Ep. 73: What if I have mucus every day?? (Continuous Mucus)
Caitlin Estes:
Welcome to the Woven Well podcast. I'm your host, Caitlin Estes. I'm a certified fertility care practitioner with a master 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 Estes:
Welcome back to the Woven Well Podcast. If you enjoy our podcast, maybe the faith perspective, the health information, the advocacy advice that we offer, would you take just a moment and leave us a review? It would mean so much to me. Whatever podcasting platform you prefer. If you could just go on there and leave one comment, one review about something that you appreciate about the show. This allows other listeners to find our show more easily and then to see, hey, this is a safe place. I can come here. I can listen, I can learn. I know there's going to be a faith perspective. I know I'm going to be educated and that would mean the world to me. So thanks so much if you can do that. Now I work with all sorts of clients, uh, women with particular pregnancy goals, women who are working at identifying some health issues that are going on across the spectrum.
Caitlin Estes:
I will work with any woman because I believe that every woman deserves to understand how her body works. And so in that process we learn first of all, big picture that there are things called biomarkers that let us know what's going on inside of our body. So these biomarkers are things that we can observe that let us know something about internal processes. So within the fertility world, common ones you will hear are temperature. So you hear about women taking their basal body temperature first thing in the morning. You think about LH spikes. So there are certain tests that you can use, to dip in your urine and see if you're having an LH spike and that tells you something about possible ovulation. And then there's also cervical mucus. Yes, there are more, but these are kind of the main ones that we think of.
Caitlin Estes:
And with cervical mucus, we can understand not only when you are fertile or infertile, but also what's going on as far as possible health conditions. You can work towards diagnosing and treating those things. So the Creighton system, which is the method taught by woven natural fertility care, which is the sort of parent organization of woven well podcast, we utilize Creighton method only. Creighton Method uses cervical mucus, and this is because it's kind of the best bang for your buck. You get the most information. This is also something that is utilized by medical providers. So you get all this wealth of information about your fertility and your health, and all you have to do is pay attention to your cervical mucus. It's a pretty good deal. And I'll also link in the show notes an episode that we did specifically about the Creighton system.
Caitlin Estes:
So if you're wanting to learn more information about the mechanics of how that works, you can go there and listen to that. But I will frequently encounter women who say, I am not sure that Creighton can work for me because I see cervical mucus all the time, or at least I think I do. I'm constantly noticing it. I'm not using the Creighton system yet, but I just feel like I'm always aware that there's some sort of mucus down there. And so I don't think it would apply to me. These women assume that they're out and they have to use some other type of a method, and there certainly are other methods. I mentioned some other biomarkers and there are natural family planning methods that utilize those in order to let you know when you're fertile or not. But there is a reason that woven only teaches the Creighton system, and one of those reasons is the fact that it can work for any woman.
Caitlin Estes:
You do not have to have a particular type of cycle in order to use the Creighton system. In fact, you can have cervical mucus every single day of your cycle and still be able to use the Creighton method. This feels like what, wait a minute, how is this supposed to work? But here's the thing, you cannot be fertile every single day of your cycle. It is physically impossible. And so there are still going to be differences that you can identify between the mucus that's present because of rising estrogen levels and therefore fertility versus the stuff that your body just produces every other day. So you may be wondering, okay, Caitlin, you've just said that every day of mucus doesn't mean that every day is fertile. So this is very limited to those ladies who are seeing mucus every single day. Okay? This does not apply.
Caitlin Estes:
If you have a more traditional cycle, this is why you work with a certified fertility care practitioner. You do not need to make that decision on your own because in a traditional cycle, what happens is after menstruation, the body begins recruiting follicles for possible ovulation. So you have all these follicles within the ovaries that are growing and getting stronger and getting bigger, and they are all producing the hormone estrogen. So as the estrogen is increasing, the body starts seeing signs of that through the biomarker of cervical mucus. So you start noticing cervical mucus in the body, you start making those observations and you know that you're getting close to ovulation. Once ovulation happens, that hormone is going to shift. No longer are you going to be having a lot of of estrogen. Now we're switching over to progesterone and you still create cervical mucus when progesterone is dominant, but it's a very different type.
Caitlin Estes:
And so you don't always see this mucus. It doesn't always leave the body. And then at the end of the cycle, you start a brand new period. So if you're thinking about using the Creighton system, I want to encourage you, because here's the thing, you are not on your own. You are going to have the expert help of a certified fertility care practitioner like myself. I have been doing this for almost six years at the time of this recording, and I feel extremely confident in walking any woman through the ability to understand her body and her cycle, even if she has mucus every single day of the cycle. I want you to know this is normal for us. This is every day type of work for us. This is not something that makes us nervous or hesitant. We know how to deal with a term we'll use, which is continuous mucus, okay?
Caitlin Estes:
So you are not disqualified. There are also other things that can cause you to see a little bit of extra mucus. So maybe you're aware of it, but when we actually start charting you notice, oh, I didn't have nearly as much mucus as I thought I did. Or maybe you're discovering vaginal discharge versus cervical mucus. Again, we can work through all of that and figure out what's the cause of this and what does this actually mean as far as your fertility goes. It can feel intimidating to learn Creighton when you think that you have continuous mucus, but I want you to know that we have bumpers in place as you learn, we want you to be successful. And for instance, if your goal is to avoid pregnancy, then we want to help you successfully avoid pregnancy even early on when you're learning. So we put these bumpers in place when it comes to your instructions, when it comes to the explanation that we provide so that you can't help but bowl a strike, okay?
Caitlin Estes:
Because I admit it is going to be a little messy before it starts to make sense. But we have a structure in place. We have a planned way to walk through this together so that you will very quickly get to the point where what you're seeing on the chart matches the accurate picture of what's going on in your body. And you can feel extremely confident about when you're fertile and infertile and what these different types of mucus mean. I know it can feel disheartening just knowing that what your body is doing is maybe not what the standard or traditional expectation is. I get it. You want your chart to look like the example charts and you want to feel like your body is normal and healthy, and you want this process to be easy and quick. I respect all of those things, but I want you to know that there is no reason why you can't be successful with the Creighton system.
Caitlin Estes:
Whether your goal is to avoid pregnancy or to conceive pregnancy. We can tell the difference together between the different types of mucus that your body produces. Also, it's giving you very helpful health information. So I mentioned earlier that for instance, there's a difference between vaginal discharge and cervical mucus, but there are also different causes for true continuous mucus. for instance, you could have some type of cervical inflammation that is causing you to see additional mucus throughout the cycle. You could have an overgrowth of bacteria in the vagina. Maybe you have insulin resistance. Maybe there are some environmental factors in your life that are causing you to see extra mucus. But when you take those environmental factors out, that goes away. So one of my very first clients, we were walking through this together, she was seeing continuous mucus, meaning she had different types of mucus every day.
Caitlin Estes:
And I suggested to her that she start taking a look at the different products that she uses. So we went through a list. We identified common things that can cause an issue, and she cut those out. I'm telling you that within two weeks, her chart went from mucus every single day to mainly dryness and only mucus related to that estrogen rise. It was a dramatic change. And ever since then, I am convinced that environmental factors can play an absolutely huge role. So while we are actively managing the chart so that you can know very quickly if it's a day of fertility or infertility, we're also digging into the health causes behind it. Our goal is to improve your overall quality of life. And that means medically, physically, that means mentally, emotionally. That means spiritually. So it matters why these things are happening, and we want to help you get to the root cause of that as well.
Caitlin Estes:
When you have continuous mucus, your body is producing some variation of mucus every single day, but you still have the same rise and fall of estrogen and rise and fall of progesterone. So with the help of a certified fertility care practitioner, you can identify the differences in that estrogen based mucus versus the other days of this, the same old stuff that you see all the time. You are not disqualified from using the Creighton system if you have mucus every day. I want you to feel confident. I believe that you can feel confident, and when you work together with a certified fertility care practitioner that you can trust, you can absolutely be successful. As always, thanks so much for listening as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.