Doctors, It’s Time to Understand Fertility Better

April 5, 2024April 5, 2024 ~ Lorelei Savaryn ~ Leave a comment

The fact that I know more than many OB/GYNs about the science of fertility is a problem.

By now many have seen the Washington Post article, which chastises the ignorant women of the world for listening to the dangerous spoutings-off of TikTok folk who lambast the dangers of hormonal contraception and urge women to use the…gasp rhythm method, which is proven to fail and will result in untold unintended pregnancies and therefore also more abortions.

I wish I could have read that article and assumed the best. I wish I could have assumed that they had cherry picked a doctor who would feed them quotes perfect for clickbait and that this was an isolated ridiculous article in a sea of medical professionals who obviously do better.

But, as a woman, I’ve lived through too much of my own experience to deny the fact that this OB/GYN represents a lot of medical professionals out there who believe it is either contraception (for smart people who care about being responsible contributors to society) or the rhythm method (for the ignorant uneducated rest.)

Three Scenarios

One: I was seventeen years old and mentioned that my menstrual cramps were fairly painful each month. I was not sexually active, and yet I was put on a daily birth control pill to manage my menstrual symptoms. Did I understand what that pill was doing to my natural hormonal cycle each month? No. Did I gain weight and experience other side effects while I was on it? Yes

Then, in college, I was still not sexually active and was prescribed the Depo-Provera shot to address similar period symptoms. I was told this would stop my periods altogether! Miracle of miracles I could be free! What resulted was months and months of constant spotting, and one scenario where I experienced significant bleeding out of the blue and at a very inopportune time. I also felt extremely weird not having my cycle regularly. It was almost as if something inside me knew that my body wasn’t working as it should…

I couldn’t even count the number of women I know who share a similar story. At best, putting women who are having issues with their menstrual cycle on a pill is putting a band-aid on a larger issue.

In most other health situations that I can think of, doctors observe a patient’s symptoms, then systematically work toward figuring out the root cause so they can treat the root cause and resolve the issue for their patient. I have pondered the questions for years of why fertility symptoms are treated by default so often with the band-aid method. Hormonal contraception does not actually treat the root cause of many cycle irregularities, and doctors aren’t actually treating women when they don’t know enough about fertility to research root causes and work to solve them. Women deserve better.

Two: I was four children in by this point, and had been seeing the same midwife team for a while for my general care between pregnancies. I had talked to them about the fact that I practice fertility awareness for my family planning. I know I had used those exact words because I intentionally opted out of the more religiously affiliated “Natural Family Planning” or NFP phraseology when answering their questions.

Months later, I showed up to a regular check-up appointment and the nurse doing my intake goes: “Are you still using the rhythm method?”

I wish I could have gone back and been more assertive about it, but I think I was so surprised at the moment and caught off guard that I awkwardly corrected her. But the fact is that my chart was inaccurate.

That moment also speaks to one of the main issues with the Washington Post article: that many people who literally specialize in women and childbirth and fertility don’t understand that the rhythm method is not the only option besides contraception. They live in a dichotomous world that doesn’t exist.

I’m assuming that many failures of the medical institution are at play here. The accountability probably lies partly with the individual practitioners who don’t do their research. Some of it might lie with medical colleges who likely don’t offer enough class time to the ins and outs of a woman’s cycle.

But the fact that I know more than a lot of these doctors is a big ole mix of frustrating and exhausting too. We’ve been practicing fertility awareness since about 2016 and we’ve had exactly two children in that time, both of whom we were open to having. The fact that I have not gotten accidentally pregnant in the four years since having our youngest is not a surprise to me, nor is it a stroke of good luck. I know each month when my body is getting ready to ovulate and increasing in estrogen. I know when ovulation is imminent and LH is surging. And I know when ovulation has passed because my progesterone rises.

The real, actual world that we exist in involves the options of contraception, the rhythm method, and any number of fertility awareness approaches that leverage the science of fertility. These approaches can not only assist families in avoiding pregnancy (at rates that match contraception) but also in achieving it if that is their goal (which can sometimes help women avoid needing more intensive fertility interventions.)

Three: My daughters. I am raising three girls in this world, and that has me thinking a lot about what we do to help young women understand what their bodies are doing.

As a girl myself, I was taught that fertility is a mysterious thing, that women menstruate about every 28 days and ovulate around day 14. I was taught that that is about all you can know about it. Girls today, in many cases, are still being taught these same things though they are all inaccurate.

I know that I will be looking for doctors for my girls who have put in the work to understand that a woman’s fertility is a good and healthy thing and who will help them understand and appreciate how their bodies function.

How helpful would it have been to learn that you can know when your period is going to start because your basal body temperature drops? I use the Oura ring and I can simply look at my BBT graph on the app to know what’s about to happen. It would have alleviated so much anxiety of getting caught off guard with a period starting when I forgot to bring the necessary supplies to school that day. Heck, it would have been helpful to simply have been told that cervical fluid is a normal, healthy thing to have and that there is a hormonal reason why the amount of fluid changes throughout the month.

We can do better in educating young women to read the language of their bodies, and to start off from the foundation that their fertility is healthy and good.

The Worst of All

But most of all, the Washington Post article is concerning because it frames women’s fertility as a problem to be solved. A burden to bear. A mystery that women are foolish to even try to solve without the help of a pharmaceutical product.

And I can’t help but think that is so incredibly backwards and harmful to women. Part of being a woman is being built with the potential to create new human life inside us. I straight up tell my daughters that our ability to do that is a superpower. That we can co-create with God to add more people made in His image to this earth. It’s awesome. It’s a gift. It is something to be understood, not something to be treated.

Women who seek to understand their fertility are not using the rhythm method. We are not uneducated or ignorant. In many cases, we know more than our doctors about how the science of fertility works and we choose to work with our bodies, not against them to navigate planning our families. We are healthier for it.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again- fertility is among the only, if not the only bodily system that we artificially suppress even when (and sometimes especially when) it is functioning exactly as it should. We live in a time when we understand more about fertility than ever before in human history. We know the hormones involved and the physical symptoms of those hormones, both of which we can track!

Image courtesy of: https://birthcontrol.com/options/fertility-awareness-method/

Since the flawed charting at my appointment, I have switched to a practitioner who can look at my monthly charts and make sense of them alongside me. Someone who won’t ever offer me IUDs or the pill or the depo shot. It sometimes takes effort or a bit of extra drive time to find medical professionals who understand fertility well or who respect the choice to work with our bodies in a more natural way, but it is so very worth the effort.

I am hoping and asking other medical professionals, especially those who work with women, to at the very least read up on this subject. There are so many resources that are easy to find. The patient knowing more than the doctor is troubling. I urge those in the medical field to do better. And please do not take the Washington Post article as sound medical advice. No, I would not recommend the rhythm method. But the real ignorance lies with the doctor who says that’s the only option besides contraception that women have.

This letter is free for you to read, but it took time and energy to produce. If you’re interested in supporting the work of This Catholic Family, I would be honored if you would consider upgrading your subscription. Or, you can always buy me a coffee here.

-Lorelei

Being “Gift” In A “Take” World

February 11, 2018February 11, 2018 ~ Lorelei Savaryn ~ 2 Comments

The Disease of What’s Best for Me

There is a disease rampant in our world today. A disease called “What’s Best for Me.”

Entertainment programs are filled with tips on how to make our lives better. How to get the best deal. How to make ourselves look good. How to advance in our careers. How to make more money. How to improve our existence.

And we absorb that culture, particularly if we live in a part of the world where we are saturated with it. Unless we actively counteract the messages we receive, they absorb into us, and we end up reflecting the approach of the world instead of the approach of our faith. Unlike what we see and read and hear every day, happiness isn’t found in improving our lives and seeking our benefit. The Catholic Church teaches that happiness is found in seeking to improve the lives of others, through a sacrificial donation of self.

To Will the Good of Another

At the core of this question is the idea of love.

To love, according to the Catholic Church, is to “will the good of another.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1766). That’s it. It sounds so simple.

If we are married, love is to will the good of our spouse. If we are parents, to love is to will their good too. Whatever phase of life, to love is to will the good of those we encounter.

It rings so true when we hear it, but it’s so different from the culture we live in! And it is less easy to apply to our relationships each and every day than it seems. But if we live our faith, if we put our energies into absorbing the truths the Catholic Church teaches, living as gift becomes more and more natural, more and more a part of how we function and view the world. Our lives become all the more beautiful for it.

Being Gift in Choosing Life

Our parish Knights of Columbus just distributed baby bottles for us to collect change in, and that will go towards Right to Life causes. The tragedy of abortion is great in our world, and this is another example of where so many have bought into the lie of What’s Best for Me so much, that they are willing to support the legal right to end a human life.

The reality is that women have this awesome opportunity to live our lives as gift in a way unique from men. We give our bodies as a sacrifice to grow and nurture life. And pregnancy and raising children is, indeed, a big sacrifice.

But we have an amazing example of bodily donation as gift for another in Jesus.

Jesus lived as the ultimate and perfect self-gift. His own words, which we hear at each and every Mass, are: “This is my body, given for you.” He gave his whole self for us, and it’s a beautiful parallel to what happens when a woman sets aside her own comfort to bring life into the world.

“This is my body” is such a popular phrase in pro-choice culture. But they distort the beautiful meaning of the phrase. Those who fight for legal abortion say, “This is my body, and I get to do what I want with it. No one has the right to stop me.” Jesus says, “This is my body, and I am going to give of myself fully to turn the power of sin on its head and to heal the world.”

There is a clear winner between the two uses of that phrase. In goodness, in beauty, and in the truth of what our bodies are meant to be.

Living as Gift is life-giving. Living for self is life-taking, sometimes in the very real and literal sense in issues like abortion. But also, in the sense that each time we choose self over another, we take the essence of life – truth, beauty, love, from those we wound with our sin.

Living as Gift within Marriage

I spent more years than I’m proud of watching the popular TV show, The Bachelor.

That show sends the message that love is meant to make us feel good. That it’s exciting and thrilling. There is the unspoken belief that love will be like that forever. Like a fairy tale, it will make me feel good forever.

It sets up extremely unrealistic, unhealthy expectations. Nothing about even the concept of that show is willing the good of the other – one person dating upwards of 20 men or women at one time is not good for anyone involved. That’s one of the reasons I won’t watch the show anymore.

It’s distorted. It’s sending a lie about love. It perpetuates a belief that I can do what’s best for me, no matter how many people get hurt in the process.

If we understand what the Church teaches about love and Catholic marriage, the idea of Gift is one of the keys to living a marriage that stands as witness to God’s love for humanity. This occurs when the husband and wife are living as Gift to each other in all areas of the marriage.

When we encounter any situation with our spouse, and we ask the question “Am I doing this for his/her good?” we are letting God into our decision with our spouse. Before we say that sharp word, before we lose our patience, before we assume the worst, we can think about our partner’s good.

This applies in a special and beautiful way to our sexuality, too. Catholic teaching on sexuality isn’t meant to be repressive, and it isn’t without reason. The things we are not allowed to use/do in Catholic marriage – contraception, climax without intercourse, pornography, etc., are all forms of believing the “What’s Best for Me” lie. Contraception says “I’m going to give myself to you, but I’m not going to give myself fully.” Climax without intercourse says “I’m going to take from you, rather than give myself to you.” And pornography says “I’m going to take pleasure without giving anything at all.”

But when we live as Gift, when we respect the whole person of our spouse, including our fertility, when we give mutually and fully to each other, each and every time, that is where the beauty lies. The joy of sex isn’t in finding the best way to feel good for ourselves. It’s in mutually seeking the good of the other in an all-encompassing and powerful way. A way that mirrors the life of the Trinity and foreshadows heaven.

A Disease of Humanity and the Cure

Reaching for goals and working to improve are all positive things. But when those things are distorted, and we start pursuing our own betterment even when it is to the detriment of others, then we do have a problem. When we seek our own comfort first, or own best first, when we forget to be Gift to those around us, then we have become sick.

If we live with a What’s Best for Me mindset, we will never be as happy as we could be. We will never have the peace we could have. We will never find the joy. We weren’t meant to be satisfied with the things of this world. We were meant to be satisfied with God. It follows that living life as God intended will bring us the greatest true fulfillment.

The ultimate way we can serve God is by living our lives as a gift in gratitude to our Creator. All of the above examples help to lead us in that direction. The realization that our lives are, ultimately, not our own, that each and every day is a gift from God helps us release any false control we have tried to cling to. None of this is ours. Life is gift from God. It’s meant to be lived as Gift to God and others.

The Me First disease is more than just an American problem. It’s a humanity problem. A result of original sin, when Adam and Eve were the first to believe the lie that eating the fruit was what was best for them and their own personal goals and advancement.

But the Church gives us this beautiful remedy to the sickness. The remedy for the poison that is What’s Best for Me is a firm commitment to What’s Best for You, to living life as Gift. It turns selfishness to selflessness, greed to generosity, and taking to giving. Living life as gift reverses the darkness of sin and let’s God’s light shine through. That is a powerful witness to a world that has absorbed a dangerous lie.

For more information on living life as “Gift,” please see John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, or check out Theology of the Body for Beginners by Christopher West.

Note: This article was originally published on Catholic Stand.

A Letter to My Infant Daughter

January 22, 2017November 15, 2020 ~ Lorelei Savaryn ~ 1 Comment

Dear Mary,

From the moment of your conception, you were genetically distinct from me, your momma. You were not an extension of my own body, but were your own self.

From the moment of your conception, I had an obligation to respect your body, just as I respect mine. I had an obligation to provide a safe and healthy environment in which you would be able to grow and develop until you could sustain yourself outside.

You will hear, as you grow up, that in fact, I did not have such an obligation, and that it would have been legally permissible for me to terminate your existence. But we live in a world where what is legal is not always what is right. I follow the laws of this country, but I follow the moral code of our Christian faith. And that moral code is very clear about your value and your personhood prior to your physical birth.

Psalm 139:13-14

“You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb. I praise you, because I am wonderfully made…”

You were created, my child, from the moment of your conception with a soul, with a purpose, and with intrinsic value given to you by your Creator.

From the moment of your conception, it became my obligation, and my joy, even through the suffering, to put my own interests aside to serve the interest of your well-being. It became my obligation to put my own convenience aside. My own comfort aside. My own plans aside.

Because nothing in this life points to the idea that it is good for us to serve our own interests. Nothing in this life points to the idea that following our own plans leads to happiness. Nothing in this life points to the idea that we should be expecting or deserving of comfort and convenience. Those things are not what life is about, and those things are not owed to us.

What is good for us is to serve the needs of others before ourselves. From the moment of your conception, you gave me the gift of being able to practice that, in a very real way, the entire time you grew inside of me, and beyond. What is good for us is to trust that sometimes, our plans for our lives aren’t always the best, and that maybe God’s plans, at times in the form of a small human life, are better- and could hold blessings for us down the road that we can’t even imagine. What is good for us is to accept discomfort and inconvenience as gifts that can help us to grow in holiness and love. What is good for us is to know that we aren’t owed anything, and that anything good we receive is a gift of grace, unearned.

There are people that will fight for the legal right to terminate a life growing inside a woman’s body. We need to pray for those people. We need to pray that the value of life from the moment of conception is seen and understood. We need to pray that we stop clinging so tightly to our perceived right to comfort and convenience, and start clinging tightly to trust in God, who endows each soul with intrinsic value, and who will sustain those called to motherhood.

We also need to pray that those who fight to give pre-born babies a legal right to exist will also fight for the rights of those children to have a safe and healthy upbringing. If a mother in difficult circumstances values her baby’s life and gives birth, we need to fight for her right to support her child and sustain a livelihood. Because life doesn’t lose value once born.

My dear daughter, we believe that from the moment of conception until the moment of natural death, that life has value. Immense value, regardless of what the laws say. And we need to pray for, and love on, and speak the truth of this to others.

Because, from the moment of your conception… you were you. And your right to exist came not from me, but from God. And He is and will always be our ultimate standard of justice.

Love,

Mom