Swim teams, safety and fertility

Eggwhite fertile cervical mucus (EWFCM)

The photo: Eggwhite fertile cervical mucus that is thick, clear and stretchy released a few days before ovulation to support the travel of sperm through the cervix and uterus to the fallopian tubes to await the release of an egg. FCM flows into the dome of a diaphragm to mix with the wearer’s natural arousal lubricant as well as the acidic spermicidal gel used to immobilize sperm that may leak into the dome. FCM has it’s own musky scent, slightly salty taste and is a favorite of men who enjoy consuming a woman’s reproductive secretions. Eight hours after sex with an unprotected male it’s always fun to pull out my latex Reflexions diaphragm and watch him lick the secretions out of the dome. My partners say there is such a strong scent of latex in the secretions that the liquefied lactic acid spermicide is completely masked and just provides a bit of additional body to the total.

Swim teams and our reproductive clinic: Since an unfortunate incident earlier in the year where a swim team member had an air embolism during underwater vaginal sex that left her in a vegetative state elite public (read private) women’s school swim teams have been coming to the clinic for cervical protection. Knowing that team members would be protected if the occasion for sex arose was high on their priority list and we are one of the few clinics that are prepared to provide it. Venous air embolisms (VAE) occurring during erotic situations are not unknown, but had been thought to be rare and so have not generally been protected against. However, it’s not clear that this method of introducing air into the bloodstream has been routinely considered when fatalities among healthy sexually active young women occur so incidences of this may be underreported.  For an instance in the literature see Pub Med: Fatal air embolism during female autoerotic practice: HERE. Additionally, an effective cervical barrier will protect against a far more common condition which can lead to infertility, Pelvic Inflammatory disease (PID), caused by having water forced into the uterus from the hydraulics of a partner’s thrusting during underwater sex.

Spotting, endometrium stripping, and VAE safety: Spotting from hormonal contraceptives break-through bleeding, endometrium stripping due to the movement of an IUD and menstruation are three possible sources of entry points for air into the bloodstream should it be forced into the woman’s uterus. Almost all the students in elite women’s schools that our clinic provide services for are using a stringless copper IUD of one sort or another as their leadership believes that experiencing the highs and lows of hormonal swings during the menstrual cycling is a part of becoming a woman and leads to the flowering of creativity during the students fertile days. Therefore, with the exception of the few on hormones for medical problems the students in a given school tend to be in menstrual synchrony.

The latex flat spring diaphragm: To protect against venous air embolisms due to air being forced into the uterus during sex while the woman is bleeding our clinic recommends the use of latex flat spring contraceptive diaphragms similar to the Reflexions which was discontinued at the first of 2015. Latex provides superior heat transfer, can be safely used with all kinds of silicone lubricants and with a flat spring rim it is nearly impossible for even a mischievous partner to under-thrust the rim. It is particularly important that a silicone lubricant be used for underwater vaginal sex as water base lubes are quickly washed away leaving the woman painfully and dangerously unlubricated. Our clinic now has its own supplier of latex flat spring diaphragms in sizes from 55mm to 95mm in 5mm increments which allows us to fit more young women just reaching menarche. We have retained a raised maker’s symbol and rim diameter in the center of the convex side of the dome as a glans stimulator; yet another plus for the latex flat spring diaphragm.

During a diaphragm fitting session our fitters not only fit the patient and answer questions, but demonstrate how to correctly deflate the dome after insertion by pushing down as though having a BM to move the cervix closer to the vaginal entrance making it easier to express the air from the dome with the fingers by pushing the latex membrane into the void of the anterior fornix expelling trapped residual air from the dome so the seal and vacuum are much stronger. Once demonstrated patients are given time to practice insertion, deflating the dome and removal so before leaving the clinic they are confident they know how to correctly insert and remove their diaphragms.

Gardasil: Our clinic also administers the HPV vaccine Gardasil in two or three injection regimens. Gardasil is safe for most girls to take except for those who are allergic to some contents of the vaccine. For girls 9 to 14 y/o the two shot regimen at 0 and 6 months is effective. For women 15 y/o and older Gardasil gives the best protection when given in 3 doses on time two months apart over 6 months.

Menarche, pelvic exams and pre-pompoir training: Unless there is a medical condition requiring a pelvic exam our clinic recommends a girl’s first pelvic be at menarche which can occur as young as 11 y/o, but mostly in dance schools girls in strenuous training where they are developing muscle mass and very little fat menarche may be delayed until about age14, which was when I had my first period. A pelvic gives us the opportunity to determine who might need hymenectomies and offer vaginal dilators to see if stretching the hymen will suffice. Shaped vaginal dilators equipped with a vibi tip are available for girls wanting to begin working on muscle isolation for Pompoir training and other shapes to use as dildos for masturbation. Having reached menarche it is never too early to begin pelvic muscle group isolation and stimulation since it is much easier to learn while young.

Mothers and consent:  In today’s permissive society it’s important that under age young women, especially those excelling in swimming, gymnastics and dance where their bodies are on display be familiar with their reproductive anatomy and learn to safely manipulate it for their own and eventually a partner’s pleasure. To that end, with her mother’s written permission, our clinic can provide a young patient at or above the age of consent with instruction on how to protect herself during solo and partnered sexual activity. This is a relatively new offering and has already become very popular and is currently oversubscribed so we plan on starting classes with me teaching Contemporary Sexual Techniques (for teens) with the same syllabus that I used at St Lucy’s in Vegas. It will be held in a property adjoining the clinic owned by the Barony which had been a health club with a dance studio and pool.

Women, fertility and desire

Fertile: Is she or isn’t she?

Live Science
By Stephanie Pappas,
LiveScience Senior Writer
17 October 2010

Booty Call: How to Spot a Fertile Woman

Ask the average person how the menstrual cycle affects women's moods, and you're likely to get an earful about PMS, or premenstrual syndrome. While it's true that PMS symptoms are common (although not as stereotypical as usually believed), new research is finding women's behavior shifts at another point in the reproductive cycle: ovulation.

Two new studies in the November issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior find that women get a little wilder during their most fertile days of the month. One study found that fertile women are more open to the idea of hooking up with a stranger or acquaintance, while the second found that women with less masculine-looking partners are more likely to lust after strong-jawed men during fertile days than women with partners with manly mugs.

The new studies are two of more than 20 that have examined the effects of ovulation on the way women dress, talk and think. While it's not yet clear if or how these temporary changes affect women's relationships in the real world, they may by a key to humanity's past.

"The idea is you see the preferences that would have evolved ancestrally still show up," Steven Gangestad, a University of New Mexico evolutionary psychologist and co-author on both new papers, told LiveScience.

Ovulation and lust

Until about a decade ago, most research on the menstrual cycle focused on PMS, which occurs after ovulation and before menstruation. Few people had investigated whether ovulation affected women, Martie Haselton, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told LiveScience. (Ovulation occurs when a woman’s body releases an egg down the fallopian tube where it can meet up with Mr. Sperm.)

"Nobody was asking what happens on fertile or non-fertile days," Haselton said.

One reason no one had tackled the question is that researchers in human evolution had long assumed that ovulation didn't matter much in humans. Unlike other mammals, which go into "heat" during fertile periods, women can be up for sex any time of the month. Evolutionary theorists have tried at several explanations for the loss of this estrus cycle in humans, one of the most common being that humans lost the "heat" phase to conceal ovulation. If a man didn't know which sexual encounter would pass his genes along, the theory went, he'd be more likely to stick around and help raise offspring.

The problem is that men do seem to be able to tell when their partner is ovulating, albeit imperfectly. No one knows how men can tell (smell is one hypothesis), but several studies have found women report that men become more attentive and jealous around fertile days. One 2006 study published in Evolution and Human Behavior found that when women were fertile, their male partners saw other men as a greater threat to their dominance.

Another problem is that women do seem to have a "heat" phase, although it works very differently than in other mammals. It's not that women become more receptive to sex in the five or so days around ovulation, Gangestad said. It's that they want sex for different reasons.

"It may be experienced more as a kind of lust mid-cycle," Gangestad said. "Outside of mid-cycle, women may be more interested in sex for intimacy."

Multiple studies have found that women go for more masculine-looking men when they're ovulating. According to a 2008 review of research by Gangestad and his colleagues published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, some of the masculine traits fertile women prefer are strong-jawed faces, muscular bodies, dominant behaviors, deep voices and tallness.

Because most studies on the topic have been done on heterosexual women, little is known about how ovulation affects lesbians or bisexual women. One study, published online in May 2010 in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, found that ovulation boosted lesbian women's motivation to act on their desires for other women, while bisexual women showed smaller increases in motivation. While women's sexuality is more fluid than men's, study coauthor Lisa Diamond, a psychologist at the University of Utah, told LiveScience, the findings suggest that ovulation could be a window into the biologically-based component of female sexual orientation.

Girls gone fertile

Back in the more-studied world of heterosexual couples, Gangestad's most recently published study on female preferences finds that if a woman is partnered with a man without a masculine face, her eye is more likely to wander during her fertile days.

This wandering eye doesn't necessarily translate into a cheating heart. Most women probably notice nothing more than a "funny little feeling" of lust during their fertile days, Haselton said. But other studies have shown that the hormonal fluctuations surrounding ovulation do change women's attitudes and behavior.

For instance, fertile women seem to be more open than non-fertile women to the idea of taking "sexual pleasures where [they] find them," in the words of one question asked to participants in the study by Gangestad and his colleagues published in the November issue of Evolution and Human Behavior. They're also more likely to express interest in sleeping with an attractive stranger or someone they don't care about.

A 2006 study in the journal Hormones and Behavior found that women who had their pictures taken during fertile and non-fertile stints were judged to be trying harder to look nice on fertile days, suggesting the hormonal boost of ovulation may translate to real-life decision-making. The women's faces were blacked out, so judges could only go on hairstyles and clothes to make their assessments, said Haselton, who co-authored the paper. To avoid any menstruation effects, none of the women were photographed right before or during their periods.

"We saw that the effect was strongest for women who were photographed closest to the day of ovulation within the high-fertility window," Haselton said.

An online shopping experiment reveals fertile women are also more likely to choose sexy clothes and accessories than women who weren't fertile, according to the study published online in the Journal of Consumer Research in August. For those who aren’t as interested in sexy clothes, ovulation can mean more money. In a widely publicized study published in Evolution and Human Behavior in 2007, researchers found that ovulating strippers made an average of $30 more an hour than menstruating strippers and $15 more an hour than non-ovulating, non-menstruating strippers.

Do fertility fluctuations matter?

The big question, of course, is how much ovulation affects the real lives of the non-strippers among us. Do women give in to the temptation to cheat more often when fertile? (No one has found any evidence suggesting they do, Gangestad said.) And what about the massive number of women on the birth control pill? The pill halts ovulation and smoothes out monthly hormonal cycles, so do women on hormonal birth control act differently than those who aren't on the pill?

The answer to that question depends on whether women base any long-term relationship decisions on the changes that happen around ovulation, Haselton said. So far, none of the studies on the topic have shown that ovulation changes women's preferences for long-term mates, just short-term flings.

"Being on the pill does remove a lot of the variation in the changes in hormones across the cycle, so we certainly would expect it to have an impact on a woman's behavior," Haselton said. "But if it's only having an impact within that narrow range of fertility, then maybe it's not that big a deal."

From an evolutionary perspective, unraveling the question of ovulation could reveal a lot about how human reproduction evolved. It's possible that women really are trying to signal their fertility with sexy clothes, Haselton said, but it's more likely that the changes are side effects of the hormonal tides women experience throughout the month.

Perhaps women really did evolve to conceal ovulation but can't quite cover up all the side effects, Haselton said. "There may be a co-evolution arms race between women concealing and men detecting any cues that leak out."

Personal comment: I think this is an important article because it summarizes and to an extent explains in print so many of the psychological aspects of a woman’s menstrual cycle and how they affect her personality. Some women, especially dancers and those of us in the adult entertainment industry have known since we were teens how to use our hormonal fluctuations to increase our attractiveness to men. It’s instinctive, but can be developed into an art with a little practice. We have known for years that intimate performances while fertile can bring in a lot more money than the same routines when we aren’t. That is why my dancers and other entertainers at the casino don’t use hormonal contraceptives.

Copper IUDs are the contraceptive of choice for the younger girls and sterilization is popular for the older ones and gas guards are now commonly worn by professionals even when no dive-sex is anticipated so if while receiving oral her client blows into her vagina the likelihood that he will give her an embolism is greatly reduced. Guy’s wanting to ‘blow-up-a-pussy’ has become very popular here recently. Initially that caused a lot of concern because it’s not good business to tell a client no. Fortunately it is just a matter of a girl being fitted for a diaphragm to use as a gas guard and she’s good to go. Personally I’m a lot more likely to try risky things with risky men while I’m fertile than when I’m not, although when I’m menstrual I’m almost as adventuresome.