- Amy Phipps
- BBC News
Montana Brown, best known for her appearance on ITV’s ‘Love Island’, recently announced that she is pregnant, after two years off taking hormonal contraceptives.
In a post on her Instagram page, Brown, the social media influencer, said she was tracking her cycle naturally, a form of contraception called the Natural Fertility Awareness Method.
“It taught me so much about my period that when it came time to make the decision to get pregnant, I felt so much in tune with my body,” she wrote.
The post was part of a paid ad with Natural Cycles, an app released in 2013 that now has 2.5 million registered users.
And in 2018 Natural Cycles became the first birth control app to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.
The app’s authors said it uses an algorithm to determine a woman’s fertility status based on body temperature and has a success rate of 93%, which is the same success rate as birth control pills in normal use. With the onset of the birth control pill in the 1960s, it was widely celebrated for the sense of freedom and control it gave women. Since then, most women in Britain have used hormonal contraception at some point in their lives. So why are some now turning to technology instead?
image copyright Getty Images
Montana Brown, social media influencer
The idea behind fertility apps is that they provide an alternative to traditional forms of contraception, and work by identifying the days when they are believed to be most likely to conceive. It depends on the menstrual cycle of each individual woman.
But there have also been complaints from Natural Cycles from women who say they got pregnant while using it.
A Natural Cycles spokeswoman said: “As with any contraceptive method, it is important to use the product correctly to maximize effectiveness, as no method is 100% effective at preventing pregnancy, even when used perfectly.”
She added that the app’s effectiveness was “higher than most fertility education methods”.
And confirms the National Health Service (Governmental Health Insurance in Britain) that the condom is the only type of contraceptive that can prevent pregnancy and protect against sexually transmitted diseases together.
And in 2018, Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority banned a Facebook advertisement for the app, with claims that it was “highly accurate” and “provided a clinically tested alternative to other methods of birth control” that turned out to be misleading.
Despite this, the app claims to have hundreds of thousands of users in Britain, while other fertility-tracking apps, such as Flo and Clue, claim to have millions of users around the world.
So what is the secret behind the spread of contraceptive technology?
“There are risks to everything.”
image copyright April
April Inscape
April Inscape, from Leicestershire, has been using the natural fertility awareness method for nearly ten years.
Over the course of eight years, she tried various hormonal contraceptives before deciding they weren’t right for her.
“As I got older, I realized it was simply not worth the effect (the pill) had on my body,” she said.
She said, “I felt lethargic, mood swings, and the pills would randomly appear on my skin, and I didn’t want to mess with my hormones any more.”
April takes her basal body temperature early in the morning and logs it into an app on her phone.
Her daily readings are plotted on a virtual graph that allows her to see the peaks or lows throughout her cycle.
“I’d rather see the whole graph than have an app take the information and interpret it for you,” she said.
“I am very confident and comfortable with my body reading method,” she added.
April said that if she did become pregnant, she would not feel any different than she would if she had been using another method of contraception and it had failed.
“I wouldn’t blame the app, everything has a risk,” she said.
“If you have any doubts and plan to avoid pregnancy, you should use another contraceptive as a back-up. But even condoms are not 100% effective.”
According to the NHS, minor side effects of the pills can include mood swings, nausea, breast pain and headaches.
She said there is a very low risk of serious side effects, such as blood clots and cervical cancer.
“Help me understand my body”
image copyright Helen
Helen, from Nottinghamshire, has been following the natural fertility awareness method since stopping hormonal contraception three years ago at the age of 30.
She said she had been using the pill for several years but felt it was affecting her mood.
“It gave me the idea of trying off hormonal contraceptives to see if that made any change,” she said.
“I felt so much better inside of me, but it took two years for her to get used to my cycles,” she added.
Helen, 33, said she does not plan to have children in the near future, but believes she is “mature enough and financially stable enough” to handle the pregnancy.
“I’m so glad I stopped taking hormonal contraceptives before I seriously got pregnant, because I didn’t know it could take so long for my body to get back to normal,” she said.
Helen tracks her period with the help of an app on her phone.
“I learned more about my cycle and my body from this app,” she said.
“It helped me understand the expected changes in my body over the course of a month: what is normal, and what may not be normal,” she added.
“I listen to my body”
image copyright Laura
Laura, from Derbyshire, said she had been avoiding going back on hormonal contraceptives until she had the children she wanted.
Laura gave birth to her first child in 2021, later than she had planned.
“It took almost a year and a half to actually get pregnant, which I think is partly due to the amount of time I’ve been on the Pill,” she said.
Laura, 33, was on the Pill from ages 17 to 29.
She stopped using it for six months when she was 21, during which time she no longer had her period.
“Back then I was so young, I wasn’t really thinking about kids, so I didn’t really think about the effect of the pill on my body,” she said.
Laura said she hadn’t been planning on getting pregnant again for some time and had been using the Natural Fertility Awareness method to get control of it.
She also used an app on her phone to help but did not rely entirely on technology.
“I listen to my body a lot more, and as long as you’re tracking your cycle, you should be able to tell which phase you’re in,” she said.
“I’m more comfortable when I used to be on drugs,” she said.
“I feel more in tune with my body now than I ever have,” she added.
Laura said that if this method failed and she got pregnant as early as she wanted, it wouldn’t be an unwanted pregnancy.
“While we’re not quite ready for a second child, babies are a blessing so we’ll be glad we were able to conceive again.”
The NHS said it can take a while for women to get their period back after they stop taking the pill, and when it does, it can be irregular.
This is because birth control pills contain hormones that stop ovulation each month.
She said women can wait up to three months for their periods to return to normal.
The NHS said: “It is not likely that the time you were taking the pill caused you to become infertile.”
“You may be able to get pregnant immediately after you stop taking it,” she added.
“However, the Pill does not cause fertility problems and can mask underlying problems you may already have, such as irregular periods.” says the National Health Service.
‘Not suitable for everyone’
image copyright Tom Trevatt Photography
Annabelle Swimimo,
According to the National Health Service, the natural fertility awareness method involves identifying the signs and symptoms of fertility during your menstrual cycle.
These include the length of the cycle, daily body temperature readings and changes in cervical secretions.
She said that if it is followed consistently and correctly, its effectiveness could reach 99%.
However, Dr Annabelle Swimimo, of the Leicester Sexual Health Service, said it was not suitable for everyone.
“If your lifestyle is not sedentary, if you are not in the same place and you can’t get into the app and access your calendar and your thermometer, if your sleeping pattern is irregular, all of these things can make it difficult and reduce your stress,” Swimimo said. How reliable is the method?
It’s also not recommended for women with irregular cycles, PCOS, or postpartum women, Swimimo said.
image copyright Getty Images
Contraceptive pills
Swimimo said she has other concerns about the technology used in the Natural Fertility Awareness method.
“The problem with some of the applications that we see is that they are subscription-based, so it is a fully profitable contraceptive,” she said.
“They have the ability to overcharge it or make it look more functional than it is,” she added.
“Some of the developments that we see also, they have real potential, but they are put on the market in a hurry, before they have a reliable evidence base, and this is because there is a lot of pressure from investors,” she said.
Swimimo believes that social media has played a role in influencing some women not to use hormonal contraceptives.
“With the advent of TikTok, people are sharing information that makes them a little more wary of the side effects of contraceptives, so it’s a very obvious trend,” she said.
She added that the belief that long-term use of hormonal contraceptives can cause infertility is not true.
“People are afraid, especially because we are getting pregnant more and more late,” says Swimimo.
“It is likely that the biggest effect is the decline in fertility in people in their late 30s, rather than the effect of contraception on fertility.”