Identifying your PEAK DAY of Fertility

This is a shameless commercial for my research project. Stop reading now if you aren't interested, but if you are a woman interested in learning more about tracking your fertility signs or a man who knows a woman then read on.

Despite what you might have learned in high school your chances of getting pregnant following unprotected intercourse are not the same every day. For most women there are about 6 days during each menstrual cycle during which pregnancy is possible. Observable changes in your cervical fluid can help you identify those days. Armed with that information you can more effectively plan sexual contact to either increase or decrease your odds of pregnancy.

Methods for avoiding and/or achieving pregnancy based on fertility awareness have been developed based on women's observations of fertility signs. These methods have been tested and have demonstrated effectiveness. Many of the methods are taught in face to face interactions with teachers and require multiple follow-up sessions for optimal implementation. Such intensive education is not feasible for large, population-scale studies. Can you imagine trying to coordinate educational sessions for 30,000 couples?

We believe that women can learn enough about their fertility signs on their own to identify their PEAK DAY of fertility (approximates day of ovulation).

The purpose of the PEAK DAY study is to evaluate how well women can learn to identify their PEAK DAY of fertility by reading and following the instructions in a simple educational brochure.

If we show that women can identify their PEAK DAY of fertility using this simple educational tool then future studies of fetal development or environmental exposures during pregnancy could use this method rather than relying on expensive laboratory testing.

The PEAK DAY study is NOT intended to teach you enough about fertility awareness or natural family planning to avoid pregnancy.

Participants in the study will receive the educational brochure and sample fertility charts. Each day they will record their observations and then use their observations to identify their PEAK DAY of fertility. Each cycle, the women will complete a 1-page questionnaire asking about exposures she might have had on her PEAK DAY of fertility. We will not be taking any blood or other samples to test for exposures during the study. After the consent form, most of the data gathering can be completed entirely on-line!

Eligible participants are women ages 18-44 who are NOT using any form of hormonal contraception, NOT sterilized, and NOT using an IUD. These exclusions are because these forms of contraception may interfere with your fertility signs and prevent you from accurately identifying your PEAK DAY. You can participate if you have recently stopped taking oral contraceptives, but NOT if you have recently had a Depo or other contraceptive shot. For budgetary reasons we are unable to accept volunteers from outside of the USA, but you don't have to live in Utah.

Ideally, we are interested in recruiting women who want to become pregnant in the next few months, but this is not ironclad.

If you are interested and want to volunteer or learn more about the study, please email us: peakday@utah.edu

We also have a blog and my valiant study coordinator, Karen, has dragged me into the present social networking environment with a Facebook page for the study or search for the PEAK DAY group on Facebook.

If you aren't interested but know someone who might be - pass this on! We're testing out the idea of recruiting via social networking!

End of commercial. :-)