Regular family planning vs natural family planning
Natural family planning
Natural family planning (also called “fertility awareness”) is a method of birth control where a woman monitors and registers various fertility signals throughout the month to work out the days when she’s more likely to get pregnant.
These fertility signals are hormone levels, basal body temperature, electrolytes levels in urine and cervical mucus (read about the sympto thermal method)
By knowing her safe safe days, a woman knows when to avoid unprotected vaginal sex.
As we will see below, natural family planning has an effectiveness rate that can go from 76 to 99%.
Regular family planning
Regular family planning methods include all other birth control methods that are non-natural, including:
- long-acting reversible contraception, such as the implant or intra-uterine device (IUD).
- hormonal contraception, such as the pill or the Depo Provera injection
- barrier methods, such as condoms.
- emergency contraception, such as the morning-after pill.
- permanent contraception, such as vasectomy and tubal ligation.
These contraceptive methods vary greatly in effectiveness, as we can see from the table below.
| Method | Effectiveness |
| Birth control implant | 99% |
| IUD | 99% |
| Birth control shot | 94% |
| Birth control vagina ring | 91% |
| Birth control patch | 91% |
| Birth control pill | 91% |
| Condom | 85% |
| Internal condom | 79% |
| Diaphragm | 88% |
| Birth control sponge | 76-88% |
| Cervical cap | 71-86% |
| Spermicide | 71% |
| Withdrawal (pull out method) | 78% |
| Breastfeeding as birth control | 98% |
| Outercourse and abstinence | 100% |
| Sterilization (tubal ligation) | 99% |
| Vasectomy | 99% |
The effectiveness rate of natural family planning
- Rhythm method – a calendar-based method. To use the rhythm method, you need to predict your fertile period based on your menstrual history.
- Cervical mucus methods – helps you predict when you’re going to be fertile by tracking the changes in your cervical mucus (vaginal secretions) throughout the month.
- The basal body temperature method – Helps you predict when your safe days are by tracking the changes in your body temperature during your menstrual cycle
Pregnancies per 100 Women over the first year of use
| Consistent and correct use | As commonly used | |
| Calendar method | 5 | 12 |
| Cervical mucus method | 3 | 23 |
| Basal body temperature | <1 | 2 |
Natural Family Planning – can be up to 99% effective
Some methods of natural birth control can be made 99% effective by pairing it with fertility monitors. Fertility monitors are devices that are very effective at tracking fertility signals, such as hormone levels, electrolytes in the urine and basal body temperature.
Fertility monitors are the most effective natural way there is to warn women when they are about to ovulate so that you’ll know when your fertile days are about to come. And monitors also warn you when you are ovulating, so that you and your partner can prepare adequately to avoid an unwanted pregnancy.
When used correctly, natural birth control methods can be just as effective as regular, non-permanent birth control methods. For this reason, I highly recommend that any couple who is trying to avoid conceiving to try a natural method of birth control with a fertility monitor.
Here at NaturalContra, the method that we recommend is the basal body temperature. For this method to be 99% effective, women need to take their body temperature using a monitor as soon as they wake up, before doing anything else!
Conclusion
We’ve seen that natural family planning methods can be just as safe as many other regular contraceptive methods. There is, however, an added bonus: natural birth control saves you money, has no side effects, no contraindications or interactions with other medicines.
In this article, I hope I have shown sufficient proof to you that natural family planning methods can be just as safe as many other regular contraceptive methods. But I haven’t yet talked about all the advantages.
Did you know?
- natural birth control saves you money
- has no side effects
- no contraindications
- or interactions with other medicines
This means that virtually all women can use one of the natural birth control methods we talk about.
If for some reason you can’t trust your body temperature readings, you can use fertility monitors that measure the electrolytes or hormones levels in either your saliva or urine and so on. If you have a good reason to believe that you can’t trust any of these fertility signals in your own body, you can always try the cervical mucus method or the calendar method.
Which one/s have you tried? And how successful have you been? Let me know in the comments below!
More about natural family planning
- 10 Natural contraception Methods
- Basal body temperature Method Pros & Cons
- Can natural birth control save you money?
- How effective is natural family planning?
- Beginners guide to organic contraception
- How to practice the rhythm method the safe way
- Sympto thermal method pros & cons
- Guide to the Basal Body Temperature (BBT) Method