Good NFP resources, advice?

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montanaman

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Yo,

I must have ignored 50 threads on this, but now it’s relevant. My wife and I just had our first child, (an awesome little boy…poops a lot, though…) and we’re, ah, ready and eager to resume marital relations. Before the pregnancy we’d been married about six or seven months and we wanted to have a child, although we weren’t making an special attempt. (Just letting nature take its course, I guess.)

Now, I love my son, but I’m basically the walking dead these days. On top of the late nights and all the fun that goes with a little one, we’ve got money problems and I’m trying to start up a business on top of my regular day job.

You see where I’m going with this…

We’d love more children, but if there’s a case for “normal spacing,” this is it. I need info on NFP.

So, any thoughts/advice/resources would help. I’m going to shoot some e-mails to some local NFP teachers in the morning that I found on the Couple-to-Couple League Web site, but this is a heck of a brain trust, so…

Thanks!
 
First off, call your diocese… usually they offer local classes!

Other great online resources…
ccli.org/ of course…
nfpandmore.com/ had a great online manual for the sympto-thermal method… towards the bottom right of the page you’ll see a link that says NFP How-to manual… GREAT!
tcoyf.com/ is another great site which promotes the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility. It’s NOT faith-based, so ignore the parts that suggest using condoms during the fertile phase, but it’s a great scientifically based book on the sympto-thermal method!

HTH a little!!! Good luck and God bless… GET SOME SLEEP! 🙂
 
You (well not YOU, your wife:p ) could also consider Ecological Breastfeeding. It’s not for everyone, but I love it. I didn’t plan on doing it this way, but it just became apparent that this wast best for us.

Gianna is 11 months old and I have yet to have a cycle/any signs of fertility returning. Like I said though, it’s not for everyone, and if you have serious reasons to avoid, it’s probably a good idea to use it in conjunction with another method of child spacing. I’m pretty sure the Couple to Couple League has info about it. Just another option to consider 👍

Blessings to you and your fam and good luck with learning to read your wife’s fertility, from what others have said it can be kind of funky in the post-partum period.
 
So many methods…so little time…

Let me guess–you have to have some kind of chart well-established before you get back to normal, right?

Speaking of charts, is there a Web site with a chart of the various methods, comparing various “features?” That would be very helpful.

Thanks,
C
 
queen_anne78 said:
You (well not YOU, your wife:p ) could also consider Ecological Breastfeeding. It’s not for everyone, but I love it. I didn’t plan on doing it this way, but it just became apparent that this wast best for us.

Gianna is 11 months old and I have yet to have a cycle/any signs of fertility returning. Like I said though, it’s not for everyone, and if you have serious reasons to avoid, it’s probably a good idea to use it in conjunction with another method of child spacing. I’m pretty sure the Couple to Couple League has info about it. Just another option to consider 👍

Blessings to you and your fam and good luck with learning to read your wife’s fertility, from what others have said it can be kind of funky in the post-partum period.
Click to expand...
Why do I get the feeling Joseph will have a little brother or sister in about a year?

lol (sorta)

Maybe I should just get rich so we can hire a nanny and buy a bigger house. Seems simpler than charting fertility.*

*For the record, I’m adamantly anti-ABC.
 
We have three kids–the first two have nearly 5 years between them, because due to financial and health reasons we were not equipped for a second for a while.

Taking my temperature every morning didn’t work for us–my normal body temperature is always wonky and very dependent on the temp of the room (like a reptile, LOL).

What did help: Reading Taking Charge of your Fertility, of course, to really understand fertility signs. Also using a ClearBlue Fertility Monitor. Yes, it’s about 100 bucks for a monitor, a three month supply of sticks was about 50 bucks. But my husband always said it was cheaper than me landing in the hospital, or buying diapers. 😛

On the box of the ClearBlue (or maybe it’s ClearPlan) monitor there is a disclaimer that it is not for avoiding pregnancy. We found, though, that it was very helpful in determining the fertile zone and learning even more about my cycle, and keeping track of my cycles.

Hope this helps.
 
queen_anne78 said:
You (well not YOU, your wife:p ) could also consider **Ecological Breastfeeding. It’s not for everyone, **but I love it. I didn’t plan on doing it this way, but it just became apparent that this wast best for us.
Click to expand...
Doesn’t work for everyone. Unfortunately, you don’t know until you try. :confused:
 
catherineajt said:
We have three kids–the first two have nearly 5 years between them, because due to financial and health reasons we were not equipped for a second for a while.

Taking my temperature every morning didn’t work for us–my normal body temperature is always wonky and very dependent on the temp of the room (like a reptile, LOL).

What did help: Reading Taking Charge of your Fertility, of course, to really understand fertility signs. Also using a ClearBlue Fertility Monitor. Yes, it’s about 100 bucks for a monitor, a three month supply of sticks was about 50 bucks. But my husband always said it was cheaper than me landing in the hospital, or buying diapers. 😛

On the box of the ClearBlue (or maybe it’s ClearPlan) monitor there is a disclaimer that it is not for avoiding pregnancy. We found, though, that it was very helpful in determining the fertile zone and learning even more about my cycle, and keeping track of my cycles.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...
If you & your wife decide to use the ClearBlue Easy Monitor for the off-label use of avoiding, I would suggest checking out the Marquette Method: mu.edu/nursing/NFP/

It is a method, by the School of Nursing at Marquette, that uses the CBE monitor with NFP, to avoid or to achieve. Cervical mucous is the cross check that is used with it. It does have a breastfeeding protocol (which is designed for women who are not cycling yet) as well. I starting using it when I was bfing (no cycle yet) and I am still using it now to avoid (my cycle has been back for a while), our youngest is almost 22 months now. It’s been a good fit for us as a couple & like the above poster temping just wasn’t ideal for me.

You can also get the fertility sticks for the CBE a little cheaper on Amazon, closer to $35 per box (if you buy 2 boxes at a time), works out to about $12 per month for sticks (if you use 10 sticks a month).

Anyway, thought I would pass on the info since I saw the CBE mentioned & you can get a protocol on how to adapt it to NFP via email from Marquette’s School of Nursing.

🙂
 
I second Creighton. I was having huge headaches with temping and internal checks, did not feel confident and it looked like we were going to have like 3 week-long stretches of abstinence (long cycles). So I can’t imagine having luck with temps postpartum when you have a little one. I have an irregular work schedule so it just was not for me. It’s an investment in time and money, but worth it to learn IMO.
Best of luck with whatever you choose!
 
Here’s a brief run down on what the different NFP methods are:

CCLI ccli.org teaches the sympto-thermal method–you take temps every morning, check cervical mucous during the day and cervical position as well for the triple cross check 🙂 This is also the method at nfpandmore.com

Creighton is a medical model of mucous only observations. Very standardized but you must have personal one-on-one teaching over the course of many months to learn it. creightonmodel.com

Billings is a mucous only method. Many women use this, esp in our Diocese. boma-usa.org

The Marquette Model uses an ovulation predictor and I’m not sure if it uses any other ovulation indicators? mu.edu/nursing/NFP/Model.shtml

So, while not a chart, there’s a comparison for you. One method may work better for your dw than another and I’ll let you know that learning NFP postpartem is not easy, but can be done. You need a good teacher, though and you need to expect her cycles to be a bit crazy if she’s nursing and if she’s ecologically nursing, she may get the benefit of a lack of cycles for a while. It depends on the woman, though, on how long that lasts–but for the most part the first 3 months of ecological breastfeeding the chances of getting pregnant is next to nil (ccli.org/nfp/ebf/summary.php)

Hope that helps!
 
Socio_Momma said:
If you & your wife decide to use the ClearBlue Easy Monitor for the off-label use of avoiding, I would suggest checking out the Marquette Method: mu.edu/nursing/NFP/

It is a method, by the School of Nursing at Marquette, that uses the CBE monitor with NFP, to avoid or to achieve. Cervical mucous is the cross check that is used with it. It does have a breastfeeding protocol (which is designed for women who are not cycling yet) as well. I starting using it when I was bfing (no cycle yet) and I am still using it now to avoid (my cycle has been back for a while), our youngest is almost 22 months now. It’s been a good fit for us as a couple & like the above poster temping just wasn’t ideal for me.

You can also get the fertility sticks for the CBE a little cheaper on Amazon, closer to $35 per box (if you buy 2 boxes at a time), works out to about $12 per month for sticks (if you use 10 sticks a month).

Anyway, thought I would pass on the info since I saw the CBE mentioned & you can get a protocol on how to adapt it to NFP via email from Marquette’s School of Nursing.

🙂
Click to expand...
Kewl! So all along we’ve been using the Marquette Model. Now when people ask (and they do!) I can say, “Oh, we’re using the Marquette Model of NFP.” It has a name! Awesome. 👍

I had never heard of the Marquette Model; I just saw the monitor and I knew the visible signs of fertility, so I have been using those together for 9 years now.
 
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