FFP 623 | Cycle Charting as Primary Care: A Midwife's Perspective | FAMM Practitioner Series | Harriet Thorn
Fertility Friday | Fertility Awareness Mastery for Women's Health Professionals
Fertility Friday Radio | Fertility Awareness for Pregnancy and Hormone-free birth control
4.8 • 869 Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2026
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In Episode 623 of the Fertility Friday Podcast, Lisa sits down with Harriet Thorn, a Switzerland-based midwife and recent graduate of the Fertility Awareness Mastery Mentorship (FAMM) program, for a wide-ranging conversation about cycle charting in midwifery practice. Harriet shares her personal journey from biotechnology PhD to midwife — including her own experience navigating heavy and painful periods, hormonal contraception, and eventually discovering fertility awareness charting as a tool for both personal and professional use. The conversation explores why midwives, despite being primary caregivers for women across the full reproductive lifespan, receive minimal training in fertility awareness — and how the FAMM certification has helped Harriet build the structure, confidence, and clinical protocols to support her clients more comprehensively. Lisa and Harriet also dive into a thoughtful discussion on research literacy, including the importance of reading full study texts, understanding researcher bias, and the challenges of accessing fertility awareness research in non-English-speaking countries. Harriet reflects on how her FAMM training has expanded her practice beyond prenatal and postnatal care to include menstrual health support — and why she views cycle charting as a foundational skill for any midwife committed to truly holistic, women-centred care.
Follow this link to view the full show notes page!
This episode is sponsored by Lisa's new book, Real Food for Fertility, co-authored with Lily Nichols! Grab your copy here!
🎧 Would you prefer to listen to the audiobook version of Real Food for Fertility instead? 🎧 Listen here!
💥This episode is also sponsored by FAMM, the Fertility Awareness Mastery MentorshipTM program! Apply now to join our next class! We start on May 12th!
📚Have you grabbed your copy of the Fertility Awareness Mastery Charting Workbook? It is the first fully customizable paper charting workbook of its kind, available in both Fahrenheit and Celsius editions. Click here to grab your copy today!
📚 If you haven't grabbed your copy of The Fifth Vital Sign, grab it here!
🎧Would you rather listen to the audiobook version of The Fifth Vital Sign? 🎧 Listen here!
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | It's officially here. Early Bird registration for our fertility awareness mastery mentorship program is officially open. |
| 0:09.3 | We officially start on the 13th of May, but early bird registration is only open for a short time. |
| 0:17.3 | As a woman's health professional, you already know that you're seeing an increasing |
| 0:21.5 | number of clients come to you asking about their menstrual cycle, asking about charting. |
| 0:27.1 | Some of them may already be tracking their cycles in one way or another. And even if you have |
| 0:33.0 | personal charting experience, if you have any clients who are sharing their charts with you, you've |
| 0:38.2 | already discovered that most of the charts your clients share with you look nothing like yours. |
| 0:43.9 | And your training certainly hasn't prepared you to support clients who have abnormal cycles |
| 0:49.4 | and complex charts. That's exactly what we do in FAM. |
| 0:59.4 | We teach our practitioners to interpret even the most complex menstrual cycle charts and confidently guide your clients through their hormonal and reproductive health challenges |
| 1:04.5 | using our evidence-based strategies and practitioner-facing protocols. |
| 1:10.4 | Head over to fertility friday.com slash Van Live to apply today. |
| 1:15.7 | That's fertility friday.com slash f-a-m-m-l-I-V-E. |
| 1:20.7 | This is the Fertility Friday podcast, episode number 623. |
| 1:31.4 | Music episode number 623. In today's episode, I am sharing my interview with Harriet Thorn. |
| 1:37.0 | She is one of our recent Bam participants. |
| 1:41.3 | At the time that we've recorded this episode. She was just a couple of months out |
| 1:45.1 | from finishing our nine-month program. And this conversation was super interesting. One of the |
| 1:52.8 | things that is kind of fun to know about our fan practitioner series is that we don't really |
| 1:59.0 | plan ahead what we're going to talk about. It's definitely |
| 2:02.2 | just a conversation. And so I don't always know, actually most of the time I don't know |
| 2:08.6 | exactly what direction it's going to take. So I always find these conversations to be super |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Fertility Friday Radio | Fertility Awareness for Pregnancy and Hormone-free birth control, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Fertility Friday Radio | Fertility Awareness for Pregnancy and Hormone-free birth control and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.