5 Reasons To Choose FemCap

1. Enjoy more pleasurable sex. The pill can effect sex drive and condoms break the intimacy of skin-to-skin sex. FemCap lets you have sex the way it was meant to be!

2. Does not interrupt spontaneity. FemCap is easy to use and can be inserted hours before intercourse. No fumbling with a condom and breaking the flow of the moment.

3. Environmentally Friendly. The reusable FemCap is made from a non-allergenic latex-free material. Good for you. Good for the world.

4. Stay Balanced. You don't want to be on medication for the greater part of your fertile life. Its just not natural. Femcap allows your fertility and menstrual cycle to fluctuate organically, without altering your internal balance. This also means that you can enjoy reliable hormone-free contraception while breastfeeding.

5. Simple Sizing. FemCap eliminates the problem of finding a doctor to fit your barrier contraceptive. The size you need is simply determined by your obstetrical history, so you can order your FemCap online today!

Simple misuse of contraception, how a little knowledge goes a long way!

Simple misuse of contraception, how a little knowledge goes a long way!

There are many contraceptive methods around which are misused by couples as a result of a simple misunderstanding.  What many women fail to realize is that the window of time where they're at risk of becoming pregnant is relatively small and therefore, using contraception day in and day out is not entirely necessary.

For example, if a woman is not using a pill, patch, coil or any other type of hormonal contraception, she will actually only be fertile for 18-24 hours per cycle when she ovulates.  Since sperm can survive up to 5 days, intercourse 5 days prior to ovulation could fertilise an egg so we have  a fertility window of  6 days per cycle.  


In order to avoid pregnancy during those 6 days, the woman should either abstain from sex or use a barrier contraceptive.  

Most people who use barrier contraceptive tend to use them on each day of their cycle, even on the 20-22 days when there's no risk of becoming pregnant, when they actually only need to be used during their Fertility Window.

Contraceptive Monitors help you identify your Fertility Window, those 6-8 days per cycle when intercourse could lead to pregnancy. 

Click here to read on and learn how they do it and how they can help you take control of your contraception.  




 

Have you heard of Vegan Condoms?!

Who says going 'green' has to stop in the bedroom? You can incorporate animal-friendly, chemical-free products in areas of your house, including your bedroom!

Using vegan condoms is one of the easiest ways to make sure your intimate experiences are not only pleasurable, but also great for the environment too!

Small efforts such as changing the brand of your condoms can make a big impact if the action is carried out by enough people!

All Condomi condoms are free of animal derivatives and meet or surpass all global and domestic quality accreditation, making them one of the best choices for vegan condoms on the market today. So, as well as being environmentally-friendly, condomi condoms are guaranteed to protect against conception as well as sexually transmitted diseases such as the HIV virus.

Vegan condoms are a great way to protect against unwanted pregnancies during the fertile days of your cycle if your practicing natural contraception. Using contraceptive monitors, such as cyclotest 2 plus, is a great way to identify those few days when extra protection is needed to avoid conception!

True Story: How and why one woman gave up hormonal contraception

I recently came across an article about natural family planning and one woman's experience in switching from hormonal birth control to natural contraception. Her story was really inspiring and is an excellent example of the conflict and confusion a lot of women experience when considering giving up the pill. I wanted to share bits and pieces from her post with you. You can read the full entry here.

Not Excited About Drugs

Why take the chance? We live today. All of our research and technology has enabled us to pop a pill to avoid a pregnancy. That's all we have to do. So why do so many question the use of contraception?

I won't speak for others, but I can tell you why I did. This is my story: Why I decided to use a natural family planning method.

I do not like drugs. I avoid them whenever I can. Just before getting married, I was introduced to the idea that I would need to take a pill everyday to avoid becoming pregnant. This idea did not excite me. But what other alternative was there?

When I started on birth control, I actually started with the patch because it only required that I remember to change it once a week, not every day like the pill; less chance of "messing up." Within a few months however, I found that I did not like the patch. If I forgot to use it, for even one day, I was thrown for quite the emotional loop. I felt out of control, something that was not common for me. It felt horrible! I switched to the pill, and even though I had to take one every day, I did not experience the sudden swings like I had experienced on the patch. This pacified me for a few years.

But it kept bothering me, "If the patch could do that to me, what was the pill doing to me?" Occasionally I would research, looking for an alternative to the birth control pill, but each search left me looking at more pills, inserts, or implements.

What was wrong with all of these methods?
Most birth control methods use hormones to suppress the natural fertility cycle. I found several studies and heard people talk about how the use of these hormones affects the body. Things like how today's pills have lower levels of hormones because research has found that the higher level hormones of earlier pills 'may have caused cancer' and all sorts of problems. My thoughts were "What will they find out tomorrow about the pills of today?" Every drug has an adverse effect. They usually help and hurt your body in one way or another. Don't believe me? Look at the labels.

The point is: I did not want to be a guinea pig.
Nothing felt right. But what else could I do?

I looked into natural family planning methods.
Rhythm method, basal body temperature, ovulation charts, they all had one thing in common: Too much room for error.
Too much was left up to chance. Each natural family planning method seemed based on good principle but not complete. They required long periods of abstinence each month to "make sure" you would not get pregnant yet the chances of getting pregnant were still higher than just staying on the pill. Not good enough for me.

Then Came The Tipping Point
While at a doctor’s appointment my doctor shared some information with me about how today's contraceptives work, which he himself had just discovered. There are three ways today's contraceptives work to avoid a pregnancy. They all work the same way.

Here they are, short and not so sweet:
1. Stop the egg from ovulating
2. Stop the sperm from getting to the egg
3. Stop implantation of a pregnancy, thereby causing the body to abort the pregnancy, in case the first two don't work.

I was floored! I had never heard such a thing! Could this be true?
It says so right on the label of the contraceptive, though you would be hard pressed to find, or recognize it.Here it is, right off of a label:

"Combination oral contraceptives act by suppression of gonadotropins. Although the primarymechanism of this action is inhibition of ovulation, other alterations include changes in the cervicalmucus (which increase the difficulty of sperm entry into the uterus) and the endometrium (whichreduce the likelihood of implantation)."

Does it sound the same?

That's probably why you missed it. I knew it was there, and yet I still had to scour the label 3-4 times before I could find it again. Click Here to read the label for yourself.

This was the tipping point. I was already uncomfortable with using the pill, having my own health in mind. Now that I knew the pill did not only prevent a possible pregnancy, but sometimes aborts a pregnancy that occurs "by mistake", I had a choice to make.The number of aborted pregnancies due to use of the pill is very small, but in my book, one is too many.

Now what do I do?
Thankfully my doctor had been researching this answer for me already. In light of this information he was preparing not to write prescriptions for contraceptives anymore. He wanted to provide a good natural family planning method alternative for birth control and he found a method called the Creighton Model. This was the method I had been looking for!
If you are interested in Natural Family Planning, this is the method that makes avoiding and achieving a pregnancy truly a matter of choice.

To learn how to practice natural contraception, have a look at Ethical Family Planning's page here.

Alert! Hormonal Implants lead to hundreds of unwanted pregnancies!

A new finding has come to show that hundreds of women have fallen pregnant after a long-term contraceptive implant failed. Many women were left injured or scarred as a result of the implant after it was inserted into their arm.

To compensate the failings of these contraceptive implants, the NHS has had to pay the women who were hurt by the implant and those who were traumatised by their unexpected pregnancies. The total payouts have totalled more than £200,000 – an average of more than £28,000 each.

A lawyer representing the women who had fallen pregnant unintentionally revealed that many of his clients had suffered psychological difficulties after suffering miscarriages or undergoing abortions after the implants went wrong. One woman who underwent an abortion claimed the trauma had led to her marriage ending.

The hormone filled rod which is behind all of these unwanted pregnancies is called Implanon. The Implanon implant is meant to provide protection against pregnancy for up to three years and when properly inserted, it is 99.5% effective compared to 99.7% for the Pill. The Implanon device costs £90. It is a flexible rod the size of a matchstick which is inserted underneath the skin of the upper arm. It works by gradually releasing the hormone progesterone, which stops the ovaries from releasing eggs and makes the womb less receptive to fertilised eggs.

One in four women in the UK who go to family planning clinics receive the long-term contraceptive implants. The implants are especially popular among teenagers who prefer the implant to the pill because it doesn’t require daily action.

Investigations conducted after reports of unwanted pregnancies have revealed that in some cases, the implant was not released from the pre-loaded applicator and therefore never inserted into the arm of the patient. Other implants were delivered too deep into the arm to function properly.

In its entire living history, the NHS has never experienced a contraceptive failure as great as this one involving Implanon. In total, 584 women who had the implant have reported unwanted pregnancies to the Medicine and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA). The total could actually be much higher considering many woman may not have reported becoming pregnant. The MHRA received 1,607 complaints about the implant going wrong. Some of these complaints were filed by doctors concerned about the difficulty of inserting the device and also that the implant is impossible to check if they are correctly implanted because they are invisible to X-rays.

The manufacturer of Implanon has now replaced it with an updated product called Nexplanon, which has a new pre-loaded applicator and can be detected by X-ray or CT scan. The manufacturer has not,however, recalled the existing stock of Implanon, which means doctors are still using it.

It’s important to remember that no form of birth control is 100% reliable and that when choosing a method of contraception, it’s best to talk to your health care professional. While hormonal birth control is often the most reliable forms of contraception, it can also come with the most amount of risks. Natural contraception, when practiced correctly, can be just as reliable as hormonal birth control and much safer. By practicing natural contraception with a contraceptive monitor or barrier contraceptive, you are eliminating the risk of side effects often associated with hormonal birth control such as mood swings and weight gain, and as in the extreme circumstance detailed in this story, unexpected pregnancies. To learn more about natural contraception, click here.