A Neat Idea---Fertility Tracking Jewelry

Recently a friend of mine gave me a neat little gift, a fertility tracking anklet. If you are at all familiar with the Rhythm Method or Natural Family Planning, the application of this piece of jewelry will be immediately apparent to you.

We first saw these in bracelet form in an Etsy store and thought, "what a great idea." The idea being that you use the bracelet as a reminder and to track your monthly cycle in order to be aware of your time of fertility either for the purpose of getting pregnant or not getting pregnant. Having said that, you must have fairly regular cycles for this concept to work for you, and you must be a careful person. Yesterday I checked my calendar with my anklet (last month was the only month in ages that I had made any notation of this), and I was several days off with my charm, which means I either forgot to move it or I put it in the wrong place to begin with. If you are a scheduled person and attentive to detail, this may be just the thing for you. Since it has been many, many, many years since I have used the Rhythm Method or paid any attention to my cycle for those purposes, I am still in the testing phase of whether or not this will be valuable to me other than being an attractive piece of jewelry.

How to use one: The different color beads represent the changes in your cycle, during your "time", likely to get pregnant, likely ovulating, unlikely to get pregnant. A charm is attached with a lobster claw to move along the anklet each day. See the Etsy link above for a chart that details it.

If you are already into making jewelry, one of these would be a snap to throw together and could be a real reflection of your personality. You could even make more than one to go with different color schemes. I like it as an anklet, but I could also see it somehow transformed into a necklace version. The problem I am now seeing is that mine will be too bulky to wear under socks in the winter. Sometime in the next few months I plan to experiment with creating a very fine anklet that could be worn with winter wear. The one my friend created for me is made of all earth tones and silver. This works well for me because I rarely wear bright colors and I think it goes with most everything. The charm says "laugh often" on one side and "love much" on the other--both of which I need to remember to do.

I just think these are a great idea and wanted to share it! You may be wondering how the anklet looks on, but I am going to spare you the sight of my blocky "Dutch" ankles and let you use your imagination.