Tema-Ghana, July 31, GNA – ‘Health personnel must help monitor your cycle for six months before you decide to use natural family planning methods’, 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 said this at the weekly “Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility! A Ghana News Agency Tema Regional Office initiative aimed at promoting health-related communication and providing a platform for health information dissemination to influence personal health choices through improved health literacy
Ms. Asante, speaking on the theme “Family Planning and Ante-Natal Care,” said properly checking to know one’s cycle was 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 took place even when couples were relying on natural birth control methods because they might get the calculations wrong because they did not know their cycle.
She said the calendar method was 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 was likely to become pregnant if engaged in unprotected sex as ovulation.
She said about one per cent of the women in the population had 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.
She said the withdrawal method, which involved 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 faster and could reach a released egg and fertilize it within 90 seconds of discharge.
She therefore advised persons who could not rely 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.
