travel because at this stage, what's the point? And it actually forms an antibacterial barrier to help protect the uterus. Isn't that amazing? You know, I told you there's lots of cool things about it, but the cervical mucus is working hard toward multiple goals throughout the menstrual cycle. Once we realize that we can use our cervical mucus to get a better picture of what's actually going on behind the scenes, you can actually learn what those different types of cervical mucus look and act like so that when you spot them, you can get a glimpse at the health of the hormones related to their production. It's possible for cervical mucus to reveal issues with estrogen dominance, progesterone deficiency, incomplete ovulation, and more.
Caitlin:
It can also give you insight into other medical factors that can affect reproductive health. It can reveal LUF cycles or L-U-F cycles, which I'll link to our previous episode that we have on that. If you'd like to learn more, it can point to the possibility of insulin resistance or glucose issues. It can give us a heads up when perimenopause begins. A process that usually starts seven years before menopause actually happens. It can also give us much needed guidance when navigating those postpartum months after having a baby. Cervical mucus is our friend, but just because it's this amazing doesn't mean it's always easy to understand. How can a woman use her cervical mucus to identify these reproductive concerns? How can she feel confident about whether she's fertile or infertile based on mucus alone? What can cervical mucus provide that an OPK or LH strip can't? These are great questions.
Caitlin:
The reality is, if you don't have a trained instructor who knows how to share this information, it can feel very overwhelming and intimidating. I'm not saying it's completely impossible to learn all about it on your own, but I do think it is unnecessarily complicated and time intensive, and where do you go to get trusted resources? You know, instead, when you learn with an instructor certified in their method, you can learn the practical side of things very quickly along with how to make the most of your newfound knowledge. And trust me, cervical mucus is extremely practical as a fertility awareness method. First of all, think of the beauty of not having to wake up at 6:00 AM on a weekend to take your basal body temperature, ugh, or think of the flexibility of being able to take this method with you anywhere you go in the world because you don't need any special tools or technology in order to do it.
Caitlin:
Cervical mucus is also giving you far more information than you can get with LH tests, which only show you when there's a rise in that one solitary hormone. They provide no guidance as to the health of the cycle or the strength of the hormone production, only whether or not you're producing LH. Plus cervical mucus can be used by women with any type of menstrual cycle and any reproductive goal. It's not intended for only regular cycles or only women trying to conceive. It's been thoroughly tested and found to be extremely effective at avoiding pregnancy tracking irregular cycles. Really, it applies to anyone, but maybe my favorite reason for learning about and utilizing cervical mucus is that it gives us a unique perspective on our female design. We live in a time when women feel incredibly disconnected from our own bodies and reproductive cycles. Instead of learning about reproductive health as teens we're given the pill instead of giving to the root cause of infertility, we're told to try IVF.
Caitlin:
It's getting harder and harder to make informed decisions about our reproductive health care as our options seem to get more and more limited. Having a tried and true method of understanding your own personal menstrual cycle and reproductive health, I think it's medicine for that disease. So access to this kind of insight and a deeper understanding of our own design and fertility, it reminds us that we can be active participants in our own health and family planning, not merely passive observers being told what we can and cannot do. And as we reengage with our ability to create new life, whether that's our goal or not, we're reminded of our creator who designed us with love and purpose and intentionality in a time of disconnection. It gives us a much needed avenue for reconnection with our bodies, our design, and our creator. No matter your marital status, your reproductive goal, or your cycle issues that you may have, you deserve to know more.
Caitlin:
Of course, we believe that strongly, and we're doing all we can to get those resources to you. So if you haven't already, be sure to check out our free downloadable resources. We'll make sure to have them linked in the show notes, and these short episodes here on the podcast are also designed to get information in your hands, or here's as well. But some of you may want to take the next step and really get the most out of what you can learn from your own cervical mucus. For those, I'd welcome you to join us at one of our upcoming introductory sessions for the Creon Model System, which uses all we can learn from cervical mucus to aid in our daily decisions related to health fertility. It's online, it's about an hour, and it's the perfect way to learn more as you discern your next steps. Thanks so much for listening today. I hope this has been a helpful episode. If you ever want to send us a message, check out our text the show link in the show notes. You can also choose to support the show through a link there, or my personal favorite, leave a written five star review about what has been the most helpful about Woven Well. Trust me, it helps other listeners find us, and that's what we want. As always, thanks for listening as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.