Hello fellow NFP families.
I just wanted to share our NFP experiences thus far. We have 4 beautiful, wonderful children (and yes, we DO want more!). We have practiced NFP for our entire marriage, going on 7 years. During that time NFP has been a huge burden on us. Do we like NFP? Sure. But it still has had it’s hard times, for example breastfeeding times have been VERY difficult w/ regards to NFP. We do the Creighton method which involves making observations of cervical mucus (is it ‘peak type or non-peak type?’) Well while breastfeeding all my babies I would have mucous all day, everyday, we’re talking fertile type (peak) mucus. Now don’t get me wrong, we love kids and YES we are open to life but not too close together in order for me to keep my sanity, if you know what I mean.
I wasn’t really wanting to have to learn a whole new NFP methold and so forth. So we discovered about 6 years ago a fertility monitor that is sold for purposes of conceiving a baby. It was about $400 and only sold on the internet. We were a little leary of buying it at that time because A) the cost and B) it said ‘not to be used for avoiding pregnancy.’ Well I found out that the Marquette NFP method uses the Clear Blue Easy fertility monitor and from what I read on their site it stated that it too, was not to be used to avoid a pregnancy. In my opinion, they say that for legal purposes so that they don’t get sued or something of that nature if a baby were to be made that wasn’t expected to be. You get my drift, right? So a friend of mine bought this other one that I had found years ago online and was too chicken to buy. She was using it to avoid pregnancy and said I should just buy one. I was going to buy the clear blue one since it is sold in stores and it’s more ‘heard of’. But after seeing that it costs $150-200 plus the purchasing of monthly test strips you can forget it!!
So basically we broke down and bought this other one. It’s so awesome! Yes it was $400 but at the same time it will come out cheaper in the long run versus the clear blue easy one. NO purchasing of any type of add ons monthly, etc. I am done rambling for now but if you want to know the name of it, etc. feel free to PM me and I’d be glad to help!!! Like I said, we are very pleased w/ it thus far. It just breaks my heart when families (good, solid, Catholic families) have struggles w/ NFP and it really affects their marriage in a negative way. (4 weeks of abstinence at a time is not fun for anyone!) So there is hope out there if you are having trouble discerning fertile times from non-fertile times. Just wanted to share that w/ you all.
God Bless.
Malia, that is hilarious!!
), but from what I could read here and elsewhere, I feel a bit frightened that post partum period might be a hard NFP time. So I’d better collect information about that now, and might contemplate investing in it shortly before we decide on TTC so that I still have time to get confident with it.