Ep. 104: The Fertility Resolutions You Need

Do we need resolutions? Not really. But we do need to live with thoughtful intention about what our lives and daily actions proclaim to the world. What do our habits and practices related to our fertility proclaim? Today's episode explores ways we can proclaim the goodness of God through even our fertility in 2024! I hope you'll enjoy this short episode and find it helpful! Thanks for making 2023 a great year for Woven Well!

Appreciate this podcast? Take a moment to give us a 5 star review wherever you listen to our podcast!

NOTE: This episode is appropriate for all audiences.

SHOW NOTES:
What is a Rule of Life?
Sacred Rhythms by Ruth Haley Barton

Pilgrimage Application
Join our Introductory Session
Schedule a Consultation with Caitlin
Get our Monthly Newsletter to get informed & engaged! 

Charting your Fertility with a Certified FertilityCare Practitioner: Anyone can begin learning more about their reproductive health and how to identify root issues. It is never too late to begin this process! We'd love to help you get started by attending one of our Introductory Sessions - an online, virtual class available each month. Join us!

Talk with Caitlin (you do not have to be a client): Need a safe place to talk about your fertility journey, what you're going through (faith, infertility, medical concerns, etc) or anything else about your fertility? Caitlin would love to hear your story and talk with you during a consultation! 

Transcript

Caitlin: 0:06

Welcome to the Woven Well Podcast. I'm your host, Caitlin Estes. I'm a certified fertility care practitioner with a master of divinity degree. Each episode will cover a topic that helps educate and empower you and your fertility while honoring the deep connection your fertility has with your faith. Let's get started. Welcome back to the Woven Well Podcast and almost happy New Year. I love a new year. I'm one of those people who really enjoys a fresh start. You know, each day holds new mercies. Each week holds new opportunities, but a new year, I feel like that is the perfect time for a big reset and reevaluation of what I want my life to be about in the year ahead. So it's not so much about resolution specifically for me, as it is an opportunity to be really intentional and personally. I love that. So what would you like to be intentional about in 2024? I wish that we could sit down and chat about it, but we have an episode that's going to talk about it instead, you know , what do you want to reflect and proclaim with your life in the new year ahead? I recently made a rule of life for myself. I've done this a few times over the years, and it's such a nice way to identify what I believe are the most important things in life, and then be intentional about proclaiming them by practicing them. So how am I spending my time? How am I spending my money? What do my daily rhythms say about God and his goodness? I'll link a few resources in the show notes if you'd like to learn more about this practice specifically. But one thing that I want to proclaim with my life, and maybe you do too, is that God created my body and because of that, it is good. What it was designed to do is good. The natural processes that occur are good. The potential that it holds is good. And notice I didn't say perfect. None of our bodies are perfect, but they are all good. So how can we proclaim that? What can we do in a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly basis, et cetera? What can we do to proclaim that truth? I think we can proclaim it by intentionally acknowledging, honoring and respecting God's creation of our bodies. So today I'm going to share a few resolutions, if you will, that can help to establish rhythms that proclaim this truth. The first is the most tangible, the most daily of the practices, and that's to get to know how the body works and how your body works. Each day of a woman's life between puberty and menopause, her reproductive system is active and changing. It's always headed towards some major event, ovulation or menstruation. It's either headed immediately toward a window of fertility or infertility. Amazingly, we have a way of understanding these processes and discerning where we are in our particular cycle, which milestone we are headed towards, and whether we are fertile or infertile that day. But it requires intentionality on our part. It's not something we magically know or even divinely discern. We can trust the physical processes of our body to reveal to us exactly what's going on for those working with woven. That's through the presence of cervical mucus. Cervical mucus is a major biomarker of the female reproductive system that can let us know exactly where we are in our cycle, what reproductive hormones are dominant right then, whether we're fertile or infertile that day, and when we can expect our next period. It is pretty credible. It's the only reproductive biomarker that can tell us all of this on its own, and the only one that also shows us when this window of fertility starts, not just concludes. So it takes a daily practice of observing and charting this cervical mucus. It takes thought, intention, and practice, and sometimes those things feel annoying. We don't always want to be thoughtful or intentional or practical. Sometimes we'd just rather have easy and I get that. But we can go back to what we desire to proclaim through our actions and our choices. What are we proclaiming when we take the time and intention to understand our creation and God's good design for our body? Could it be that that choice to engage with our creator and with his good creation could be spiritually fruitful in our lives? For many of us, we use a system like Creighton because it's practical. There's a very practical purpose that we have in mind. It helps us to avoid or conceive a pregnancy, or it helps us identify health issues. But there are benefits far beyond these practical goods as well. So one resolution for 2024 may be to learn to understand your body's fertility. When you do that, you suddenly have many more ways to acknowledge God in this same area. For one, now you have more resources for honoring that good creation and the processes that God designed. Now that you understand what is normal versus abnormal, you may feel inspired to get the answers to questions you've long thought impossible to answer. Painful periods, PMS, ovarian cysts, these are issues that women are so often told are simply unavoidable or that they can only be improved with birth control . Now you know that there are solutions available, that that's not how the body was designed to function. And so those things are actually signs or symptoms that something is off with the reproductive system. This kind of knowledge allows you to advocate for yourself and hear this, your health, your body is worth advocating for. What do we proclaim when we advocate for the care and respect of our bodies? We proclaim that what God creates is worthy of respect that we were made in the very image of God. So a new resolution for you may be to honor God by advocating for your body and reproductive cycle. Here's another suggestion. Once you understand your body's reproductive function, you now have the opportunity to partner with God towards its end, meaning you get to include God in the decisionmaking about baby-making. Why do we think those decisions are up to us and us alone? Does that come from the church, the Bible, Jesus, or does it come from the messages that we hear day in and day out? It feels scary to do something different and I know it, but what good could come from partnering with God in this decisionmaking, instead of holding onto it with all we've got? What would we be proclaiming by praying and discerning monthly with our spouse, whether or not God was inviting us to try to conceive? What would we be proclaiming by intentionally releasing the outcome of the joint fertility in marriage to the God we acknowledge as the creator of life? What would we proclaim by releasing ourselves from pursuing the authority and power and instead acknowledging the one who already holds it? Good, good, good can come from these things. Maybe 2024 is the year that you talk to God in a new, open, trusting way about family planning. Or maybe this is the year you start to share these things with others. Maybe your life has been transformed in some way already by one of these aspects we've talked about. Maybe you're already blown away by the fact that you can understand what your body is doing. It is amazing, or that you can get answers to those frustrating fertility questions that you had for years. You know, you can't be the only one that's dealt with them or that you can experience freedom and guidance from God. When it comes to family planning, it really is revolutionary. Maybe this is the year that you can become a resource for others. We're women. We talk about these things. So when your friend brings up how much she hates being on the pill, take a chance and share what you've been using and what it's meant to you. When your family member is frustrated by her reproductive concerns being dismissed or devalued, offer her an alternative that she may not have heard of before. When your small group member mentions their fear about pregnancy, take a chance and share about the good God who wants to work even in this vulnerable area of their lives for good. We hear so many messages about fertility and sexuality in our world. It's so hard to hear the others above all that noise, but we don't have to rely on just the big names to always be that voice. You can be that voice you can share with your friends and family and church, and your voice matters. Your experience matters. God's good work in you is so incredibly meaningful and maybe more meaningful than if they heard it from some big name. So please don't undervalue what God is doing in your life and what God can do through your vulnerability with others. What do we proclaim by openly sharing the goodness of God in our lives? Not all these resolutions are going to be for you. This isn't an all or nothing sort of scenario. Baby steps are great. You know, baby steps are good steps, and when it comes to New Year's resolutions, the more realistic, the better. So where do you want to start? Where is the best place for you to begin? Maybe you need a little support in discerning that. You're welcome to email me personally. I would love to help you think through what you hope to begin related to fertility in the new year. But thank you so much for being here, friends. This is our last episode of 2023, and the next one--released on January 5th--is going to be our two-year anniversary of this podcast. Thank you for listening week in and week out for sending helpful or thoughtful episodes to friends and family for reviewing the podcast so that others can find it for taking the time to email me about favorite episodes. I am so glad that these important topics are as meaningful to you as they are to me. Here's to a fantastic and fruitful 2024. Thanks for listening, as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.