I received an amazing email from one of my readers in the UK recently that reminded me yet again about the extraordinary benefits of charting menstrual cycles. Several years ago, she had had a couple of miscarriages, with the last one ending in a dilation and curettage (D&C), a procedure in which the woman’s cervix is dilated to allow an instrument called a curette to remove the uterine tissue (called the endometrium). She immediately started charting again after the D&C. With each of the following two cycles, she experienced completely normal pre and post- ovulatory temperature patterns with a typical cervical fluid build-up to ovulation. However, when her temperature dropped at the end of each luteal phase following the release [...]

There’s a cruel irony in the fact that the majority of women have at one time or another probably experienced mild panic when their period was even just a few days late, only to discover years later that they would do anything to actually get pregnant. But both situations are really two sides of the same coin. The bottom line is that if women learned how to chart their fertility signs, it would empower them with the knowledge to never again question such a profoundly intimate issue. Two of the most challenging menstrual cycle patterns are those that are either perplexingly irregular or exceedingly long. There are many reasons why a woman may have one of these patterns, or why [...]