Tag: Education

My experience using Natural Cycles #Periodically 20
“How do you review a contraceptive?” was a question I asked myself when Natural Cycles kindly sent me a six month trial of its certified* contraceptive app. I sure as hell wasn’t going to risk pregnancy for the sake of a blog, even if I had been having any sex in the first place. So the following review does nothing to attest as to whether the Natural Cycles app actually prevents pregnancy, but it does test the accuracy of the app against my own fertility awareness, that of other apps I use, namely Clue, and how it compares to hormonal contraceptives like the pill. I have now (sadly) restarted the pill, but the last five months of my hormone-free journey have been made so much more interesting thanks to Natural Cycles, it was the perfect way to say goodbye to my (literal) natural cycles.

It’s nothing like the pill…

… in that it’s non-hormonal, non-invasive and has no side affects. For those who don’t know, the app works by taking your Basal Body Temperature (BBT), which you measure yourself, to detect the rise in temperature that occurs around and after ovulation to estimate your fertile window. Whereas most contraceptives involve taking precaution 24/7 or with every sexual encounter, by knowing when your fertile, ideally you can gauge the (much longer) period of time when you’re infertile and have lots of barrier and/or pill-free sex during that time. With that in mind, the app gives you ‘green days’ (infertile, go bare-back if you wish!) and ‘red days’ (fertile, wrap it up). Since you don’t have to ingest anything or have anything injected or implanted into you, there are no side-affects, which is very attractive to lots of people with uteruses for obvious reasons.

Contrary to what a member of my family presumed, you take your temperature by sticking the thermometer in your mouth, NOT your vagina!

But it’s more like the pill than you would think…

… because it relies on you doing something at roughly the same time every day. What’s worse, it relies on you doing it first thing in the morning before you’ve done anything else at all, including but no limited to, getting up. If you happen to take the pill as you get out of bed, but one day forget until after you’ve brushed your teeth – it’s no biggy, but if you brush your teeth and only then remember to measure your temperature, then you have immediately compromised the reliability of the app and therefore your contraception. For someone like me – the very opposite of a morning person – this has been a challenge. I usually need an alarm on the other side of the room to get me out of bed, and while I’ve had alerts reminding me to take my temperature before my alarm goes off, it took a while to get consistent with measuring in the morning. In this sense Natural Cycles is a bit like the pill, skip a pill and risk fertility, skip a measurement and risk a green day when it ought to be red.

Do I have a drinking problem or is there an evolutionary flaw with the app?

There are a few circumstances when your temperature is considered unreliable. Getting out of bed before you measure being one of them. Basically, anything that messes with your BBT is no longer really your BBT and might wrongly detect ovulation – the app calls this a deviating temperature (naughty). Other triggers for a deviating temperature include having a lay-in (or any disruption to your usual sleeping pattern), being unwell or having a hangover. Now boozy nights have become much less frequent for me since I graduated, so I wasn’t worried about hangovers being a major hindrance to my experience with the app until it became clear that the only bloody time I was hungover was around ovulation.

My hangovers (the green dots) as tracked in Clue

The first couple of times I thought it was a fluke, but then it started happening every cycle – something about being fertile makes me DRINK. There are several explanations for this, but one that sticks out for me is that one of the behavioural changes that we experience around ovulation is that we go out and socialise – biologically, this is to find a mate, but socially in the twenty-first century, this often involves having an alcoholic beverage or thirteen. This is in no way Natural Cycles’ fault, honestly it could just be a coincidence with my own bad habits, but it disrupted four out of five fertile windows I had while trying the app. For this reason I personally wouldn’t recommend the app as a contraceptive to single people enjoying regular drunk stranger sex.

Sure, it’s a fun game to play when you’re not having sex, but a risky one if you are

Throw an ovulation test in the mix – I dare you

So once it was decided I was going back on the pill, albeit reluctantly, I wanted to really see what Natural Cycles could do in my final cycle using the app. When you input your temperature it gives you the option to add a positive or negative LH (Luteinising Hormone) test, a positive result means the hormone is surging and you’re about to ovulate. So with this in mind I started a five-test pack on the date recommended by both Natural Cycles and Clue. Five days passed and I only had negative results, as far as Clue was aware I was out of my fertile window and steaming towards PMS. Natural Cycles meanwhile was pulling the old “the ovulation symbol has disappeared for a while until we detect it” which is reassuring. So I bought another pack and continued for another five days… still nothing. This really made me panic, I’m going back on the pill to stop me ovulating – “WHAT IF I DON’T OVULATE AT ALL IN THE FIRST PLACE?” I thought, thinking I’d accidentally discovered my real problem. Another three tests later and I got a positive result on the twenty-third day of my cycle (I have no idea if that is normal and or healthy) BUT ANYWAY, low-and-behold my temperature did what Natural Cycles expected it to do after that and my pain moved in tandem with it – I think it successfully detected my ovulation – wahoo!

There were so few green days it almost wasn’t worth the fuss

Maybe it was because the app was still getting to know me or maybe it was because my ovaries are evidently dysfunctional, but red days have been the majority, making me think that if I were having sex, it would be a whole lot easier (and cheaper given the price one would normally pay for the app) to just use condoms all the time? I wouldn’t have to worry about getting out of bed too quickly, an issue that has never ever been an issue in my life before, nor having a hangover or a cold.

Uhm… my birth control isn’t a video game & other concerns

I’m all about making Femtech fun. There’s a pelvic floor exercise device and app that involves moving a butterfly by literally clenching your vagina – I think that’s brilliant (and hilarious), but if I’m trying not to get pregnant, that’s no joke and I don’t treat it as such. So the fact the app has “achievements” for users to unlock, i.e. it’s currently hounding me to become a “Pro Cycler” – I’ve only got three stars so far – isn’t very motivating to me. I get that they’re trying to encourage users to input as much data accurately and as often as possible, but for me it felt a bit like trivialising what is otherwise a very scientific app.

In the same vein of thought, I’m a little uncomfortable with how the app is advertised. “Wake up. Measure. Get Up” the slogan goes and upon setting up everything is said in such a positive, sales-pitchy way that the very serious warnings risk passing you by – like the fact if you have a reproductive issue like PCOS for example, it’s likely the app could interpret your data incorrectly – and anything that risks pregnancy is dangerous. There have also been concerns mentioned in the press and also at a number of Femtech events I’ve attended that the figures regarding the success of the app aren’t entirely reliable, you can read the company’s reaction to some of these issues in its press release here.

One other minor annoyance. Are we not done with blue periods and bizarre, unrealistic representations of women? Let’s just get one thing clear, at no point during my Natural Cycles experience did I wake up and measure looking like those featured on the app’s website. Can you possibly tell which one of these photos is the official Natural Cycles branding???

Case and point…

A step in the right direction

I’ve learnt a lot about my body and Femtech in the last few months using Natural Cycles. The hormone-free aspect of the app is incredibly appealing to me, but the fact remains that it relies on me too much, and I am not nearly reliable enough for it to work for me as a means of birth control. However, the app is, without a doubt, progress.

What would I like to see from Natural Cycles in the future if I were to use it again?
- No achievements to unlock or stars to gain, just pregnancies to achieve and avoid!
- An alert that wakes me up before the actual alarm set on my phone to remind me to take my temperature.
- A better interface for inputting data – it’s a bit too numerical and off-putting. (The graphics on Clue are much more welcoming, but Natural Cycles’ temperature graphs are waaaay easier to read than Clue’s.)*
- No BS about the risks. Say it how it is please!
*Same data as presented on Clue and Natural Cycles. While Clue is not a contraceptive app, I find it really hard to interpret its temperature graph, a problem I didn’t have with Natural Cycles.

Clue

Natural Cycles
February 12, 2018
Persistence – #Periodically 17

Long time no #Periodically, but don’t fear I’m back with another exciting instalment of “WTF is happening in Hilary’s pelvis” – I’m sure you were all anxiously waiting.

So we left off with the discovery of two cysts, one functional (good), one hemorrhagic (bad) on my right ovary. The protocol is to wait six weeks to see if they go or grow. I also had a blood test taken the day after the first internal ultrasound and was informed there was something in those blood results that I needed to see a doctor about, but typically (#ToryBritain) the first available appointment was six weeks away. Conveniently though, it was scheduled for the day after the follow up ultrasound.

I had a couple of really rough weeks in the middle of the wait for “answers”. I was both stressing about what was wrong with my blood (who tests for PCOS and Ovarian Cancer, says something’s wrong but doesn’t tell you what?!), dealing with a sudden and random horrible outbreak of acne and a flare-up of top-notch pain. I was pretty miserable company for a fortnight (sorry friends and family – thank you for not disowning me).

Let’s throw it back to November 2016 for a second, where the first blood results I had to search for a problem revealed nothing. I did have slightly higher levels of androgens (male hormones) than normal, but nothing that warranted suspicion of PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome). So when they found the cysts and something in my blood this November, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had just noticed symptoms of PCOS really early, and the androgens were now at a higher level and had been picked up in my blood. So what does any sane person do in this situation? I GOOGLED. I’m actually glad I did as I quickly learnt the surprising fact that despite the name, polycystic ovaries does not involve many cysts. It involves much smaller bubbles of fluid that grown on the ovaries in abundance. I don’t have that, so I relaxed. But my hairy disposition and sudden acne break out didn’t help calm my PCOS suspicions.

Now because life is cruel, the six weeks came around and I was due on my period the exact same day as the internal ultrasound. While offering some potential technical problems, it also meant I was super on edge as I tried to suppress my PMS in the hope of postponing my period (this actually worked remarkably well but it also postponed and intensified my PMS, would not recommend). The internal ultrasound goes smoothly albeit painfully, and the sonographer immediately says “oooooh no,” as she sees that the hemorrhagic cyst is still there. “That should have gone,” she said. Problem is, it didn’t grow either, which, she explained, means it’s unlikely I will be referred for any kind of treatment. So I have a “persistent hemorrhagic cyst”.

The next day I show up bright, early and menstruating for my blood test results. Happily, it was nothing too serious, just that my iron levels are a tiny bit low, which is consistent with having too heavy periods. Unfortunately, I hadn’t seen this doctor before, and having to explain all my symptoms all over again mid the hormonal meltdown I was having, resulted in some really attractive sobbing as I explained the last few years of pills, pain and frustration. This sobbing only worsened when she informed me that contrary to what I’d been told, Dr C never actually got around to referring me to a gynae in Essex. I explained to her that a big part of my frustration is that in 2015 I ran a marathon, in 2016 I ran a marathon but in 2017 I need a lie down after a dog walk. Not being able to have sex isn’t great either obviously, but exercise is a really great way of feeling like you have some control over your body, it’s difficult losing that control.

However, the sobbing seems to have worked as Dr E has referred me to a local hospital, which should be quicker, and like the God she clearly is, she gave me something. I remain a little perplexed that no one has ever even offered me the medication she prescribed before, as its literal purpose is lightening menstrual flow and potentially easing period pain. It’s non-hormonal and I take it only when I’m on – pixie dust, clearly (Mefenamic Acid IRL). I can’t say I’ve noticed a huge difference thus far, but my period pain has been a little more manageable. I can’t take ibuprofen with it, which makes me nervous that if it doesn’t work then my main source of pain relief is out the window, but we’ll give it a good ol’ college try.

The latest venture.

There are lots of frustrating things about this situation, but the two I’ve learnt this week are that the combined pill might stop the cysts from growing in the first place but that no doctor wants to put me on it because of DVT and breast cancer risk factors. The other is that both the sonographer and Dr E’s response to my pain outside of my period has been to say, “yes, sometimes cysts can be painful”. Trying to communicate to them that whatever is causing my pain, cyst or otherwise, is really painful often is proving difficult.

So with a bit of persistence, like the pesky cyst, I’ve managed to get something to help with period pain, iron tablets that should help with sleepiness, and hopefully a decent and quick referral. It’s not exactly good news, but it’s something.

Confused? Start the saga from the beginning here.

December 11, 2017
What’s in a name? Thank you Hillary Clinton.

Like Hillary Clinton, I graduated from Swansea University in 2017, but that’s not all we have in common. We both have Welsh ancestry and we share a name, though mine is spelt properly (obviously). When it was announced that Hillary Clinton would be receiving an honorary degree from Swansea and delivering a speech, I applied for a press pass in the off-chance I might get one so early on in my career.

To my surprise, this past weekend I had the extraordinary opportunity to attend the commemoration ceremony as a member of the press. I returned to my alma mater and experienced my first *real* press room. While the site I was writing for didn’t end up using my piece (ah, freelance life!) I got to catch up with friends and colleagues still in Swansea, experience a major landmark in the university’s history and find myself in a strange void, somewhere between student journalism and the real thing. Update: my article didn’t get published on the site because it in fact got published in print! Read it here and see if you can spot the irony in the byline…

https://www.instagram.com/p/BaOi3DGBAEk/

As I scrawled my not-yet-mastered shorthand during Hillary’s speech I couldn’t help but get a little nostalgic. I had graduated on the same stage just three months earlier. A stage in a hall on a campus with which I had almost no sentimental attachment. My time at Swansea was spent on Singleton Campus and I had groaned on announcement that we had to graduate on the shiny, new Bay Campus. Now however, I have a genuine memory associated with the Great Hall on Bay Campus. I got to work independently with old and new colleagues, while watching a hero deliver an important speech on children’s rights that will also give my university recognition that will undoubtedly help struggling graduates like myself.

My family have often wondered about the origin my burning advocacy for women’s rights. I have always and will always stay steadfast in saying that it comes from my mum. During Hillary Clinton’s speech however, I started to wonder if the former Secretary of State had something to do with it too. While my parents insist I’m named after a (rather depressing) Beaches character and my mother’s confidence in having ‘never met a stupid Hilary,’ I think I grew up associating my name with a very different source. One month and one day after I was born and named Hilary, the other Hillary delivered her monumental speech on women’s rights in Beijing. From then on, my name was associated with advocacy of women’s rights as human rights. While most of my friends associated my name with Hilary Duff and Hilary Swank, I think I must’ve been listening to the radio on 5 September 1995, because now I think about it, the only other Hilary I knew as a young child was Hillary Clinton. I mentioned this to my mum this afternoon and she spoke of how when she told the nurse my name the reply was ‘is that with two Ls like Hillary Rodham?’

In her speech at Swansea Hillary spoke of how things had almost come ‘full circle’ with her return to Wales, where her ancestors began. Returning to Swansea not as a student but as a professional human being (boohoo!), things felt remarkably full circle for me too. What’s more, Hillary Clinton’s speech was about the children’s rights, where she drew attention to the fact that children are not simply ‘passive observers’ of what adults are up to. She spoke mostly of sad, negative examples of where that foolish assumption shows itself, but I think I have a slightly happier example of it. I grew up with a woman fighting for the rights of women, saying things that were revolutionary at the time. Luckily for me, she happened to share my name which perhaps made me listen a little closer. Hillary Clinton is one of many empowered women that I’ve been able to look up to, but one I didn’t full appreciate until now.

So thank you Hillary Clinton, for giving me a genuine connection to Swansea University’s Bay Campus, God know’s not many Singleton students can say they have one. And thank you for saving it until after I graduated. I never expected a connection to the campus of my graduation to be conjured up after the fact, but I think you’ve given me some much needed self awareness in this period of Graduate Blues. An awareness of what my own name is starting to mean to me, an awareness of my sudden place in the professional world and an awareness of the importance and impact of role models on children. While it took me until your speech to realise it, you have undoubtedly influenced the course of my life so far, all because I was once a child paying attention to what adults were saying and doing.

Read my last blog here

October 16, 2017