It's so easy to be pro NFP

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danimay

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That is, before you get the “You are risking your life” lecture from your OB. At my last appointment, she asked what my plans are for the future…do I understand the risk? I said yes, I am concerned…I don’t want to end up with blood transfusions and a hysterectomy, ect. She stopped me, saying " Dani, I don’t want you to die!". This is my fourth c-section in nearly five years and I have had previous abdominal surgery in the same area. I also have a severe luteal phase defect and then gestational diabetes. She says internal scarring is a huge issue with me and if I go into labor before my scheduled surgery, an emergency c-section would be a nightmare.
My husband says he is not risking it. I can’t stop thinking about it.
 
There are a few of us on this board who have had the same words come from a doctor’s mouth.

I did, 15+ years ago. We have used very conservative methods since then, and we are happy as clams 🙂

You will hear from others as well here - it is about knowing that following Christ is #1.
 
**Wow, that is scary. I suggest you do as much research on NFP as possible until you have as much knowledge (or more!) than any NFP instructor. Once you KNOW that it is the safest most reliable form of preventing or spacing births then you can counteract the scare tactics of today’s society.

Your only other option would be total and complete abstinence.

What method of BC is your doc recommending by the way? Examine their “fail rates” carefully. Most of them are much more risky than NFP. And even vasectomies can fail to prevent another pregnancy.

Malia
**
 
I second that. The idea that any kind of artificial birth control is effective doesn’t make sense. THey may use numbers for statistics, but that can’t be a true number becasue we don’t know how many people would have conceived if not using ABC. (meaning, how many were ovulating, and the circumstances would have resulted in ovulation). its nice to say that only 1% conceived while using ABC…but in actuality, 20 of those 30 days were infertile anyway, and all ABC did was add artificial hormones and damage the relationship
 
I had it out with my OB before my last childbirth. GD, big baby on the ultrasound, history of shoulder dystocia and low APGAR score = “you have to have a cesarean or you will have to find a new doctor”. I guess if I had the cesarean, next time I would have to have one also as a matter of routine, and then the next time. After a few Cs, then the doctor would have told me I had to get my tubes tied because the scarring put me in a dangerous position. It was not a road I wanted to travel as a woman who wants a large family.
Sometimes I think the doctors set us up to make sure we don’t have too many kids.
My prayers are with you, Danimay. Be prayerful, trust God, and He will guide you to make right choices and bless you with His will being fulfilled in your life.
By the way, I didn’t get the cesarean (or the tubal ligation my doctor recommended), and my baby was born naturally, easily, healthy, and BIG! Doctors don’t know everything, and their agenda is often to minimize risk to zero and cover their butts – not to help you and your family to be happy and healthy.
 
Well, my babies are large…like 9lb 15oz…and breech, so I couldn’t avoid the first c-section. Then, like you said, you aren’t going to find a doctor who will do a vbac with a 10 lb baby. So, here I am. I don’t think she is trying to scare me. I trust this woman. She is very matter-o-fact and not at all pushy with the birth control. The only thing she has ever said was that she would like me to wait a year between pregnancies, for my own health. If I choose to continue having children, she will support me, but she has warned me of the risks I am taking. My husband was already concerned for my health as each c-section has been harder on me. He was thinking of the big V after our third was born and I talked him out of it. I was working on it again, before this last doctors visit, but now he says he’s doing it. I know it must be hard for him. I think it is the fact that he feels he could “kill” me with his fertility. He loves me. I can’t imagine how I would feel, if the tables were reversed.
 
You said " I know it must be hard for him. I think it is the fact that he feels he could “kill” me with his fertility. He loves me. "

He does know that a Vasectomy is not 100%, right? I have a family friend who will bring their two examples over to for a visit.

Your DH is afraid, but, he is looking for answers from the world. Has he sought the Church on this matter?

If there was a chance I could kill my husband via marital relations, I would not have relations until that danger was past. I love him too much to take a chance.

Prayers for you!
 
We can’t offer medical advice on these forums I should note. None of us are qualified.

That said, I do have some questions. Have you practiced NFP in the past? Which method? Did you get pregnant while trying to avoid? If so, how carefully did you chart? Did you follow the rules or have a ‘close enough’ evening? 😉

There ARE NFP friendly doctors who are willing to help you figure out which method works best for your body and will help you to learn extra conservative methods that surpass the reliability of any artificial contraceptive technique. The catch is that they require longer abstinance periods (which when you think about it, is why NFP is Ok in the first place and ABC isn’t). IIRC the PaulVI Institute offers such help and possibly local referrals.

I have a friend who is a doctor and prescribes ABC. When I have discussed it with him, he freely admits that he knows of the POTENTIAL effectiveness of NFP, but based on the mass of humanity he sees every day disbelieves that even a fraction of his patients will properly practice it. Then he gets the blame if pregnancy results. In his eyes, it is hard enough to get people to have the ‘discipline’ to take a pill everyday without asking them to do even MORE intrusive and time intensive things. Not defending him, its just how secular doctors tend to think.
 
kage_ar said:
You said " I know it must be hard for him. I think it is the fact that he feels he could “kill” me with his fertility. He loves me. "

He does know that a Vasectomy is not 100%, right? I have a family friend who will bring their two examples over to for a visit.

Your DH is afraid, but, he is looking for answers from the world. Has he sought the Church on this matter?

If there was a chance I could kill my husband via marital relations, I would not have relations until that danger was past. I love him too much to take a chance.
Prayers for you!
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I wonder if your husband would feel the same way about living without sex for the next 20 years? We are in our early 30’s, and giving up intimacy is not something my husband wants to consider. He won’t even consider condoms as an extra layer of protection in addition to NFP, as a friend of his suggested. He’s looked into V and says you have to go back and be tested after a couple of months to make sure it worked. I still don’t want him to do it. I hate the thought of him mutilating his body. I love him. I worry about the risks to his health, and, yes, I have researched it. That is part of the way I convienced him not to do it after the birth of our third child. That and the fact that I think it is wrong. He said that if I didn’t want him to do it, he wouldn’t. He’s not saying that anymore. Actually, I think he would like us both to have the surgery, but he won’t pressure me.
 
I will be praying for you. Also learn about ecological breastfeeding from the couple to couple league. For me it did delay fertility for over a year first time, 11 months next time. You do have to be really bonded to the baby. Also get their Fertility, Cycles, and Nutrition book for help with your luteal phase.

As others have said, I know children conceived on every form of artificial birth control there is. Yes, I know NFP oopsies too, but usually the parents admit they weren’t being cautious. Ask you husband to research NFP techniques with you and commit to being very conservative while you regain your strength. Talk to your dr again later and see what she says.
danimay said:
Well, my babies are large…like 9lb 15oz…and breech, so I couldn’t avoid the first c-section. Then, like you said, you aren’t going to find a doctor who will do a vbac with a 10 lb baby. So, here I am. I don’t think she is trying to scare me. I trust this woman. She is very matter-o-fact and not at all pushy with the birth control. The only thing she has ever said was that she would like me to wait a year between pregnancies, for my own health. If I choose to continue having children, she will support me, but she has warned me of the risks I am taking. My husband was already concerned for my health as each c-section has been harder on me. He was thinking of the big V after our third was born and I talked him out of it. I was working on it again, before this last doctors visit, but now he says he’s doing it. I know it must be hard for him. I think it is the fact that he feels he could “kill” me with his fertility. He loves me. I can’t imagine how I would feel, if the tables were reversed.
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danimay said:
I wonder if your husband would feel the same way about living without sex for the next 20 years? We are in our early 30’s, and giving up intimacy is not something my husband wants to consider.
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Yes, he would and he did. We were in our late 20’s when we had the “another pregnancy is likely to result in a wheel chair or death” speech. We were not Catholic at the time, and that was before the internet - we knew nothing about NFP so we abstained for a long time.
 
manualman said:
We can’t offer medical advice on these forums I should note. None of us are qualified.

That said, I do have some questions. Have you practiced NFP in the past? Which method? Did you get pregnant while trying to avoid? If so, how carefully did you chart? Did you follow the rules or have a ‘close enough’ evening? 😉

There ARE NFP friendly doctors who are willing to help you figure out which method works best for your body and will help you to learn extra conservative methods that surpass the reliability of any artificial contraceptive technique. The catch is that they require longer abstinance periods (which when you think about it, is why NFP is Ok in the first place and ABC isn’t). IIRC the PaulVI Institute offers such help and possibly local referrals.

I have a friend who is a doctor and prescribes ABC. When I have discussed it with him, he freely admits that he knows of the POTENTIAL effectiveness of NFP, but based on the mass of humanity he sees every day disbelieves that even a fraction of his patients will properly practice it. Then he gets the blame if pregnancy results. In his eyes, it is hard enough to get people to have the ‘discipline’ to take a pill everyday without asking them to do even MORE intrusive and time intensive things. Not defending him, its just how secular doctors tend to think.
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Actually, we never needed any form of family planning. We TTC naturally, just left it in Gods hands, for 8 years before seeking medical help. I had such an extreme case of luteal phase defect that we were unable to concieve without medical intervention (progesterone). That seems to have somewhat corrected itself, as I concieved this child without the hormone, while breastfeeding a 5-6 month old. I still had to take progesterone to maintain this pregnancy, but we were blown away by being able to concieve without help!
 
danimay said:
I think it is the fact that he feels he could “kill” me with his fertility. He loves me. .
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Can we put this in perspective here? Instead of the physical “killing”, he could kill his soul, and possibly yours (although I know you said you are against it, but this is a potential arguement), AND kill your marriage.

Believe it or not Contraception is a HUGE factor in the underlying causes of issues in marriage.

Let’s forget about things of this earth and live in the Spirit. Eternal life is what is important. Your husband should be focused on getting you to heaven, by whatever means necessary.
 
I was all for it but now that I am on medication that will cause severe birth defects, I am not too sure about using nfp anymore. It just seems more risky and I am not relaxed about it. I had to take a pregnancy test before going on this medication. My doctor wasn’t happy with me just using nfp.
 
dove51 said:
Wait, hold up. What about using NFP could kill someone?
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This kind of flippant post doesn’t help. Are you trying to be cute? I find your comment very disrespectful. All I was trying to say is that it is hard…scarry…to be in the situation I am in. It is terrifying for my husband to think of losing me. I fear for my children, if I weren’t here to raise them. Of course, no one can fix this for us and I wasn’t asking anyone to. I just thought there might be some supportive people here. People who might just understand that it is serious…not the joke you are trying to make it into. NFP is great and I am all in favor. Prayer’s might help my family, but your snide little comment won’t.
 
pink said:
I was all for it but now that I am on medication that will cause severe birth defects, I am not too sure about using nfp anymore. It just seems more risky and I am not relaxed about it. I had to take a pregnancy test before going on this medication. My doctor wasn’t happy with me just using nfp.
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I am sorry you are facing a similar situation. It’s so hard to just accept any risk when the outcome could be so serious. I will be praying for your family. Thanks for sharing your story with me.
 
danimay said:
Actually, we never needed any form of family planning. We TTC naturally, just left it in Gods hands, for 8 years before seeking medical help. **I had such an extreme case of luteal phase defect that we were unable to concieve without medical intervention (progesterone). **That seems to have somewhat corrected itself, as I concieved this child without the hormone, while breastfeeding a 5-6 month old. I still had to take progesterone to maintain this pregnancy, but we were blown away by being able to concieve without help!
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Now I am very confused. How is it that you have had 4 children in 5 years if you need medical intervention to conceive? You certainly don’t need to tell us your whole medical history, but if you’ve been using hormones to help you conceive children that close, that is one issue. If you have had difficulty conceiving in the past, you may find that the same thing happens again as your body regains health. Finally, if you’ve never learned any NFP method, please do so now. There are several methods. We prefer the Sympto-thermal method taught by the Couple to Couple League, but you could look into them all and choose one that is best for you and your dh.
 
Well, we had #1 in Dec '02, # 2 in Dec '04, and #3 in Aug '06…all 20-24 months apart. We had to use progesterone to establish the pregnancies. Without it, we actually learned, we can achieve fertilization, but the baby will not survive even the week or two it takes to get a positive pregnancy test…until this pregnancy. We concieved this child, a suprise blessing, while I was breastfeeding my then 6 month old and without using progesterone. He will be here in Dec, just 8 days after my oldest turns 5. We planned our first three children and waited the one year that my OB recommended was safe between pregnancies.
 
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