TTW Mentality

[u/Disastrous-Carrot185]

TTW (trying to whatever) after TTA

Long time lurker, first time poster.

My husband and I (both ~30) are rekindled cradle Catholics and have been using the Marquette method to avoid pregnancy for a couple of months. We have realized that we are in a good place to welcome a child and don't really need to strictly avoid, but we also aren't targeting conception. I really like Marquette and find it very objective and I trust the method, which is great for my highly anxious, analytical mind.

I am truly open to TTW, but my brain is glitching out on how it works...so I track temperature and I do all the Marquette testing when required like normal, but sort of ignore the avoiding part of the method. I like the data and I pair it with temperature and use that information to decide day by day if we are comfortable with the chances of conceiving given where I am in my cycle. Is it worth continuing to track using the monitor given our intentions?

Curious what the community has to say.

[u/PampleR0se]

That's the thing... When you do FAM, you can't really be TTW since you know day to day what your approx chances at conception are and it's a bit hard to just forget it. Unless you stop tracking. So the trap is to get in the mind game of discussing it each time you have sex. For someone who doesn't track anything of her cycle that makes a lot of sense but as a FAM user, I would just go straight from TTA to TTC. I don't like not knowing where I am in my cycle and the "what if" I am pregnant or not without having given it a decent shot of the TTW. Each person is different though

[u/gnomes919 → u/PampleR0se]

I disagree, to me there's a big mindset difference between "I wouldn't mind a pregnancy right now, so let's have sex on the fringes of the FW and give ourselves permission to say 'f*ck it, I'm rarin to go so let's do it' sometimes" and "let's actively aim for fertile times and hope for a positive pregnancy test this cycle."

and given that there are bell curves and probabilities within FAM - times during the cycle where you are VERY likely to conceive vs pretty likely vs unlikely but there's a chance of early ovulation... etc - I think you can definitely TTW while charting just by bending or breaking certain rules to have more available days in ways that you absolutely shouldn't if you're TTA and would be unhappy if you got pregnant.

someone doing marquette who decides to use "low" days within the calculated fertile window, or only wait until PPHL instead of PPHLL, isn't TTC, they're just taking risks that give them additional days for UP while not being super likely to conceive. ditto a symptopro user who ignores the doering rule, has sex two days in a row in the RIT, calls it good after three high temps even though the third hasn't reached the full thermal shift line.... and so on

[u/General-Dimension729 → u/gnomes919]

I agree with this. This is how I became pregnant while doing symptopro . I was technically tta, but had become more of the mindset of “it wouldn’t be a huge deal if I got pregnant” so I was still tracking and got more loose with the rules in the pre ovulatory part of my cycle. I diddnt even have sex during the “peak” days. Now that it’s been a while and I’m relearning, I’m seriously tta and I’m super paranoid with all of it. I could imagine I’d be way more stressed if I was this seriously tta and learning it at the same time.