Thank you for the information. You're right that regular cycles are probably helpful but not necessary. I hadn't considered that before. Gotta check my regular-cycle privilege at the door next time. :)

YES to this as well. When I started charting, I was really angry I hadn't learned this in high school. It's so empowering to understand how our bodies work, and I wish more women had access to this knowledge.

Good points all around. I wish Jezebel would cover fertility awareness more in its discussions of birth control. Fertility awareness is a feminist issue, and can empower women for just $10 (the cost of the thermometer). It felt so good to learn about and understand my own body. It was like a light finally switched on,…

Yes! Timing pregnancies is way easier with charting. Apparently you have a 65-75% chance of getting pregnant each month with timed intercourse, as opposed to like 10% if you just stop using protection. My husband and I wanted an autumn baby, and I got pregnant on the second try. Due in October! :)

Just to jump in and comment on the "no telling in the first trimester" rule:

Check the policies on maternity leave. Some employers don't give paid leave until you've been employed for a year, so that wouldn't be great timing since you're expecting before then. But if it's your best job opportunity, you could always try to negotiate for paid leave anyway.

It's true - but you don't need "normal" periods. You can still chart with very long or short cycles, so long as they're consistent. Mine is ~23 days — much shorter than the "normal" 28!

I completely agree. On a related note, it makes my head spin thinking about how many girls and women have had traumatizing pregnancy scares when it was biologically impossible that they were pregnant because they were far, far away from ovulation. The side effects of Plan B just add insult to injury in those cases.

Ladies, if this post resonated with you, go out and borrow a copy of Toni Weschler's "Taking Charge of Your Fertility." Or download the app called Kindara. Or just Google "fertility awareness method." No, it's not the same thing as the "rhythm method."

"But did you know that millennials are giving up around 70 to 40 percent of their income to rent in those cities? Buying takes an even larger chunk in those areas, grabbing nearly 80 to 50 percent of an inhabitant’s income for mortgage payments."

My husband and I are friends with another couple, and the girlfriend seriously eats like a toddler. This goes way beyond not eating vegetables. Apparently, she only cooks mac and cheese (dino shapes, I assume), chicken nuggets, mini corn dogs, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and so on. There's something very…

Yeah, I think these clothes are for tall, thin ladies without boobs or hips. In other words, Hollywood. :)

This look must work on a very specific type of woman, because my body is totally different from yours, but it looks terrible on me! I'm tall and thin, but with wide hips. If I wear flowy shirts and/or pants, I look twice as large as I really am. I need a defined waistline.

I think this is a bit of a stretch. These button-downs are many different styles, from flowy yoga-type tops to crisp office-wear to tight, cleavage-revealing blouses. there is probably a higher ratio of button-downs to tees in Allen's films than in real life, so I'll give you that.

Yeah... How could your uncle have introduced his new wife to the family? Wouldn't it be weird if his siblings told stories of their childhood antics, when his wife believed he was a decade younger than the rest of the sibs? I'm surprised he kept it up as long as he did.

That's definitely not true for me. I've had my vitamin D levels tested over the past year because I'm pregnant, and they were really low in the winter. I live in New Mexico, in the sunbelt, and go outside a lot. It's just not possible for a lot of people to get their vitamin D needs filled in the winter through…

I think she would have said "Canadian teen" or "Canadian student." Definitely not schoolgirl.

Update: I just remembered I saw a guy carrying a handgun in a holster at a Dunkin Donuts a few weeks ago. But it was like "Woah! What the..." not "ho hum another day in the ABQ."

I get that we have poverty, and terrible / unprepared parents, and drunk driving ... but I have never seen someone who is not a police officer carrying a gun in Albuquerque. I don't live in the Northeast Heights or the North Valley, either. I guess I should never say never, but I certainly haven't seen more guns here…

Actually, the evidence suggests a different explanation. People who cohabitate before marriage have a high divorce rate, but people who start cohabitating after getting engaged or discussing some serious plans for the future actually have the lowest divorce rates. This strongly suggests that when people start living…