Anyone familiar with natural family planning methods?

KateLouise

Hi everyone,

I'm looking into natural family planning methods. The Creighton method is most readily available to me locally, in terms of instructors.

My reasons for looking into it are mostly that I'm catholic, although my husband is not, but he's open to exploring options.

I guess one of my big questions is around how quickly you can learn to follow the method so that it's reliable.

My Dr wants us to be put off TTC for at least another 2 mths, at which point we'll check iron and thyroid levels. So for health reasons it's important to me to not get pregnant (although the hospital obstetricians were happy for me to TTC as soon as I got my next period)

I've used fertility friend for years so I'm pretty good at observing CM. The creighton method is mostly based on this rather than temping.

Does anyone having any experiences with this?

Thanks

danieleandwayne

That method would never work for me-- I do not have a reliable way of checking my CM and I don't even think my body makes enough CM consistently. I temp and I use OPKs (nothing fancy, just the cheaper ones I bought online and/or through a coop). That works for me. 

Sharon&Paul

I am Catholic too. We use natural family planning with success during the 8 years of our marriage. There is always room for error, but when used correctly it is a reliable form of birth control.

lgsdesigner

We are going natural family planning right now. Not on any birth control, and not going to be TTC until late August/early September. I just go by my chart and we are extra careful during my FW time. SO far, so good!

kelley72

no experience with the Creighton method, I know you have to be extremely conservative when figuring out your fertile days in NFP when tta.  Of course a lot of us have wonky cycles after a miscarriage so that would be a hesitation.  After my cp last year my dr. ok'd me ttc immediately.  We happily conceived on the 2nd cycle after the cp.

I'm not Catholic but I do believe in prayer and ask God to either block or bless my desires ... (meaning if a pregnancy is not his will for me then* remove my desire)does I do not mean to start a religious/spirtual debate only stating a small part of my spiritual ideals that keep me going.  When I think about wether it is the right time ttc or if i'm just being selfish, etc. I have to talk myself down and recognize that just by me desiring an outcome does not = that outcome, in other words I'm not in charge, again this is just for me not meaning to upset anyone by my statement.

I wish you well and hope for your healing both physically and emotionally!

 *edited to make the statement make sense

annalisel

The first section of "Taking Charge of Your Fertility" describes in detail how to use charting to avoid pregnancy. I'm pretty sure when you combine its methods with abstinence during your fertile window, that's what is considered "natural family planning" by the Catholic church.

Basically there are 3 rules (which I will not state because I don't want anyone trying this without reading the book) and you follow both your temperature and your CM throughout the month. I used it for years and it was very easy to figure out when to avoid for my cycle. I can't attest to its success in that we found out later we had severe MFI, but the author gives impressive statistics and says most failures are due to deliberate disregarding of the rules. I loved using this method.