Your experience with NFP?

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kristalyn

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How long have you used it?

Has it been successful in helping you achieve pregnancy when you wanted to conceive?

Has it been successful in helping you postpone pregnancy when you wanted to postpone it?
 
well, I’m only on my third cycle using NFP. (I put off learning the method for toooo long). So far, so good. Although DH isn’t enjoying it too much!:rolleyes:
 
We’ve been using it for three years. The abstinence part is tough but in reality, it has brought us closer together. We have had some very important discussions about what we want from the future and what is important to us as a couple. We also have learned to view the marriage priveledge differently, in an almost sacred way. It’s hard to explain, especially to strangers, but it is really more precious when done in the way that God has given us. After abstinence is over, its a wonderful celebration. 'Nuf said.

We have very good reasons to use NFP, by the way. Having the children I have was advised against because of on-going physical issues. In my 2nd to last pregnancy, both my son and I almost died due to a uterine rupture along the scar of my previous c-sesction. It took a few years to overcome the fear of getting pregnant again but I did. Sadly, I had a miscarriage.
 
Yes.too both questions. In addition, through observations from our friends (or really my wife’s friends), we realized how beneficial it is to marriage. We recently became teachers to help promote it, and in the process have met many other wonderful couples. We are expecting our third in a few weeks. Apparently, God has approved of our plan so far, since all have been planned.

We started when we were married over 8 years ago. We did not learn very well and only latched onto some basic concepts (we took it through CCL). Since then, CCL has dramatically improved the materials for class making it much more understandable.

masondoggy: CCL does have some brochures that may help your DH understand NFP better. That’s why NFP is so beneficial, it points out what is just “an itch to scratch”, and what is for love and respect for spouse.
 
kristalyn: BTW, I love your sig!

masondoggy: Another suggestion, for your DH, is to listen to “Contraception, Why Not?”, by Janet Smith. It is now on CD. Find it at One More Soul. A local teaching couple may be able to get one to you for free. She does a good job of explaining what took my wife and I 6 years to figure out.

I did find a transcript online, but I highly recommend listening to the talk: catholiceducation.org/articles/sexuality/se0002.html
 
This is my 4th cycle using NFP to prevent pregnancy. We have 3 children (23, 18 & 13) from separate marriages. One of the children has been more than a handful giving us plenty reason to not have more children. My husband is 8 years my senior and I am nearing the end of my child bearing age. I checked out a book from the library and self taught myself. They offer no classes in my parish and I would have to travel about 30 minutes to attend a class. The hardest part of using NFP is the abstinence period for my husband. Once the fertile part is over, it is well worth the wait. I read the transcript by Janet Smith, Contraception: Why Not? This transcript strengthened my reasons for using NFP. I would recommend this to any and every one.
 
puppylove, the Couple to Couple League does have a correspondance course as an alternative. You also may be able to ask a teaching couple to come if you call your nearest teaching couple.

Other organizations may have similar options.
 
Just thought I’d add my own experience in here! 😉

We’ve been using NFP for about 9 years. I bought a book and read it myself. That’s how I learned!

In that time, we’ve had two pregnancies.

One was completely planned. No, I take that back. We decided to stop trying NOT to get pregnant and see what happened…Pregnant within a month! 😃

The other one is my almost-one-year-old. We didn’t decide to have another baby that time. We did decide to go ahead and be romantic, even though we knew a pregnancy might result…my husband was going in for surgery, and we knew there’d be a long period of abstinence while he healed. (We thought it would be 6 weeks or so…but he had multiple complications and it ended up being about 12 weeks of waiting!) Anyhow…we knew there was a chance, but we went ahead anyhow. So while we hadn’t “decided” to try to get pregnant, we both knew exactly when she was conceived.

So, we’ve had to make efforts to avoid pregnancy. In that time, NFP has been completely reliable for us. At no point did I suddenly realize that I was pregnant and have no idea how or why! 😉

Others here have explained how beneficial it is, even when you’re trying not to have a baby–and I completely agree.

We too seriously consider whether or not we can or should allow the possibilty of conceiving a child that month. We talk about it often and prayerfully. And the marital act becomes much more sacred and intimate.

Much.
 
Well, my perspective is a bit different. We have been married, going on 10 years now, and we have never really used NFP (and certainly not any form of birth control!!) We are 5 months along with our 7th child. (11th pregnancy). We began to learn the ‘method’ through CCLI, and a month into the class, we knew God was calling us really and truely give it all to Him. (this was w/in 3 months after our first child was born, and we were experiencing the normal infertility that can come along with breastfeeding)

It has been so beautiful and so liberating. We were no longer answering to thermometers, charts, and cervical mucus, and became so much more in tune to each others needs and to the voice of the Holy Spirit in our marriage.

I completely agree and will attest to the fact that period of abstinence are good for a marrige. We have many times prayerfully chosen periods of abstinence, that did not revolve around my fertile/infertile times, for specific intentions. These periods are then purely for those intentions, and not the added intention of avoiding conception. We do not know how to use it well enough to achieve or avoid a pregnancy. If we did face some grave or serious reason to post-pone another child, we would abstain altogether either until our circumstances changed, or until we did learn the method well enough. (and maybe in that time our circumstances would change anyway.) *I also wanted to add that, there are more than enough periods of abstinence when you have many little children running around! 🙂

I am not at all saying that NFP is wrong, or that it does not have it’s place. I do believe it to be over used and over promoted. The couple that taught the one class we attended, though CCLI, boasted that the method worked so well, that they had the three kids they wanted, when they wanted them. That really bothered us. 😦
 
we’ve been using NFP for 5 years. In my vocab NFP = all natural family planning-- ‘nothing’ to using something like the sympto-thermal method-- since its all natural means.
that being said we learned sympto-thermal from CCLI just by reading the book. I read a few others along with it. 3 mos into our marriage it really seemed like we really didnt any reason to not see if we would be blessed so we stopped using to avoid PG. We didnt then turn around and use sympto-thermal to conceive either-- we just changed our perspective-- being more open to life and I stopped charting-- and I got PG right when we knew it was possible to conceive =)

We’ve not gone back to sympto-thermal- although my ‘training’ in it gives me complete confindence that if I ever had to make a huge attempt not to be PG I can rely on the natural cycles God has given us.
My DD is 17 mos old and she was another great blessing that we ‘knew’ was possible just due to natural observations.

We are sort of going for spacing right now because I’ve had two emergency C sections but I personally feel 17 mos +9 mos is great ‘spacing’ lol so a new baby anytime is great =) We’ll see what happens but our back up plan is to pray for a baby alot around our 5 year anniversary when we take a 2nd honeymoon.

so- I dont chart. I just go by visible fertility signs. I say if my grandmother ‘only’ had 5 kids using calendar rhythm its good enough for me to ‘just’ do visible signs and I dont need to go all out and fool with all those extra rules and temp taking etc hehehe.
It seems to be working just fine for us!! I’m sure most people assume we’re using some sort of ABC-- but what a waste that would be! So many people drawn into that money making scheme using contraceptives during times they naturally wouldnt be able to get PG anyway. Poor brain washed society… 😃

–K
 
ahh and one other subject I wanted to mention is how much I appreciate the abstaining. I find its really helpful to have an ‘off limits’ period (not necessarily at the fertile time) to reflect on our marriage, ourselves, each other. Abstaining during fertility when ‘using a method’ seems to have really good benefits too. I wonder how different martial relations are with contracepting couples who because they contracept are always “available”. I’ve heard numbers quoted that say us NFPers do have more sex. I wonder if thats in part because women who arent in tune to NFP dont give much thought to when their husbands start to look “more attractive”. For the ladies I know what the abstaining has resulted in is a development in our attitudes about giving of ourselves– are we being open to our husbands when dont naturally have hormones behind the process? I can see how contracepting couples could fall into only having marital relations when the woman ‘feels like it’ as opposed to how we have marital relations because we recognize the self giving, the love thats at the heart-- and it’s not about “when I feel like it” or “when its ok with me” which is typically the schooled answer for “when am I ready for sex?”
–K
 
I know my wife and I aren’t a great example of using NFP since we just started.

We decided to start using NFP since we just had a baby girl 4 months ago. We started taking the course before we had the baby. We are currently in our 4th full cycle after pregnancy.

So far everything has been fine. We did have a “scare” this month because we thought my wife was pregnant because she is currently late, but it turns out that it’s just her body still returning to normal after the baby.

So far everything has been fine, it has brought us even closer together. It sort of feels like you have an engagement and honeymoon every month.

We didn’t use NFP to get pregnant, but we have been successful so far at avoiding pregnancy.

Check out this page for more info: ccli.org/
If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask either via this thread or PM.
 
Abstaining just isn’t that hard, once you are resolved to it. It was the other part that had an odd tone to it. Let me explain. Once you try abstaining, you become aware of just when it it that a woman is attracted to her husband and just when it is that she is less interested. Then you turn around and only have relations when she is not so interested. It is probably just me, but I find that aspect of it odd/difficult.

I venture that I would prefer an all or nothing approach, instead of halvsies.

I should mention that the question is from my past and was the type with themometer and mucus and such, and currently is of no relevance to my life. So I am answering from memory. I only used it for 2 years.

MY EDIT: I don’t know how to fix this problem, but I keep posting under the wrong part of the thread. I meant this to be a reply to the original post, but somehow that is not where it appeared in the thread. Sorry! END MY EDIT
 
Marauder, why would pregnancy be considered a ‘scare’? Closely spaced siblings are so much fun, and such a blessing. (as are all children :))
 
With our first kid only being 4 months old, it was a “scare” to think that we would have to deal with a 2nd one already. We would have loved any kids God decided to bless us with, but we aren’t quite ready yet. Not to mention the OB/GYN made it clear that you need to give your body at least a few months to recover between pregnancies.
 
Understandable. 🙂 BUT, don’t take what your ob/gyn tells you for gospel. Many a women have had babies a year or less apart with no problems what so ever. Trust the Lord! 😉
 
We’ve been using NFP for 5 or 6 years, trying to conceive the whole time.

We started off with the Creighton Model taught to us at Dr. Hilger’s facility here in Omaha. After about a year were were unsuccessful and switched to the basal temperature model explained to us by my wife’s OB. Both doctors presxcribed drugs for my wife, but oddly the same drug for different times of the cycle. We had success relatively quickly after switching to the basal temperature method and the new time for the drugs (sorry, the specific names escape me)

Our son is now 3.5. For the first year or so after he was born we were not actively trying to conceive, but not actively trying to avoid, either. We’ve been actively trying for about 2 years now, but God has not chosen to bless us with another pregnancy yet.
 
My husband and I have been using NFP for 7 1/2 years. We teach the Billings od.

We have four children-ages 6, 4 (19 months apart–our goal was 18 months apart), 2 and 10 months (15 months apart–our goal was 18 months again, but our youngest was 6 weeks early.)

There are about 3 years between our 2nd and 3rd child. We postponed a pregnancy during this time successfully using NFP. We love having our kids close together, but we needed a little bit of time after our 2nd was born.

NFP has worked for us to achieve and postpone. You need to learn a od properly and follow the rules. The four ods that are taught in our Diocese have the same effectiveness rate when they are used correctly.
 
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MamaAtHome:
Understandable. 🙂 BUT, don’t take what your ob/gyn tells you for gospel. Many a women have had babies a year or less apart with no problems what so ever. Trust the Lord! 😉
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I agree. We practice SNFP: SuperNatural Family Planning. 😃
Exclusive breastfeeding - even without following all the “ecological” rules - usually results in several months of infertility. If God decides otherwise, so be it. 🙂

In unusual circumstances (e.g. the first 6 months after a c-section), we’d probably use Billings. In dire circumstances, or if we were having infertility problems, we might learn Creighton. No offense meant to Creighton fans, but, in most cases, I don’t think the slight improvement in accuracy is worth the effort of checking so many times a day, folding the TP just so, using all those number-letter codes, etc. (And what’s with the jargon? NaProTechnology (R)! CREIGHTON MODEL FertilityCare! * VDRS! Let’s re-align the warp coils, Captain Picard! 😉 )*
 
I have been married for eight years. My wife in I practiced NFP for a year or so trying to concieve without success. We finally gave up based on the doctor determining that she was inconceivable. Impregnable?

Just came back from the doctor today who confirmed that she is in fact now with child (and 14 weeks along!) At age 38 and 45 we are so grateful for this, God’s gift.

Never give up!
 
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