Category Archives: catholicism

Women Speak on NFP: A Story About Autism and Natural Gender Methods

Posted on June 3, 2013 by | 7 Comments

This is a guest post by Michaela of Making Life Divine in the Women Speak on NFP series. In this series you will hear from women using various methods of NFP, some to avoid pregnancy, some trying to conceive, and their experiences.

Disclaimer: This series is not meant to be a substitute for any method of training in NFP! If you are interested in one of the methods introduced in this series, please contact a certified instructor for information about training in that method of NFP. 

My story is complex and controversial to say the least. Granted, I am fortunate in many ways. I am a young stay at home mom. I have a 19-month-old son and I’m 19 weeks pregnant with baby #2. My son is by all appearances healthy at 19 months and I can only pray to God that He blesses me again with a healthy baby. We are a military family, currently in Florida though Arizona is “home”.

My husband and I were married in the Catholic Church. I am Catholic and he is not. I am my husband’s 2nd wife. I never EVER thought I would marry a divorced man or a man who is 13 years older than me, but I ESPECIALLY never wanted to marry a man who already had a kid.  My husband never would have stood a chance if our meeting had occurred differently. (That is an entire story of its own)

He has a son from a previous relationship who is now 13 years old. He is Autistic. He is considered “low functioning” on the spectrum, but I believe he knows everything you say even if he’s never spoken a word. Despite his challenges, he’s generally considered healthy… what a loaded word. I did not know his son when we got married, but I knew that I could love a man who could love a child with such challenging needs. I didn’t know how hard it would be though. I was a new wife, a new mom, and I had a role I never wanted as wife-of-a-man-with-another-child, and not just any other child.

Why do I bring this up? What does this have to do with NFP? For us, NFP was everything. It was everything from becoming healthy as fertile individuals to prevention of pregnancy thru planned conception. Natural. Family. Planning. It’s not about a method. It’s not about an iPad app (though I use both). It’s about a journey to have faith in God and build a family.

Natural: There is NOTHING anyone does to directly cause Autism in his or her child. NOTHING. However, the rates are skyrocketing, why? There are now studies that suggest maternal pre-conception and first trimester folate levels, maternal health and illness prevention and genetic composition are significant components. To me, another big one was how hormonal contraceptives change mating behaviors. (AKA, take your Folic Acid, stay healthy, be aware of the effects of hormonal contraceptives on sexual attraction, and don’t marry someone just like you genetically). The cause of Autism is multifaceted, theoretical in many ways, maybe this, maybe that…it’s never-ending, but I had to do the best I could and leave the rest to God (but I didn’t know that lesson yet).

I had been using Hormonal Contraceptives for over a decade. I never considered what I was doing my body until I became Catholic and became a nurse with greater understanding of medication and its responsibilities and consequences. Contraception in marriage was something we knew we would forgo. I tossed boxes of OrthoEvra in the trash! I felt liberated. I was ready!

Family: We talked during our marriage prep about being open to any children God would give us. I have wanted children my WHOLE life. But, my biggest fear was, what could I do to prevent my children having Autism? The fear was almost enough to make my husband feel that it wasn’t fair to “do that to me”. Would we not have kids? Being a mom was all I’ve ever wanted. Ultimately, we talked about the biggest thing we knew decreased risk of Autism – the gender.

Did I mention my husband is 1 of 5 boys, 0 girls. Of those 5 boys they’ve had 11 children – only 3 girls. No woman (there are 7) has birthed a girl first (just saying). I practically married into a dynasty!

Planning: Autism is more prevalent in boys. The current statistics are 1 in 88. That’s OVERALL. It’s actually 1 in 56 boys.  It is also more common in siblings when one already has a diagnosis on the spectrum.  The risk in direct siblings, if the next child is a boy, is over 25%. But half-siblings 12 years apart? No one knows. All providers I ever talked to told me that any given pregnancy carries a 4% risk that SOMETHING will be “wrong”. Less than 2% of boys will be diagnosed with Autism.

While I was deployed (our entire engagement) I read the book by Dr. Landrum Shettles, How To Choose the Sex of Your Baby. Why? Because he talks ALL about NFP Science: taking temps, reading mucus, understanding how babies are made, and the differences in making those babies. (Gist being, if you pinpoint ovulation you can skew your chances of conceiving one or the other based on how close to O-day you have intercourse.) I knew that if I had a girl, we had a better chance of not having a child with Autism.

What does the Church say? Well, my understanding is that it’s accepted to use natural gender selection methods because you use the same methods in selecting which days to be intimate and which days not to be, so long as you realize that God will give you what you are meant to have and if it’s not what you “want” then you are to still be loving and open to the gift you created, just like if NFP “fails”. The Church understands couples need consider health risks when preventing or achieving pregnancy. There’s that word again, health. For us, health risk included considering how to mitigate risk of Autism by gender preference.

Some plans don’t go the way you want them: Guess what happened? We got married; we tried for 3 months charting temperatures, observing for mucus, and documenting it all on Fertilityfriend and NOTHING. So, we decided to “wait a year”. I was in Colorado Springs on Active Duty and Joe was in Phoenix at his civilian job anyway. The night before he left, with no egg white cervical mucus noticed, on day 14 of what would have been my first “normal” cycle since throwing away the patches months earlier, while using Ovulation Predictions Kits that had read negative, we conceived our first child. I knew right away he was a boy.  I was scared out of my mind. What had I done? NFP had not failed me. I had failed to understand it.

I did everything I could in the first 20 weeks to determine if he was a boy or a girl. I peed in cup and watched glitter turn green in a split second; I did Chinese calendars, midwives tales, the ring on a string. They all said BOY! We went to our ultrasound and VOILA! BOY PARTS! I was DEVASTATED. I cried and cried. I felt selfish for ruining my husband’s happiness because the doctor told us that everything was healthy. His brain was the right size, his heart was beating strong, his face showed no clefts, he had two feet, two hands, a complete spine, and I’m CRYING because he’s a BOY?! I’m such a horrible person. I couldn’t admit this to my provider or anyone!  I became extremely depressed. I didn’t understand God’s plan over my plan.

I delivered my son naturally and when he was placed in my arms I began to wonder, would he love me? Would he hug me? Would he show me something precious to him and want to share it with me? As mothers, we are gifted with unconditional love, but I was so scared. When he was 4 months old I had to let go of my fear because it was ruining my mothering experience. I had to give my fears to God. And when I did, I watched my son grow; meet his milestones and I celebrated them even more! I have pictures of everything he does. I LOVE my son more than I ever imagined. He is a Mommy’s BOY. BOY being the operative word. Cars. Rocks. Animals. Throwing balls. Tooting in the tub. B.O.Y.

Planning (Round 2): So when it came to #2, what do we do this time? I thought about not having any more children and I even thought about spacing with hormonal control until my son was deemed developmentally appropriate or not. I felt it might be my only choice to ensure his health before we brought another life into this world. After much prayer, we gave it to God.

To space our children, we practiced exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months and continued breastfeeding through his first year (we still are), I took my PNV’s with at least 800mg of Folic Acid, and watched for fertility signs. I got my first cycle at 8 months post delivery but I did want to ensure that my son was 12 months old and had had his 12-month check up before conceiving again. The AAP now recommends that all children be formally evaluated for Autism at their well checks (Linc has been evaluated at 9, 12, and 18 months). AND Child Spacing of at least 12 months from birth to conception decreases chances of Autism in the subsequent child. Although 3 years is recommended, we didn’t feel waiting 3 years was something we were willing to do. I was still nursing; I was charting all possible symptoms and observing for CM. If I thought there was something, we shared our love in other ways.

I didn’t have another cycle again until just before my son’s first birthday. I was using my fertility charting iPad app, counting days, and looking for CM (for serious this time). We talked about “going for the girl” again. We really didn’t care either way, but my husband has 2 sons and a girl would be nice. So, we left it on the table and we abstained around the most likely fertile days per the Shettle’s Method until I got the news that the Army was planning to mobilize me this coming fall. It was time to make a baby! It was in God’s hands to give us who He wanted us to have. I prayed A LOT, I paid very close attention to my symptoms and CM, and on day 19 in January of my 4th cycle we conceived Baby #2. Ultrasound confirmed (and still does) to the day what I already had charted – conception on day 19. We utilized the fertile CM symptoms to time our conception. We say baby #2 is also a boy. We do not plan on finding out until the delivery – not because I will be devastated if it’s a boy (I won’t be) but because we want the surprise!

God taught me by giving me my son that He is the Ultimate Creator. Out of a quarter billion sperm, my son was the winner the night that he was made. NFP did not fail me. God knew better than I what joy my son would give me and what appreciation I would gain for His guidance.

Am I still worried? ABSOLUTELY. Hormones, pregnancy, the unknown, the whole caboodle makes me a wreck if I get too wrapped up about it. I just have to consciously give my fears to God and pray for a healthy baby-in all ways.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share with you. This is a very difficult topic full of fear, hope, and ultimately faith- faith that I can be open to God’s plan no matter what it holds, and answer his call if I am chosen to bear a child with Autism or any special challenge. No matter who comes along, or what conditions they may have or acquire in life, they are blessed by God and I will love them unconditionally.

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Michaela is a military wife, RN turned stay-at-home-mom, and soon-to-be mother of 2! Despite being a Pinterest/Facebook/BlogLovin’ addict, Michaela enjoys self-portrait photography, scrap booking, and playing piano. Michaela writes about the joys and challenges of her life and family at Making Life Divine.
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Posted in Baby, catholicism, Children, Family, Guest Posts, Marriage, Motherhood, NFP

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Women Speak on NFP: How NFP Got Me Pregnant

Posted on April 24, 2013 by | 21 Comments

This is a guest post by my dear friend Kaitlin of More Like Mary~More Like Me. in the Women Speak on NFP series. In this series you will hear from women using various methods of NFP, some to avoid pregnancy, some trying to conceive, and their experiences.

Disclaimer: This series is not meant to be a substitute for any method of training in NFP! If you are interested in one of the methods introduced in this series, please contact a certified instructor for information about training in that method of NFP. 

My experience with NFP has been different than most. I’m coming up on five years of marriage to my husband, Ted, and we’ve yet to actually use NFP to avoid a pregnancy. Because of my history, we knew we might have trouble conceiving and started trying for a baby pretty much from the get-go. Even though we haven’t needed to chart to postpone getting pregnant, we are eternally grateful for the knowledge that came with our pre-marriage NFP courses. NFP led us to NaPro technology, a technology that uses a woman’s NFP charts to direct its diagnoses and treatments for infertility.

We have NFP (and NaPro) to thank for getting us pregnant. Here’s how:

1. NFP helps to identify key days of your cycle to make diagnostic testing and treatment more accurate. One example: Anyone who has gone through the initial rounds of testing for infertility has probably heard of  ”day 21 blood work”. In theory, day 21 is one week after ovulation and a good time to check your hormone levels to get an idea of what your body is doing. This is based on the idea that women have 28 day cycles and ovulate on day 14. But, last I checked, a woman who has 28 day cycles 100% of the time….. doesn’t really exist. So if you ovulate a few days later than the doctor thinks you “should”, your blood work could be horribly inaccurate and even misleading. A much better approach is to complete the blood work on “peak + 7″. That is to say, seven days after you identify your “peak” which is ovulation. If you don’t chart, you can’t identify this crucial time and complete the blood work with this level of accuracy.

The first OB we sought help from when we realized we couldn’t get pregnant was not trained in NaPro. He suggested the “day 21 blood work” and an ultrasound series on days 12, 14, and 16 to watch my follicles grow, hopefully erupt, and produce an egg. We opted to do the blood work (and paid thousands of dollars out of pocket. Don’t even get me started on that….) but weren’t able to do the ultrasound series. He ended up putting me on a high risk medication for a hormone level he thought was too high. When I was tested by a NaPro doc on “peak + 7″ months later, it was perfectly normal and the medication wasn’t needed. I’m thankful we didn’t do the ultrasound series because if I didn’t ovulate on the exact days he thought I would, it could have been a complete waste of time.

We did several ultrasound series with our NaPro doctor a year later and discovered I wasn’t ovulating. Thanks to my charts, we were able to identify the best days for me to take a medication that helped with this. We then used my charts to identify my peak and watch my follicles grow in order to determine if more medication was needed. We have NFP to thank for giving us this amazing picture:

follicles

Three follicles. All of which erupted later that day. One of which released the egg that held half the DNA for her

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who has known grown into this.

Amazing.

2. NFP helps doctors heal your body rather than just get you pregnant. I think that many doctors, in their quest to “get you pregnant” really miss an opportunity to get you pregnant. 

Let me back up first.

I saw my first OB when I was 15 years old. I had horrible, horrible, horrible periods that were causing me to miss school every month. Cramps that sent me to the floor in agony. Puking for the first several days of my cycle. I saw just about every OB our small town had to offer and they all said the exact. same. thing. They all suggested I take the pill. It sounded like a great idea to me…except my mom refused to let me. My long term boyfriend probably had something to do with her refusal, but all I could see at 15 was her refusing to let me feel better. “This is the only thing that will help me!” I argued. She finally consented when I was 18 and my cramps instantly went away. But after only a few months I began to wonder what I was actually putting into my body every day. Even more so, I began to wonder what this meant for my future. I knew I wanted children, so what was going to happen to me when I went off the pill? I came to realize that I wasn’t healed, I was patched. And I desperately wanted to be healed.

As a sophomore in college, I sought out our local NFP instructor and asked her if she knew of any doctors who would treat me without prescribing the pill. She knew of one, several hours away, and I called immediately. The office said I had to learn NFP before meeting with him so he could review my charts. So I signed up for the class and took it with a friend who was having similar issues. After a few months, I met with my first NaPro doctor, told him about my symptoms, and showed him my charts.

Endometriosis.

Not yet a diagnosis, but a strong suspicion. He suggested surgery.

I cried and cried. In part because I was worried about what this meant for a future family (Ted and I were newly dating but pretty serious at this point). But I also cried tears of joy and relief. Finally, after five years and countless doctors, I had one who was actually going to try to help. He even gave me this analogy. “If your car breaks down, you don’t call a tow truck to tow you around in a broken car forever. You call a mechanic and get it fixed. Birth control is just a tow truck. I want to actually fix your car.”

Cut forward a few years when Ted and I are seeking help for infertility. Our blood work experience has already taught us to only work with doctors trained in NaPro, but we needed to meet with a local OB to arrange for ultrasounds to be sent to our doctor. (He was three hours away. NaPro is worth. the. drive.) I started to tell the OB just a tad about my history and was about to ask him if he would simply order ultrasounds for me and let us use his technician when he interrupted me. “It looks like, with your history, you’re going to need In-Vitro. I highly doubt you’ll ever get pregnant on your own.” I told him that, as a Catholic, that was not a moral option and not something I wanted to do. He just restated his stupid opinion and acted like I was crazy. He did consent to ordering the ultrasounds, however, which was all we needed from him.

A year later, after his technician conducted our ultrasound series and our NaPro doctor prescribed the right medicine, I gave birth to our beautiful daughter just two hours before Dr. In-Vitro went on call. If she had been born just a bit later he would have been the doctor catching her. I was actually disappointed it didn’t work out that way. I would have loved to have had the opportunity to look him the eye and say, “Remember me?“. Don’t think I wouldn’t have done it.

Because I had a doctor who understood NFP and was able to read my charts, he never once suggested that I wasn’t able to get pregnant without artificial reproductive technology. He fixed the problem. He healed my body. And he gave us our Hannah.

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3. NFP helps you identify the best possible days for conception. If you’ve been following Haley’s series, you are aware of the fact that you can use NFP to avoid pregnancy by avoiding sex on certain days. But you can also increase your chances of getting pregnant by having lots of sex at the right times!

Anyone who has dealt with infertility knows that’s not nearly as fun as it sounds.

Nuff said?

4. NFP treats the whole person. We are body and soul. We cannot find healing in a system of medicine that only seeks to treat our body. When I sought out doctors who were committed to treating me with NFP and NaPro technology I found doctors who truly cared about me. I’ve worked with four different NFP only doctors in three different states and each of them has helped me deal with the spiritual and emotional aspects of infertility just as much as the physical. One doctor told me of his prayers for me the morning of my first surgery. Another allowed Ted to bless his hands with holy water before going in for surgery a second time. Each of them took the time to fully explain things to me, allowed me time to process and grieve, offered me tissues, and assured me of their prayers. I’m not saying you can’t also find that in mainstream medicine, but holy doctors seem to abound the world of NaPro. And the world needs holy doctors to treat more than just medical conditions.

NFP is powerful. It’s information that every women deserves to have about her body. Especially women struggling to get pregnant.

That’s real medicine. That’s what got me pregnant.

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Kaitlin is a Catholic wife who, by the grace of God, has gone from blogging about infertility to blogging about motherhood. She writes at More Like Mary~More Like Me.
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Posted in catholicism, Children, Family, Health, Marriage, Motherhood, NFP, Pregnancy

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Women Speak on NFP: An Interview with Dwija

Posted on April 22, 2013 by | 12 Comments

This is a guest post by Dwija of House Unseen, Life Unscripted in the Women Speak on NFP series. In this series you will hear from women using various methods of NFP, some to avoid pregnancy, some trying to conceive, and their experiences.

Disclaimer: This series is not meant to be a substitute for any method of training in NFP! If you are interested in one of the methods introduced in this series, please contact a certified instructor for information about training in that method of NFP. 

(Dwija had the brilliant idea to make this post “interview” style. Hope you enjoy it! – Haley)

Haley: So, Dwija, you’re a Catholic convert like me, so I assume you haven’t always had the view of marriage and fertility that you do now. Tell me a little bit about your journey toward NFP.

Dwija: Okay, well…you know how I like to drop new tidbits about my weird childhood every now and then, right? Brace yourself: I was raised in an “unusual” faith community that taught that any sex, even within marriage, that wasn’t intended for procreation was a sin. So, the Church’s teaching that sex is both unitive AND procreative was pretty wonderful for me.

Between the time that I basically stopped believing in the faith I was raised with and my conversion to Catholicism, though, I had sort of a muddled view of marriage and fertility- one that I wasn’t ever able to flesh out until I came to the Church. But I basically assumed that any “regular” guy would expect consequence-free sex and I agreed to think that was reasonable so I could be “normal”. Lucky for me, my husband is faaaaaaaaaaabulous and selfless. Even in college, before we were engaged, he said that no man should expect any woman to alter her body for his pleasure. It was amazing. And that was the day my pro-NFP stance was born.

Haley: What method(s) of NFP have you tried? Did you have a good or bad experience?

Dwija: The only method of NFP we’ve ever used is the Sympto-thermal method, which I taught myself after our second child was born using Toni Weschler’s book “Taking Charge of Your Fertility.” Without getting into the reasons right now, we used STM to avoid pregnancy for five years after that. So if you need it to work to space the babies, it WILL work. But it’s not easy to abstain when you’re fertile because, well, it’s supremely natural to want to come together during that time, ya know? Since then we’ve not had as grave reasons to avoid having more children, so the spacing is a little closer, with an average of a bit more than two years between babies (so far!).

Haley: I know you have horrible, debilitating morning sickness during pregnancy like I do. Tell me a little bit about that and how it affects your child-spacing and NFP.

Dwija: Well, the sickness with each pregnancy has been totally different and did not depend on gender or personal physical fitness or anything that I can determine. Two of my full-term pregnancies have come with half-dead-for-months-how-will-I-ever-survive-this hyperemesis (one boy and one girl), two have come with “run of the mill” nausea, and one, our second child, was practically symptom free. Amazingly, as with labor, once you hold that baby in your arms, the physical discomforts all make sense somehow. Or are worth it. Or something. Basically I’ve given up on comfort being a deciding factor in any major life decisions. Like Papa B16 said “This world promises you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness!“

Haley: How has NFP affected your marriage and spiritual life?

Dwija: NFP has been the tool that’s allowed us to consider children so often. Considering them, talking about them, knowing they could be on the horizon, keeps us grounded in our primary vocations as spouses and parents. The most difficult time in our marriage came, not coincidentally, toward the end of that long space between babies two and three. Although it is definitely sometimes necessary, it is not natural in a healthy marriage to abstain consistently for so long. After a while, that can put a strain on a relationship. Being able to identify that and get brave together about trusting God’s plan for our future instead of our own breathed new life into our family- figuratively and literally!

Haley: Your youngest baby is beyond adorable. Please elaborate on that statement.

Dwija: Ehrmagherd.  Right?  She is the bees knees.  She totally made friends with the cashier at the grocery store today.  Her two front teeth are enormous.  I love her chubby thighs.  Not a single older child can stay crabby when Mare Bear comes in the room.  Also, first home birth…so, super neat memories there and all that jazz, too.  You know: bonus!  I’m attaching a photo (of course) for your entertainment ;)

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Dwija is the beer drinking, joke cracking friend you wish you had in real life. In her (imaginary) spare time, she loves Will Farrell movies, 90s rap, and jalapeño kettle chips.  She lives in a fixer with her five kids in that she and her husband bought sight-unseen off the internet.  Clearly she makes prudent decisions. Visit her at House Unseen, Life Unscripted.
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Women Speak on NFP: Why My Husband and I Don’t Use Contraception

Posted on April 10, 2013 by | 11 Comments

This is a guest post by Stephanie of Captive the Heart in the Women Speak on NFP series. In this series you will hear from women using various methods of NFP, some to avoid pregnancy, some trying to conceive, and their experiences.

Disclaimer: This series is not meant to be a substitute for any method of training in NFP! If you are interested in one of the methods introduced in this series, please contact a certified instructor for information about training in that method of NFP. 

I bet not everyone gets to learn about contraception with the help of a Slip N’ Slide. Seriously. Born and raised Catholic, I learned somewhere along the way that the Church never permits artificial forms of birth control, but until I attended this particular gathering of my high school youth group, the one involving said slide, I’d thought birth control was one of those things, like Crocs and the Backstreet Boys, that wasn’t really taken seriously anymore.

I’ve discovered, as it turns out, that birth control totally is serious business. Love, I was told that night, is meant to be free, faithful, total, and fruitful (the slide was supposed to represent this, I think). It’s meant to be given without reserve, promised and sealed in fidelity, to hold back nothing, and to invite a man and woman to become creators of new life. It all made a lot of sense, especially when I discovered that the Catholic Church didn’t insist that every sexual act produce a baby.

So yes; my Catholic faith tells me that contraception is always inherently wrong. If you told me that it’s foolish to follow a bunch of rules just because the Catholic Church tells you to, I’d say you’re absolutely right. The amazing thing about the Church, I’ve learned, is that every time I’ve put a question of teaching to the test, there’s been a perfectly clear, logical answer that emphasizes one’s best good. Rules don’t exist to burden us (there’s a reason why you stop at a red light, for instance, or why your iPod manual tells you not to take your iPod swimming), but to let us live in the most fulfilling way.

The thing is, I don’t want to lead with my religion. I want to lead with who I am. My understanding has since deepened beyond a teenager’s somewhat blind obedience to her faith. The more I learned, the more convinced I became that birth control is one of the greatest inhibitors of romance, intimacy, and true freedom. I’ve come to see that biologically, practically, logically, and even romantically speaking, choosing not to bring contraceptives into a relationship is one of the absolute best ways to foster trust, honest communication, and authentic love. Who doesn’t long for that?

In the past few years, various friends and personal reading have led me to become a huge advocate for what I like to call the crunchy life. You know: coconut oil, kale, homemade cleaning products, and natural deodorant. I know I’m not the only one — in my observation, the benefits of things like green juice, organic restaurants, and neti pots are becoming commonplace on the pages of many women’s magazines.

It’s a puzzle to me, then, that with all the justified concerns we have about our well-being and environmental impact, so many of us seem to overlook a critical area of our lives: our reproductive health. Biologically, the birth control Pill and other hormonal contraceptives work by releasing large amounts of synthetic hormones, estrogen and progestin, that suppress ovulation and mimic the hormonal symptoms of pregnancy. In other words, they fool a woman’s body into a sort of state of constant pregnancy.

This, to me, couldn’t be further from natural. Consider, for instance, the fact that it’s normal to take medicine when you have a headache. It’s not normal when you don’t have a headache. In the same way, the Pill is marketed to “treat” a condition that doesn’t exist: it’s intended to actually prevent a woman’s body from functioning as it naturally does.

What’s more, the information packet for the Pill contains an extensive list of side effects that are directly related to taking it, ranging from weight gain, acne, migraines, and high blood pressure all the way to heart attack and increased chances of breast and cervical cancer. Ironically enough, the Pill often lowers a woman’s sex drive, the very thing she sought to liberate, as well. While packets are quick to point out that the Pill is merely “associated with” higher instances of serious conditions, and that they are rare, I still personally don’t find that the freedom to enjoy sex without pregnancy outweighs these risks.

I’m angered when I see how readily the Pill is pushed on women, largely in the name of profit. Friends have described taking birth control to me as feeling trapped in one’s own body, not feeling at all like oneself, and living in fear of what might happen to one’s complexion, weight, and future children, if one ceased to take it (you can read more anecdotal testaments here). We deserve so much more. The health-related shortcomings of birth control speak for themselves, but I think the logical case against contraception is just as convincing.

Free, faithful, total, and fruitful. It seems that even to a nonreligious individual, these four elements of love and sex are, at some point in a relationship, very desirable. I think most would agree that the body speaks a language, and that sex and love speak the same thing, whether one intends them to or not. They say, I want you, and all of you, forever. Isn’t that what we’re all longing to hear?

If one of these elements is missing, the body essentially speaks a lie. I want you, it says, but not all of you. It’s a conditional promise. When the fruitful aspect of sex is artificially eliminated, there’s a withholding of one’s fertility and the accompanying responsibility it bears.

That exact sense of unconditional love and responsibility is my biggest reason of all not to contracept. I met my husband Andrew four years ago, and when we became a couple, it didn’t take long for either of us to know we’d never go on another first date. Not only was he a handsome lover of words who’d hide notes around my apartment, he shared my take on birth control. During our engagement, we signed up for Natural Family Planning (NFP) courses to prepare for a contraceptive-free marriage.

Choosing to forego birth control in our marriage comes down to love. Karol Wojtyla, the man who became Pope John Paul II, wrote that the opposite of love is not hatred, but using another person. One need only look to the culture, I think, to see that hookups, friends with benefits, and cohabitation have left so many of us broken. We’re promised freedom, but are left instead with deep wounds. No one’s body or heart is meant to be used only for what it can offer sexually; it’s meant for love that sacrifices and heals.

Each of us is so much more than just a body, but in our humanness that can be easy to forget. Even in a loving marriage, there exists the possibility of desiring one’s spouse for self-gratifying purposes, rather than a desire to express love for the other. It’s a daily battle to let love prevail over lust.

I want my husband and I to have the best possible chances of winning that battle–when birth control takes pregnancy off the table, I can only foresee a greater temptation to use one’s spouse, even unintentionally, to take sex for granted. Birth control, I think, could easily become a crutch to mask a lack of self-control for one another’s sake.

In our attempts to not take sex for granted, we’ve found NFP a powerful way to understand sex as good and beautiful without idolizing it. A far cry from the rhythm or calendar methods of old, NFP is a scientifically precise, observation-based method of simply tracking, rather than altering, the existing conditions of a woman’s body in order to determine periods of fertility and infertility throughout her cycle. When used correctly, NFP is as effective at postponing pregnancy as the Pill.

I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t hard not to giggle, at first, when we learned that cervical mucus was one of the observable signs of fertility. We discovered that planning to use NFP in the abstract and actually sitting in a classroom learning it, trying to pretend a couple wasn’t standing there talking about ovulation the way most people talk about the weather, are two completely different things. You get used to it.

It’s actually something I’m so thankful for–I’d venture that, between texting my husband about my mucus while I’m at work, filling in my chart together each night, and constantly discerning a prudent time to begin a family, we have a more goofy, more intimate, and more joyful sex life than we ever could with contraception. The responsibility of planning our family doesn’t just fall to me as I take a daily pill or replace a monthly patch; it’s shared by the both of us. The self-control required to abstain during times of fertility sets us free to truly give ourselves to one another.

Intimacy isn’t a right to be demanded. It’s the fruit of loving, willful submission. Sexual freedom, we’ve seen, doesn’t mean a total lack of responsibility for each other. It means a willful choice to love in a pure, self-giving way. “Freedom,” said John Paul II, “exists for the sake of love.” That is, when you love someone, you actually desire to place their happiness before your own. It’s a beautiful thing to behold.

Love that is free, faithful, total, and fruitful; love that sacrifices and unites. It’s nothing less than any of us deserve. I’d say that’s definitely worth a trip down the Slip ‘N Slide.

This post originally appeared on Arleen Spencely’s blog.

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Stephanie delights in bike rides, good books, puddle jumping, The Avett Brothers, hammocks, avocados, and the notes her husband Andrew sneaks under her pillow. She is thirsty. Knowing so many others are, too, she spent a missionary year with Generation Life speaking to students about human dignity and authentic love. Her passion is telling young women they possess immense worth and that pure, sacrificial love is real; she thinks a truthful understanding of sex and love is medicine for an aching culture. Upon noticing there were few resources for Catholic brides-to-be, Stephanie decided to make a humble attempt at filling the void. Her blog,Captive the Heart, is a collection of wedding ideas, spiritual reflections, inspired dates, and general ways to plan a sacred, stylish celebration and a holy marriage.
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Women Speak on NFP: One Girl’s Experience with the Sympto-Thermal Method

Posted on April 4, 2013 by | 30 Comments

 

This is a guest post by Deirdre of Like Mother, Like Daughter in the Women Speak on NFP series. In this series you will hear from women using various methods of NFP, some to avoid pregnancy, some trying to conceive, and their experiences.

Disclaimer: This series is not meant to be a substitute for any method of training in NFP! If you are interested in one of the methods introduced in this series, please contact a certified instructor for information about training in that method of NFP. 

What I have to share with you is a mere introduction to this practice, which is simply a way of understanding one’s fertility and knowing how to work with it. I learned the STM from The Art of Natural Family Planning: Student Guide, which is published by the Couple to Couple League. Understanding was my motivation for learning NFP in the first place. I think for some women, the cycle is very regular and the body is straightforward and easy to read. This has never been the case for me, so I liked the idea of learning some tracking techniques so that I would come to have a better grasp of what was going on with me, both physically and emotionally.

Based on my experience, I would say that, no matter what your situation — whether you’re hoping to conceive or whether you are currently seeking to avoid pregnancy for a time, or even if you’re single and pregnancy is not a potential part of your life — it could be a helpful exercise to do some charting on your cycle and learn some more about yourself in this area, especially if you are not already particularly regular or aware of your phases.

Have you ever been very tuned into nature, such that you can wake up in the morning and look at the sky and listen to the wildlife, and predict the day’s weather, based on the signs around you? There is a pleasant and satisfying feeling that goes with being in the know in this way. You learn a practical wisdom and sensitivity that can be very useful but is also enjoyable in itself — maybe it’s helpful to know that rain is coming, so that you can get the things out of the yard and into the shed; or maybe it’s nice to know just because it’s nice to be able to grasp and work with nature, rather than being taken by surprise or at nature’s mercy. Coming to know your fertility cycle is a similar experience.

All this being said, I am not an expert on the STM! But I can tell you a few things about it, and perhaps the introduction will be helpful.

Basics

The “thermal” part of Sympto-Thermal is the easy starting point of the method. The basic idea is that you track your fertility by taking your temperature with a high-quality thermometer at the same time every morning, right when you wake up. By doing this, you capture your Basal Body Temperature (BBT), which is an indicator of where you are in your cycle. Each day, you make a note of your BBT on a chart. Over the course of the month, you will be able to see trends in your BBT. From these, you should be able to identify your different cycle phases, and in particular your time of ovulation. From this alone, you can garner key information about what days of the month you can expect to be fertile.

The “sympto” part of STM is a little more complex. This part is about identifying the various qualities of your cervical fluid as it changes throughout your cycle, and learning how these changes are also clues of where you are in your cycle. This takes a bit more effort than a moment with the thermometer in the morning; you really have to be conscious of it it throughout the day and diligent about it throughout the month if you want to get an accurate read on yourself. The basic way to approach this kind of “research” is at each bathroom break. Sometimes it may mean simply taking a look at your used toilet paper before discarding it and sometimes it may mean doing a little self-inspection, testing your cervical fluid between your fingers in order to identify its consistency. I find that it’s easiest to gather this information during the day, making mental notes, and then do your formal notation on your chart at the end of the day.

If you get into this method and are doing a thorough job with it, you can also opt to keep track of your cervical opening on your chart, which would be another element of the “sympto” part. I personally have not done this part, and it’s not as important as the other two, but you can certainly find info on it in whatever official STM reading materials you pick up and it will increase the accuracy of your charting.

So that’s the basic picture for you of what activity the method entails: a morning notation of your BBT and an evening notation of your cervical fluid (and your cervix itself). Both are noted on the same chart so that, after a few weeks, you have a one-stop-shop visual of the various factors that indicate your fertility. If you are charting for the purposes of achieving or avoiding pregnancy, you will learn more about exactly how to use the information on your chart for reliable decision-making.

Experience and Challenges

Two major perceived deterrents with this method are 1) that morning thermometer routine part is probably obnoxious and 2) that cervical fluid part is probably disgusting. The good news is that neither fear is accurate.

It is not that much of a burden to take your temperature once you get in the habit of it. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be at the EXACT same time every morning; as long as you’re measuring your BBT within the same space of about a half-hour, you’ll get the proper read. That means that, if your normal waking time is 7am, you can plan to take your temp anywhere between, for example, 6:45am and 7:15am, and you’ll be able to track accurately enough. It would only be a problem if you were measure at 7am three days out of the week and then 10am on the other four days. Also, if you have a thermometer that stores your temperature for you, you don’t actually have to read it and write it down immediately. In my experience, it worked to take my temperature at 6am and then immediately shut off the thermometer for the day. Then, in the evening, when I was making my other notations, I would power the thermometer back up and read what it had recorded that morning, thus getting all my charting done in one go. On the weekends, when I wanted to sleep a little later, I would simply set my alarm for 6am, take my temperature, set the thermometer aside for later, and roll back to sleep! Not too bad.

Also, I never bought the high-accuracy thermometers that some sources talk about. I just used the one I already owned (for fever-detecting purposes) and it seemed to serve me just fine.

As for the cervical fluid, it can be a bit off-putting to read about it at first, but I believe that’s something to get over once the initial surprise factor is behind you. After all, this is a natural and healthy process of your body and there’s no reason to be afraid of or repulsed by the proper functions of your systems – even more intimate ones. Actually, for me the challenge was not any ‘yuck’ factor, but simply the fact that the cervical fluid can be hard to read. I’ve talked about it with friends as well and we have agreed that it is not always as straightforward as the literature presents it. The expectation is that you’ll have a certain kind of fluid for each phase of your cycle and that differentiating among them will be simple, as long as you know what you’re looking for. This may well be true for you! In my experience, however, it can be a frustrating process when this doesn’t quite happen. How do I make note if it’s not quite one type or the other, but somewhere in between? What if it changes back and forth every day? In the end, I found that it could be helpful to keep a note of what I saw, but that I depended more on my BBT to get a chart that made some sense. The cervical fluid part was more like occasional corroborating evidence than a guide unto itself.

The Chart

The chart itself is probably the most daunting part when you first see a STM kit in front of you. I remember when I first saw my friend’s chart and I thought it was impossibly complicated. Fear not! Once you get a very basic tutorial on what notation goes where, you’ll find that it’s actually extremely simple. I never actually bought a kit for myself, so at first I was simply borrowing some chart sheets from someone else. When I ran out, I went ahead and just drew up my own charts, which I enjoyed doing because I could tailor them for my exact purposes and needs (and eliminate the one small expense of this method). Of course, if you enroll in a program, like the Couple to Couple League — through which you can actually send a copy of your chart to a consulting, expert couple so that they can give you feedback — you will probably want to stick with the standard-issue charts, which include a carbon copy.

General Thoughts

As I said before, I think it is a good thing to learn how to learn about yourself and your body in this particular way. Sometimes it can be extremely clarifying and even comforting to have a visual resource (your completed or semi-completed chart) to refer to and to give you insights into the crazy world that is your hormonal shifts. Charting can also be a great way to uncover any anomalies or problems existing in your reproductive system, so it’s worth trying for a while if you have concerns in that area.

I would be sorry, however, to provide all this information if it ended up being an aid in anyone’s pursuit to avoid having children who could otherwise be happily welcomed into the world. One of the best things about my (short, thus far) experience with the STM is that I was informed enough to know pretty much the moment I had conceived, and to begin to enjoy my pregnancy right from the start. While the STM is easy to learn and the basics can be put into practice quite simply, at the end of the day, it would still be a challenge to use it for purposes of avoiding pregnancy – and in a way that is natural, because of course the joy of frequently and freely giving yourself to your spouse and the accompanying promise of life can’t be easily set aside. As we know from the Psalmist:

“Children are a heritage from the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them”

Deirdre Folley is a young Catholic wife living in the DC area who is passionate about advocating for Life and all other beautiful things. She and her husband John are expecting their first child this summer. You can visit her at Like Mother, Like Daughter where she blogs, along with her mother and sisters, about Catholic domesticity and maintaining the collective memory.
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Women Speak on NFP: Kelley on the Creighton Method

Posted on April 3, 2013 by | 6 Comments

This is a guest post by Kelley of Over the Threshold in the Women Speak on NFP series. In this series you will hear from women using various methods of NFP, some to avoid pregnancy, some trying to conceive, and their experiences.

This series is not meant to be a substitute for any method of training in NFP! If you are interested in one of the methods introduced in this series, please contact a certified instructor for information about training in that method of NFP. 

Hello, Carrots readers!  My name is Kelley and I’m an NFP user.  We have been using the Creighton model to postpone pregnancy for over three and a half years.

 

Our choice to use NFP came as a bit of a default choice for us originally.  Because I have Lupus it was recommended that I not use hormonal birth control pills because I am at a higher risk for clots already and birth control pills increase that risk even more.  Birth control pills work in 3 ways: suppressing ovulation, thinning cervical mucus, and preventing implantation of a fertilized egg (usually through thinning of the uterine lining).  My gynecologist advised me that low-dose or progesterone-only pills do not carry the same amount of risk for clots (since it is the estrogen really that increases the risk for clots).  However, I knew that low-dose and progesterone-only pills were also the pills that relied more heavily on preventing implantation of a fertilized egg because they are not as reliable at preventing ovulation.  This was not okay with me.  I was not Catholic, but I did not like to think a fertilized egg would be expelled from me because of my birth control.  So, pills were out.

 

My husband is Catholic, but he left the whole matter up to me.  I decided to give checking my temperature a try.  I got a basal thermometer and tracked my temperature for a full six months.  There was no discernable pattern or connection to my cycle.  It’s possible that my Lupus was the reason for this since I have read that certain illnesses can cause abnormal fluctuations in temperature.  I know couples who do rely solely on a temperature method, but in my opinion, there are way too many variables that can affect your temperature and if you are serious about avoiding pregnancy, I think you should always pair temperature with cervical mucus.

 

Then I decided that since the temperature method was out, condoms were in.  I wasn’t really aware of other types of NFP so I didn’t really pursue it anymore.  For three or four years I had carefully tracked my cycle and knew the minimum and maximum number of days per cycle so I determined based on that what the range of days for my ovulation would be (11-18) and I figured we would employ condoms only when it was really necessary.  As it turned out, we pretty much relied only on my calendar method and used condoms only a few times ever because we really hated them.  So there I was, using that ancient rhythm method!

 

When I went for my annual exam it was the first since I’d been married.  I told the nurse practitioner that we were using NFP, even though technically I guess it was the rhythm method.  I was interested in learning about a diaphragm so we talked about it and she gave me information to take home.  She was obviously not really supportive of my NFP, but she had the decency to keep it to herself for the most part, unlike most doctors.  I never did pursue the diaphragm because to me, barrier methods always seemed more risky than NFP unless you were also tracking your cycle at the same time.  The failure rate of barrier methods is really pretty high, especially with diaphragms and the way I see it, if you aren’t having sex at all during the fertile period it must be more effective than a barrier method during the fertile period.

 

About six months after we were married we saw an announcement in our Catholic church’s bulletin for an NFP intro class.  We decided to go mostly because I wanted to see if one of those methods would give us a shorter period to avoid!  Ahh, newlyweds!  It was just us and one other girl who was engaged.  Kind of sad for the cathedral in the diocese of Atlanta!  Anyway, it appeared we’d have even more days when sex was off limits so I wasn’t interested.  But the instructor kept calling me and I finally decided to meet with her.

 

I showed up and she asked me about what kind of family planning we were doing and I think she was shocked to realize I was just doing rhythm and avoiding pregnancy was still very important to us.  (My husband had just started grad school and I was only making $10-12/hour for the first few months.)  She gave me a chart and taught me what I needed to do.  We met pretty frequently to start and I got excited about it and couldn’t wait to count how many days there was from my “peak” to the start of my period.  It was always 12–how cool!  (I was an NFP nerd from the beginning.)

 

At every session she’d quiz me on the whole procedure, but I caught on really quickly.  Creighton is based only on cervical mucus.  You can chart other symptoms if you want, but that’s really all there is.  I think it’s a really easy method to use and I’m glad I don’t have to wake up early to take my temperature no matter what.  While regular cycles aren’t required for Creighton, I will admit that it probably helped me learn it a lot faster than I would have otherwise.  Since you are only looking at the cervical mucus, it doesn’t matter what day it is at all so being irregular is irrelevant.  It turned out that based on my normal fertile period and peak, my rhythm method was fine.  It worked for those 6 months, but I didn’t have any irregularities.  I have seen irregularities a couple of times and been able to see how that affects things.

 

Using NFP is not always easy, but I’ve really appreciated not having to add yet another drug to my long list.  I also really enjoy knowing my cycle so well and I think it’s really intresting.  I know it’s been easier for me having regular cycles and being a nurse as well, but I think lots of other women can benefit from the Creighton method.  I hope to be an instructor one day, but it’s an awfully expensive method to learn so it hasn’t happened yet.

 

If you have any questions or would like to talk to me more about my NFP experience as a Protestant, you can find me at Over the Threshold. But these will be past experiences because this Easter I became Catholic :-)

 

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Kelley and her husband have been married for almost 4 years and currently live in Connecticut.  Their blog has been chronicling their married life from day one.  You can follow their adventures (living in 4 different states and Germany), read book and movie reviews, recipes, and a hodge-podge of other faith-based thoughts at Over the Threshold.
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Women Speak on NFP: Top 11 Reasons to Try Creighton

Posted on April 2, 2013 by | 25 Comments

This is a guest post by Michele Boda in the Women Speak on NFP Series about her experience with NFP using the Creighton method. This series of women’s experiences is not meant to serve as training in NFP, if you are interested in learning more about the Creighton model, please visit: www.creightonmodel.com
www.naprotechnology.com
or www.fertilitycare.org to find a Practitioner near you

creightonmodel

When Zac and I were married just two years ago, doctors told me not to risk using natural methods because surely I would get pregnant and that would be dangerous, both for me and the baby. I have Type 1 Diabetes and getting pregnant before my blood sugars were totally in control would mean serious complications. Those doctors were, however, quick to push the pill, the implant and all sorts of IUDs, all methods with lengthy lists of side effects and dangerous health risks (Increased risk of breast cancer? Perforated uterus? Decreased libido? No thanks). Because of my disease we are dedicated to a healthy lifestyle and these methods just didn’t sit well with us. And as faithful young Catholics we were looking for a system that respects the dignity of women and marriage.  So we took a leap of faith and began charting with the Creighton Model FertilityCare System, a completely safe, all natural and effective method of avoiding (or achieving) pregnancy, and reaped lots of benefits we were not expecting.

It’s not always easy, but Zac and I feel peace knowing that I am not loading my body with artificial hormones, but that we are avoiding pregnancy naturally and benefiting my reproductive health at the same time. So when we are able to start our family I know I will be the healthiest I can be. My wonderful husband and I now talk to engaged couples about the awesomeness of this natural method. In true Letterman style we call this our Top 11 reasons why we use Creighton (because 10 were just not enough):

11. NaProTechnology! Creighton is the first method of NFP to be fully integrated with a new women’s health science. My PCP and OB/GYN were unconcerned with my abnormal cycle, faulting stress and offering birth control pills as a swift solution. Thankfully, my Creighton practitioner saw the irregularity in my chart and referred me to a NaProTechnology (Natural Procreation Technology) doctor. Because of the Creighton System, I was able to connect with NaPro docs who were not interested in masking my symptoms with destructive drugs but who tackled the cause of my symptoms with a cooperative and healthy approach.

infertility success rates

10. Affordable- and who doesn’t appreciate that?

9. Zero side effects- Nothing bad is going in, and I’m feeling pretty great.

8. Natural- Nothing artificial about this gal!

7. Eco-friendly- Using my own body to monitor my fertility- talk about true organic living.

6. Morally acceptable – We have a problem with the post fertilization effects of artificial birth control- with that and any barriers limiting our marriage and lowering the dignity of the human person. Using NFP we are open to life even when we are avoiding pregnancy.

5. Increased communication- Natural methods involve attentive communication about charting signs of fertility and also our intentions in using the system. And if you can talk about “biological markers,” you can talk about anything.

4. Easy to learn- With the help of a dedicated practitioner, Creighton Model System is easy to learn and easy to interpret. Checking for biological markers (cervical mucus) is as quick and easy as going to the bathroom. (No internal exams, no thermometers, no monitors. Just you and your toilet tissue).

3. Effective- 99.6% perfect use and 96.8% typical use effectiveness is a number we could really stand behind (Sorry oral contraceptives, 91% typical use is not gonna do it (Trussel 2011)).

Avoiding Success Rates vs Pill

2. Shared System- I observe, he charts, and we use the system together- because we always knew we were a great team.

1. There are possibly, I suppose, a few things my husband wishes he could change about me- my dangerous habit of using dish towels for ovenmits, my unbearable reliance on morning coffee, or perhaps my insistence to always sing the harmony to our favorite tunes- but my fertility is not one of them.

We believe in this system so much I am now not only a satisfied user but a proud FertilityCare Practitioner Intern out of the Pope Paul VI Institute in Omaha. NFP is a part of our Catholic lifestyle and is now my vocation and career.  Creighton has changed our lives and it’s a privilege to share the good news about natural methods with other young couples.

Michele Boda, FCPI & Zachary Boda

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Michele is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and John Cabot University in Rome. She lives in small town Butler, PA with super-husband, Zac. Wed in 2011, they love to talk to fellow young couples about the awesomeness of the Creighton Model System. Michele recently started her education as a FertilityCare Practitioner Intern in Omaha, NE at the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction under the instruction of Creighton and NaProTechnology founder Dr. Thomas Hilgers. She is totally excited to share the system with you to make for healthier women and happier marriages! She can be reached at michele.a.boda@gmail.com or visit her blog: http://bodafide.wordpress.com/. 

www.creightonmodel.com
www.naprotechnology.com
www.fertilitycare.org to find a Practitioner near you!
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Women Speak on NFP: Introducing a New Series

Posted on April 1, 2013 by | 40 Comments

As a Catholic woman seeking to follow Church teaching about marriage, fertility, and sexuality, I’m concerned about the lack of resources for couples to become equipped to practice Natural Family Planning (NFP). So many faithful and well-intentional Catholic couples have either been inadequately educated and encouraged in Church teaching regarding contraception and do not know how to implement those truths in their marriage, or their diocese (like mine) has no NFP classes or resources readily available to help them learn NFP. If we truly believe that Church teachings about marriage, fertility, and contraception are true, good, and beautiful, we need to help couples embrace those truths by giving them the education they need to practice it.

Since our conversion to the Catholic faith in 2010, we haven’t been avoiding pregnancy (we call it Awesome Family Planning, or AFP) and have been blessed with two little girls (one 18 months and one arriving this May) in addition to our 4-year-old son. Apart from very severe morning sickness, my pregnancies have had no complications and we’ve been able to provide for our children financially. In our current situation, there are no grave circumstances that would prompt us to avoid pregnancy and we embrace ecological breastfeeding as natural child spacing. However, what if there was a grave concern? What if a health crisis made a subsequent pregnancy highly dangerous? What if my husband lost his job?

A Catholic marriage is called to always be open to life, but the Church does provide families with the option to space children through natural family planning in cases of severe physical or financial strain. If we were in a situation prompting us to avoid pregnancy, I wouldn’t know how to begin learning a method of NFP! I wouldn’t know which method to be trained in! Since there’s no classes offered within a two hour drive, I would want to be sure that the method we chose was the right one for our family since it would be a big commitment to pursue training. I have spoken to so many women in a similar situation and this is why I wanted to run this series of women speaking about their experience with various methods of NFP to provide some resources in order to learn more.

In this series you will hear from women using various methods of NFP -some to avoid pregnancy, some trying to conceive- and their experiences. Some began using NFP for religious reasons, some for health reasons. Some are Catholic and some are not. I’m excited to hear from some of our Protestant sisters about why they find NFP valuable to their marriages and spiritual life and to share and celebrate this commonality with them!

IMPORTANT! Disclaimer: This series is not meant to be a substitute for any method of training in NFP! If you are interested in one of the methods introduced in this series, please contact a certified instructor for information about training in that method of NFP. For some women, learning NFP is a piece of cake, for others it’s very tricky. In other words, don’t simply read this series, assume you’ve got the idea and then send me angry emails because your attempt at NFP was unsuccessful. This series is merely meant to give you an idea of several women’s experiences and point you in the right direction for further resources!

I’ve got some great posts lined up from some inspiring women and I can’t wait to share them with you!
UPDATE: These are the posts in this series that have run so far (more to come!):
If you’re wondering what all the fuss is about with Catholics not contracepting, you might want to look into some posts from the archives:
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Trembling at Confession

Posted on March 11, 2013 by | 21 Comments

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As we approach Holy Week, I’ve been thinking about all my friends and readers who are going through RCIA this year to be confirmed this Easter. Are you afraid about making your first Confession? I was. I was terrified. I was so excited to be confirmed, but the anxiety of making that first Confession loomed over me. It felt like an excruciating torture I was going to have to endure before being accepted into the Church.

I remember so vividly coming to the end of the Penance service during Lent, lining up for the confessional and trembling. Most cradle Catholics I know are surprised to hear how scared I was, but they also haven’t ever carried 25 years of unconfessed sin around. It’s a tad intimidating.

One of my anxieties was just the shame of telling someone out loud everything horrible I had done. As I waited for my turn, I realized my perspective was off. Jesus already knew. He already knew everything. And he was the only one that mattered. But I was still afraid that I would chicken out. That I would hold back the worst things because I was too ashamed to speak them out loud. There was a statue of Our Lady right next to my spot in line. I asked her to pray for me. “Please give me the courage to make a true, full confession. Don’t let me knowingly hold anything back. Please, please, help me.” My hands shook. The people in front of me in line were chatting together about this and that and I was baffled by their nonchalance. Why aren’t they scared? I wondered, as my knees knocked.

When it was my turn, my stomach lurched. I knelt. My voice trembled. The tears came. It all tumbled out: my sin, my selfishness, my failures. Then I heard the priest’s voice. Not words of condemnation, but encouragement. Not despair, but grace. He told me my penance. I prayed the prayer of contrition and heard the words of absolution. Then: Go in peace. And let me tell you, I did. When you get to leave 25 years of guilt behind you, you go in peace.

I left and knelt in the church to complete my penance. Ask for Jesus’ blessing on you and your family. That’s it? Is that even a penance? I wondered. Sounds more like a gift. That’s not nearly enough to make up for what I’ve done! I thought as I looked up at the crucifix above the altar. It’s not enough. Was the answer. You can’t make up for what you’ve done. I made up for what you’ve done. Just like this. On the Cross. This is all my gift to you. I love you this much.

Can we understand God’s love and mercy if we don’t face our sin? Can we rejoice over our salvation if we don’t realize what we’ve been saved from?

I had been wrong about Confession. It wasn’t a humiliating hoop God was making me jump through. It was a gift offered out of His love. He didn’t want me to bear the weight of my guilt any more. He wanted me to offer it to him, to let it go, to be reconciled, to live in grace. He wanted to give me the chance to be free from sin, to receive his mercy and love.

Now when I hear someone is about to make their first confession, I am so excited for them. The joy, the peace, the beauty of it. During this lenten season when I go to Confession before Holy Week, I won’t tremble in fear like I did the first time, three years ago. I will tremble instead at the weight of God’s mercy. Behold! God’s love for you.
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When Donkeys Talk: Book Review and Giveaway!

Posted on March 5, 2013 by | 106 Comments

Soon after delving into Tyler Blanski’s new book, When Donkeys Talk: A Quest to Rediscover the Mystery and Wonder of Christianity (Zondervan 2012), I knew I had found a kindred spirit. And it wasn’t just because mutual friends kept showing up in the text: G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Anne of Green Gables, Jane Austen, and even Martianus Cappella. You see, like Blanski, I have always been a medievalist at heart and there’s not many of us haunting this modern world.

When Donkeys Talk begins with author Tyler Blanski, an Anglican writer and musician in Minneapolis, in a spot I was very familiar with: facing disillusionment with modern Christianity. He commits to a holy pilgrimage to find answers. As the book begins, I find myself begging, “please don’t say you’ve got some new, progressive, and emergent idea figured out that 2,000 years of Christians have ignored”–a claim every 20-something who writes on theology seems to profess. But to my delight, he didn’t say that at all! He does something far more exciting, wise, and humble: he journeys to the past.

In his quest for the true richness of Christian faith, I saw my own journey mirrored. As a little girl I devoured every book about Greek mythology and Camelot I could get my hands on and those worlds were alive to me. It wasn’t that I was confused about reality, I knew the difference between myth and fact, but I was aware of the truth that I lived in an enchanted world. As I grew up I became more acquainted with modernity, but I never felt quite at home there.

As I developed a love for literature, no era fascinated me like the Middle Ages. From the Early Modern period and forward, it all seemed rather dull. When I finally read Max Weber in college, I discovered that this was due to a phenomena called “the disenchantment of modernity.” After the Enlightenment, the physical world and the spiritual world simply didn’t intersect. The supernatural did not touch the material. The world was not enchanted. There was nothing left to wonder at. There were no more mysteries.

This modern materialism infiltrated my theology. Was baptism really a big deal? My unbaptized, church-attending friends explained that it was just a symbol. “Why do I need to do it? I know what I profess in my heart,” they said. “There’s nothing magical about the water.” Even Christianity ceased to be mysterious and fascinating. It was as vague as a cloud yet as cut and dry as a business meeting. I longed for something more but feared that I was being irrational. “No need to be superstitious. This modern Christianity is very progressive and factual,” I told myself. It wasn’t until I started reading the Church Fathers that I realized that my longings had a home. What I had been missing was the historical Church.

In grad school I wrote a paper about the disenchantment of modernity and modern artistic attempts to re-enchant the world, to see the world again with wonder. “The problem,” my professor explained to me, “is that you have to be progressive, you have to do something new. You can’t just go back to the Middle Ages to find the answer!”

Tyler Blanski steps up next to other modern medievalists like C.S. Lewis to respond with the brazen question, “And why not?” Why shouldn’t we look back to a world saturated with the supernatural? Why can’t we question modern materialism and instead encounter a sacramental world?

The delightful read really hits its stride in Part II when Blanski paints a picture of “Atomland,” the world we inhabit with our often unexamined conceptions of modern materialism. With help from G.K. Chesterton, Wendell Berry, St. Augustine, and others, Blanski offers a mirror to show us the materialistic worldview we don’t often realize we have embraced. Then Blanski juxtaposes this City of Man with the City of God, in which the physical and the spiritual are ever-intertwined. His pilgrimage leads him to examine what we have to learn from the God-bathed world of medieval Christianity. Since C.S. Lewis’ The Discarded Image, I haven’t read a book that presents the medieval mind in such an accessible way. His synthesis really is wonderful. I found myself saying, “Yes!” and reading passages out loud to my husband when I couldn’t contain myself.

But how can we enter into this sacramental world of ancient Christianity? I applauded Blanski when he claims that one place to start is the liturgical year. I loved Blanski’s description of how embracing holy time, setting our clocks by the Gospel, can direct us toward sacramental living. He writes, “In Christendom we celebrate the feast days of the saints, the holidays that retell the biblical narrative. Good Friday is our Memorial Day. Pentecost is our Independence Day…The Christian calendar invites us to escape the straitjacket of individualism and pluralism, and instead to get our orientation and sense of self in this larger story.”

Blanski calls out for a “holy renaissance” in which ancient Christianity is reborn in our lives today. And it’s a cry we need to hear because Christians always seem to be following in the footsteps of the disciples who, when accompanying Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, failed to stay awake with Our Lord. Indeed, we are a people who are always falling asleep and we need to be reawakened. In addition to embracing the liturgical year, Blanski bids a return to the historical church’s understanding of the sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist. His description is beautiful and rich and it’s a message that would be accessible and inspiring no matter which Christian denomination you hail from.

As a former evangelical Protestant, I closely sympathize with Blanski’s wondrous journey into the joy and richness of liturgy and Christian tradition. I see my story reflected in almost every page. But as a Catholic convert, I found myself asking, now that we have journeyed into the depths of historical Christianity, where do we go from here? Blanski gives us an itinerary for the beginning of our quest: holy time, holy sacraments. But there is so much more to be found. Blanski’s holy pilgrimage seems to end just shy of the truths to be found in Roman Catholicism. His work points toward these truths, serving as a useful beacon to those only just setting out, and to those who have arrived at the final destination and have begun to make a home. 

I believe that the Church (note the big “C”) has never lost touch with the truth that our world is enchanted by the presence of God. The water we dip our fingers in as we enter Mass is not merely a gesture or a reminder. It is itself holy, sacred. The Church never falters in its belief that the Holy Eucharist is truly the Precious Body and Blood of Our Lord, knowing as Flannery O’Connor fiercely put it, “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.” It’s more than a symbol. It’s heaven touching earth. When a holy renaissance awakens us to these truths, what path do we take? What adventure lies in store?

I was so inspired and reawakened to the beauty of our faith through this wonderful book and I would highly recommend it no matter where you are in your journey, interested in a pilgrimage, traveling through the dark ancient forests of Christianity, or ready to reach journey’s end.

Thanks to the generosity of the publisher, I have 5 copies of When Donkeys Talk: A Quest to Rediscover the Mystery and Wonder of Christianity to giveaway to my readers!

To enter, simply leave a comment saying you’d like a copy of the book. For additional entries, share this giveaway on FB and/or Twitter, and leave an additional comment saying you did (or two additional comments if you did both). This giveaway will be open until midnight EST Sunday, March 10th. I will choose 5 winners through a random number generator. Good luck!

Disclosure: I was not compensated to write this review. I did receive a complimentary review copy and 5 giveaway copies of this book for my readers. 
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