Abstaining during the honeymoon

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Teresa1901

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My fiance and I are getting married in a couple months and are committed to using NFP in our marriage. We want to have kids fairly soon but he is still looking for work where I live and we’re not sure a long term job will come through before the wedding. He’s also working on his master’s degree, but that by itself probably wouldn’t keep us from trying for kids if he had a good job to support us. In theory we might be able to afford to have a baby on what I make, but we really don’t want me to be the main source of income and have to leave the baby in childcare while I work.

Right now it’s looking like our wedding/honeymoon might fall in the middle of my phase 2 fertility (although I know this is not completely predictable and could very well change, especially with stress levels right before the wedding). I know ultimately the decision whether to abstain from the marital embrace is something we have to decide prayerfully together, but I’m interested in the perspective of people who have been here before.

In a situation like this, did you play it safe and abstain from relations or trust that since God is the giver of life, He wouldn’t give you a baby unless He has a plan to take care of you?
 
I don’t know that my husband and I would have been capable of abstaining during our honeymoon, so it probably would have been a moot question for us… 😊

That said, I haven’t been in this situation before, so I think I would speak with a spiritual director or priest for advice if I was in your shoes. And, of course, pray for discernment.
 
My wife and I faced the same discussion. Her cycle was/is incredibly difficult to forecast. Not hard to read, just hard to to look 1-2/2-3 months into the future to plan.

We decided, after much thought and prayer, that we would not abstain on the honeymoon. We decided that God knew when we were getting married and that He would not bless us with children if He didn’t think we could handle it.

We didn’t get pregnant on the honeymoon. That happened about 3 weeks later. 😃
 
We too were right bam-pow in the middle of when I could have gotten pregnant on our honeymoon. To be perfectly honest, our thought process was more “we’ve waited this long, we aren’t waiting any longer.”

We did not get pregnant until the following month, though I suppose our actions were, uhh, very open to life that first month.
 
Trust in God, but row away from the rocks and above all use your imagination. If you have a serious need to avoid a pregnancy, God has given you a way to attempt to do that. There isn’t a Plan B for vacations. It’s kind of like being diabetic or having an allergy and going on vacation: your body does not magically learn to tolerate the foods it cannot tolerate because it is a special occasion. People who are gluten-intolerant are still gluten-intolerant when it is their wedding cake. Besides–you are short on money! Maybe your need to avoid pregnancy is God’s way of pointing out that it isn’t the time for the dream vacation of a lifetime. You might want to look at your honeymoon merely as your first vacation, one of many that may fall at times you would rather not abstain from marital relations, but really feel you ought to.

Maybe it would be a good idea to save the money, have a very simple honeymoon, since your finances are tight, and plan to have something more elaborate when starting a family is your goal–or when it first becomes clear that having a family is imminent. Having the huge vacation where you spend time together and reconnect within the year or so before you are hoping to be tied to the home fort for awhile may be very good timing, as it may be awhile before you’ll be able to enjoy something similar together.

IOW, maybe you can use your bigger vacation not as the honeymoon you use to launch your marriage, but the memorable vacation you used like the woman’s alabaster jar, saving that extravagance for when it will anoint you for your hoped-for plunge into parenthood! 😃
 
Teresa1901 said:

“Right now it’s looking like our wedding/honeymoon might fall in the middle of my phase 2 fertility (although I know this is not completely predictable and could very well change, especially with stress levels right before the wedding). I know ultimately the decision whether to abstain from the marital embrace is something we have to decide prayerfully together, but I’m interested in the perspective of people who have been here before.”

One of the possibilities is that your pregnancy will be complicated enough that you won’t be able to work or that there would be other unexpected difficulties (I know a woman whose first pregnancy turned out to be twins born very prematurely via emergency c-section). So, I would not make any plans based on you being able to work right through 9-months of pregnancy or being able to return quickly to work postpartum. Obviously, you could make it work, but within just a few more months you will be in a much better situation.

I’m not sure how much of a honeymoon you have planned, but if you do wind up abstaining, you might find it depressing to be on a big, expensive, abstinent honeymoon.
 
There have been several posters that have made threads about this very same problem.

If you are that serious about waiting to have kids then you won’t have an issue abstaining. In my opinion, it should be fairly easy to do so because you know your fertile and you don’t want kids right now.

This happened to me where my charts were telling me I was fertile for the wedding night and the honeymoon and hubby and I were absolutely incapable of abstaining. It wasn’t even something that was brought up to be honest. I put it totally in God’s hands and was willing to have a baby as opposed to abstain for the wedding night and honeymoon. For us, it wasn’t worth abstaining but that doesn’t apply to everyone. I didn’t start getting serious about my charting until after the honeymoon and we were settled into our new house.

No, we didn’t conceive during the honeymoon but we very well could have.

It’s really tough for my husband and I to abstain when I’m fertile. We are that attracted to each other. To the point where one of us needs to sleep in the guest room but that is how serious we are about putting off another baby.

You may be able to do some searching and find some of the other threads on this topic.
 
Xantippe said:
I’m not sure how much of a honeymoon you have planned, but if you do wind up abstaining, you might find it depressing to be on a big, expensive, abstinent honeymoon.
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We didn’t go on this massively extravagant honeymoon because we couldn’t afford one. But we were looking forward to having a brand new house to ourselves for the first time in our lives. Plus, we had booked a really nice hotel room for our wedding night.

No, abstaining wasn’t an option for us that month. I would have been overjoyed but stressed if I had conceived on my wedding night or the week following it but it would have been worth it.

It would have been an even bigger no if we did go on a dream vacation of just the two of us. I would have left the charts and thermometer at home and started again after that cycle was over.
 
We also had job/money issues that made it prudent to wait to have kids. We were fortunate enough that our wedding night was still in the infertile time, but then we had to abstain for the next 3 weeks until phase 3 came along. It was hard to abstain, (especially since DH would start something at 3 am without being fully awake and knowing what he was doing) but doable.
 
As a few other posters have suggested, only you know how much you want to postpone having a child right now. I will tell you what happened with us, because it might be helpful to you. I was in phase 2 on our wedding night and during the honeymoon. I realized a few weeks beforehand that this was likely to happen. We had discussed waiting “a while” to have kids, mostly because I had student loans but no full-time job, even though I’d been out of school over a year, and he was just starting out in his job. But we weren’t starving, and the new apartment we’d rented was inexpensive, his family was nearby, and I had a few part-time jobs. So - for us, we talked about it and decided, “whatever happens, happens.” 😉 And nine months and two days after our wedding, our first son was born.

Halfway through the pregnancy, I got a salaried job, but then was let go after my maternity leave ended (this was a large corporation, my office was closed and everyone was let go, not just me.) There are no guarantees. Life is volatile and it happens. If I wanted to wait for financial security, I wouldn’t have the two children I have now. For me (this may not be the case for you), I’m glad that we decided to leave it up to God. And I am continually amazed that when I start to worry about how we’re going to do x, y, or z, I stumble across learning some way to stretch a dollar farther, or I get a surprise check in the mail.

What you might do, no matter what happens with when you have children, is try as much as you can to live on the income of just one of you, and save the rest - have a solid emergency fund, start putting money toward retirement, etc. That will help you tons when you do have children if you plan on staying at home. Your income will take a hit, but your lifestyle won’t have to. That was absolutely the hardest adjustment for me. Sometimes I kick myself looking back at the me three years ago, who thought she was living frugally because she only had take-out once a week. :o
 
We played it safe.

But we spent our honeymoon at home, first we wanted a few days with some family members who live far away and we see them in person very rarely (some once a year if lucky, some I hadn’t seen literally years before that and even some cousins I had never ever met), then we had a lot of work finishing up stuff at home, since we had just moved in, so most days we were actually really tired and I don’t think we would have thought of sex even if it was the single safest moment in our lives. 😃
Especially the first night, man, we got home at 4 am, after being extremely busy for almost 24 hours, we barely stayed awake long enough to walk the dog. 😃

First night and honeymoon are symbolic, but “till death do us part” is a long time and there’s no rush. 🙂
 
Kelfa28 said:
If you are that serious about waiting to have kids then you won’t have an issue abstaining. In my opinion, it should be fairly easy to do so because you know your fertile and you don’t want kids right now.
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This. Chart, decide on an on-going basis, and choose your actions accordingly. IOW, you do not have to know three months in advance what you are going to choose to do. If you chart, though, you’ll be able to make an informed decision, to the extent that your body and knowledge allow.
 
Kelfa28 said:
If you are that serious about waiting to have kids then you won’t have an issue abstaining. In my opinion, it should be fairly easy to do so because you know your fertile and you don’t want kids right now.
Click to expand...
This. Chart, decide on an on-going basis, and choose your actions accordingly. IOW, you do not have to know three months in advance what you are going to choose to do. If you chart, though, you’ll be able to make an informed decision, to the extent that your body and knowledge allow.
Xantippe said:
I’m not sure how much of a honeymoon you have planned, but if you do wind up abstaining, you might find it depressing to be on a big, expensive, abstinent honeymoon.
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I’m thinking the same thing. Spend money on all that free time and romance when you have decided that you want to make the best use of it. If life gets crazy busy and you find yourself wanting to start a family but exhausted half of the time, you may thank yourselves.
 
We sort of missed the boat and we weren’t able to start the NFP training until we got back from our honeymoon, so we just left it up to God for those two weeks. We discussed the situation and decided that it was more important for us to consummate our marriage properly and bond together. Keep in mind though, we didn’t have a major reason to avoid a pregnancy and we were both looking forward immensely to our first child. Our main motivation for avoiding was we wanted a year of time to get adjusted to marital life and save money in case we had major medical bills associated with the pregnancy/childbirth. It turned out right because when we went to the training, we found out we had to abstain completely for the first month of charting!:eek: If I could do it over again, We’d have been responsible and wet to the training a month ahead.
 
Not everyone is able to have sex while on their honeymoon. I actually started my period on my wedding day. :eek: 😊
 
My fiancée and I are getting married on May 24, and we may face a very similar situation. If we do decide to abstain at first, well, we do have our entire lives for the marital embrace. 🙂 But, I doubt we will abstain.
 
KendraDZ1902 said:
Not everyone is able to have sex while on their honeymoon. I actually started my period on my wedding day. :eek: 😊
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So my wife wasn’t the only one! Actually, that’s not quite accurate. We got back to her apartment from the reception at around 1am, finished our last minute packing, got an hour of sleep, then got up and hopped on a plane to Jamaica. It was on the plane that she got hers. Nevertheless, despite an abstinent honeymoon, we had an amazing vacation.
 
CatholicRaven said:
…I think I would speak with a spiritual director or priest for advice if I was in your shoes.
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Strikes me as an odd question to put to a priest, noting there is no bad option, and the decision hangs entirely on your preparedness for an early pregnancy.
 
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