Ep. 87: What about Single Women? with FCP Intern, Elizabeth Randall
Caitlin:
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:
Welcome back to the Woven Well Podcast. Here on the podcast we talk about issues related to reproductive health, family planning, fertility, and how faith plays a role in all of it. We share stories of ladies who are a part of our Woven community so that you can hear their real life experiences and we provide you with quality restorative health resources. Today we're talking with fertility care practitioner intern Elizabeth about a core value that we have at Woven Natural Fertility Care: All women deserve to understand their fertility and optimize it for the best quality of life, regardless of marital status, pregnancy intention, or anything else. Now, you may remember Elizabeth from episode 68 where she shared her journey of discernment in working in this field and why the Creighton Method has meant so much to her. So if you haven't had a chance to listen to it, I encourage you to go back and do so. I don't think you'll regret it. Elizabeth, welcome back to the show. I'm so glad you're with us.
Elizabeth:
Thank you so much. Excited to be back.
Caitlin:
Yeah. So for those who haven't had a chance to listen to the other episode yet, why don't you share just a little bit about yourself with us?
Elizabeth:
Yeah. I am a fertility care practitioner intern at the moment. Will be finishing that up here within the next six months to a year, and will be fertility care practitioner--no longer an intern, which is exciting. I'm also a mother baby nurse at a local hospital here in Birmingham, so take care of sweet moms and babies postpartum and love it.
Caitlin:
Yeah, that's great. I appreciate you sharing a little bit about yourself. Now I know that you believe, like I do, that all women benefit from understanding and optimizing their fertility, including single women. So what's your take? Why should women who may not even have fertility on their radar be interested in understanding more about it?
Elizabeth:
Yeah, I think that reproductive health is helpful to know for all women no matter what season of life you may be in. Even if you're not concerned at the moment if you are fertile or not, being aware of your cycle, of your body, tracking your cycle can help give all sorts of information that can help indicate different things that could be going on with a woman's health. So yeah, I think that this is really beneficial no matter what season of life a woman may be in.
Caitlin:
Yeah. Now listeners know that I'm a huge fan of Creighton. It doesn't take long to get there. But I'd love for them to hear from you about why Creighton can specifically benefit women who are single.
Elizabeth:
Yeah, so I am single at the moment., Caitlin's asking me because of that. I started learning Creighton as a single woman. I think that this can help benefit single women because it gives us information to see.
Elizabeth:
Maybe you are familiar with your cycle right now. You know some general information. You may have pretty painful periods or maybe you see spotting before or after your period. Maybe you have pretty significant PMS symptoms or irregular cycles, but you're not really sure how long they last exactly. This can be helpful to know, that general information, but learning the Creighton model system can give us confidence in seeing what's truly going on. How long are your cycles? How long is that time between ovulation and starting your period? Is that spotting that you're seeing significant? Is it brown? How many days is it, how long before you start your period are you experiencing those PMS symptoms? All of this is helpful to learn and to be able to really acknowledge and listen to what your body's telling you, to write it down on a chart to be able to physically see and to be able to see patterns of what our bodies are telling us month to month, cycle to cycle. I believe that our bodies truly are incredible and the Lord has given us a way to listen to what they're trying to tell us in this unique way of tracking our cycles and learning our cycles, our mucus patterns, can help give us such valuable information.
Caitlin:
Yeah, I completely agree. I think that Creighton is uniquely designed to do all of those things and give us that very visual insight into what's going on internally with our hormones, with our reproductive health, like you mentioned. A lot of us live with symptoms that we think are just a part of being a woman, but when we really get down to it, there's usually a root cause that's causing these things to happen. And not until we have that kind of information in front of us do we feel that empowerment to do something about it, to advocate for those needs, and be able to have that information with us. So now I know with you your doctor recommended that you use the Creighton system. So when they first recommended that, what did you think? Like what was your first reaction to that?
Elizabeth:
I did not love the idea at first. As you probably remember, Caitlin, I know we talked about this last time, but I thought, how in the world does this apply to me? I am not in a season of life where I'm trying to achieve pregnancy or to avoid pregnancy. And so I'm learning how to track and writing down when I'm fertile and when I'm not and how, how does this work for me. And it's funny looking back now thinking of that point and my, how skeptical I was and now I'm doing this professionally. With the Creighton model system, learning it about two and a half years ago, I remember feeling a bit bitter as I mentioned, but because my doctor asked me to chart, it helped me to do what I've just been sharing about to be able to see. It gave me information visually to be able to see patterns in my cycle and in my chart that I had never been able to see before.
It gave me information that I knew something was wrong and for the first time I was like, ah, okay. Now I see what's going on. And I could even see, I looked back at my chart when I first started a few weeks ago, and it's so amazing seeing the physical change that's happened over time. Through working with you, Caitlin, and working with my Napro medical consultant, you can see on your chart the changes when you actually move towards healing. So this helped so much in gaining information, and it helped with my doctor, with my nurse practitioner, for her to determine patterns in my cycle, for her to gain clarity, to be able to diagnose and to take confident steps towards treatment for me. I also remember being amazed that she could look at my chart and that was almost more helpful to her than my lab work. And thinking this is, this is crazy. But that, a chart can give you so much information of months of time, whereas labs is just one single moment in time what your hormone levels are. So this really can give so much helpful information for me and for me as a woman who was trying to learn and figure out what was going on, but also for my medical provider.
Caitlin:
And doesn't that feel good that your work, your knowledge of yourself and your body and what's going on is valued, that she cared about that, that she wanted to see it, that you had a seat at the table in discussion about what's going on with your health and how to optimize it? That doesn't always happen within women's healthcare, but I feel like the doctors who are interested in this charting, we talk a lot about NaPro technology and doctors who are trained in natural procreative technology. They want to see what your experience is day in and day out. And you perfectly shared that about looking at months worth of information, instead of one particular moment in time alone. Now, labs are very helpful. I don't mean that they're not, but having both of those things is really, really beneficial.
Elizabeth:
I also want to say too that it felt very empowering for me to have this information to, and it helped me feel more involved in my own health journey because up until the point of learning Creighton, it, I just felt so in the dark and now I feel much more engaged and involved and can see active changes and things that are going on. So that was a really helpful part of learning for me too.
Caitlin:
It gives you a real practical knowledge about what's going on. You mentioned earlier that you knew something was wrong and I think about how many women out there know in their bones that something is wrong, but they don't have the vocabulary to talk about it, to explain it to a doctor. They don't have the words to use to make the doctor care about what they're trying to express. And so our approach is so different in that way because it puts you in a place of knowledge about yourself, of insight. We teach you how to understand what's going on. And what I hear you saying is even as a single woman who had no interest whatsoever in even the topic of pregnancy, because you're just focused on your health, it was extremely beneficial to you to know that information about yourself and be able to use it to, yes, advocate and also work with a like-minded restorative health professional who is working with you, you know, on the same team, who valued very much so the work that you were putting into it. And I think that's, I think that's a big deal,
Elizabeth:
Right? It made me feel a part of the team.
Caitlin:
Yeah. So what do you think are the main reasons single women are hesitant about Creighton or think that this is not for them?
Elizabeth:
I think so much of the hesitation single women may have is because they feel that it's not the right time. They feel like I'm not trying to avoid or achieve pregnancy at the moment. And so it doesn't make sense. It feels kind of useless to take this time to learn this. I should probably just wait. But I hope hearing a little tidbit of my own story of how I began feeling that way at first, how does this even apply to me? And now being on the other side of learning it as a single woman, I can now say with confidence that it is so worth it to start in this season. I pray to be married one day and to have children, and I wonder if had I waited until I got married and I started at that point, I think it would've taken a lot more time of learning and listening and focusing on my body that it potentially could have delayed my ability to achieve pregnancy much more one day down the road. I think it maybe could cause undue stress at the beginnings of marriage.
Elizabeth:
I think there's a lot of reasons that I am so thankful that I started learning it as a single woman. And I believe that the Lord has brought me a lot of peace and confidence in learning about my body and fertility at this point. And I've gained a lot of information that I really feel thankful for to know in this season of my life. I do want to point out too, for those of you single ladies who maybe are listening to this and feeling like I don't know that I have any health issues related to my cycle, I wanna say that is amazing and beautiful, and I am so glad to hear that for you. But this still applies to you too. I think that learning about your cycle and your fertility can really appreciate, help you to appreciate, the way that you are made and the gift of your body and to help prepare for changing seasons to come. So I wanted to mention that too. Yeah. But I really do believe this can apply for any woman in any season.
Caitlin:
I absolutely agree with that. And I think that that's an important thing to bring up. One, because sometimes we are surprised by what we see when we chart. And so sometimes we don't think we have anything and then we notice a lot when we start charting. But also back to what you said about appreciation, we live in a culture of disconnection. We are constantly, subconsciously, indirectly, and sometimes very directly, but we are being encouraged to disconnect from our bodies and the worth and the value that's there. This is an active, intentional practice of connecting body, mind, and spirit, saying God created me in this way. God designed me as a human being: a beautifully complex, intricately created human being, and I wanna celebrate that. I wanna get to learn more about that because this was done intentionally. And so I want to intentionally respond to that as well. So I completely agree with you. So I would imagine that if someone is feeling interested in learning more about this, maybe they're not ready, you know, maybe they're like, ah, I still don't know if it's for me, but they wanna talk with you or they wanna even join one of your upcoming classes. What would be the best way for them to get connected with you?
Elizabeth:
Yeah, so I am on the Woven fertility affiliates page, so you can look me up there. You can email me at elizabeth@wovenfertility.com. That's probably the best way to reach me, and I want to note I am, I know I've talked a lot about singleness and would love to work with you single ladies. And I wanna share, I'm happy to work with any woman in any season of life. I am super passionate about this, obviously, since I'm doing it vocationally now and really value the information that I've learned and want to help all women who desire to learn to have access. So whatever season of life a woman may be in, I would love to come alongside you.
Caitlin:
Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. And we will be sure to link that and your previous podcast episode in the show notes for today. So thanks so much for being on Elizabeth. We really appreciate it.
Elizabeth:
Of course. Thank you
Caitlin:
Here on the Woven Well podcast, we bring you resources like this on a regular basis. We provide education and a sense of community that empowers women to make informed fertility decisions while honoring the deep connection between fertility and faith. We would love for you to be a part of this community. You can join our monthly newsletter or even attend one of our events. You can find information about both of those in our show notes or on our website at wovenfertility.com. As always, thanks for listening as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.