Husband becoming providentialist, rejects using NFP to avoid/space pregnancy

[littleflower84]

Part 1:
I hope I can explaining my situation without writing a novel. Here goes… My husband and I have been married about 3.5 years, and we just joyfully welcomed our second child to our family about 6weeks ago. We prayerfully discernced together that it was time to start our family when we beganusing NFP to concieve our daughter (who is 22 months). For a little background, I was surgically diagnosed with Stage II endometriosis in 2014, and the primary symptom for me with this condition is chronic unrelenting pain throughout my entire cycle. I have tried every treatment for this from expert surgery (excision) to multiple forms of hormonal treatment and none have given me any lasting relief (or would have required total abstinence for the duration of treatment and so not a long term solution. I ecologically breastfed my daughter for her first 9 months of life but had a return of menstruation around 7 months, and concieved our second child at 10 months post partum.
Around the time my cycles returned I had a perhaps-not-surprising return of my chronic pain, and it became clear that I may be facing the prospect of a hysterectomy due to how incapacitating the pain is and how incompatible that is with my responsibilities as a wife and mother. Because of this, we made no attempt to really avoid pregnancy or chart but instead, decided to leave it up to God to send us another if it was His will for us, knowing that if I did fall pregnant it would sort of kick the can down the road so to speak in terms of finding treatment for my pain as endo pain isnt an issue when my ycles are suppressed. We decided that we had no serious reasons to avoid at that time and that in fact we would want to add to our family at least one more time before I seriously considered a hysterectomy. We also felt no great rush however, and so truly, at that time, left it entirely in God’s hands and were essentially “providentialist” in our whole approach. We concieved our son during my third cycle PP.
I am now six weeks PP, and am of course thinking about the future, and while I am not currently menstruating, I know that this decision is one we will have to make again when my fertility returns. I am planning on getting some more medical opinions about the potential hysteectomy in the coming months, but I realized that for the time being, during this post partum period with my 2 under 2, I feel that as a family we have proportionately serious reasons to avoid (won’t go into them here unless asked) I understand that if my pain returns with my fertility in the next 6 months I may have no choice but to move ahead with the hysterectomy even if that means closing the door on future conception. But as it stands I do not feel like I have the physical or emotional or material resources to responsibly bear another child right away and feel that in this season of life, even with the prospect of hysterectomy looming, using NFP to avoid a third pregnancy is the responsible, loving thing to do. I am thinking about the wellbeing of my current two children here and my ability to be the mom they deserve.
Tbc in Part2…

 

[littleflower84]

Part 2:
I told my husband tonight that I wanted to look into a new NFP method that is better suited to the arguably difficult post partum period of lactation so that we could avoid until we were ready to make a concious prayerful decision to knowingly seek conception (I do not feel I am ready now, and recognise my hysterecomy may become necessary before we get to the point where I feel like I am). I was surprised (and somewhat hurt) by his reaction. He does not want to use NFP to avoid. He apparently thinks we should again leave it entirely in God’s hands as we did with our 2nd, and that abstaining from the marital embrace (or me “refusing the marriage debt”) during ferrtile parts of my cycle is not something he is on board with yet.
Now, I was entire fine with the providentialist approach we took to marital relations during the post partum period when we concieved our son because I honestly felt that another child was something we as a family and my body in particular could handle but I now feel that the situation is diffrent and feel the need for greater spacing in a future pregnancy should we have one (even if it means I end up needing to go through with the hysterectomy before we’re able to do so). I feel my reasons are just, selfless, prudent, and proportionately serious. I believe that the use of NFP to avoid in our situation, such as it is, is entirely licit in the eyes of the church.

Apparently my husband feels that my reasons to avoid (we are near poverty, my last pregnancy was indescribably depleating of my mental and physical reserves and beset with multiple complicatoins that can be expected to recur and be worse next time around, I suffer from at times severe depressoins and anxiety with a history of eating disorders and peripartum depression is a huge issue for me, and I have plans to finish my degree so that we can eventually climb out of our near-poverty existence, etc.) don’t count for much because his attitude is that he should be able to request “payment” of the “marital debt” at all times without regard to my fertility on a given day and that unless I am like, sick or something right then, my desire and my reasons to postpone and space our next conception don’t justify my refusal on any given day.
I had told him that the breastfeeding period is one that often requires more abstention to avoid conception than other times in life but that I wanted to learn a new method that would possibly cut the amount of abstainting down significantly and he got noticably upset at the suggestion that we’d be abstaining at all.