Her Story.

Lisa is a Fertility Awareness Educator who has been charting her own menstrual cycles using the Fertility Awareness Method for the past 15 years. She is passionate about helping women to develop body literacy, by understanding their natural cycles.

Lisa is also the founder of FertilityFriday.com and the Fertility Friday Podcast – a weekly radio show that she created to connect women with a deeper understanding of how fertility and overall health are connected and intertwined with menstrual cycle health. Each week she conducts in depth interviews with professionals who specialize in helping women to restore their fertility naturally.

Background: Lisa was an only childhood and shares with us that she had a happy childhood. She says that their were definitely times when she would have wanted a sibling, however, her parents were not able to have other children. Having no siblings, she had a lot of alone time and had to entertain herself. Lisa was quite aware that she was an only child and her friends had siblings. She would fantasize about having siblings. At the same time, she was loved and cared for and had a wonderful childhood.

Future career thoughts: Lisa can look back on her experiences as a teenager and realize the impact this had on her and the work that she is currently doing. It does not surprise her. Her menstrual cycles were very painful, requiring medication. She was very active in sports and having painful periods was difficult. She asked her mother to take her to the Dr. and she received a prescription for the pill for pain relief. She was not using it for birth control and did not want to use it for birth control. By the age of 18 she already knew that it did not really fix her pain and she knew that she wanted to have children, but did not want to use the pill for birth control. Lisa started her podcast because she feels every woman should know this information. She commonly hears woman wish they had this information years ago.

Preparing to breastfeed: Lisa knew that breastfeeding was important to her and while she did not have any particular timeline in mind, she knew she was going to breastfeed. She remembers thinking though that breastfeeding would come easy and could not understand why others would give up on breastfeeding. She had a waterbirth at home with a midwife in attendance. Since this plan of natural birth worked out, she had expectations that breastfeeding, which was a natural thing, would come easily also. However, breastfeeding in the first 3 hours was excruciatingly painful. She would cry when her baby would cry to eat. At some point, Lisa gave her baby some formula because breastfeeding was so painful and she needed to give herself a break. Her husband did not have an issue with formula, however, to Lisa this was the worst thing she feels she could have done. When her midwife came the next day and saw the formula she said: What is going on? Her baby was checked and was diagnosed with tongue tie. She now understood why she was in so much pain.

Lisa lives in Canada and has access to a visiting nurse come over for a few days after the birth. With the diagnosis of tongue tie she was referred to Jack Newmans clinic. At her first appointment, Dr. Newman used scissors to cut the frenulum. They had lactation consultants right there on staff to help with initial latch after the procedure. Lisa said that she felt the difference immediately. Her pain was a lot less and yet it still took a few weeks for the pain and trauma to heal from the first several days of breastfeeding. It also takes babies a few days or weeks to figure out how to use their tongue properly to transfer milk.

Going through this experience really helps Lisa to understand why the next mother would stop breastfeeding. She recognizes that having the support that she had for breastfeeding and follow up care she received is largely responsible for her continuing breastfeeding. She did not understand this before she had her first baby, however, she now understands that getting help quickly for an acute breastfeeding challenge is incredibly important. Her husband is a typical guy and he sees her in pain and he wants to fix it. From his perspective he felt formula and breastmilk is the same so he did not think it was an issue to give baby formula. Lisa is grateful for knowing and understanding that breastfeeding is not suppose to hurt and she knew she needed help to make it better VS. staying home and waiting for it to get better. Once they gave baby formula, both she and her husband could see that baby did not stool for 24 hours and this did concern her husband. It was this part of the experience that her husband could relate to and see that his baby did not respond well to the formula and this changed his mindset and he was more motivated to ensure that his baby boy was breastfed. Lisa talked about really appreciating the difference between her first breastfeeding experience and her second time around. She returned to work during a time when she needed to pump her milk for her baby. Now she exclusively breastfeeds and does not pump and does not give her baby a bottle. She feels that this is so much better for her, so much more convenient and is very happy with this.

Lisa shares with us that her menstrual cycle returned at about a year postpartum, with regularity. She was back to work and so she continued to breastfeed and did some pumping until he was 2 1/2 years. With her second son, her cycle returned also at about a year. She saw and noticed that she ovulated and then she got her period so it was not a surprise. Since her baby is almost a year old and she is staying home with him, she is grateful that she does not need to pump and bottlefeed him.

We had a good discussion about ecological breastfeeding and how to use this as a way of helping a woman to determine when she is able to use this method as a way of birth control while you are breastfeeding for the first 2 months postpartum and use this method as a way to identify when her fertility returns. We also Had some interesting talk about Japanese condoms and what makes them so much better.

She teaches woman how to identify which days you can get pregnant and which days you can’t, so you can confidently use this as an effective method of birth control.
This method also helps woman to identify the days that they can get pregnant. While using the method is not difficult, you just have to learn it, it is not just as simple as checking your cervical mucous. Part of what she does is help women to identify if there are certain things that need to look into deeper with a physician and helps you on the path to good fertility health.

Using the FAM is helpful to moms who are Breastfeeding and don’t do well on hormones and are looking for another method of birth control. You can use it as an effective method postpartum. It can be a bit tricky and this is how Lisa can help you.

Words of wisdom: Stay true to yourself: Don’t try to do something because you think you should or shouldn’t. Do what is right for you in the moment. Sometimes it means that you can keep going and sometimes it means that you just can’t. Of course she hopes that mothers find the help they need to breastfeed comfortably and this does not happen to you.

Contact Info: Fertilityfriday.com
Email: info@fertiityfriday.com