Introducing NFP to Husband

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PotassiumCl

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Hello,
I am new to this forum and need some help. To make a long story short, my husband is not Catholic and does not understand NFP. This means that he is not sure if he wants more than one child, which we are so blessed to have and that he only trusts ABC. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to bring the subject up in a way that he would better understand. I will also say this, when we married, in the Catholic Church, I was not regularly attending mass but I did feel it important to be married in the Church. In addition, he did agree to raise any children Catholic, I must admit that I never thought I would be a mom. How wonderful the Lord is that he had another plan and I feel he has more in store for us…
 
🙂 You may want to have a GYN explain to your husband how effective it is compared to birth control pills or other ABC. She will also explain it in a scientific way. My husband is an athiest and he thought that NFP was a Catholic superstition. This issue was causing problems in the marriage(so I was just were you are at…in regards to the husband only trusting ABC). I prayed before the Doctor visit(because alot of doctors trust medicine a bit too much). Then after the doctor showed my husband the charts and explained how fertility works, my husband said “ok, we can do it” I almost fell off my chair.
 
Carjack1 said:
🙂 You may want to have a GYN explain to your husband how effective it is compared to birth control pills or other ABC. She will also explain it in a scientific way. My husband is an athiest and he thought that NFP was a Catholic superstition. This issue was causing problems in the marriage(so I was just were you are at…in regards to the husband only trusting ABC). I prayed before the Doctor visit(because alot of doctors trust medicine a bit too much). Then after the doctor showed my husband the charts and explained how fertility works, my husband said “ok, we can do it” I almost fell off my chair.
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Not sure what charts your referring to that state it is as effective as ABC. NFP is not as reliable as other methods…see for yourself.

womenshealth.about.com/cs/birthcontro1/a/pregratebcmeth.htm
  • When fertility awareness is used correctly and consistently, it may reach effective rates around 90%. The effectiveness depends on your diligence to track and record your fertility pattern and your commitment to abstaining from sexual intercourse or using a barrier form of birth control during your fertility window.
    **
    Typical use, which refers to the average use, shows a failure rate of approximately 25%**. If you are committed to tracking and recording your fertility information, you can achieve much higher success rates.*
 
onetimeposter said:
Not sure what charts your referring to that state it is as effective as ABC. NFP is not as reliable as other methods…see for yourself.

womenshealth.about.com/cs/birthcontro1/a/pregratebcmeth.htm
  • When fertility awareness is used correctly and consistently, it may reach effective rates around 90%. The effectiveness depends on your diligence to track and record your fertility pattern and your commitment to abstaining from sexual intercourse or using a barrier form of birth control during your fertility window.
    **
    Typical use, which refers to the average use, shows a failure rate of approximately 25%***. If you are committed to tracking and recording your fertility information, you can achieve much higher success rates.
Click to expand...
Do these charts include the babies that were aborted while using the pill?
 
onetimeposter said:
Not sure what charts your referring to that state it is as effective as ABC. NFP is not as reliable as other methods…see for yourself.

womenshealth.about.com/cs/birthcontro1/a/pregratebcmeth.htm
  • When fertility awareness is used correctly and consistently, it may reach effective rates around 90%. The effectiveness depends on your diligence to track and record your fertility pattern and your commitment to abstaining from sexual intercourse or using a barrier form of birth control during your fertility window.
    **
    Typical use, which refers to the average use, shows a failure rate of approximately 25%***. If you are committed to tracking and recording your fertility information, you can achieve much higher success rates.
Click to expand...
Do your statistics include the number of fertilized eggs that do not get to be implanted into the uterus? Because some charts do not include those numbers as pregnancy.
 
They key is to be diligent about it. NFP does work, and it works as well as ABC without the hormones and thwarting of God’s plan.
Check out this link:
ccli.org/nfp/basics/effectiveness-p03.php

My husband (then fiance) thought NFP meant “rhythm method” until we went to a meeting our Church had. He agreed to try, if I agreed to chart. It’s worked great for us.

Say the rosary. That’s the best advice I could give you on this one. Good luck!!
 
Is your husband a Christian? That makes a big difference. When my wife and I contemplated forgoeing all forms of birth control (more than twenty years ago), we centered it on trusting God for our family size. That was the key peice for me.

If he’s not a Christian, obviously that won’t help. I’d focus on the health risks for you and the much improved experience for the both of you when he foregoes “protection”.

Also, if he is a Christian, note the abortion ties many forms of ABC. Remind him that you both must be aware of the consequences of what you do now and will answer to God for failures.

This may take time, be patient.
 
Go to omsou.com and order a free copy of the talk on CD by Dr.Janet E Smith called ‘Contraception Why Not.’ It should be noted that NFP is actually more effective than the most effective ABC at preventing/postponing pregnancy.
 
JLCecilia said:
Go to omsou.com and order a free copy of the talk on CD by Dr.Janet E Smith called ‘Contraception Why Not.’ It should be noted that NFP is actually more effective than the most effective ABC at preventing/postponing pregnancy.
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It’s great to say that, but the real numbers don’t support your assertion.
 
Carjack1 said:
🙂 You may want to have a GYN explain to your husband how effective it is compared to birth control pills or other ABC. She will also explain it in a scientific way.
Click to expand...
Depends on the doctor. Both of my gyns were against NFP, and my current one still tries to get me to use some kind of ABC. So, I don’t think they would have been helpful to me in this same situation.
onetimeposter said:
Not sure what charts your referring to that state it is as effective as ABC. NFP is not as reliable as other methods…see for yourself.

womenshealth.about.com/cs/birthcontro1/a/pregratebcmeth.htm
  • When fertility awareness is used correctly and consistently, it may reach effective rates around 90%. The effectiveness depends on your diligence to track and record your fertility pattern and your commitment to abstaining from sexual intercourse or using a barrier form of birth control during your fertility window.
    **
    Typical use, which refers to the average use, shows a failure rate of approximately 25%***. If you are committed to tracking and recording your fertility information, you can achieve much higher success rates.
Click to expand...
This is just one source. I agree that its typical use is a little less effective than the pill, I would say it is about the same for the condom. Here are some others sources:

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6375261.stm

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_awareness#Effectiveness

ccli.org/nfp/basics/effectiveness-p02.php

And I was wondering how effective it was, so I made a poll:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=245170

I think the best thing would be for you to join a NFP class together.

I also recommend the book, Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler and the website: tcoyf.com/
These are not Catholic (they are non-religious) resources, so that might make your husband a little more comfortable about what they say compared to the NFP class leaders. When referring to either the book or the website, they say it is ok to use a barrier method during the fertile time (hence they aren’t practicing NFP, but fertility awareness) so just make sure that you abstain during your fertile time.
 
JLCecilia said:
Go to omsou.com and order a free copy of the talk on CD by Dr.Janet E Smith called ‘Contraception Why Not.’ It should be noted that NFP is actually more effective than the most effective ABC at preventing/postponing pregnancy.
Click to expand...
This is a good suggestion. Dr. Smith has some powerful information on the dangers of hormonal contraception which should persuade anyone, regardless of their faith.

Another idea–would he be open to attending an introductory session on a method of NFP with you? Try contacting your diocesan office of family life (or some have an office of natural family planning) and they should be able to help you find one. Or try creightonmodel.com/ and click on “Find a Teacher” to locate teachers and classes in your area.

Good luck! NFP is SO good for marriages!
 
onetimeposter said:
It’s great to say that, but the real numbers don’t support your assertion.
Click to expand...
The secular sites typically put scientific methods of natural family planning (Creighton, Billings, Sympto-Thermal) in one category that also includes Rhythm Method and “no method” and sometimes also includes withdrawing :eek: .

Hardly an accurate assessment of the scientific methods we are referring to if it includes “nothing”, rhythm, and withdrawing.

The chart you linked to lumps calendar methods in with natural family planning. Calendar methods have about a 25% failure rate and are highly unreliable. No one here is advocating a calendar method.

When you look ONLY at the scientific methods by themselves, the numbers change significantly as they are all highly reliable.
 
PotassiumCl said:
Hello,
I am new to this forum and need some help. To make a long story short, my husband is not Catholic and does not understand NFP. This means that he is not sure if he wants more than one child, which we are so blessed to have and that he only trusts ABC. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to bring the subject up in a way that he would better understand. I will also say this, when we married, in the Catholic Church, I was not regularly attending mass but I did feel it important to be married in the Church. In addition, he did agree to raise any children Catholic, I must admit that I never thought I would be a mom. How wonderful the Lord is that he had another plan and I feel he has more in store for us…
Click to expand...
From a non-Catholic POV, the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler is outstanding.
 
onetimeposter said:
Not sure what charts your referring to that state it is as effective as ABC. NFP is not as reliable as other methods…see for yourself.

womenshealth.about.com/cs/birthcontro1/a/pregratebcmeth.htm
  • When fertility awareness is used correctly and consistently, it may reach effective rates around 90%. The effectiveness depends on your diligence to track and record your fertility pattern and your commitment to abstaining from sexual intercourse or using a barrier form of birth control during your fertility window.
    **
    Typical use, which refers to the average use, shows a failure rate of approximately 25%***. If you are committed to tracking and recording your fertility information, you can achieve much higher success rates.
Click to expand...
Does this site also take into consideration that people chart their fertility to achieve pregnancy, too?

When following the rules according to your intentions (achieve or avoid) charting is more effective than ABC. Also, you are not mutilating your body or infecting it with poisons.
 
This may be of interest:

Frank-Herrmann P, Heil J, Gnoth C, Toledo E, Baur S, Pyper C, Jenetzky E, Strowitzki T, Freundl G., The effectiveness of a fertility awareness based method to avoid pregnancy in relation to a couple’s sexual behaviour during the fertile time: a prospective longitudinal study, Human Reproduction, Vol. 22, No. 5, 1310-1319, May 2007

Full Text
PDF

Conclusions (emphasis added):

“This is the first time that a large STM database has been established with sufficient detailed information on sexual behaviour. It enables the true method effectiveness for the STM to be calculated. Our results show that 0.4 unintended pregnancies occurred per 100 women years, if there was abstinence during the fertile time. In addition, our results showed that when barrier methods were used during the fertile time the rate of unintended pregnancies was not significantly different. **The use-effectiveness of the method, i.e. the overall pregnancy rate was 1.8% after 13 cycles of use **and the discontinuation rate due to dissatisfaction with the STM was only 9.2 per 100 women after 13 cycles; this demonstrates a fairly good acceptability of a FAB method that uses two indicators of fertility–cervical secretions plus a calculation to identify the onset of the fertile time and temperature and cervical secretion observations to determine the end of the fertile time.”
 
1ke said:
The secular sites typically put scientific methods of natural family planning (Creighton, Billings, Sympto-Thermal) in one category that also includes Rhythm Method and “no method” and sometimes also includes withdrawing :eek: .

Hardly an accurate assessment of the scientific methods we are referring to if it includes “nothing”, rhythm, and withdrawing.

The chart you linked to lumps calendar methods in with natural family planning. Calendar methods have about a 25% failure rate and are highly unreliable. No one here is advocating a calendar method.

When you look ONLY at the scientific methods by themselves, the numbers change significantly as they are all highly reliable.
Click to expand...
I was just about to say the same thing!

See if your parish is offering NFP classes. The least he can do is learn about the method so he can make an informed decision.
 
Thank you all for you encouragement. I have been praying that he would see my side of things and this morning he agreed to investigate NFP!!! This is a huge step for him and I am thankful for this step forward.
 
PotassiumCl said:
Thank you all for you encouragement. I have been praying that he would see my side of things and this morning he agreed to investigate NFP!!! This is a huge step for him and I am thankful for this step forward.
Click to expand...
That is wonderful and I am so happy for you:hug1:
 
PotassiumCl said:
Thank you all for you encouragement. I have been praying that he would see my side of things and this morning he agreed to investigate NFP!!! This is a huge step for him and I am thankful for this step forward.
Click to expand...
Excellent! Of course you’ve been reading that NFP is more than “Catholic Contraception”, right?

There are several recommended books on the subject and I suggest you choose one and go through it together. The Catholic perspective about sex is so much better (yep, believe it!) than our current culture. It brought back real love to our marriage.

If your husband still prefers ABC, I’d be happy to provide some real personal experience about how it can kill a marriage. BTDT.
 
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