By: Rosario Alfaro Martínez (psycotherapist)

The natural methods for fertility regulation are not contraceptive methods, but a life style, which helps the couple to exert a responsible paternity, that means, having only the number of children they can have.

They are clear like the signs and natural symptoms of women’s fertility cycle, making it possible to distinguish fertile from infertile phases, so that every marriage decides to maintain or abstain from having sexual relations according to their wish of having or not a child.

Depending on the procedure to detect ovulation (it means when a woman is fertile) the different natural methods have different names, each method has its own peculiarities and each person will decide which meets best his/her needs.

Natural Methods are:

1. OVULATION METHOD OR BILLINGS METHOD. It is also known as the mucus method since it bases upon the observation of the cervical mucus, recognizing that a woman is fertile when that mucus is thinner, more abundant and clearer.

2. BASAL TEMPERATURE METHOD. It is based on the basal temperature that increases after ovulation approximately from 0.3 to 0.5 °C for three days, keeping high during all the second half of the cycle. A graph of these temperatures helps a couple to know when they have possibilities to conceive.

3. THE RHYTHM METHOD. Also known as the calendar or Oggino-Knaus Method, this was the first natural method that is based on a mathematical calculus to predict the ovulation day.

4. SYNTOTHERMIC METHOD. Combines several methods: The Billings, the basal temperature and the rhythm methods and the so called additional fertility signs that appear in some women, like liquid retention, repelling some odors, excitability increases, headaches, depressions and suffocations.

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