does natural family planning work?
im taking a marriage class and im learning about it the teacher says it does but my doctor says it doesnt. i havent met anyone that has tried it. i dont know what to believe can anyone help me?
im taking a marriage class and im learning about it the teacher says it does but my doctor says it doesnt. i havent met anyone that has tried it. i dont know what to believe can anyone help me?
Comments
It does not work very well because women's periods are never 100% regular. Also, many people are unsure of the exact days they are "fertile".
The withdrawal method (natural planning) and the day planning method (also natural planning) does not work because
a) there is always some pre-*** during sexual intercourse and the sperm in that can cause pregnancies.
b) you need to know the approximate days that you are likely to be fertile ( the day you should ovulate then three days before and four days after) and many Americans (and people in other countries also) have no idea of when this happens or at when during their cycle they can become pregnant.
My husband & I have used NFP for 12 years now. We initially learned the Billings Method but because I had irregular cycles, it was difficult, so we switched to the sympto-thermal method as taught by the Couple to Couple league. It was such a big influence in our life & marriage that we went on to become NFP teachers.
I love being able to talk to others about NFP. It is such a misunderstood form of family planning. It is more effective than any barrier methods and is about equal to the pill - WHEN USED CORRECTLY. That "when used correctly" part is what can give NFP a bad name. But it's true for any kind of family planning. If you don't take your pill every day or use a condom every time, then you reduce effectiveness. Well, if you have sex when you know you can be fertile, you don't make your use of NFP very effective.
Most people who have unexpected pregnancies while using NFP get pregnant because they have sex too late in the early part of their cycle.
The most effective way to use NFP is after taking a class. If you don't know of any classes in your area, go to www.omsoul.com and go to their teacher-finder section. Some organizations also do home study (Couple to Couple League) or online classes - (Northwest Family Services).
Our own personal experience is that we used NFP to postpone for the first 2 years of our marriage, though some very challenging situations. We then used NFP to help diagnose a medical disorder that would go on to give me infertility issues. Thanks to NFP I was able to conceive twice during cycles where, if I hadn't been using NFP, I never would have known to keep trying because I ovulated so late in my cycle.
If it makes you feel any better, one of the first couples we ever taught used NFP successfully for over 5 years before they decided to be open to pregnancy.
Doctors are skeptical of NFP because they don't learn anything about it in medical school. It's unfortunate, but NFP means that doctors have to trust women to be able to learn about their bodies and they just don't. Frankly, it also doesn't make them any money. Doctors do have a financial incentive to prescribe the pill, insert IUD's, give shots. There are good doctors who support NFP, but they are difficult to find.
There are plenty of studies that support the research on NFP effectiveness at the 99% level. I have a feeling a lot of people think they are doing NFP because they are basically not using contraception and sort of going by the calendar. But modern NFP is a lot different. Let me explain a little about how NFP works and then you can decide for yourself.
NFP is using a woman's natural signs of fertility to determine if she is in a fertile or infertile part of her cycle. A woman's fertile window is 5-6 days long. This is because sperm, under good circumstances, can live for up to 5 days. A woman's egg can only survive for about 12-24 hours. And once she has ovulated, she will not ovulate again in a cycle (with the rare exception of double ovulation - like for fraternal twins - and ovulation always takes place within 24 hours; all NFP rules take this into consideration).
So, how does a woman know if she is fertile? The menstrual cycle is dominated by 2 hormones: estrogen and progesterone. Before ovulation, when estrogen starts to kick in, the body starts to produce a special kind of cervical mucus that sort of resembles egg-whites. Her cervix also changes in its position, openness, and firmness. After ovulation, the body triggers a production of progesterone. This hormone makes the cervical mucus dry up, causes the cervix to lower and close, and causes a woman's temperature to rise.
A woman using NFP watches the changes in her mucus, cervix and temperature and from that knowledge knows which part of the cycle she is in. If she is fertile (close to ovulation) and doesn't want to get pregnant, then she will refrain from having sex. If it is before ovulation she can use special rules to know which days are safe for sex. After ovulation there is no chance of another ovulation so she can have sex at any time.
Learning NFP can be confusing at first, but it gets easier after the first 2-3 months. Once you learn the rules, it actually doesn't require much thought at all! A minute a day to record your information and then you're done. After I learned the method well, I didn't chart after I confirmed ovulation either, so I really only charted the first half of my cycle and then took the second half off every month.
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