Tema-Ghana, July 31, – Health personnel must help monitor your cycle for six months before you decide to use natural family planning methods, as senior midwives at the International Maritime Hospital (IMaH) have advised women.
Some women have complained of getting pregnant despite their adoption of natural family planning methods such as the menstrual calendar and withdrawal methods.
Ms. Millicent Asante and Ms. Rosemary Fosuaa, both senior midwives at IMaH.
Ms. Asante speaking on the theme “Family Planning and Ante-Natal Care,” said properly checking to know one’s cycle was very important in deciding to use the natural method to avoid any failure and unplanned pregnancies.
She said some women could have an irregular menstrual cycle, making it inappropriate to use such methods, adding that there were some whose menses could vary from 28 to 31 days and even up to 35 days.
Ms. Fosuaa, on her part, stated that sometimes fertilization takes place even when couples are relying on natural birth control methods because they might get the calculations wrong because they do not know their cycle very well.
She explained that the calendar method is mostly calculated using the average menstrual cycle of 28 days, which starts from the first day of menstruation, adding that with that, between the tenth and fourteenth day of the cycle, a woman is likely to become pregnant if engaged in unprotected sex as ovulation sets in around that period.
She said about one percent of the women in the population have a 31-cycle period; therefore, the menses calculator might not apply to them, and that could result in pregnancy if the cycle had not been properly monitored.
Ms. Fosuaa further said the withdrawal method, which involves pulling out of the phallus before ejaculation, could also fail some people because, out of ecstasy, the men do not pull out early and some sperm might already have entered.
She said healthy sperm moved very fast and could reach a released egg and fertilize it within 90 seconds of discharge.
She therefore advised persons who could not rely effectively on the natural methods to discuss this with their health care providers and be put on a family planning contraception method for the needed protection.
