NFP Using Couples: Days of Abstinence Poll

[Rach620]

Just hoping to get a feel for what’s ‘typical’ from all of you NFP-using couples out there.

We’re getting married in a month and intending to avoid pregnancy initially (our reasons why are not the topic of this thread). At this point, we are looking at quite a bit of abstinence–almost certainly for most, if not all of the honeymoon (though that could change with all of the pre-wedding stress!). I haven’t exactly tallied them, but I know that we have three solid weeks of fertility/abstinence. I’ve heard that Creighton is supposed to be ‘good’ for freeing up days for use by those TTA, compared with sympto-thermal, but that doesn’t look like it’s the reality for us!

If you’re not using NFP to avoid, just give days of fertility, please! And please explain as you think might be helpful…

 

[ChristinaM]

I know I’m probably not who you were looking for to vote in the poll, since I’m still not married. That’ll change in about, oh, five days, though.

I am very curious about this as well! I learned Billings NFP and this is my 8th cycle of charting. I looked at my charts and typically I have 9-12 days of potential fertility per cycle. Sometimes I get lucky and only have 6 or 7. Other times my ovaries just go nuts.

What’s your teacher say about the 3 weeks worth of white baby stickers? That sounds really insanely long. I sympathize with the honeymoon thing…I had fertile signs today and I’m a little bummed that it will probably last through the wedding night. I just keep trying to tell myself it’s all part of God’s plan. We’ve been worrying and stressing and discussing what we would do if this happened. Chance a honeymoon baby, or not? In the final analysis, God is in charge! I think this might just be the biggest test of my obedience to His will that I’ve had to face.

We’re thinking about going to the movies on the wedding night instead.

 

[Em_in_FL]

I can overlap between the first two options… depending on the month.
Sometimes we’ll only have to abstain as little as 4 days… other times up to 10 days…

Let’s just say we easily make up for lost time… so it’s not that bad. Kinda like a honeymoon every single month!

 

[yessisan]

We’re not avoiding, but when we were, it’s less than a wk. And to tell you the truth, I think STM gives more options than Creighton. I’m in my 2nd chart of Creighton and if it were because of Creighton, we’d have to abstain for 2 wks. With STM we only abstained about 6 days.

 

[agapewolf]

We’re not avoiding, but when we were, it’s less than a wk. And to tell you the truth, I think STM gives more options than Creighton. I’m in my 2nd chart of Creighton and if it were because of Creighton, we’d have to abstain for 2 wks. With STM we only abstained about 6 days.

Is that a good thing?

I’m just asking because it would seem to me that if you are trully absolutely avoiding pregnancy, when one method says you could be fertile on a certain day, (even though another doesn’t)…wouldn’t you want to play it safe? There’s a reason for those extra days in there. THat means someone conceived on that day during research.

I understand its more difficult to abstain more days, but if your life depends on it, I see it from the other side.

 

[StratusRose]

Three weeks is a really long time to abstain. IMHO, you would get more clearcut answers if you tried the STM.

 

[yessisan]

Is that a good thing?

I’m just asking because it would seem to me that if you are trully absolutely avoiding pregnancy, when one method says you could be fertile on a certain day, (even though another doesn’t)…wouldn’t you want to play it safe? There’s a reason for those extra days in there. THat means someone conceived on that day during research.

I understand its more difficult to abstain more days, but if your life depends on it, I see it from the other side.

I’m not avoiding so it doesn’t really matter. I’ve done NFP for over 14 months and I know when I ovulate, being why I know the Creighton isn’t telling me the truth… my temps are low, my OPKs say negative… I’m on CD 18, and I usually ovulate on CD 23. Of 13 charts, I’ve ovulated on CD 18 the time I got pregnant (trying to conceive) and 2 times after my miscarriage (also TTC).

Besides, STM has cross checking methods, which to some might help… I really miss the cross checking of internal cks and cervical cks, but if I wanna learn Creighton the right way, I can’t…

 

[samovila]

We’re getting married in a month and intending to avoid pregnancy initially (our reasons why are not the topic of this thread). At this point, we are looking at quite a bit of abstinence–almost certainly for most, if not all of the honeymoon (though that could change with all of the pre-wedding stress!)

I admit I don’t know you’re reasons for TTA, but I would encourage you to pray and think about how serious your reasons are, particularly on your honeymoon. I was ovulating around my wedding night, but risked a pregnancy in order to seal the union between my husband and I. It would have taken a very serious reason indeed (read: life or death) for us to withold that gift from one another on our honeymoon.

 

[BlestOne]

you didn’t have zero as an option. I am using NFP to get pregnant. I am 45 yo and NFP has helped identify my fertile days. It has worked a few times but unfortunately we just figured out after a few miscarriages that I have a progesterone problem.

 

[Rach620]

What’s your teacher say about the 3 weeks worth of white baby stickers? That sounds really insanely long. I sympathize with the honeymoon thing…I had fertile signs today and I’m a little bummed that it will probably last through the wedding night. I just keep trying to tell myself it’s all part of God’s plan. We’ve been worrying and stressing and discussing what we would do if this happened. Chance a honeymoon baby, or not? In the final analysis, God is in charge! I think this might just be the biggest test of my obedience to His will that I’ve had to face.

We’re thinking about going to the movies on the wedding night instead.

My cycles were crazy when I started charting, so I just recently started getting the ‘hang’ of it, finding my ‘normal,’ and starting yellow stamps to deal with my post-peak non-peak-type CM (not sure if Billings has it, but basically it’s non-lubricative mucus that appears after I have confidently ID’d my peak, and sometimes right after my period and before the onset of fertile CM.)

At this point, it’s not 3 solid weeks of fertile days, but I think it adds up to 21 or so, when you include heavy and moderate bleeding days, and all of my white baby sticker days. She started me turbo-loading Vitamin C this month, because that is supposed to help ‘dry up’ some of the excess uber-fertile CM (I usually have 10+ solid days of clear, stretchy, lubricative CM), so FDH and I are both interested to see what that does. My post-peak phases are great, too, so according to her I should have no trouble getting pregnant when that time comes for us…we just don’t think God is calling us to be parents right away!

Three weeks is a really long time to abstain. IMHO, you would get more clearcut answers if you tried the STM.

Unless STM ‘permits’ intercourse for those TTA on days of clear, stretchy, lubricative mucus, I really don’t think it would indicate different days of fertility for me.

I’d really like to deal with this using the Creighton Method, and I trust the resources I have open to me through my instructor and Fertility Care Center…I just wanted to know what "standard’ avoiding days were for other NFP users who are TTA.

I admit I don’t know you’re reasons for TTA, but I would encourage you to pray and think about how serious your reasons are, particularly on your honeymoon. I was ovulating around my wedding night, but risked a pregnancy in order to seal the union between my husband and I. It would have taken a very serious reason indeed (read: life or death) for us to withold that gift from one another on our honeymoon.

We are praying and talking about it a lot. We both know that it is going to be hard to abstain, but are also trying to see and accept abstinence and the virtues it is helping us to grow in as a married couple as the gift from God that it is. We don’t think that we need any more serious reasons to abstain on our wedding night or honeymoon than we would later in our marriage, given that we have prayerfully discerned God’s will for us in making that decision. Our reasons for TTA initially, we believe, are serious, and we don’t think it would be responsible of us at this point to totally throw caution to the wind and consummate when we–on any other non-honeymoon night–wouldn’t.

 

[reganq]

Congratulations on your pending nuptials!

It’s been awhile since we were TTA. But, I would say that after baby #3, we had 10 days or so of abstinence a month. (This is going from memory, my charts are in the bedroom where DH is sleeping right now.)

After baby #2, I had yellow stamps galore! The first 6-8 months after she was born was a real challenge for charting.

But, I must say that going through that experience of determining point of change really helped us to p(name removed by moderator)oint ovulation exactly. Baby #3 took 8 months of trying.

This one who will arrive in a few weeks took only 3 months of trying. I was fairly certain that the day we conceived I was going to ovulate. The cool thing was that within a half hour after we did the BD, I felt that twinge of ovulation. Way cool!

You and your FDH are in my prayers! The best (non-medical) advice for any method (IMHO) is to trust God and don’t second guess yourself. When you start second-guessing yourself, it messes up your observations big time!

 

[ChristinaM]

Yes, Billings uses the yellow stickers as well for post-Peak, sticky mucus. I get that quite a bit in the last phase of my cycle, I think it’s not uncommon.

Unless STM ‘permits’ intercourse for those TTA on days of clear, stretchy, lubricative mucus, I really don’t think it would indicate different days of fertility for me.

I think what is meant is that a temp shift would tell you that you have ovulated for sure. That probably wouldn’t help much if you have lots of days of clear eggwhite CM pre-ovulation, but if you’re uncertain about when you ovulate, it could be helpful.

We are praying and talking about it a lot. We both know that it is going to be hard to abstain, but are also trying to see and accept abstinence and the virtues it is helping us to grow in as a married couple as the gift from God that it is. We don’t think that we need any more serious reasons to abstain on our wedding night or honeymoon than we would later in our marriage, given that we have prayerfully discerned God’s will for us in making that decision. Our reasons for TTA initially, we believe, are serious, and we don’t think it would be responsible of us at this point to totally throw caution to the wind and consummate when we–on any other non-honeymoon night–wouldn’t.

I’m right here with you. If it happens, it happens, and of course it would be nice to be able to on the wedding night. You may even change your mind on the wedding night. We’re open to the possibility that we’ll be…inspired…even if it is baby time. But I think the first time with your DH will be just as special on a random Tuesday night as it is on your wedding night. Plus you will probably be more relaxed and less exhausted!

 

[gettingthere]

We are TTA right now and the amount of time we abstain varies from month to month. On a good month, we abstain during my period (about 6 days) plus about 3-5 days before ovulation and 3 days after. So approximately 12-14 days.

On a bad month (bad= when my cycle is wonky or hard to read) we might abstain for 14-21 days. This is usually when my temps are higher than usual, or I forgot to temp after ovulation, etc. An I had one annovulatory cycle where I kept having fertile signs but no ovulation, and we abstained way too long during that cycle.

You’ll just have to figure out what is best for you.

 

[samovila]

We are praying and talking about it a lot. We both know that it is going to be hard to abstain, but are also trying to see and accept abstinence and the virtues it is helping us to grow in as a married couple as the gift from God that it is. We don’t think that we need any more serious reasons to abstain on our wedding night or honeymoon than we would later in our marriage, given that we have prayerfully discerned God’s will for us in making that decision. Our reasons for TTA initially, we believe, are serious, and we don’t think it would be responsible of us at this point to totally throw caution to the wind and consummate when we–on any other non-honeymoon night–wouldn’t.

If it’s not too difficult, you may want to consider rescheduling your honeymoon. I really saw my honeymoon as a bonding experience for us as husband and wife. Sex was an important part of that. Just a suggestion if you feel similar!

 

[Good_Daughter]

I really miss the cross checking of internal cks and cervical cks, but if I wanna learn Creighton the right way, I can’t…

I really like using STM but think Creighton might help me classify my (sometimes) ambiguous CM. I recently contacted a Creighton instructor as I’m hoping to take an intro class very soon. Does Crieghton really require you to eliminate cross checks like internal/cervical checks and temps? I thought maybe I could do Creighton and keep up my cross checks on the side. Then again, maybe not.

 

[reganq]

I really like using STM but think Creighton might help me classify my (sometimes) ambiguous CM. I recently contacted a Creighton instructor as I’m hoping to take an intro class very soon. Does Crieghton really require you to eliminate cross checks like internal/cervical checks and temps? I thought maybe I could do Creighton and keep up my cross checks on the side. Then again, maybe not.

You would be able to do the temperature cross checks on the side. However, with Creighton, your observations are limited to the CM you find when you wipe. There aren’t supposed to be any internal checks because it would interfere with the method and could possibly lead to observational errors.

 

[yessisan]

I really like using STM but think Creighton might help me classify my (sometimes) ambiguous CM. I recently contacted a Creighton instructor as I’m hoping to take an intro class very soon. Does Crieghton really require you to eliminate cross checks like internal/cervical checks and temps? I thought maybe I could do Creighton and keep up my cross checks on the side. Then again, maybe not.

That’s what I thought I could do until my intro session last month. They told me absolutely no internal cks… but I still do temps and I also do OPKs. It’s sad I cannot do internal cks because they are very helpful in determining when I am to ovulate, but I need CrMS for fertility issues. So, I have to abide by the rules

 

[Rach620]

That’s what I thought I could do until my intro session last month. They told me absolutely no internal cks… but I still do temps and I also do OPKs. It’s sad I cannot do internal cks because they are very helpful in determining when I am to ovulate, but I need CrMS for fertility issues. So, I have to abide by the rules

Yessi, I wouldn’t get too bummed about the CrMS rules. They are there for a reason! My instructor told me that couples who start CrMS to help treat infertility have an 80% success rate within the first year!

 

[yessisan]

Yessi, I wouldn’t get too bummed about the CrMS rules. They are there for a reason! My instructor told me that couples who start CrMS to help treat infertility have an 80% success rate within the first year!

Thanks for the reassurance Rach! I’m just a bit confused because internally is when I would find my fertile CM. I could never rely on external CM observations… and I cheated yesterday, I did an internal ck and I had very fertile CM (stretchy, clear and lubricative) and externally it was sticky and gummy

 

[Good_Daughter]

You would be able to do the temperature cross checks on the side. However, with Creighton, your observations are limited to the CM you find when you wipe. There aren’t supposed to be any internal checks because it would interfere with the method and could possibly lead to observational errors.

Okay, I see what they’re saying. Thanks for the info.