Those of you who follow the news, know that the Pope has been under fire for some things he has said about Catholics and reproduction. I feel that he will always be under fire because he is the Pope and the media is not a fan of Catholics. But that is another post, for another time. This post is about NFP( Natural Family Planning)
I am going to start off with why I am writing this, often after you have a baby, people ask when you will have the next one or what you will do for birth control. Both of those questions are very invasive. Furthermore, the reactions to the answers to those questions can be hurtful. My husband and I use Natural Family Planning, in accordance to the church's (Catholic) teaching. That means no artificial hormones, no barriers, and nothing to get in the way of conceiving a child. In fact, the only way to not have a baby is absence. Yet, when we inform some medical personal about our reproductive choices, we are often told that it will not work and we will be seeing them within the next six months. My son is now 14 months old. Therefore, I say "Ha" to those doctors who don't believe it works.
There are many different methods of NFP. I am not going to share the type my husband and I use, but I will list the methods. When done correctly, if you are planning to avoid a pregnancy, each of them have been proven to be 99% effective. I am not going to get into a lot of details about the methods, if you want more information please check out the links I list at the end. There are your mucus only methods; Billings and Creighton are the most common. There is your cross-categorical method; Couples to couples league Sympto-Thermal, this one check mucus, basal body temp and cervical position. There are other sympto-thermal methods, but the one I listed is the most common. Then there is the Marquette method which uses a fertility monitor and checks hormone levels. Each method has it's own rules which need to be followed for both avoiding and for conceiving.
Now, I know that many of my readers (or those who happen to find this post) will say that NFP does not work. It will be mistakenly called the Rhythm method. That is false. The rhythm method is based on the perfect 28 day cycle and that she ovulates on day 14. We all know how false this is and each NFP method is able to work with all types of women, those who have short cycles and those who have irregular cycles.
I think I will end this post here by saying that NFP works for me and my husband. It helps bring us closer to God. It also help me know my body. For more information on NFP and to find where I got my information please check out these websites.
http://www.iusenfp.com/
http://ccli.org/nfp/
http://www.natural-family-planning.info/
http://www.nfpandmore.org/
Ciao,
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