Does NFP really work?

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DoxieMama

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I am not Catholic yet, but will start taking the RCIA classes. So, I have been reading up on Catholicism. I read that using condoms is a mortal sin.

This really stresses me out because I do not want to commit a mortal sin, but I don’t want to get pregnant either. After my last baby, the doctor suggested I not have any more children because I had extreme post-partum and wanted to kill myself.

So, it seems from what I’ve read that NFP is my only option. But, doesn’t that have a high failure rate? I realize I’m not educated at all about NFP either. Advice please?
 
Yes NFP really works…whether using it to conceive, or to avoid conception. There are a few methods out there, each one with it’s own particulars that make it better for the various types of folks that us natural birth regulation.

Here’s a site that can get you started to understanding one of the methods:
ccli.org/

My wife says:

Hi. 🙂 I am a part of this forum, it’s really helpful and the start page lists several of the methods and their corresponding websites to get more info: forums.delphiforums.com/nfptalk/? It is free to join.

Welcome to the Church! I went through RCIA about 13 years ago. 🙂 We have used NFP our whole marriage (8 years). It sounds like you may not realize that it’s different from the rhythm method (which is also allowed but I wouldn’t recommend it) ;). The rhythm method assumes that all cycles are alike while NFP looks at each cycle individually to p(name removed by moderator)oint potentially fertile days in that cycle via various signs that your body gives. It takes some practice when you get started, and you may have more abstinence at first, but you’ll get the hang of it. We have four children, 3 of whom were either “let’s have a baby!” kids or “let’s throw caution to the wind!” kids. :rolleyes: One of those was a “hey, let’s make up our own rules because I think it’ll really be ok, I can’t actually be fertile even though the rules say to abstain one more day.” So just as a warning, don’t make up your own rules and you’ll be fine. 😉
 
Thanks so much for your reply! I’ll check out the links you shared 👍
 
Oh yes, I’m also asking the moderator if he can move this post to another area. Thanks for the suggestion Dave!
 
It absolutely does when done correctly.

The wonderful thing about NFP is that it’s based on the hard science of biology. If a woman is in her luteal phase she can not fall pregnant no if’s or buts about it. (working that out can be the challenge)

Artificial contraceptives on the other hand are quite absurd when you look at it because people are paying money to get a few extra days of sex with a reduced risk of conception because all the fine print says there’s a chance of failure and in the mean time they’re either sticking objects into their bodies or taking hormones 🤷

Those poor suckers for marketing harming their souls, their bodies & their relationships because a bunch of pharmaceutical companies want their money :hypno: 😦
 
I guess I need to find a NFP teacher. I talked to my dad about this earlier, he is non-Catholic BTW, and he said NFP is stupid because of the high failure rate. I value his opinion, but that comment made me upset.
 
DoxieMama said:
I guess I need to find a NFP teacher. I talked to my dad about this earlier, he is non-Catholic BTW, and he said NFP is stupid because of the high failure rate. I value his opinion, but that comment made me upset.
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Actually I think typical use failure rate for NFP is right up there (if not better) than typical use failure rate of Condoms (once you take the rhythm method out of the stats), and perfect use NFP is actually better than perfect condom use. 🤷

Make sure you distinguish, that people who often use NFP realize they don’t have very serious reasons to avoid pregnancy and thus tend to have a lot of kids. You obviously do have serious reasons to avoid and thus should be successful at avoiding pregnancy. Good luck!
 
DoxieMama said:
I guess I need to find a NFP teacher. I talked to my dad about this earlier, he is non-Catholic BTW, and he said NFP is stupid because of the high failure rate. I value his opinion, but that comment made me upset.
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Your father doesn’t understand NFP. I would suggest that you not discuss this with a lot of folks because you are most likely going to get hurtful, uneducated, and rude comments.
I had cycles that were very irregular and I could tell when I did ovulate. My own doctor at the time rolled his eyes at me. People who aren’t interested in NFP can’t be bothered to look into it and see that it is scientific and it’s a *wonderful tool for women. *I really wish I had learned NFP when I was a teen so I could avoid the surprises that my periods were.
 
PennyinCanada said:
Your father doesn’t understand NFP. I would suggest that you not discuss this with a lot of folks because you are most likely going to get hurtful, uneducated, and rude comments.
I had cycles that were very irregular and I could tell when I did ovulate. My own doctor at the time rolled his eyes at me. People who aren’t interested in NFP can’t be bothered to look into it and see that it is scientific and it’s a *wonderful tool for women. *I really wish I had learned NFP when I was a teen so I could avoid the surprises that my periods were.
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Thanks Penny! It would be great to chart anyway, so I can understand why I’m so emotional during different parts of my cycle (I tend to forget 😊 )
 
DoxieMama said:
I am not Catholic yet, but will start taking the RCIA classes. So, I have been reading up on Catholicism. I read that using condoms is a mortal sin.

This really stresses me out because I do not want to commit a mortal sin, but I don’t want to get pregnant either. After my last baby, the doctor suggested I not have any more children because I had extreme post-partum and wanted to kill myself.

So, it seems from what I’ve read that NFP is my only option. But, doesn’t that have a high failure rate? I realize I’m not educated at all about NFP either. Advice please?
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The method effectiveness is high. The user effectiveness is usually found to be lower because people have a tendency to use their fertile time. The Creighton model is the only method I know that actually came up with a user effectiveness study that omitted couples who use the fertile time. The couples were told that if they use the fertile time, they are actively trying to get pregnant because you are so likely to get pregnant. This thus Creighton claims to have a .5% failure rate with perfect use and only a 3.2% user failure rate.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creighton_Model_FertilityCare_System

Here is a non-biased video on the Billings Method
youtube.com/watch?v=g6In0cgRrsU&list=PLC56BE8B82D456337&index=1&feature=plpp_video

Another option would be to find a doctor trained in Napro who can help you will any hormonal imbalances when you are post partem. Consuming the placenta (you can dry it and put it in capsels you can swollen) also apparently helps.
 
jilly4ski said:
Actually I think typical use failure rate for NFP is right up there (if not better) than typical use failure rate of Condoms (once you take the rhythm method out of the stats), and perfect use NFP is actually better than perfect condom use. 🤷
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This is not true. The rhythm method had only a 9% failure rate with perfect use. The standard days method which is another calendar method has a 5% failure rate. Standard days is more effective because the only infertile days counted are during the luteal phase which according to that method starts on day 20. Thus if you have a 26 day cycle, you only get six days to have sex a cycle. Moreover, the thing about both methods is that to qualify to use them you have to have a cycle that are always between 26 to 32 days. They will also give you extra days of abstinence because they’re averaging out when a woman ovulates from if she had a 26 day cycle all the way to a 32 day cycle. Both have a 25% user failure rate which would be mostly based on people using it on their fertile days.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar-based_contraceptive_methods

Symptom based methods have higher method effectiveness and give you more days to use, but the user effectiveness still tends to be abnormally low compared to contraceptives because people choose to have sex even though they know they’re fertile.

Some methods try to remove those people from the study to restrict the user effectiveness to charting mistakes.
 
twoangels said:
This is not true. The rhythm method had only a 9% failure rate with perfect use. The standard days method which is another calendar method has a 5% failure rate. Standard days is more effective because the only infertile days counted are during the luteal phase which according to that method starts on day 20. Thus if you have a 26 day cycle, you only get six days to have sex a cycle. Moreover, the thing about both methods is that to qualify to use them you have to have a cycle that are always between 26 to 32 days. They will also give you extra days of abstinence because they’re averaging out when a woman ovulates from if she had a 26 day cycle all the way to a 32 day cycle. Both have a 25% user failure rate which would be mostly based on people using it on their fertile days.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar-based_contraceptive_methods

Symptom based methods have higher method effectiveness and give you more days to use, but the user effectiveness still tends to be abnormally low compared to contraceptives because people choose to have sex even though they know they’re fertile.

Some methods try to remove those people from the study to restrict the user effectiveness to charting mistakes.
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I am sorry I wasn’t clear, I think we are saying the same thing. Once you take out the non-symptom based methods, the failure rate is close to or better than condoms. (Typical use failure of condoms is 15%, which is worse than NFP).
 
You may want to check this out. plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/ask-dr-cullins/dr-cullins-birth-control-5491.htm?__utma=1.839502069.1345677968.1345677968.13461651

I know it is hard to find non-Catholic sources of information on NFP. The Catholic sources are biased on this, as well as many secular sources. This one seems to be pretty fair about the effectiveness of NFP. I know in my women’s health class in college they talked about NFP (no, it wasn’t the rhythm method) and they gave more the low end of the statistics of what you find in this article. While I fine Catholic sites give the high end. Truth is that it is probably somewhere in the middle.
 
TrixieMcGee said:
You may want to check this out. plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/ask-dr-cullins/dr-cullins-birth-control-5491.htm?__utma=1.839502069.1345677968.1345677968.13461651

I know it is hard to find non-Catholic sources of information on NFP. The Catholic sources are biased on this, as well as many secular sources. This one seems to be pretty fair about the effectiveness of NFP. I know in my women’s health class in college they talked about NFP (no, it wasn’t the rhythm method) and they gave more the low end of the statistics of what you find in this article. While I fine Catholic sites give the high end. Truth is that it is probably somewhere in the middle.
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I think the point that needs to be made is that the “margin for error” is way lower with nearly all NFP methods than with most artificial methods. If you miss a pill, for instance, the hormonal method effectiveness does not immediately evaporate. If you have relations on a fertile day, however, your effectiveness in using NFP to prevent pregnancy is nil. The same failure exists for using condoms if say, it breaks and the woman is on a fertile day. At least with NFP you’re far more aware that you’re “taking chances” and abandoning the method.

The only case where an NFP method’s “typical” effectiveness does not fall to 75-80% from 97-99% perfect use effectiveness is LAM. Missing a feeding or something does not completely disrupt your hormones as it pertains to LAM. Typical effectiveness for LAM I believe is 97%, compared to perfect use of 98.5%.

If you want to know if NFP works though, how about this. My wife and I had two kids in the first two years of marriage. We didn’t know what we were doing. We got LAM figured out and that worked perfectly. Fertility returned around 12 months. In the intervening six months she and I learned a LOT about awareness.

We’re coming up on our fifth anniversary and those are still the only two kids we have, though that might change at some point in the not terribly distant future. But it will only change because our conservatism in using NFP is changing too. 👍

Oh yeah, and my wife does not have remotely regular cycles. Some are as “short” as 32 days. Some are as long as 47. A good book, a good instructor and time and experience will go a long ways.
 
IME, NFP works.

Before I found a NFP-friendly doctor, I was constantly “encouraged” by my doctors to use ABC, to avoid pregnancy (even though I’m healthy and haven’t had any history of problems with pregnancy or ppd), to get all those unnecessary pre-natal tests that determine how likely it is that a baby will be born “abnormal,” and to get my tubes tied while I was in the hospital with each baby after #2 (we have six children). That was very frustrating, because even before we became Catholic, we were pro-life and always desired more children than the “ideal” one boy and one girl.

When we had our third child, I still didn’t know about NFP. I wish I had, because my doctor at the time asked me what kind of birth control I’d be using after the baby was born. When I said, “None, we’re not planning to use any birth control,” I noticed her write “NFP” on my chart. I didn’t know then what it stood for; I assumed it was some kind of medical abbreviation that meant, “not planning to use birth control.” 🤷

By the time I found out what it meant, we’d already moved away and had a new doctor, so I never did anything about it. I still wonder if I should have, and if so… what?

I don’t know how common it is for doctors to do that kind of thing in reporting “failure rate” numbers, but I do tend to be skeptical of the statistics because of that experience.

Therefore, I realize that I’m a bit biased. 😉 Still, I would seriously suggest getting a second opinion from a NFP-only doctor, if there is one available in your area, or at least a NFP-friendly one, to discuss options regarding pregnancy with your history of post-partum depression in case you decide (now or in the future) that you want to have more children–or in case you do happen to get pregnant. They may be able to offer more options than your previous doctor. A local NFP teacher can probably give a recommendation or two if needed. 👍
 
The_Bucket said:
I think the point that needs to be made is that the “margin for error” is way lower with nearly all NFP methods than with most artificial methods. If you miss a pill, for instance, the hormonal method effectiveness does not immediately evaporate. If you have relations on a fertile day, however, your effectiveness in using NFP to prevent pregnancy is nil. The same failure exists for using condoms if say, it breaks and the woman is on a fertile day. At least with NFP you’re far more aware that you’re “taking chances” and abandoning the method.

The only case where an NFP method’s “typical” effectiveness does not fall to 75-80% from 97-99% perfect use effectiveness is LAM. Missing a feeding or something does not completely disrupt your hormones as it pertains to LAM. Typical effectiveness for LAM I believe is 97%, compared to perfect use of 98.5%.

If you want to know if NFP works though, how about this. My wife and I had two kids in the first two years of marriage. We didn’t know what we were doing. We got LAM figured out and that worked perfectly. Fertility returned around 12 months. In the intervening six months she and I learned a LOT about awareness.

We’re coming up on our fifth anniversary and those are still the only two kids we have, though that might change at some point in the not terribly distant future. But it will only change because our conservatism in using NFP is changing too. 👍

Oh yeah, and my wife does not have remotely regular cycles. Some are as “short” as 32 days. Some are as long as 47. A good book, a good instructor and time and experience will go a long ways.
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I am not considering NFP at the moment and I wasn’t saying that for me, just trying to give another angle on NFP. Unfortunately NFP is pictured on Catholic sites in an idealized way and it is hard for me, I know, to see something all from one side. I like to do my research on both sides of anything.
 
"Oh yeah, and my wife does not have remotely regular cycles. Some are as “short” as 32 days. Some are as long as 47. A good book, a good instructor and time and experience will go a long ways. "

This is great to know! I’ve been worried about this. Before I had my daughter, my cycles were every 28 days like clockwork. Now, they can be anywhere from 30 to 45 days.

Thanks to everyone for the resources! 👍
 
I’m new to the forum, how do you properly post back someone’s quotes (where it’s in that gray box)?
 
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