My Beautiful Cervix
My Beautiful Cervix
Webmaster's Note: I discovered this very unique article while surfing the web and felt it should be made more readily available to the general public. If you click on the individual photos and illustrations you will be able to see full size versions of each. The creator of the article is unknown. You can access the original at:
http://mybeautifulcervix.googlepages.com/
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One full cycle of Cervie Love...
I am a 25 year old woman who has never given birth.
My intention with this project was to better understand my cycle and the changes in my cervix throughout the month. As a student midwife, I used this project to help me see how a cervix might look different throughout the cycle in the absence of vaginal infections and to understand speculum exams. You may notice on the right side of some photos, some jagged looking skin, which is the remnants of my hymenal ring.
Each photo was taken at approx 10:00 pm every day starting the first day of my menstrual cycle. I re-used a plastic speculum (order one here) and macro function of normal digital camera (and a very talented boyfriend with a headlamp). For the duration of this project, we used condoms as our birth control method so as not to introduce semenal fluid into the photoshoot. I also charted my basal body temperature to notice when the post-ovulation rise in progesterone triggered a rise in my body's temperature.
This cycle I photographed is of normal length for me, about 33 days. The diagram above is for a 28 day cycle. My cycle's follicular phase (variable number of days preovulation) lasts until about day 20 or 21. My fertile phase lasts from days 12 to 21 with ovulation on day 20. My luteal (postovulation) phase is 13 days long (12-16 days is the norm and is not variable).
Above is a graph of my basal body temperature for this cycle. As you can see, after ovulation on about day 20, my temperature began to rise due to the heat-inducing hormone progesterone produced by the corpus luteum. This temperature shift signifies that ovulation has already occurred. Check out more information about the Fertility Awareness Method of birth control.
May this site be educational for you and may you feel inspired to discover more about your body...
