The fashion part is just a joke, gals. Although, who knows, maybe we could all start a new trend! The wearable, hip, responsible birth control. Again, just joking.

As I've written before, I read a lot of magazines. This summer I kept coming across little articles and some ads for these things called CycleBeads. I didn't really pay them too much attention, since this blog is about getting pregnant, not trying to prevent pregnancy. Then I read part of their slogan, which reads, "Plan or Prevent Pregnancy Naturally". This sounded like something we might be interested in.

CycleBeads are a visual tool for women using the Standard Days Method of family planning. This is different from the rhythm method, which I had learned about in high school. It is also more effective than the rhythm method for women how fall into a certain category. As far as planning for pregnancy, this is what the CycleBeads website has to say:

Q. Can I use CycleBeads to help me get pregnant?
A. Yes you can. No research has been conducted to date to see exactly how effective the Standard Days Method is in helping a couple who wants to get pregnant, but because CycleBeads identify the fertile days, using CycleBeads can be an important first step in trying to get pregnant. This is because when they are using CycleBeads,

a woman and her partner can see on which days she is fertile, and they can have intercourse on those days; and
keeping track of the number of days in her cycle gives a woman information about her cycle that she can share with her doctor and thereby make appropriate choices to help her conceive.
Of course, there are women who are not ovulating, or have some other biological issue that makes it difficult for them to conceive. Or the man may not be fertile. While CycleBeads will not directly help them to conceive, it can be useful in helping them to at least establish the woman’s potentially fertile days and her cycle lengths

Interested? Please check out www.cyclebeads.com