Charting -- The Great Revelation

My question is, How did you find out about charting?

Several of you have mentioned it in your Finding Out stories, and I'm curious. See, I just discovered charting. For anyone checking the sidebar, yes, I have three children. I'm nearly 31. In all these years, I've operated on vague and general ideas of what happened every month. I have just in the past year discovered how to pinpoint my fertile phase, predict my period, and understand what the heck is going on inside me.

I'm especially indignant about my ignorance because I grew up around hyperconservatives who said even trying to avoid a pregnancy, and therefore all contraception, is sinful. You'd think somebody could have found a segue into the topic of fertility tracking. And when I visited the OB/GYN for my pre-marriage exam and birth control discussion, the only mention of charting was that it was cumbersome to take my temperature every morning and why bother when there are all sorts of other methods that don't require any work?

I'm actually having a great time with my chart. We're currently using it to avoid pregnancy, but I enjoy just seeing what happens day by day.

So did you chart for fertility purposes, or to figure out when to use a form of birth control to prevent pregnancy? And when you did chart, did you record only temperatures, or temperatures and cervical fluid?

Possibly if I'd had a clear understanding of my cycle, I wouldn't have gotten pregnant so soon with my first child. But then, why would I want to give up Ladybug? And speaking of Ladybug, she and Dilly will be properly educated in the facts of femaleness in the future. Twenty-five years from now, they'll be posting on their own blogs (which probably will be holographic with theme music): "One thing I wish my mom had done differently was not talk so much about cycles and charting. Honestly, who needs to know all that?!"