The truth about NFP

[PhiloMed]

When my first was born I counted 46 times my door was knocked on one day. By 9pm I was in tears and my nurse put a “do not come in the room before speaking with RN” sign on my door.

Anyway, thank you all for the kind words of encouragement.

I think what I’ve learned is that the ugly truth about NFP is that by practicing it you are supposedly open to life, but when that life comes along you suddenly don’t feel so open. You just feel angry and frustrated. Not everyone for sure. I have a friend expecting her 8th child. 7 unplanned pregnancies all while using NFP. She’s just as happy as can be and glowing. Still says she would be thrilled to have more.

Sometimes I feel there is no place for someone like me in the church. If this is supposed to be our struggle, our cross to bear to be open to God’s will then why does it get to be a picnic for some and a nightmare for others? I am really not cut out for this and will be spending the next several months doing some soul searching on what to do.

I’ll speak with my husband tonight. Right now I’m filled with a combination of just anger, frustration and yet fear of something going wrong or having another miscarriage. How peculiar of me to both be angry to be pregnant yet fearful of losing my baby.

 

[alphawoman]

Here’s a bomb: 4 years of nearly constant abstinence. Not the kind where it’s once a month. The low-ball, ultra-conservative, phase 3 only method with a short luteal phase looks like rutting season by comparison to the handful of times DH and I have been able to be together since DS was born. We have serious reasons to avoid now, and so abstinence it was.

Yes, the teachers of these methods need to acknowledge that some medical conditions must morally and medically be managed by something other than just NFP. There are contraindications to NFP that are provided for in Humanae Vitae, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable for the material upfront to say: X, Y, and Z conditions require active medical management by a trained medical specialist and may be incompatible with NFP. As it were, the few Catholics who are faithful to NFP who also have complicating medical conditions risk ending up getting strong-armed into persisting with a method when medical intervention is indicated.

I was even working with the medical director (an MD) of the method I use after over two years of wonky CM and a cervix more changeable than Michael Jackson’s face. It was all written off as being due to extended breastfeeding and a medication I was taking. She had TWO YEARS of postpartum charting data and digital ovulation tests and never once said, “Get a reproductive hormone blood panel done. This isn’t normal.”

Thankfully, I have a terrific GP with an unusually good knowledge of endocrinology who did some investigative sleuthing with ratios of my blood tests. After about 4 rounds of bloodwork and some imaging, we found the root causes.

So lesson learned for me: even if someone is an MD consulting on your NFP charts, unless that person is legally carrying your patient file, you are NOT receiving medical advice. If I hadn’t received the hunky-dory, once-you-wean-it’ll-be-back-to-basics messaging, I would have pushed hard for diagnostics 2 years ago. But the symptoms were subtle enough that they could be discounted.

I’ll speak plainly: the Church needs to finance some credible, arms-length prospective clinical trials for the major methods and not use cherry picking inclusionary criteria for participation (I.e. No endocrine disorders, no reproductive conditions.) Humanae Vitae includes a call to action to scientists to develop methods that are effective. Why has the global Church not been front and center in making the funds for that research available? For 10 cents per nominal global Catholic, we could invest $100 million to work out 10-15 robust, credible, top-shelf peer reviewed journal caliber method clinical trials. Imagine how many more Catholics could trust the methods outside the existing user base if the clinical understanding of the method in various subpopulations of users was more fulsome! The Marquette team does well in publishing and providing evidence-based work, but their budget is limited to special interest grants, and so their sample sizes are not as large as conventional clinical trials by a large factor.

If we as a Church honestly expect people to put their trust for their lives and families in NFP hands, don’t we owe them more than a sample of 150 predominantly white, 30-year-old, university educated, Catholic, western women’s experience with a method? How about a survival analysis based on observed contributors to user failure, and tables breaking out all causes of method and user failure with their incidence? Give people a good understanding of the levers they can control to maximize efficacy and proactively troubleshoot risky observations!

Oh, and why is Creighton the only method that offers instruction by medical professionals? Why is what is ostensibly a medical question being punted to lay couples simply because it carries ethical implications? Riiiight, the lack of clinical trials makes most medical schools wary to instruct doctors to recommend NFP methods because of perceived (or real and not well understood) inefficacy.

 

[utunumsint]

Here’s a bomb: 4 years of nearly constant abstinence. Not the kind where it’s once a month. The low-ball, ultra-conservative, phase 3 only method with a short luteal phase looks like rutting season by comparison to the handful of times DH and I have been able to be together since DS was born. We have serious reasons to avoid now, and so abstinence it was.

Yes, the teachers of these methods need to acknowledge that some medical conditions must morally and medically be managed by something other than just NFP. There are contraindications to NFP that are provided for in Humanae Vitae, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable for the material upfront to say: X, Y, and Z conditions require active medical management by a trained medical specialist and may be incompatible with NFP. As it were, the few Catholics who are faithful to NFP who also have complicating medical conditions risk ending up getting strong-armed into persisting with a method when medical intervention is indicated.

I was even working with the medical director (an MD) of the method I use after over two years of wonky CM and a cervix more changeable than Michael Jackson’s face. It was all written off as being due to extended breastfeeding and a medication I was taking. She had TWO YEARS of postpartum charting data and digital ovulation tests and never once said, “Get a reproductive hormone blood panel done. This isn’t normal.”

Thankfully, I have a terrific GP with an unusually good knowledge of endocrinology who did some investigative sleuthing with ratios of my blood tests. After about 4 rounds of bloodwork and some imaging, we found the root causes.

So lesson learned for me: even if someone is an MD consulting on your NFP charts, unless that person is legally carrying your patient file, you are NOT receiving medical advice. If I hadn’t received the hunky-dory, once-you-wean-it’ll-be-back-to-basics messaging, I would have pushed hard for diagnostics 2 years ago. But the symptoms were subtle enough that they could be discounted.

I’ll speak plainly: the Church needs to finance some credible, arms-length prospective clinical trials for the major methods and not use cherry picking inclusionary criteria for participation (I.e. No endocrine disorders, no reproductive conditions.) Humanae Vitae includes a call to action to scientists to develop methods that are effective. Why has the global Church not been front and center in making the funds for that research available? For 10 cents per nominal global Catholic, we could invest $100 million to work out 10-15 robust, credible, top-shelf peer reviewed journal caliber method clinical trials. Imagine how many more Catholics could trust the methods outside the existing user base if the clinical understanding of the method in various subpopulations of users was more fulsome! The Marquette team does well in publishing and providing evidence-based work, but their budget is limited to special interest grants, and so their sample sizes are not as large as conventional clinical trials by a large factor.

If we as a Church honestly expect people to put their trust for their lives and families in NFP hands, don’t we owe them more than a sample of 150 predominantly white, university educated, Catholic, western women’s experience with a method? How about a survival analysis based on observed contributors to user failure, and tables breaking out all causes of method and user failure? Give people a good understanding of the levers they can control to maximize efficacy and proactively troubleshoot risky observations!

Oh, and why is Creighton the only method that offers instruction by medical professionals? Why is what is ostensibly a medical question being punted to lay couples simply because it carries ethical implications?

AMEN!!!

 

[alphawoman]

AMEN!!!

Thank you! After 4 years of abstinence, I think God understands DH and I genuinely gave NFP every chance before realizing that alternate medical treatment was required to treat my underlying medical conditions which rendered NFP untenable in my body.

 

[Marysann]

It seems to me that when I was a girl a lot of women had hysterectomies. Now I know why.

 

[Maximilan_Kolbe]

I’m a bit lost with all the acronyms.

Do these acronyms mean this:

dh - designated husband?
dw - designated wife?
pg - pregnant?
ds1 - first born son?
dd1 - first born daughter?
dd2 - designated daughter number 2

NFP - natural family planning
FAM - family?
STM - sympto thermal method?

i am at a loss. a little love here. what do they mean?

a

You forgot to write “WTH?”

 

[Kelfa28]

Here’s a bomb: 4 years of nearly constant abstinence. Not the kind where it’s once a month. The low-ball, ultra-conservative, phase 3 only method with a short luteal phase looks like rutting season by comparison to the handful of times DH and I have been able to be together since DS was born. We have serious reasons to avoid now, and so abstinence it was.

Yes, the teachers of these methods need to acknowledge that some medical conditions must morally and medically be managed by something other than just NFP. There are contraindications to NFP that are provided for in Humanae Vitae, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable for the material upfront to say: X, Y, and Z conditions require active medical management by a trained medical specialist and may be incompatible with NFP. As it were, the few Catholics who are faithful to NFP who also have complicating medical conditions risk ending up getting strong-armed into persisting with a method when medical intervention is indicated.

I was even working with the medical director (an MD) of the method I use after over two years of wonky CM and a cervix more changeable than Michael Jackson’s face. It was all written off as being due to extended breastfeeding and a medication I was taking. She had TWO YEARS of postpartum charting data and digital ovulation tests and never once said, “Get a reproductive hormone blood panel done. This isn’t normal.”

Thankfully, I have a terrific GP with an unusually good knowledge of endocrinology who did some investigative sleuthing with ratios of my blood tests. After about 4 rounds of bloodwork and some imaging, we found the root causes.

So lesson learned for me: even if someone is an MD consulting on your NFP charts, unless that person is legally carrying your patient file, you are NOT receiving medical advice. If I hadn’t received the hunky-dory, once-you-wean-it’ll-be-back-to-basics messaging, I would have pushed hard for diagnostics 2 years ago. But the symptoms were subtle enough that they could be discounted.

I’ll speak plainly: the Church needs to finance some credible, arms-length prospective clinical trials for the major methods and not use cherry picking inclusionary criteria for participation (I.e. No endocrine disorders, no reproductive conditions.) Humanae Vitae includes a call to action to scientists to develop methods that are effective. Why has the global Church not been front and center in making the funds for that research available? For 10 cents per nominal global Catholic, we could invest $100 million to work out 10-15 robust, credible, top-shelf peer reviewed journal caliber method clinical trials. Imagine how many more Catholics could trust the methods outside the existing user base if the clinical understanding of the method in various subpopulations of users was more fulsome! The Marquette team does well in publishing and providing evidence-based work, but their budget is limited to special interest grants, and so their sample sizes are not as large as conventional clinical trials by a large factor.

If we as a Church honestly expect people to put their trust for their lives and families in NFP hands, don’t we owe them more than a sample of 150 predominantly white, 30-year-old, university educated, Catholic, western women’s experience with a method? How about a survival analysis based on observed contributors to user failure, and tables breaking out all causes of method and user failure with their incidence? Give people a good understanding of the levers they can control to maximize efficacy and proactively troubleshoot risky observations!

Oh, and why is Creighton the only method that offers instruction by medical professionals? Why is what is ostensibly a medical question being punted to lay couples simply because it carries ethical implications? Riiiight, the lack of clinical trials makes most medical schools wary to instruct doctors to recommend NFP methods because of perceived (or real and not well understood) inefficacy.

Thank-you.

This summarizes questions that have been circling around in my head and puts them into plain english nicely.

We are supposed to be relying on NFP to space our babies…I wish the Church would do more to help.

I wish I could do something to help but I’m drowning and can’t.

 

[PhiloMed]

I found a bright side to failing NFP and becoming pregnant!

No peeing on sticks or taking temperatures for MONTHS! Woo Hoo! Though, I’m not sure if pregnancy symptoms or premenstrual symptoms are worse.

 

[jmjZelie]

I found a bright side to failing NFP and becoming pregnant!

No peeing on sticks or taking temperatures for MONTHS! Woo Hoo! Though, I’m not sure if pregnancy symptoms or premenstrual symptoms are worse.

And if you have a healthy pregnancy, no need to abstain from relations for quite a while.

I always found that not having to worry about getting pregnant because I already was pregnant was quite a relief.

 

[Allegra]

I found a bright side to failing NFP and becoming pregnant!

No peeing on sticks or taking temperatures for MONTHS! Woo Hoo! Though, I’m not sure if pregnancy symptoms or premenstrual symptoms are worse.

Second trimester hormones cause a lot of women to be particularly frisky, and it is nice not to have to worry about abstaining. You can’t get more pregnant!

 

[Sophie_Lawrence]

Here’s a bomb: 4 years of nearly constant abstinence. Not the kind where it’s once a month. The low-ball, ultra-conservative, phase 3 only method with a short luteal phase looks like rutting season by comparison to the handful of times DH and I have been able to be together since DS was born. We have serious reasons to avoid now, and so abstinence it was.

Yes, the teachers of these methods need to acknowledge that some medical conditions must morally and medically be managed by something other than just NFP. There are contraindications to NFP that are provided for in Humanae Vitae, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable for the material upfront to say: X, Y, and Z conditions require active medical management by a trained medical specialist and may be incompatible with NFP. As it were, the few Catholics who are faithful to NFP who also have complicating medical conditions risk ending up getting strong-armed into persisting with a method when medical intervention is indicated.

I was even working with the medical director (an MD) of the method I use after over two years of wonky CM and a cervix more changeable than Michael Jackson’s face. It was all written off as being due to extended breastfeeding and a medication I was taking. She had TWO YEARS of postpartum charting data and digital ovulation tests and never once said, “Get a reproductive hormone blood panel done. This isn’t normal.”

Thankfully, I have a terrific GP with an unusually good knowledge of endocrinology who did some investigative sleuthing with ratios of my blood tests. After about 4 rounds of bloodwork and some imaging, we found the root causes.

So lesson learned for me: even if someone is an MD consulting on your NFP charts, unless that person is legally carrying your patient file, you are NOT receiving medical advice. If I hadn’t received the hunky-dory, once-you-wean-it’ll-be-back-to-basics messaging, I would have pushed hard for diagnostics 2 years ago. But the symptoms were subtle enough that they could be discounted.

I’ll speak plainly: the Church needs to finance some credible, arms-length prospective clinical trials for the major methods and not use cherry picking inclusionary criteria for participation (I.e. No endocrine disorders, no reproductive conditions.) Humanae Vitae includes a call to action to scientists to develop methods that are effective. Why has the global Church not been front and center in making the funds for that research available? For 10 cents per nominal global Catholic, we could invest $100 million to work out 10-15 robust, credible, top-shelf peer reviewed journal caliber method clinical trials. Imagine how many more Catholics could trust the methods outside the existing user base if the clinical understanding of the method in various subpopulations of users was more fulsome! The Marquette team does well in publishing and providing evidence-based work, but their budget is limited to special interest grants, and so their sample sizes are not as large as conventional clinical trials by a large factor.

If we as a Church honestly expect people to put their trust for their lives and families in NFP hands, don’t we owe them more than a sample of 150 predominantly white, 30-year-old, university educated, Catholic, western women’s experience with a method? How about a survival analysis based on observed contributors to user failure, and tables breaking out all causes of method and user failure with their incidence? Give people a good understanding of the levers they can control to maximize efficacy and proactively troubleshoot risky observations!

Oh, and why is Creighton the only method that offers instruction by medical professionals? Why is what is ostensibly a medical question being punted to lay couples simply because it carries ethical implications? Riiiight, the lack of clinical trials makes most medical schools wary to instruct doctors to recommend NFP methods because of perceived (or real and not well understood) inefficacy.

I think historically, when Margaret Sanger was running around trying to “help” poor women avoid pregnancy by using contraceptives (often by giving them devices to use without the knowledge of their husbands) there should have been a similar movement in Catholic circles to figure out how to licitly avoid pregnancy through the use of NFP, or periodic abstinence.

Many of those women had legitimate reasons to avoid, but instead of learning how to work with their spouses and God, they were encouraged to contracept while lying to their husbands.

 

[pensmama87]

I think historically, when Margaret Sanger was running around trying to “help” poor women avoid pregnancy by using contraceptives (often by giving them devices to use without the knowledge of their husbands) there should have been a similar movement in Catholic circles to figure out how to licitly avoid pregnancy through the use of NFP, or periodic abstinence.

Many of those women had legitimate reasons to avoid, but instead of learning how to work with their spouses and God, they were encouraged to contracept while lying to their husbands.

I think that’s kind of what the “rhythm method” was supposed to be - it’s just that the knowledge really wasn’t there in the way that it is now, so there were lots of flaws with the method.

 

[Sophie_Lawrence]

I think that’s kind of what the “rhythm method” was supposed to be - it’s just that the knowledge really wasn’t there in the way that it is now, so there were lots of flaws with the method.

What I mean was that while Sanger peddled contraceptive methods, there wasn’t a simultaneous Catholic movement to discover a scientifically accurate “improvement” on rhythm method.

Sanger was aggressive. And she was ahead of Dr. Billings who was the founder of the Billings method by about 20 years.

I find it so sad that women were in need of a means to space pregnancy, and were given false compassion by giving them contraceptives.

 

[Xantippe]

What I mean was that while Sanger peddled contraceptive methods, there wasn’t a simultaneous Catholic movement to discover a scientifically accurate “improvement” on rhythm method.

Sanger was aggressive. And she was ahead of Dr. Billings who was the founder of the Billings method by about 20 years.

I find it so sad that women were in need of a means to space pregnancy, and were given false compassion by giving them contraceptives.

Even the rhythm method was very new at that point.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar-based_contraceptive_methods

It was around 1930 before rhythm was formally created as a family planning method–at the time, the biological insights involved were still pretty cutting edge–Margaret Sanger was active starting in the 'teens.

 

[Sophie_Lawrence]

Even the rhythm method was very new at that point.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar-based_contraceptive_methods

It was around 1930 before rhythm was formally created as a family planning method–at the time, the biological insights involved were still pretty cutting edge.

Well, the Church answered a Dubium in 1853:

The first time Rome spoke on the matter was 1853, when the Sacred Penitentiary answered a dubium (a formal request for an official clarification) submitted by the bishop of Amiens, France. He asked, “Should those spouses be reprehended who make use of marriage only on those days when (in the opinion of some doctors) conception is impossible?” The reply was: “After mature examination, we have decided that such spouses should not be disturbed [or disquieted], provided they do nothing that impedes generation” (quoted in J. Montanchez, Teologia Moral 654, my translation). By the expression “impedes generation,” it is obvious the Vatican meant the use of onanism (or coitus interruptus, now popularly called “withdrawal”), condoms, etc. Otherwise the reply would be self-contradictory.

catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=6452

So there existed some fundamental knowledge of avoiding sex at certain times to avoid pregnancy.

I guess I’m making my point poorly.

Sanger was opportunistic, she saw a need to limit families and “helped” by providing contraceptives.

There wasn’t any Catholic doctors who simultaneously developed a licit and accurate form of natural family planning.

 

[Xantippe]

Well, the Church answered a Dubium in 1853:

catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=6452

So there existed some fundamental knowledge of avoiding sex at certain times to avoid pregnancy.

I guess I’m making my point poorly.

Sanger was opportunistic, she saw a need to limit families and “helped” by providing contraceptives.

There wasn’t any Catholic doctors who simultaneously developed a licit and accurate form of natural family planning.

It was very speculative and theoretical at that point, though.

In fact, the timing of human ovulation wasn’t really understood until the 1920s.

 

[LongingSoul]

Well, the Church answered a Dubium in 1853:

catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=6452

So there existed some fundamental knowledge of avoiding sex at certain times to avoid pregnancy.

I guess I’m making my point poorly.

Sanger was opportunistic, she saw a need to limit families and “helped” by providing contraceptives.

There wasn’t any Catholic doctors who simultaneously developed a licit and accurate form of natural family planning.

Also within the pharmaceuticals field there has been active hostility against non profitable family planning methods even to the point of sabotaging research. When my father was active in the Knights of the Southern Cross back in the 70’s, one of their projects was a reaction to a pharmaceuticals company buying up the patent for a litmus paper being developed… and just shelving it altogether so it didn’t compete with the new chemical contraceptives being developed for sale.

 

[alphawoman]

I would consider the 1970s the start of the movement under the Church’s guidance, as Humanae Vitae was only published in 1968.

I didn’t post up thread with the intention of criticizing the genesis of NFP development, but rather to point out that there is SO much that can be done by the Church on a prospective basis to support clinical NFP research.

 

[utunumsint]

I would consider the 1970s the start of the movement under the Church’s guidance, as Humanae Vitae was only published in 1968.

I didn’t post up thread with the intention of criticizing the genesis of NFP development, but rather to point out that there is SO much that can be done by the Church on a prospective basis to support clinical NFP research.

Agreed. And God bless those researches who are already doing this work. I don’t know how well funded and supported they are, but if we had a fraction of the budget that large pharmaceutical companies put into developing new and expensive drugs, there would be a revolution in how family planning is done throughout the world.

God bless,
Ut

 

[Sophie_Lawrence]

I would consider the 1970s the start of the movement under the Church’s guidance, as Humanae Vitae was only published in 1968.

I didn’t post up thread with the intention of criticizing the genesis of NFP development, but rather to point out that there is SO much that can be done by the Church on a prospective basis to support clinical NFP research.

I wasn’t trying to criticize the genesis of NFP development. I’m sorry of it came out that way.

I just wanted to point out Sanger had a head start by a number of years. Also, while NFP was getting more scientific, she was working with scientists to get the Pill developed.