A question about the 3rd type of NFP pregnancies

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HerCrazierHalf

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I often read on here that those practicing NFP have 3 types of babies.
  1. planned
  2. whoops
  3. what the heck (rolling the dice during fertile days)
My question is about the third type. Let’s say a couple decided not use the fertile days while sober and thinking clearly. In the heat of the moment they say “Oh, what the heck” and decide not to abstain. Doesn’t this mean they are making a huge life altering (and life creating) decision with compromised decision making abilities?

Amorous moods can alter one’s decisions.
 
But they started down that road while still sober, right?

Also, I don’t think being amorous affects your decision making THAT much.
 
HerCrazierHalf said:
I often read on here that those practicing NFP have 3 types of babies.
  1. planned
  2. whoops
  3. what the heck (rolling the dice during fertile days)
My question is about the third type. Let’s say a couple decided not use the fertile days while sober and thinking clearly. In the heat of the moment they say “Oh, what the heck” and decide not to abstain. Doesn’t this mean they are making a huge life altering (and life creating) decision with compromised decision making abilities?

Amorous moods can alter one’s decisions.
Click to expand...
The thing about NFP is that the couple is in an on-going process of discerning if they still need to abstain in order to delay a child. At any given time, they are free to say “no” to the act of abstaining and do what comes naturally.
 
HerCrazierHalf said:
I often read on here that those practicing NFP have 3 types of babies.
  1. planned
  2. whoops
  3. what the heck (rolling the dice during fertile days)
My question is about the third type. Let’s say a couple decided not use the fertile days while sober and thinking clearly. In the heat of the moment they say “Oh, what the heck” and decide not to abstain. Doesn’t this mean they are making a huge life altering (and life creating) decision with compromised decision making abilities?

Amorous moods can alter one’s decisions.
Click to expand...
For category #3, motivation is often going to differ a lot depending on the gravity of the situation. A “do not get pregnant for another year” or “do not get pregnant again–EVER!” from your OB has a different weight than “I was hoping to lose another 10 pounds before getting pregnant again” or “I was hoping for a 3 year spacing between kids, not 2.5.”

Also, there are more and less fertile times, so a somewhat motivated couple might use the grey areas, while a very motivated couple would follow the rules very strictly and avoid grey areas. There are different sets of NFP rules depending on the degree of accuracy desired.
 
Xantippe said:
For category #3, motivation is often going to differ a lot depending on the gravity of the situation. A “do not get pregnant for another year” or “do not get pregnant again–EVER!” from your OB has a different weight than “I was hoping to lose another 10 pounds before getting pregnant again” or “I was hoping for a 3 year spacing between kids, not 2.5.”

Also, there are more and less fertile times, so a somewhat motivated couple might use the grey areas, while a very motivated couple would follow the rules very strictly and avoid grey areas. There are different sets of NFP rules depending on the degree of accuracy desired.
Click to expand...
Exactly. I don’t care how “amorous” or “drunk” a couple is. If the woman’s life is on the line, they aren’t going to say “what the heck?”
 
The thing about having serious reasons to avoid pregnangy is that there is a lot of grey between definitely serious and definitely not serious. The desire to be intimate is natures way (perhaps we could say God’s way) of testing those reasons. Do those reasons stand up to God’s natural design that married couples procreate?

So a “what the heck” baby is the result of a serious reason falling into the grey zone and not standing up to natures inbuilt test (or an overly pushy spouse, but that’s another matter).
 
Xantippe said:
Also, there are more and less fertile times, so a somewhat motivated couple might use the grey areas, while a very motivated couple would follow the rules very strictly and avoid grey areas. There are different sets of NFP rules depending on the degree of accuracy desired.
Click to expand...
This is not true for some methods
 
Allegra said:
Exactly. I don’t care how “amorous” or “drunk” a couple is. If the woman’s life is on the line, they aren’t going to say “what the heck?”
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Serious health risks or a possible descent into poverty would be serious enough to kill the mood. I suppose the serious reasons in this context would be summed up as “we rather not conceive right now, but we could manage if we do”.
 
HerCrazierHalf said:
My question is about the third type. Let’s say a couple decided not use the fertile days while sober and thinking clearly. In the heat of the moment they say “Oh, what the heck” and decide not to abstain. Doesn’t this mean they are making a huge life altering (and life creating) decision with compromised decision making abilities?

Amorous moods can alter one’s decisions.
Click to expand...
What’s your point?

God gave us free will. How we use it is up to us.
 
HerCrazierHalf said:
I often read on here that those practicing NFP have 3 types of babies.
  1. planned
  2. whoops
  3. what the heck (rolling the dice during fertile days)
My question is about the third type. Let’s say a couple decided not use the fertile days while sober and thinking clearly. In the heat of the moment they say “Oh, what the heck” and decide not to abstain. Doesn’t this mean they are making a huge life altering (and life creating) decision with compromised decision making abilities?

Amorous moods can alter one’s decisions.
Click to expand...
From experience as a lifelong NFPer, the care increases in relation to the serious need to avoid. When you decide that your family is the optimum size by your late 30’s, there is care but also the awareness that you could cope with another child if need be. As you age… I’m 52 and still fertile but my children are all in their 20’s… of course I could cope now with a brand new baby, but with my already creaky knees and on an important medication for health… realistically I’m not confident that I could provide another 20 years of adequate maternal care. Your caution relates to the seriousness of needing to avoid. Of course there are some who would say that reasons like that are not serious because you live in an affluent country and conditions… but that’s all a bit ridiculous. People know themselves and their capacities and should be left to discern those things completely for themselves.
 
I think I coined that third category name!

I think that the “mood” DOES alter your mental calculus, but looking at the larger picture, I suspect that what it really does is overcome the power of anxiety, selfishness and rationalizing that seems to be controlling the vast majority of the developed world’s married couple attitudes about children. It just doesn’t ring true that the richest and longest lived generations in the world’s history MUST have the smallest family sizes in the world’s history “because our health and finances don’t allow any more.” Yeah, sure.

So far from losing your sanity in the heat of the moment, I suspect that what really happens is that some people get their sanity back in that moment. God designed us pretty well, it turns out… 😉
 
I’d be inclined to agree with you except that we have all made other smaller decision before or soon after that we normally wouldn’t. Something as simple as agreeing to go to an event you dislike or whatever. Short of life or death these become small things.

So then it would follow that perhaps one is temporarily in an alerted mindset (for lack of a kinder phrase). It is fine for small things but making a life altering choice especially when we are designed to feel greater desire near fertile times (men too) arms problematic.
 
“alerted mindset”?

Sure, if you want to phrase it that way. Equally, I make different decisions when shopping for food/groceries depending on whether I’m hungry or satiated at the time. Our appetities do affect our decisions, and the sexual appetite certainly does.

So what? As discussed in this thread, if a couple has very serious reasons to avoid pregancy, they will be a lot more strict. If a couple has borederline serious reasons, their natural desire to be intimate will test the strength of their reasons to avoid. If they can’t control themselves and behave like animals, with no regard to their God-given rational minds, that’s their problem.

What exactly is the point you are trying to make?
 
Ok. Good enough. I think I get where you guys are coming from. All I was getting at was that it seemed odd to make spur of the moment decisions on something as profound as a new life.

But since I’ve started this thread I looked around here more and I guess many of you come from a vastly different point of view.
 
The factual evidence suggests that, teenagers aside, people in modern industrialized nations are NOT overly prone to rash decisions to have too many kids. The break even point for long term demographics is 2.1 kids per woman. The developed world has about 1.8 on average. That’s about a 11% DECLINE in population every 60 years. That decline is just about to hit stride as the Boomers begin to die off and from there on, only immigration will sustain population numbers. Many parts of Europe have already begun the native population declining slope.

I think the evidence pretty clearly suggests that the “heat of the moment” restores us to sanity, rather than takes it away. At least for adults. We all know that teenagers are another can of worms!
 
No offense, but NFP as I understand it is fundamentally different from other forms of birth control. Simply put, most abc methods do not alter the decision to be intimate or not. NFP effectiveness is relies on abstaining, which provides a recurring pressure uncommon to other methods. Coming from the abc mentality it seems odd in that one would not make a decision about abc during the lead up to intimacy. That would have been decided well in advance and merely followed through with.

Edit: I get where you guys are coming from. I think I see how this is not a real concern from your world view.
 
Using periodic abstinence to avoid pregnancy in marital relations, definitely requires a whole different attitude towards your sexual life and behaviours. In my observations, it is terribly hard for people who have come from the contraceptive mentality, to accept the limitations on sexual freedom that NFP requires and perhaps that needs to be focused on more when people are making that switch.

That feeling of resentment and bitterness that people feel at being unable to have sex whenever they want is not a real feature in my life I have found. It has to translate into the whole of your married relationship and you have to sure to recognise your sexual triggers and you have to learn to develop ways of connecting intimately that involve things that relax but don’t stimulate. Contraception doesn’t require developing any of those aspects to any real extent and as a matter of fact, contraception depends on those aspects not excerpting a high value to relationships.

NFP is a whole lifestyle, not just a sexual style. It requires belief, patience, temperence and generosity of spirit.
 
HerCrazierHalf said:
No offense, but NFP as I understand is fundamentally different from other forms of birth control. Simply put, most abc methods do not alter the decision to be intimate or not. NFP effectiveness is relies on abstaining, which provides a recurring pressure uncommon to other methods. Coming from the abc mentality it seems odd in that one would not make a decision about abc during the lead up to intimacy. That would have been decided well in advance and merely followed through with.

Edit: I get where you guys are coming from. I think I see how this is not a real concern from your world view.
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I’m so glad that you recognize how NFP is different from contraception. 🙂 NFP’s design encourages couples to evaluate their motives for using it.

The closest a contraceptive mindset may come to the “heat of the moment” might be found in couples that rely on barrier methods but who run out of “supplies” or can’t find it when they want to be intimate. Do they take the chance? Maybe. Couples who don’t really mind having a baby but who haven’t firmly decided to “try” may not always be very vigilant in their use of contraception. (Again, as you noted contraception is certainly not the same thing as NFP.)

We live in a culture that tells us we either have to be trying not to have a baby or we have to be trying to have a baby, but there is another option.
 
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