Fertility Awareness Method (FAM)

Fertility Awareness Method (FAM) is a method of natural family planning where a woman or couple keeps track of all of her fertility signs. Women are only fertile for a few days out of each cycle. FAM may be used for birth control or to assist pregnancy.

FAM is not the calendar method, which assumes that all women have a 28 day cycle and ovulate on the 14th day. Women have a lot of variation in the menstrual cycle; the calendar method is not fully effective without also investigating one's own fertility signals.

Note that a woman who is on an oral contraceptive or any other hormone-based birth control method will not notice any fertility signals.

Temperature charting, basal body temperature

A fertile woman will have a rise in temperature after she ovulates due to the release of hormones when the female egg cell is disintegrating. The Toni Weschler.