How/Where did you first hear about NFP?

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Josefa

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Someone reecently asked the question “how old were you when you learned the Church’s teaching on contraception?”. I want to build on that question and ask…

How/Where did you first hear about Natural Family Planning?

What motivated you to learn more about NFP?

Josefa
 
I first heard about NFP at a wedding show/extravaganza. (You know, where people set up tables in hopes of getting your business… dj’s, bakeries, dress shops, quartets, etc) The CCL had a table (kinda hidden in the background, but it was there).

My bestfriend and I had been talking about not wanting to be on the BCP. Too much bad “stuff” going on with that. We were curious if their were any natural option out there. So, I stopped by the table and shipped all the info off to my buddy. She immediately signed up for the classes and loved it. I did my best to convince my husband to use this method for BC. He was hesitant at first, but finally agreed to go. We have been using it ever since.

As a side note: I am not Catholic and at the time, my husband was not a practicing Catholic. Our main goal was the find a safe form of birth control. Shortly after the class, my husband started his journey to being a very devout Catholic. It wasn’t long after that, that we stopped using NFP with a contraceptive mindset. Guess the Church knows what it is talking about after all. 😉

Also interesting to note: My best friend is also not Catholic, but after about a year of using NFP and loving the Church’s teaching behind it, they are no longer using it…or anything else, for that matter. They have decided to welcome as many children into their marriage as God will bless them with. # 4 is due any day now. (4 kids under 6, what an amazing family)

)Sorry, I’ve rambled)

God Bless,

RyanL’s Wife
 
I ‘accidentally’ found the book “Taking Charge of Your Fertility” at the library (when I was about ~28-ish, single, abstaining and thinking about reverting back to the Church.)

Wasn’t looking under the topic; it must have been just sitting out & caught my eye. Couldn’t read it fast enough, and it blew my mind that such a thing (fertility awareness, nfp) existed in such a scholarly form.

I was motivated to learn more & try it out on myself from a purely scientific basis. So I basically taught myself the sympto-thermal method from that book.

Of course the wisdom & beauty of the Church’s teaching came next, and was a wonderful door to so many other moral teachings.
 
I wasn’t Catholic at the time I got married, so I never heard about NFP during the very brief marriage prep session my husband and I attended. It was around the time we became Catholic that I heard about it (I read about it and later got on Couple to Couple League’s mailing list and found out more).
 
I sadly first heard about NFP about a year ago… I am 28 and definitely should have heard about it earlier!
 
I’m so old I don’t remember!!

But I bought a Billings Method workbook (Your Ovulation Cycle or something like that ) right before I got married and thought it was cool b/c it had stickers- LOL I bought it at a Catholic bookstore.
 
After I took my first communion (I was in high school), my priest gave me a copy of Humane Vitae (sp?) and I think another book similar. That is probably where I first heard the teaching.
However, my mother told me that some Catholics think contraception is ok, and it was ok to think that way. 😦 And also I would read, hear on the news, learn in school, or whatever, about how natural family planning didn’t work or wasn’t reliable (this was like 15 years ago, so reliable NFP was out there…but I didn’t know that)
We also heard about NFP in our engaged encounter weekend, but I didn’t hear any information to make me re-think anything other than what I had been told before.
Dh and I have been using Creighton for nearly a year, though we have been on board with church teaching for over 5 years now (and still learning as we go).
 
I don’t remember… probably when I was a kid.

I know my parents attempted NFP, but never got the hang of it (although, I don’t believe it was as developed back then as it is now… they were still counting days and estimating VS the current practice of monitoring fertility signs)…

So I always knew about it… and when DH and I were engaged we didn’t even really have to talk about it… we signed up for an NFP class through our church immediately… just part of the preparation for marriage…
 
I first learned about NFP when I went looking for a non-hormonal method of contraception. I’d been on the pill for 5 years and was sick of the weight gain, headaches, breakouts, and breakthrough bleeding. I first found Taking Charge of Your Fertility. This was about the same time that DH was getting to the point where it was clear that he was going to become Catholic. He encouraged me to look into CCL and NFP. I did, but was offended by the overtly religious language in their book, so I put it back on the bookshelf and we did NFP using the TCYF book. While that book suggests barriers during fertile times, we didn’t use them because DH had already decided that birth control was wrong (though I’m not sure he would have told me if I hadn’t mentioned NFP myself). 4 years later, we are both Catholics (and loving it!), have a wonderful 2 year old son, and are praying for another child (on God’s time, of course!). BTW, the CCL book doesn’t bother me anymore. 🙂

MJ
 
My mom. You would think I would have been much smarter considering what my parents taught me. :o
 
I heard about it in grade school and high school but had also been somewhat informed by my mom and dad. They struggled with infertility and in those days NFP was for avoiding only, not so much for achieving.
 
On here about a year and a half ago!

And I went to Catholic school!!! And was married in the Catholic church and had Catholic marriage prep classes!!!

Sorry, but it still amazes me the things I didn’t “learn” or “absorb” in all my 28 years of being a Catholic!
 
My mom went to Opus Dei stuff ( prayer groups, weekly confession etc.)with a bunch of ladies from Church (all who had big families), and we kids played in the other room but could overhear them talking about cycles and temps and husbands who didn’t cooperate:p So, I was exposed to it early on.

Then when I was in nursing school I heard more about it and how it had ‘advanced’ since it’s early days and was more ‘reliaible’ (they meant from the contracepting standpoint…). I recall a lot of the women being very enthusiastic about an alternative to the BCP, and some ended up adopting the methods even though they weren’t Catholic.
 
I went to a public school for most of my life, and we learned about NFP in sex ed… as something that was a sort of stupid option, according to the teacher of the course…

actually, that’s as much information as I ever got on it… apparently the people I’m living with now (a Catholic couple who took me in) are planning to get me some more information so that I can learn about it.

Saoirse
 
Television.

Got a card from my daughter last week…it read, “What do you call a couple who practices natural family planning?” Inside it of course read “Parents!”

Hooray!!!
 
Wow, your posts are all very interesting!

The reason I’m asking this question is that I want to take a NFP teacher instructor course after I graduate with my BSN this coming April. So I’ve been doing research about what motivates people to learn about NFP.

Josefa
 
Oh- if that’s what you’re interested in, my answer is a bit lengthier. My DH and I knew about NFP but also knew that I had irregular cycles and that getting pregnant for us would be difficult. We didn’t take any classes and instead tried to conceive starting when we got married. A year later, we started to take clomid, first unregulated, then we went to a traditional fertility clinic, got pregnant (no IVF or IUI, just medications and regular intercourse), and lost the baby. Our hearts were cleared of any thoughts of achieving pregnancy based on what we were told at the traditional fertility clinic as to our hopes of ever achieving a pregnancy.

DH and I started looking into adoption, and as we started the process, were told by no less than 15 people (all different sorts of people, some virtual strangers, one an on-line friend in Australia) that we should look up the Pope Paul VI institute. We did so, learned the Creighton model, met with the doctor there and for the first time, had actual hope that we could get pregnant. We’re still working on it, but I am so glad that we are using NFP now.

For me what interests me in the Creighton model is that it is natural, it is truly unitive, and that it helped identify several medical issues that I have which have now been treated. I formerly had really irregular cycles (2 periods each year, a period for four months, a period every other week, etc…) and now am on a nice 28-30 day cycle.
 
I can’t remember exactly when I knew it existed. I had a vague idea in high school probably from my own reading. I had no intention of using since I didn’t believe it was effective, and wasn’t as interested in following the Church’s teachings (okay not too many teenagers are!) About a year ago, when I started thinking more about marriage I did some more research and got hooked. By some miracle my FH had no problem with it, he thought it sounded terrific- this coming from a former Protestant! 😛 So i’ve picked up a book and I’m all set to start- in 16 more months 😉
 
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