Ep. 54: Practical New Year Fertility Resolutions
Welcome back to the Woven Well Podcast! And happy 2023! This is the first episode that I get to talk with you personally in 2023, although I absolutely loved hearing from Dr. K about not only endometriosis and whether or not you should use Receptiva to diagnose it, but also sharing the whole mentality behind treatment and diagnosing in general. It was so informative and gave such a great perspective about restorative reproductive healthcare. If you haven’t had a chance to listen, I highly recommend it.
Empowering women with the option of restorative reproductive healthcare is something that’s hugely important to us at Woven Well. We want you to know your options, and be able to make informed decisions about your care - from the way things are diagnosed, to your options in treatment. We know you’re a whole person who deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, and we want to help make that happen for you.
We’re also all about educating women to understand and respect their bodies through the Creighton method, by charting and tracking the changing hormones in their cycles.
And discussing the very important role faith plays in our fertility journey - whether it’s healing and redeeming our relationship with our bodies, submitting our fertility journey to God, or listening to what God may be saying about fertility for the first time.
We care deeply about these things, and the odds are high that if you’re listening, you care deeply, too.
That’s probably why I got so many responses to our New Year’s Fertility Resolutions post on our Woven Fertility account on Instagram. We had dozens of new followers and lots of DMs - and I think it’s because we know there’s something special about our bodies and our fertility, and we’re ready for more.
If you missed it, the fertility resolutions we shared were:
understand my menstrual cycles
advocate for myself at the obgyn office
submit my fertility journey to God
embrace my natural fertility
respect my body through nutrition, sleep, and healthy relationships
So today we’re going to talk about practical ways to pursue these resolutions in 2023, or any year or time that you may be listening.
Yes, it may be the second week of January already, but who cares? Most people don’t start their new years resolutions on the 1st anyway. Or maybe the ones you set then are out the door and you’re looking for more realistic ones. No matter your reason, today’s a great day to get started!
And I’m going to start with what I consider to be the number 1 decision to take to prioritize your fertility - health, intimacy, faith, all of it - in 2023: Begin charting your cycles with more than an app.
I know, it may seem like getting started with an app is better than nothing, but it really could be misleading without more context. I’ve had more than a few clients begin working with me after charting their cycles with an app for years. They’re confident they have healthy, regular cycles because they have a period every 30 days or so. But what we see in between periods is anything but healthy. Or half of the periods they thought they saw were actually instances of unusual bleeding. You can learn so much more about your health and your fertility by truly understanding your entire reproductive cycle, hormone health, and more.
Now, you know I’m going to strongly recommend the Creighton method of charting. We teach it at Woven Natural Fertility Care for a reason. It’s widely used among trained medical professionals, relevant to any healthcare or fertility goal, and easy to learn with the help of a fertility care practitioner.
You don’t have to have a particular type of cycle in order to use Creighton - you can have long cycles, short cycles, you could even be anouvlatory. You can be avoiding pregnancy or hoping to conceive a pregnancy. It can work with anyone. And it gives you so much information! I truly do believe it’s hands down the best method for understanding your overall fertility.
If you’d like to learn it, stick around to the end of the episode or check out the show notes for our next Introductory Session.
Next on the list of ways to prioritize your fertility health this year:
Find a restorative reproductive medical professional in your area.
I know this can be tricky. There's not really one website that has all the restorative approach medical professionals on it. But a safe place to start is with doctors trained in Naprotechnology, a system that works with Creighton charting and allows doctors to get an in depth look at your cycle patterns, health, fertility, and more. All napro doctors are restorative-minded and set on finding the root cause of the health or fertility issue, so they can treat it at its source and help you have a better quality of life.
But I get it that not everyone will have easy access to a Napro in their area, or may not know if they do. I invite you to email me directly and I’ll let you know if I know of someone in your area, or what your next best option would be. You can contact me through our website wovenfertility.com
Finding a doctor you can trust to respect you is huge. I want to strongly encourage you to make this a goal this year, because you deserve to be respected by your doctor.
Your fertility goals deserve to be respected.
Your overall health and wellness deserve to be prioritized.
And the results are worth it.
Next in the ways to prioritize your fertility health this year: Respect your own body.
Yes, I just talked about the importance of surrounding yourself with medical providers who respect it. But really, the first step is to respect our own bodies. If WE don’t respect them, how will anyone else?
Now this topic is one I could spend a lot of time talking on, and I’m so tempted. But we’ll have to save it for another episode. For now, I just want to emphasize the fact that you deserve to be respected. Not because you’ve earned it or you’re somehow superior to others and deserve it more. You deserve to be respected because you are made in the image of God. God made you worthy of respect when you were created with beauty and purpose. You are intimately known and loved by the Creator of the Universe. Who could possibly make you worth anything else?
Beginning to respect your body can take the form of many things. There’s not one right way to get started. Take a look at how you’re currently treating your body, and see if it feels honoring to the dignity with which you were created. Are you running it ragged? Expecting it to do the same things for you after only sleeping 5 hours a night or without enough food or water, for instance? Are you fueling it with an excess of sugar? Are you protecting and nurturing it, or is it being mistreated and devalued?
It can open up a lot of thoughts and feelings, but don’t be afraid to start small. Maybe you drink more water each day, or go to bed 30 minutes earlier. Other steps will come.
But as you make the changes, remember why you’re making them. Not simply because it's better that you drink more water or get more sleep, but because this body you have was given to you as a unique gift. That it is a part of what makes you you - it cannot be separated from your personhood. It is made in the image of God, and is precious and beloved.
Which leads us to the final suggestion to prioritize your fertility this year: Start praying about your fertility.
Even as we’ve talked about your health and your body and your overall wellness, we’ve brought up how involved God has been in your creation, in your design, and in how your body should be valued and respected. But God has even more good for you.
What you should pray - how you should pray - is not something I can dole out as an assignment in a podcast. There are so many ways in which God may be inviting you to more through your own fertility journey.
But maybe my one suggestion would be that this prayer for your fertility wouldn’t necessarily be about specific fertility outcomes - that you'd conceive or that you’d avoid pregnancy - although those are most definitely great things to bring before the Lord!
But maybe what would be most beneficial is practicing prayers of submission and openness - maybe it’s asking God to reveal to you how even this area of your life may be an opportunity for worship and deeper understanding.
Maybe you’re pondering that idea of respecting and valuing your body as it is, and you need God’s help to see yourself through the lens of Love.
If you need words to help you begin that prayer, we have a free resource available to you called a Prayer Guide for the Female Body, and it’s yours for the taking on our website at wovenfertility.com/resources.
Whatever your prayer may become, the first step is to begin.
So those are our suggestions for your fertility resolutions:
Start charting your cycles with Creighton
Find a restorative reproductive health medical provider
Practice one act of respecting your body
Start praying about your fertility
You don’t have to do all of these. One may stick out to you more than the others. It could be that when you begin practicing one, the others come naturally as time goes on.
But I think you’ll be pleased with the result.
I would love to hear what you decide to start, and how things go throughout this year! I know it seems hard to connect with someone through a podcast, but you can always connect with me on Instagram @wovenfertility or allow me to walk with you personally as a client.
If you’re ready to prioritize your health and fertility by learning the Creighton system, I’d love for you to join us for our next Introductory Session. We offer it monthly through a live, online presentation. We go over your anatomy, what your body is doing cycle after cycle, hormone health, and of course - introduce you to Creighton and all that it can reveal about your reproductive health. I’d love for you to join us this month - and please let me know you connected with us through the podcast! I would love to meet you.
Happy New Year to all of you - I hope you have a fantastic one, full of health and wholeness!
As always, thanks for listening as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.