I Stopped “Turning Off” My Body

Motherhood turned me into a detective.

Sunscreen ingredients.
Red Dye 40.
Heavy metals in baby food.
What's in the pouch. What's in the snack. What's in the water.

I was so careful about what went into my kids' bodies.

And then one day it hit me:

I had no idea what was going on in mine.

For years, I treated my cycle like a problem to manage.

I was either on hormonal birth control (feeling foggy, flat, and kind of "muted") or off everything and doing anxious math in my head every month.

Neither felt good.

But I didn't question it, because that's just… what you do, right? You pick one and deal with the trade-offs.

It wasn't until I started paying more attention to how I felt (the random energy crashes, the weeks I felt amazing vs. the weeks I didn't, the brain fog I blamed on "just being a tired mom") that I realized:

I didn't actually understand my own cycle. At all.

I knew my toddler's nap schedule better than I knew my own body.

I didn't want to just "turn off" my fertility anymore. I wanted to understand it.

So I started looking for something in the middle. Not hormones. But not just guessing and hoping either.

That's when I found Natural Cycles.

It's an app that uses your body temperature to track your cycle. No hormones. No devices inserted. No side effects.

Every morning, you get a simple answer: Green Day (not fertile) or Red Day (use protection, or go for it, depending on your goal).

That's it.

What made me actually trust it (when I had ignored every other "period tracker" on the app store) is that it's FDA-cleared. It's the first and only app cleared by the FDA as birth control.

It's not a calendar guessing your cycle is 28 days. It's using your actual data to learn your actual pattern.

That felt like a completely different thing.

Here’s the quiz I took to get started →

It took about 2 to 3 cycles for the algorithm to really learn me.

In the beginning, you get more Red Days because it's being cautious while it gathers your data. That's actually what made me trust it more. It doesn't pretend to know you before it does.

After that, the Green Days started opening up. And it became second nature.

Wake up, take my temperature (or if you have an Apple Watch or Oura Ring, it does it while you sleep), open the app, see my day.

But here's the part I didn't expect:

I started understanding myself.

Why I had insane energy one week and felt like a zombie the next.
Why some weeks I was motivated and others I wanted to cancel everything.
Why my mood shifted on almost the exact same day every cycle.

It wasn't random. It was my hormones. And once I could see the pattern, I stopped blaming myself for it.

That was the real shift. Not just the birth control part. The knowing part.

I first came to Natural Cycles for the hormone-free birth control.

But the app actually has five different modes, all under one subscription:

You don't pay extra to switch between them. It just grows with you.

That's what makes it different from a random period tracker. It's one app for whatever season you're in. And you don't have to start over every time your life changes.

If you've ever felt "off" on hormonal birth control but didn't know what else to do.

If you're done having kids (or not sure yet) and want something that doesn't mess with your body.

If you're trying to conceive and want actual data instead of guesswork.

If you're in a season where you just want to understand your cycle (the energy shifts, the moods, the patterns) instead of ignoring it.

If you want your data to stay private. Natural Cycles doesn't sell your data. That matters more than it should have to.

They have a 2-minute quiz that helps you figure out which mode fits your life right now.

And if you do decide to grab the annual plan, code THEMOMMY gets you a discount at checkout.

Here's to finally knowing our own bodies as well as we know everyone else's. 😅