Certified sex therapist and licensed psychotherapist Laura Federico and certified professional midwife Morgan Miller are co-authors of The Cycle Book, where they illuminate the complexities of the menstrual cycle. Federico’s background in mental and sexual health and Miller’s experience as an activist and midwife offer readers a grounded yet transformative perspective. Here, they explore ovulation—an essential but often misunderstood phase—and its impact on physical and emotional well-being.

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An incomplete list of times it would have been helpful to know how ovulation feels in my body:

• When I ended things with a long-term ex with a single cold, unsentimental text because it suddenly seemed so clear that he could never, ever possibly understand me, and then, days later, when I started my period, I was flooded with love for him – and massive regret.
• When I was trying to get pregnant and couldn’t — I got pulled into the fertility industrial complex vortex and lost my voice. I did not respond well to the fertility medications and trusted the doctors more than my own understanding of my body.
• When I stopped ovulating after the fertility medications, I worried I would never bleed or ovulate again and that my body had been irrevocably broken.
• When, more times than I can count, I felt I was going to jump out of my skin, stuck and bubbling over with a huge rush of energy – usually rage and despair - with nowhere to send it but toward the people I cared about or back at myself.

An incomplete list of conditions Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) has imitated in my life:

• Anxiety and Panic Disorders
• Impulse Control Disorders
• Borderline Personality Disorder
• OCD
• Depression
• Being a terrible friend/partner/human etc

Having PMDD is like trying to jump out of a driving car.

That’s probably the most accurate way I’ve seen it described. The act itself is described in multiple accounts of PMDD I’ve read, and it almost perfectly captures the feeling of my week to ten days from ovulation to bleeding - trapped, suffocating, with no way to manage the all-consuming emotions, looking for the first way out. PMDD is one of the premenstrual disorders marked by significant mood changes, among other symptoms. Not surprisingly, we don’t yet know enough about menstrual cycle disorders.

What I didn’t fully understand when I was diagnosed with PMDD was that what we were really talking about here was ovulation. And what was happening in my body and mind during and after ovulation? I had this notion of a month-long cycle cut in two, with one half being okay and the other half being dangerous. I used my treatment cycle to orient myself to what I believed to be my body’s schedule - every fourteen days, I took SSRIs, but nobody ever used the word ovulation when prescribing.

When I was trying to get pregnant, I knew I was focusing on ovulation, but I looked to an app to tell me when that should be. Completely underwater with infertility treatment, I used the brand of ovulation sticks I hated (but insisted on by my doctor) to try to determine the cadence of my cycle. These sticks were the most expensive. I always had to press that little button and bother someone working near the pharmacy in the drugstore to come and open the plexiglass case for me, and when I peed on them, a smiley face either did or didn’t appear. This seemed to me symbolic of the way gendered medical concerns are treated in general. Expensive and with smiley faces.

So many years into this experience of having a body that menstruates and running into clearly hormonally-related problems, I truly still did not actually understand what was happening in my body and when. I was always looking outside of myself for some other person or app or the internet to tell me what was going on. The answers I got were confusing, conflicting, and, more often than not, totally inaccurate.

Sometimes, I feel caught between two ways of thinking. On the one hand, okay, a societally-gendered biological process does not define me. But on the other hand, I think, "Wait, we’re being misled and gaslit by a biased educational and medical system that is actively dismissing how these hormonal cycles impact people."

Probably in an annoying way (I don’t want to ask because I can’t stop), I talk to everyone about hormones now. Maybe it comes up because someone thinks they might have PCOS, or they finally got an endometriosis diagnosis, or someone had a wild reaction when their IUD was taken out, or maybe I’m just the one bringing it up because I’m fixated on it.

But truly, nobody knows how to track their cycles! Maybe they have a wearable or an app, but they don’t know how to pinpoint where they are in their cycle by just listening to their bodies. Because I’d like to be a person who still has friends and gets invited to places, I do my best to ignore the sense of urgency this provokes in me. I try very hard to resist discussing cervical fluid consistency when out for drinks.

Now I know the signs of ovulation, and I can prepare. As a therapist, I see a lot of the people I work with also trying to sort out how their hormones impact how they feel, how they care for the people they love, and how they get to live. I want everyone else to also have this information because I’m actually not a terrible person/friend/human but just one who really wants everyone else to feel better, too.

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Okay, I see you cervical fluid!

Guidelines from a Midwife

Knowing when you ovulate can be lifesaving. For one, it can offer a modicum of control over your reproductive life when politics continue to strip away your rights. And, if Laura’s story about her experience with PMDD resonated, you can also see how knowing your cycle can set a framework for finding yourself the best support.

One midwife’s expeditious guide to tracking ovulation:

Typically, ovulation occurs mid-cycle, meaning between the follicular phase (the first part of the menstrual cycle where you bleed and then prepare a follicle/egg to ovulate) and the luteal phase (the second part of the menstrual cycle where you fluff up your uterine lining and prepare to bleed for the next cycle). Those two phases have big hormonal changes as estrogen and progesterone do a little dance to aid in all those events happening. So, if you know when ovulation is occurring, you can be prepped for that big hormonal shift that is also in the works between those two phases.

Vaginas come with discharge and body fluids; the trick is discerning between them all.

Cervical fluid is the real stunner of body fluids, showing up around ovulation. This slippery, clear, silky discharge might feel kind of like arousal fluid or being turned on, but it's a bit extra…thicker even, almost like raw egg whites…and shows up regardless of your libido.

There are plenty of ways to track ovulation, but cervical fluid is a go-to that doesn't require tech accessories, peeing on a test strip, or logging into an app.

Tracking cervical fluid wherever and whenever:

• When you’re moving and walking through the day, briefly think about how your vagina feels. Do you feel slicker than other days?
• Wipe with toilet paper before and after using the bathroom. Does the paper feel dry? If it feels slippery, it may be cervical fluid. Take a look at the fluid on the paper, is it thick and jelly?
• Insert and remove a clean finger from the vagina. Feel the body fluid between your fingers. Is it dry, tacky, lotion-y, creamy? That might not be it just yet. If it slides between your fingers easily, it may be cervical fluid. And if it’s thick and clear, it may be cervical fluid.

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Preorder The Cycle Book here.