NFP and Me

As many of you reading this might know by now, this week (July 25 – 31) is Natural Family Planning awareness week. I don’t want to devote the entirety of this post to what NFP is, or even to the many objective reasons why it’s good for women, good for marriages, and good for the planet. (You can read more about that here, here, and here.) What I’m going to do in this post is tell you why we use NFP. There are a plethora of good reasons to do so, but I’ve narrowed it down to the top few. Before I get into that, I want to throw a few things out there, some basic definitions and distinctions, if you will.

****                          ****

What is Natural Family Planning?: Natural Family Planning (NFP) is an umbrella term for certain methods used to achieve and avoid pregnancies. These methods are based on observation of the naturally occurring signs and symptoms of the fertile and infertile phases of a woman’s menstrual cycle. Couples using NFP to avoid pregnancy abstain from intercourse and genital contact during the fertile phase of the woman’s cycle. No drugs, devices, or surgical procedures are used to avoid pregnancy. NFP reflects the dignity of the human person within the context of marriage and family life, promotes openness to life, and recognizes the value of the child. By respecting the love-giving and life-giving natures of marriage, NFP can enrich the bond between husband and wife.

*******                                      ********

Is NFP the same as the rhythm method?: NFP is not “Rhythm.”
The Rhythm (or Calendar) method was developed in the 1930s. It was based on the theory that the time of next ovulation could be determined by calculating previous menstrual cycles. This method often proved inaccurate because of the unique nature of each woman’s menstrual cycle: some women have very irregular cycles and almost all women have a cycle of unusual length once in a while.

On the other hand, NFP methods are progressive. That is, they are based on progressive, day-to-day observations of the naturally occurring signs and symptoms of the fertile and infertile phases of the menstrual cycle. NFP methods take advantage of the changes associated with ovulation, treating each cycle as unique.

Couples using NFP to avoid pregnancy abstain from intercourse during the fertile phase of the woman’s cycle. Couples who wish to achieve a pregnancy can also take advantage of the fertile time of the cycle. Because it allows couples to adjust their behavior to the naturally occurring cycles of a woman’s body, NFP is not a contraceptive–i.e., it does nothing to work against conception.

*****                                     *******

What are the signals of fertility which are measured?: A woman’s body provides three basic ways to identify the fertile and infertile times of her cycle. Recognizing the pattern of those physical signs forms the basis for all methods of NFP. A primary sign of fertility is the mucus released from the woman’s cervix. A woman learns to identify the normal, healthy, cervical mucus which indicates the days that intercourse is most likely to result in a pregnancy. The second sign is her basal body temperature. Due to hormonal activity, a woman’s waking temperature changes during the menstrual cycle. Lower temperatures indicate that ovulation has not yet occurred. Higher temperatures indicate a rise in progesterone which signals the end of the fertile time. The third sign is a change in the shape or texture of the cervix. Finally, secondary signs, such as minor abdominal pain or pressure at the time of ovulation can also be observed. (Sidenote: some methods of NFP rely on both temperature shifts and cervical mucus, while some rely solely on observation of mucus).

*************                               *********************

Why We Use NFP

(1) For Our Spiritual Health: It Doesn’t Violate Our Consciences What is conscience? Conscience is “a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is about to perform, is in the process of performing, or has performed.” (Catechism of Catholic Church 1778). You know, like Jiminy Cricket. Why is it important? Our conscience is of vital importance to the well-being of our souls because, “it is there [in our conscience] that man is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths” (CCC 1776).

So that means we “do what we think is right”, right? Well, sort of. See, for a person’s conscience to be reliable, that is, to be trustworthy, it needs to be well-formed. So how do we form our conscience? “In the formation of conscience, the Word of God is the light for our path, we must assimilate it in faith and prayer and put it into practice. We must also examine our conscience before the Lord’s Cross. We are assisted by the gifts of the holy Spirit, aided by the witness of others, and guided by the authoritative teaching of the Church” (CCC 1785). That’s how we form our conscience(at least if one is Catholic, certainly for non-Catholics the other precepts of this passage are applicable); reading of Scripture, reflection on the sacrifice of Christ, frequent reception of the Sacraments, and study of the Church’s authoritative teachings.

So when I say that using Natural Family Planning does not violate my (or Atticus’ conscience), what I mean is that the use of contraception does. Though all Christian churches taught before 1930 that the use of contraception was wrong, the Catholic Church stands alone now in its adherence to the Natural Law as it pertains to fertility. As Catholics, we follow this teaching because our conscience tells us that to do otherwise would be wrong. This is the number one, primary reason that we use NFP.

***************                               *****************

(2) To Be Authentically Feminine (and Masculine!)

God created me as a woman; I bear the image and likeness of God as a woman. I am a woman with a body *and* a soul, which exist within me simultaneously – this is what it means to have a sexuality. Sexuality is how we relate to the world as a gendered person, not how we look in a miniskirt. Woman is my sexuality, and part of being a woman is the gift of fertility. I have to give so much credit here to the lovely Rae, for her post today which has taken the words out of my mouth on this topic to the extent that, I must just repeat her, for you to understand what I mean.

“Feminism for me means refusing to accommodate men by being less of a person.

From my early teens I had only thought about how this applied to sex in terms of my mind. There was no way that I was going to separate my brain from my sexuality for the majority of guys who were interested in my body but not my mind. Holding true to this principle was easy because I was not sexually attracted unless I was intellectually attracted…

My sexuality is composed of my ability to be a mother as much as it is my ability to be a lover. Why should I insist on maintaining the unity of my mind and body, only to tear my sexuality apart and suppress half of it in order to please a potential lover?…

It seems silly to others, after all, why not just suppress the fertility that I do not desire to use in order to engage in the pleasure that I do desire? The answer is that I do not want to use any part of myself. My fertility, just like my mind, is a part of who I am as a woman. It is not something which I engage or disengage as needed. I am not a mind which uses my body, nor a body which uses my mind. I am a person. And I refuse to be less of a person in order to accommodate men.”

I have a husband who, because of our shared experience of using NFP together, is required to know, and care about my body and my fertility. The monthly chat that discusses whether or not you are prepared to welcome a conception is something that both spouses participate in. With natural family planning, husbands can’t just look at their wives and say, “Didn’t you take care of that?”, speaking of his wife’s fertility like a disease or the electric bill.

I have experienced the self-sacrificial love that a husband is called to have for his wife (“Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her”) during fertile times when a back-rub really was just a back-rub, and he didn’t mope, pout or act like a teenage boy, but accepted days of abstinence like a real man.

******************                           *******************

(3) For Physical Health

When I was 16, I had only had a handful of periods. I went to a doctor, wondering what was going on. I was told I had Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). It’s rather common, I’ve written about it before. The solution? The Pill. You see, the Pill did a great job of giving me a fake period every month. But what it didn’t do was treat my illness. The Pill was a big old hormone packed band-aid which did little other than make me feel more like my friends, since I was getting “my period” every month.

I took it dutifully for four years, never hearing from my doctor about lifestyle changes, eating habits, vitamins and supplements that could actually address the causes of PCOS itself. It was only after a few years off the Pill, when Atticus and I began taking classes to learn NFP, that I also learned more about PCOS and how to treat it, not just mask its symptoms.

I still find it ironic and sad that I learned more about managing my PCOS from a book that I received as part of NFP classes, than from *anything* I got from a doctor’s office from the ages of 16 – 24.

Without NFP I would have gone back on the Pill when we got married,  had no idea what the PCOS was doing, how it affected my body specifically, and would have probably eventually progressed nicely down the “infertility pipeline” from the Pill, to one year TTC on OPK’s (Ovulation Predictor Kits — which DON’T work for PCOS), to a “fertility specialist”, to Clomid, to an IUI or other immoral ART, to perhaps even the grand-daddy of them all, IVF (which, oh by the way is about $14,000 per cycle).

Meanwhile, with NFP, I’ve had improved health, better nutrition and lifestyle, and a healthy conception and pregnancy (so far, thanks be to God!) with the help of only Metformin (a diabetes medication which decreases insulin resistance, one of the causes/factors in PCOS).

You can bet that if we have a daughter, she will learn to chart her cycles, and to recognize and respect her fertility for what it is from the moment she gets her first period.

Women owe it to themselves to actually be aware of what is going on inside their own bodies from month to month, rather than blithely pump themselves full of hormones which, by the way, seem to end up getting pumped back into the water supply via the urine of women on the Pill. For increased physical health, and to know how to observe, understand, and respect how my body works is another reason we use NFP.

********************                           ******************

Lest this post turn into a novel (too late?) I’ve limited our reasons for using NFP to the three most important (to us). For those of you reading who are NFP users, why do you use NFP? What have you gained from the experience? For non-NFP users, thanks for staying with me to the end, and I hope I’ve piqued your interest in Natural Family Planning!

******************                                  **********************

NFP resources for people interested in learning more:

Contraception: Why Not? (article by Dr. Janet Smith)

One More Soul (website)

Couple to Couple League (website)

Taking Charge of Your Fertility (Fertility Awareness Method website)

The Vindication of Humane Vitae (article) by Mary Eberstadt