THE BILLINGS METHOD

Using the body’s natural signal of fertility to achieve or avoid pregnancy

Dr Evelyn Billings & Ann Westmore

Since it was first published in 1980, The Billings Method: Using the body’s natural signal of fertility to achieve or avoid pregnancy has become a classic health book for women. Worldwide, it has sold more than a million copies in 22 languages. It is estimated that more than 50 million couples worldwide use the Method, across all cultural boundaries.

Melbourne doctors, Evelyn and John Billings met over a dead body while they were studying anatomy as young medical students. She went on to study paediatrics and he neurology. In the 1960s they became interested in looking for a natural alternative to the notoriously unreliable Rhythm Method and discovered the Billings Method.

The Billings Method itself has been hailed as ‘Knowledge that every woman ought to have’. This book is an invaluable guide in that knowledge. It explains - clearly and simply - how a woman can observe her body’s own natural signals of fertility and use that knowledge to achieve or avoid pregnancy. It also taps into the ever-increasing demand by women for natural ways of dealing with issues of health and contraception.

Dr Billings was fascinated to learn that the Billings Method - observing changes in a woman’s mucus as a signal of when she is fertile - is actually ancient knowledge that we had lost. She discovered that this method of contraception was taught by grandmother to grand-daughter in some African tribes, and was also known to some Aboriginal people.

Dr Billings is internationally renowned for her work and the Billings Method has proved particularly invaluable in Third World countries. In these countries, where birth control is a critical, and even live-threatening issue, this natural method is widely taught and practised, with excellent results. Dr Billings travels overseas regularly and visits China several times a year at the invitation of the Chinese government to teach the method.

An unexpected bonus has been its success for Western couples wanting to conceive, as it pinpoints precisely the time of ovulation. Twenty years on from its original publication, The Billings Method is as relevant today as it was on publication.

Dr Evelyn Billings is available for interview and talkback.

Published by Anne O’Donovan Pty. Ltd., Level 1, 171 La Trobe Street, Melbourne, 3000, Australia, November 2000.