Fertility Friend
From LoveToKnow Pregnancy
Fertility Friend is a web site dedicated to women who are trying to conceive.
Getting Pregnant
For most women, getting pregnant is easy. Many healthy young women who are trying get pregnant will succeed within just a few months, and about 90% will be pregnant by one year. It's not necessary to use web sites, charts, thermometers, or anything else. Regular intercourse without birth control will do the trick.
Then again, it can be fun to plan a pregnancy. Knowing your cycles just might help you get pregnant a little faster. Also, women who are having trouble conceiving often want as much help and support as they can get.
Fertility Friend is one of many options for planning a pregnancy. It offers charts to help women track their fertile days, programs to help predict conception and birth dates, expert advice, and support from other women who are trying to get pregnant.
How the Site Works
To use the site, you have to join. You can tour the site and see a list of its many functions. But, if you want to use anything, you need to sign up. The site asks you to make up a screen name and provide your email address.
Once you're in, the site gathers some information about you. It asks for your last menstrual period, the length of your cycle, your own age, how long you've been trying to get pregnant, and if you have any medical conditions or complicating factors. The site then takes you to a page of blank charts, which you'll fill in with your own data.
The charts track information such as:
- When your periods start
- Your temperature, which changes slightly when you ovulate
- The appearance of your cervical mucus, which can help you determine fertile days
- When you have intercourse
Community
Fertility Friend lets members share their charts online. You can search for charts by women your own age, with similar menstrual cycles, and so on. If you're interested in seeing how other women's cycles work, this can be a fun feature.
The site's "Community Section" has several options.
- Message boards let women share experiences, ask questions, and offer advice.
- Buddy groups are small groups of women who commit to supporting each other on a day-to-day basis. These groups are usually organized around a specific issue or interest.
- Interest groups are larger groups, with less intense participation, dealing with specific issues.
- Chat rooms let members "meet" online for real-time chats.
Photo Galleries
Taking a pregnancy test can be stressful, especially if you're not sure you're doing it right. The same goes for ovulation predictor kits: if you've never used one before, you might want some help knowing when to use it, how it works, and what the results are supposed to look like. The Home Pregnancy Test (HPT) and Ovulation Prediction Kit (OPK) Photo Gallery has thousands of pictures, sent in by members, showing actual pictures of test kits and results.
Once You're Pregnant
Once you've conceived, Fertility Friend invites you to visit their Pregnancy Tracker. It's a similar site, but now you can chart pregnancy symptoms, keep a journal, and keep track of doctor appointments. Worksheets help you prepare for doctor visits. Information about pregnancy milestones lets you follow your baby's development and see what changes to expect in your body. An ultrasound photo gallery has thousands of pictures from ultrasounds, of singleton and multiple pregnancies. And a community section, similar to the one on the main Fertility Friend site, invites women to share information and experiences.
Costs and Cautions
The site gives new users a 30-day "VIP trial," with access to most of the site's features. After that, you can either pay to subscribe—for a period from a month up to a year—or choose to use only the basic features. The community message boards are open only to subscribers.
How useful is Fertility Friend? It depends. You can find similar information and charts elsewhere on the web for free. For most women, they aren't even necessary: getting pregnant is just a matter of having regular intercourse without birth control. And, the site makes no guarantees about the accuracy of the medical information you'll find there.
On the other hand, if you're the sort who likes to plan every last detail, if you're nervous about getting pregnant and want to interact with other women going through the same experience, or if you're having trouble conceiving and just want some support, you may want to visit the site and see if it has what you need.
Learn More
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