I feel like I should start with a disclaimer, which is probably not a good sign. First, I might overshare here, and I'm sorry. Second, I'm going to be talking about NFP and our journey. I welcome comments and questions that are respectful and intended to further a conversation. I do not welcome comments that are rude, disrespectful and so on. Third, I pray that what I say is not hurtful to my readers (especially IRL friends) that struggle with infertility. I do not mean to belittle your struggles at all.
Okay, now that that is out of the way, let's get started.
NFP is the common name for one method of natural (no hormones, no drugs, etcetera) fertility awareness. It is short for Natural Family Planning. The method involves taking your temperature daily and interpreting some more personal signs of fertility. Husband and I have practiced NFP for the length of our marriage. Well, more accurately, have not used any form of artificial birth control for the length of our marriage. We didn't actually learn the method until our third child was born (hence three consecutive October birthdays).
We choose to use NFP for a variety of reasons. First and foremost is that we are faithful Catholics and we accept the authority of the Church in our lives. I realize that not every person, even every Catholic, is able to say this. I'm not here to preach to you, or change your mind. My words are not likely to do that. Second, I'm a healthy woman and have no desire to introduce artificial hormones to my body. I'm blessed that my body functions precisely as it should. I know that is not the case for far too many women. Third, we don't just accept the authority of the Church, but have come to an understanding of the reasoning behind these teachings and embrace them as true.
But this post is not even about all of that. This post is about how hard it sometimes is to do something, even when you know it is right and exactly what God wants for you.
"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light." Matthew 11: 28-30
That passage is a tough one to understand. I'm pretty sure I still don't fully understand it, and might never do so. But I think it is an essential passage for my life.
Sometimes I rail at God and want Him to know that I find nothing easy and light about being His child. This is certainly the case more days than not lately in terms of our family life. We are SO blessed to have had five healthy children. I have never lost a child through miscarriage. I know that I am the exception in that experience. But being that exception is not always easy. I am very aware of how easily my body accepts a pregnancy and kicks into gear to protect and grow a baby. And, well, sometimes I wish I wasn't so dang fertile.
Part of using NFP is abstaining from relations in a fertile period if we are not seeking pregnancy. Given my history, that can be a pretty long time. We are in a season where extreme caution is required. We do have serious reasons for postponing pregnancy (indefinitely at this point). Financially, we would put our whole family in danger with an unexpected pregnancy. Emotionally, we (and especially me) would be at a breaking point. Spiritually, I fear I would be even further from where God wants me. Our marraige would be strained by the demands of our family.
There is a misconception out there that once a couple comes to embrace NFP that they want a million kids and that they throw caution to the wind regarding their fertility. People think that we eagerly look for a positive sign every month. I guess this is true for some families. They have reached a point in their walk with God of complete surrender, I guess. But we are not there. We love each of our children and are grateful that we have been blessed beyond our imagining in our family. But we do not feel called to grow our family at this time.
This is where the hard part and the oversharing come into play. We're young, we've only been married eight years, and I've been pregnant five of them. Throw in nursing, and you find that my body has not been my own for a long time. So those brief windows when not pregnant and not nursing have been treasured. Are treasured currently. But. I'm young, I'm healthy, and my body seems to like pregnancy. So we chart the signs and we avoid each other. We carefully choose our moments. And lately it feels like the moments are far too infrequent.
NFP advocates like to tout the low divorce rate among couples who use it. I am happy about and take assurance in those positive statistics. But I want some reality too. I want people to talk about the struggles. The questions. The times when we question what we believe and feel burdened by our convictions. I think more of us should be telling others about the months that we feel like roommates more than spouses. I want to know what other couples are doing to keep their passion alive when their options are limited.
So I'm telling anyone who will listen. It is hard. There are days, weeks, months when you feel like you are surviving, not thriving. Real work is needed to grow and nurture a marriage in these circumstances (and any circumstances of course).
But, then you are blessed with that moment of clarity. That instant when you feel that you are right where God wants you to be, and that you are moving to an even better place in your journey. That moment when you get it, if only for a moment, when you read this:
"If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." John 8: 31-32
We're not there yet, or we might not stay there, but we're trying. And some days that is enough.
12 comments:
Beautiful post. For the last five years or so, we've been using FAM (Fertility Awareness Method), which so is sort of like NFP, but instead of abstaining completely, you can use "backup". Which more often than not, doesn't happen. So we're actually closer to NFP than we claim to be. Especially in the first year when I'm genuinely afraid of getting pregnant again.
Thanks so much for your honesty and transparency...that kind of openness is really so refreshing. And it's better for everyone if we can all be honest about what's going on instead of assuming that everyone else is doing great and we're the only ones struggling with an issue.
As far as keeping the passion alive, I hear you. Even with not completely using NFP, just having a baby in the house (or several children for that matter) can put a damper on things. Definitely finding time to do things you enjoy just the two of you and keeping the lines of communication open can help you hold it together.
{{hugs}} Thanks again for this post.
I hope that you will get a lot of support from this post, and that writing about it has at least helped a little.
Those times of abstinence can be so long and trying. Yet when the fertile time is over, wheeeeeeeeee! you can let go and have fun.
Yeah, there were time when we missed each other but that absence really did make our hearts grow fonder. We cuddled every night. We WANTED to be with each other. A much different world from trying for years to conceive and the feeling of 'oh, it's time to try... again?!'
Nicole, this was so open and honest, and I've always thought about writing something very similar, but I never have. I guess I'm not there yet either :)
I feel you, believe me, and it can be very hard sometimes to discern what God is asking/desiring for your family. Especially when the pervasive culture of contraception seems so easy and attractive -- when even your close Catholic friends are using it. I cannot say anything against them, as I am sad to admit that we have not always been 100% faithful to the Church's wisdom in this area.
It can be incredibly HARD to do NFP, and I think the redemptive, sacrificial quality of it is not fully explored in NFP classes/books. Sometimes it's not even touched on, and couples use NFP as a sort of "Catholic birth control" - which is also NOT the right approach.
God created a woman's body to be most receptive and desirous of her husband precisely when she is most fertile, so to deny yourself to your spouse, when both of you REALLY don't want to, is so stressful. Sometimes, don't we just want a roll in the hay? . . .
For us, I know it has caused tensions when we can't be together, and then, when the green light is on, I am usually not as "ready" as I was three nights earlier.
Add to that, my cycles are CRAZY irregular. There is no predictability to them whatsoever, so some months we may get no window at all. I'm not going to lie - that's a tough one.
I try so hard to be open to God's will, that I have finally just gotten to a place where I realize that I am OK with not being pregnant right now, and I think that God's will is for us not to be pregnant right now.
Sometimes it's so hard to articulate, but I know you get me.
Beautiful post. I completely get it.
Great post Nicole. That's the great thing about NFP, you are always discerning and I think that's a good thing!
I'm not qualified to respond here as even though we took the course on NFP after #3 was born, we've never really had to use it. We did learn an incredible amount from it though.. not just the details of how to avoid pregnancy but rather that we are all called to carry our crosses and depend on Him every.single.minute to get us through our days.
I really like Danielle Bean's article "One Yes at a time" that she recently published on the Faith and Family website. http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6379&Itemid=48
I would love to talk, but cannot write such deep, to the point of raw feelings on this subject. I have been open to life, had a tubal ligation, reversed the ligation, been open to life and nearly died by that openess. I would love to share in order to help you, but it is too much for a comment box or even for a phone call. It is the kind of face to face stuff that is the sharing of deep and emotional truths as well as beliefs. I'll keep you in my prayers because I completely understand your struggle, you are not alone~
Kathryn
Wow!! Nicole, you've just taken all the thoughts from my head and placed them into your blog. My husband and I have 6 children. The last is 7 months and the first is 11. We have been married for 12 years.
He is a teacher and our income is not enough to live off as it is now. Adding another to the pack and we would definitely feel the stress.
I have gotten pregnant 3 times while nursing and without any forewarning of a period. I just went straight to ovulation. So, now I feel like we need to go into total abstinence mode, just to be on the 'safe' side. But what does that do to a marriage. I feel like I am always rejecting my DH.
I so feel your pain. I am Fertile Myrtle myself. Sadly, he mostly sleeps on the couch while I sleep in the bed. He knows he does not have enough self control.
I am just waiting for a period, so that I can at least have a general idea of what is going on with my body.
I truly feel that my cross is having the desire to have as many kids as we can, but it not being God's Will.
I will be thinking of you and praying for you in your struggle...
Totally relate to this post--know you are not alone in your struggles and through prayer, sacrifice, and sometimes sin (gotta love that reconciliation opportunity), we can support each other in our mission to be sons and daughters of Christ.
Thanks for your honesty as it shows your true humility.
I could have written almost all of this myself (except that I haven't always been Catholic and managed to conceive 4 children when I, at least nominally, was using birth control). The Church's stance on birth control was one of the hardest things for me to accept when converting to the Catholicism and I got pregnant with #5 about about 2 weeks after we became Catholic. And now to add complications to it all, my return of fertility after #5 has been anything but clear and textbook. It's been so hard to do anything but abstain, which drives me into depression and is so, so frustrating. I have come to understand and believe the Church is totally correct in her teachings on the matter, but that hasn't stopped me from hating it at times and railing against it in my head while wishing I could just not be quite so fertile.
I am past this point in my life so the struggles aren't as fresh. I had nine children. We would do all that abstaining and then make one little mistake. If the rule says that the night of the fourth day past the peak mucus symptom is safe, well, the morning of the fourth day is not safe. I could always figure out afterwards what rule I had broken.
We were very poor. My husband worked in restaurants for most of that time, earned much less than a teacher and usually had no benefits at all.
Sometimes we had some scanty medical insurance, but usually we didn't.
In 1987, our low point, our income was a third of the Federal poverty level.
Somehow we made it.
I don't think we would have had more children, or not more than one or two more, if we just had had sex when we wanted to and accepted children as they came. As it was, except for #'s8 and 9, they are all 17-22 months apart.
So one suggestion is just to take the children as they come, unless you have a medical reason why you can't.
In retrospect, no one ever wishes they had fewer children.
If you really feel you can't do that, know that your struggles and sufferings in obedience to God are blessed by Him and are bringing you closer to Him, even when you might not especially feel that you are.
Susan Peterson
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