NFP and Family Planning for Newly Weds

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captaingator85

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Hi friends!

I’d like some friendly, catholic opinions. The love of my life and I were married about two and a half weeks ago in a beautiful nuptial mass in our hometown. During our year-long engagement, we were introduced to NFP, and tracked it for several months before “putting it to use”.

Now that we are married, I’d like a little guidance on when fellow NFPer’s thought you were ready to have your first child. We haven’t been married long, but we dated for over 4 years before walking down the aisle. Financially, we could probably wait a bit, but many people have told me that “if you wait until you can afford kids, you will never have them”.

So what are your thoughts? When did you know you were “ready” to have children?
 
It’s hard to say what actually triggered it… God just made it suddenly obviously clear that we should open up our lives to children.
We waited a little over a year before this happened. I was still in college and starting my career during our first year of marriage… but once everything seemed to settle in (except finances - I don’t think we’d ever be ready if we waited for that! ;)) it just came up in one conversation and our hearts were then open… our first child was due on our 2nd Anniversary. 😃

Good luck… and PRAY. If you don’t have serious reasons to avoid, them maybe just stop charting and see where that takes you (rather that actively TRYING to conceive). After a while you can reassess the situation…🙂
 
If I’d waited until I was ready, I never would have had any! I still don’t feel ready…six kids later 😃

When we first married, we tried charting NFP (just for knowledge of my body) for a couple of weeks and quickly tossed it. The truth was, we weren’t motivated NOT to have children and figured whatever happened, happened. I didn’t get pregnant for 11 months. Looking back, that’s nothing short of a miracle because I went on to get pregnant 10 times in 10 years (and that was WITH charting and NFP! LOL)

I am really glad we had almost two years together before having our first child. But if I had to do it all over again, I’m pretty sure I’d do it the same way. We didn’t have a compelling reason to avoid. It was fun being so spontaneous and letting whatever happened, happen!

Congrats on your new marriage 🙂
 
I am 23 and I have been married for 3 years. I have 2 beautiful daughters. In our marriage retreat a couple asked our speaker when you know when you are ready to have kids. The older gentleman’s answer was great.- You know you are ready to have kids when you are ready to be married. A hush went over the crowd 🙂 It is fulfilling the purpose of marriage. We have found nothing but blessings (*I need to remind myself that crosses are blessings!) through our children.

Financial issues give us a great opportunity to show trust in God. I have found that if we trust that God will provide- He will.

I hope that this helped! 👍

In Christ,
Jim
 
You know what works the best? Praying about it DURING the abstinance times. It becomes clear, it just does. It’s essentially a fast - and an extremely relevant one to the matter at hand. Fasting always makes prayer clearer and more effective.

Congratulations on your wedding!
 
I tend to agree with the POV that if you are married, you are ready. The rules are no different for newlyweds than they are for people who have been married a while - you still need serious reasons to avoid, licitly. But I do think newlyweds are more likely to have serious reasons to avoid - many have not been able to build up the basic resources needed for a family, like being able to afford medical insurance, and spacing stressful events like marriage and the first pregnancy can be prudent in some cases.

We TTA’d for 3 months, and then achieved pregnancy in month 4 while TTC. I gave birth to twins the day before our first wedding anniversary, and think DH and I were surprisingly ready (except financially).
 
I’m not so much worried about finances as I am about TIME. We’re frugal people. I’m sure we can make it work financially.

Ideally we’re waiting until hubby finishes his actuarial exams. That way he can study in peace for now and be a father to his children later. At the rate he’s passing them, it looks like we won’t have to wait for too long.

If I happen to become pregnant before then…well…we could buckle down and raise a child now we had to. But because we both need to work, we would require additional care whether it be day care or sending my baby to grandma’s. While I trust my mother and I’m sure she’d be on cloud nine taking care of a baby, it’s not something I really want to do. Once DH is done with exams, hopefully he’ll be making enough for us to live off of just his income so I can be a full-time mom.
 
fecistinosadte said:
I am 23 and I have been married for 3 years. I have 2 beautiful daughters. In our marriage retreat a couple asked our speaker when you know when you are ready to have kids. The older gentleman’s answer was great.- You know you are ready to have kids when you are ready to be married. A hush went over the crowd 🙂 It is fulfilling the purpose of marriage. We have found nothing but blessings (*I need to remind myself that crosses are blessings!) through our children.

Financial issues give us a great opportunity to show trust in God. I have found that if we trust that God will provide- He will.

I hope that this helped! 👍

In Christ,
Jim
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I second this. We are going on 5 years this summer, and are expecting our 4th. If we would have waited for the perfect time we would still be waiting, and would be missing out on the beautiful blessings God has sent us. Things have worked out amazingly, we have always been taken care of, even if we have gone through job losses, natural disasters, relocations, etc, and I can only thank God for that! 🙂
 
The basic answer is that if you wait until everything is absolutely perfect, and you think you have enough time, and enough money, and are secure enough, and have spent enough “one-on-one” time, and that you are really ready, the truth is that you will never think you’re ready, and you never have enough money, and you always want to take just one more nice trip alone together, and so on and so on.

My wife and I were using NFP and charting and such, and we conceived our daughter 5 months after we were married. It wasn’t exactly the timing we had planned on - we thought we’d be ready maybe a few months later. And truth is, I was terrified. But it turns out to have been the greatest blessing possible. And now I can’t even remember what life was like before having her, nor would I ever want to go back. The joys of spending every day and night together with your spouse give ways to the joys of spending every day with your spouse and kids (even when they drive you nuts!).

I liken it to being at the beach, and just sticking your toe in the water, and saying oooh, cold! And slowly going out one more step till it’s up to your ankles, and then up to your knees, and slowly getting acclimated. Versus just running out, diving in headfirst and getting soaked. You end up in the same place, only faster.

One upside I can see to starting sooner, that is rarely mentioned, is that you are younger when your kids are adults, and if you are then blessed with grandchildren you will get to spend more time with them when you yourself are a bit younger. You will also get to spend more time having “adult” relationships with your kids (you’ll spend 20-25 years having “kid” relationships with them regardless of what age you are when you have them).

On the other hand it’s a highly individual thing. Depends on maturity level. Although I would agree that if one isn’t mature enough to be a parent, then one isn’t mature enough to be married either.
 
wonderful advice, everyone. Bobby Jim, you’ve given me some great little nuggets to keep in my head, and I can honestly say that after reading this thread, my nervousness is gone. Thanks for the guidance, guys.
 
If you’re using NFP, then you’ll know the time is right someday during fertile time. All of a sudden TTA won’t be so important.
 
We waited to marry until we decided we were ready for children (funny how they seem to come along with marriage most times, lol). Two months after the wedding we were pregnant without starting to “try” yet. It was such a blessing! We are expecting our first in a few weeks.
 
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