Tag Archives: Natural Family Planning

National NFP Awareness Week 2019

National Natural Family Planning Awareness Week is Sunday, July 21 through Saturday, July 27, 2019. NFP Awareness Week is an annual campaign to celebrate and educate individuals and couples throughout the country about the gift NFP is to marriages and families. This year’s theme is:

Love, Naturally!
Natural Family Planning
Cooperating with God’s design for married love

What is NFP? Natural Family Planning is a method based on a woman’s menstrual cycle. NFP methods involve daily observations of the scientifically verified, natural and recurring signs of fertility and infertility that a woman’s body displays during her monthly cycle. No chemicals or barriers are used. A couple prayerfully discerns if they feel called to achieve or postpone pregnancy and use the information accordingly.

The dates of Natural Family Planning Awareness Week mark the anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, Humanae Vitae. This encyclical explains the Catholic Church’s beliefs regarding human sexuality and responsible parenthood. The Church also celebrates the Memorial of Saints Joachim and Anne, the parents of the Blessed Mother, on July 26.

Be sure to follow the featured NFP Awareness Week page on the USCCB website. The USCCB and For Your Marriage Facebook and Twitter pages will also provide daily graphics and posts in recognition of the week. For more information on Natural Family Planning check out the pages, find an NFP class in your area, or read some articles here on For Your Marriage!

More NFP articles

Be Her Joseph!

When we first married, my wife, Misty, and I were the typical secular couple. We relied on hormonal contraception. Due to bad side effects, that didn’t last long. Misty found out about Natural Family Planning (NFP) through a Catholic friend. Admittedly, I was suspicious of all the “hocus pocus” involving thermometers at o’ dark-thirty in the morning and observations written down in cryptic symbols on the NFP chart. That would all change in surprising ways once we got into living the NFP lifestyle.

Before having children, Misty had been an atheist and I had been an agnostic. With our first child, the miracle of life spurred a spiritual awakening in us. We realized the Holy Spirit had already led us into a Catholic life. Even after our conversion, however, NFP grew our relationship with each other and with God in ways we never expected.

We studied Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” and became excited about living out our faith and sharing it. It was thrilling to learn the compelling reasons behind the Church’s beautiful teachings on sex and marriage.

Much to my surprise, I also learned how grateful my wife was that I was willing to learn how her body worked. Sharing the family planning responsibility, as well as finding non-sexual ways of expressing affection and intimacy when we had good reasons to postpone pregnancy, strengthened our marriage and made me a better husband and father. When we became Catholic, I knew I wanted to be the spiritual leader of our family, but I didn’t understand what that entailed besides herding our children to church on Sundays. Through NFP and Scripture, I discovered that I had a choice in the kind of man— the kind of husband — I was going to be.

We often blame Eve for eating the forbidden fruit. But in Genesis, we learn that after taking a bite, she turned and offered the fruit to Adam, who was with her. Adam didn’t stop her and say, “This is a bad idea, let’s go.” He did not protect his wife, but stood by silently while the serpent convinced her to surrender her holiness and damage her relationship with God.

Then there was St. Joseph. When Joseph obeyed the angel who told him to bring Mary into his home, he was accepting the public shame and embarrassment of a pregnant fiancé. He sacrificed his personal honor and reputation to obey God and protect Mary and Jesus.

The choice for a husband is clear: he can be his wife’s Adam or he can be her Joseph. A man can stand by silently and allow his wife to suffer the physical and spiritual consequences of contraception. Or he can defend her virtue, body, and soul by using NFP. Today, contraception is accepted and expected. Any man who forgoes it for NFP will likely be exposed to ridicule and criticism. But as St. Joseph taught us, there are some things more important than the opinion of others. May we husbands choose to be Joseph to our wives!

About the authors
Tom and Misty Mealey have four children and live in the Diocese of Richmond.

Natural Family Planning Awareness Week is celebrated each July, to mark the anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae. Learn more here.

Hope for Married Couples Who Want to Have a Child

Alone in the bathroom, staring blankly at the negative test, you tearfully ask yourself, “Why am I not pregnant yet?” Later, you may find yourself talking to your doctor about a “take-home baby” and come face to face with the costly, invasive and sometimes morally questionable reality of fertility treatments. You wonder, “Is there any hope for me?” As a Catholic gynecologist working with a team of pro-life physicians, I want to tell you, there is hope.

You may have tried to conceive for a year, the minimal duration to be considered infertile. However, you are a person, not a statistic. Your desire to be pregnant is real and is screaming, “Now!” As a physician, I agree. Now is the time to find out why you are not conceiving. You are not alone, and there is help.

More and more couples find themselves childless after “trying” for a period of time. After being married for six years, Jen and Bob were still childless. Sadly, Jen was diagnosed with Chlamydia as a younger woman, and she always thought that it might prevent her from having children. Although she had quit smoking and improved her nutrition to optimize her fertility, she also sought medical help due to worsening pain at the time of her periods. Through laparoscopy, we found mild adhesions from her Chlamydia infection long ago, and many manifestations of endometriosis. The problems corrected, six months later Jen came into our office carrying her positive pregnancy test, with a smile and a tear of joy after many years of trying to conceive.

Diagnosed with irregular cycles since she was a teenager, Hillary knew she had a hormonal imbalance. Starting abruptly after college, Hillary gained weight, became constipated, noticed the drying of her skin and began to feel cold all the time. She and her husband of one year, LeVar, came into the office to talk—not only about their desire to have a child but more importantly about the riddle of her hormonal health. A good health history and physical exam complemented the Natural Family Planning (NFP) charts Hillary had done for the last six months. Blood tests done on particular cycle days and the finding of low temperatures during the first half of her cycle, led to a diagnosis of polycystic ovaries. Hillary also had low thyroid function. Once her thyroid function was regulated and her insulin resistance addressed, Hillary began to have more regular cycles, and she showed signs of increasing fertility. Recognizing her suboptimal ovulation, she was given medications to help her ovulate more efficiently. After several months, Hillary walked into our office with that same smile Jen had shown us. She said she appreciated both the help with conceiving and the attention to her underlying hormonal problems.

But what happens when no underlying problems are found? That is the story of Miriam and Cole. In their early thirties and after being married two years, they came to the office to see why they were not yet pregnant. Both worked in high-stress jobs, and time was at a premium. Though meticulous and thorough, their history and physicals didn’t reveal the “why” behind their infertility. Laboratory tests showed no chronic diseases. Cole was given a collecting kit, enabling us to test a semen sample after marital intercourse and determine that it was normal. Dye studies and ultrasound tests showed that Miriam had a normal womb and Fallopian tubes indicating no physical blockage. Sequential hormonal testing throughout Miriam’s cycle indicated healthy female hormones in the right ratios, peaking and valleying at the correct times. Her laparoscopy showed neither endometriosis nor adhesions. Multiple cycles of attempting to tweak her ovulation with medications did not produce a pregnancy.

Stressed beyond their tolerance and depressed at not yet being parents, Miriam and her husband wanted a second opinion from a local, highly successful clinic specializing in in vitro fertilization (IVF). That procedure involves removing mature eggs from the mother’s ovaries, fertilizing them in a glass dish (in vitro is Latin for “in glass”), and then inserting the resulting embryonic children into the mother’s womb in the hope that one (but not multiple children) will implant and develop normally. As Christian physicians, we had to counsel them: “The central question you and your husband must answer before you go is this: Are the embryos made at the clinic your children or your property? If they are children, which your faith says they are, you ought not to experiment on or freeze them, or miscarry three to get one “take-home baby.”1 We lost contact, but several years later, Miriam and Cole were back in the office with two children, Jason and Jackie. Both were adopted. Smiles and tears were shared along with hugs. Miriam said they never found out why they could not conceive, but it no longer mattered. They were a family, and they had peace: “Adoption grew on Cole and me. It became a real option for us.” At a defining moment, her faith helped her see the humanity of any embryonic children she may help produce and the dangers to which she’d be exposing them through IVF. And she was thankful for the guidance.

Restorative, holistic, integrative, respectful, and effective—these words describe how our faith wants us to approach the misery, agony and challenge of infertility. There are scientifically sound, as well as surgically and medically effective ways to treat the causes of infertility in a thoroughly compassionate manner. There are doctors across the nation who have learned the art and science of looking into the causes of infertility and, as appropriate, addressing a couple’s condition medically, surgically, psychologically, and spiritually.

Many successful options exist for Christians who want a morally sound way to treat infertility, and who need help combating the sadness, frustration, and even anger that can come from the inability to “have a child.” We all need to discern the course God has for us—physicians as well as couples. Sound science based on the dignity of the human person is available to help couples to cooperate with our Heavenly Father and conceive a child. Some may be called to adopt a child whom God has sent via another set of birth parents. Or perhaps some couples have a unique vocation that does not involve raising children. It is our challenge as believers of the living God to know that he loves all of us profoundly and that he knows us better than we know ourselves. When we align our will with his will, and respect his great gift of human life, there is hope for us all!

About the author
John T. Bruchalski, MD, FACOG (Fellow, American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology), a practicing obstetrician- gynecologist, is chairman of Divine Mercy Care and founder of the Tepeyac Family Center in Fairfax, Virginia.

Notes

1 IVF raises many grave moral issues. These are explained in the USCCB statement Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology (Washington, DC: USCCB, 2009).

Signs of Grace

The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes grace as the “free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God.” My husband, Frank, and I have experienced God’s “undeserved help,” as we have wrestled with His plan for our family. We now know it was God’s grace that guided our journey.

Frank and I met in our work place soon after college. Our first date was at a Chinese restaurant. After dinner, my fortune cookie read, “Stop searching forever, happiness is just next to you.” Frank thought it was the coolest thing ever—I wondered if it was a setup! From that unexpected beginning, we married and had five children almost immediately. Because of our family size, people often assumed that we were “good Catholics,” thinking that we had always accepted the Church’s teaching prohibiting contraception. In our case that assumption would be wrong. We had used contraception despite the fact that the priest who prepared us for marriage taught us Church teachings. We stopped using contraception only to have our first baby,Emily. We did the same for our second child, Madeline, and our third child, Sam.

Around the time that Sam was born, Frank and I became involved in youth ministry. This prompted me to question our own contraceptive behavior. If we had to explain the Church’s teachings on chastity, I thought, we should follow them ourselves! I quickly ordered Natural Family Planning (NFP) books and signed up for the local diocesan class. Before class began however, I skimmed through the book and started tracking my menstrual cycle on a calendar. One romantic evening soon after that, with total disregard for the calendar , we conceived our twins, Caroline and Sophia.

Having five babies within six years was extremely overwhelming. Without hesitation I forgot about NFP and got a prescription for birth control pills. Something quite unexpected then happened. During these years using contraception I lost my sexual desire for my husband. Sex became one more thing I had to do for somebody. In addition, Frank and I began to fight about sex. Needless to say, this was upsetting—I loved my husband and I often prayed that God would help us!

In this difficult period a new parish priest came into our lives. With every examination of conscience in preparation for the Sacrament of Reconciliation he would bring up contraception. I would immediately dismiss the subject. “That teaching doesn’t apply to us,” I thought, “we have five kids!” And yet, this new priest ’s comments stuck with me and my heart remained restless. The turning point for me happened after a conversation about sterilization.

One of our friends had been sterilized and asked me when Frank would “get snipped.” Without missing a beat, I said, “Maybe for my birthday.” The fact that I so easily thought of sterilization got me thinking— how could I, we , decide to do something so major without talking about it and praying? Soon after this realization, I wondered why we were not open to having another child. I found myself offering simple prayers asking God to help us. It was the first time that I had asked God for guidance regarding our fertility. From that simple step , God began to send signs though neighbors, family and friends.

Soon after that, I spoke with our new parish priest about my concerns. He confirmed that the Church’s teachings were true and gave me CDs and books to learn more. At the same time, I kept receiving signs about having a sixth child. For example, when we were out to dinner I complimented a woman about the behavior of her five children. She thanked me and mentioned that her sixth child was away at college. At a parish meeting I saw an old friend who commented that she thought I had a new baby. She had not known we were discerning. I shared these and other experiences with our new parish priest and asked if they were signs from God. He said if they were, they would not stop coming. Father’s words could not have been more true—the signs kept coming.

Meanwhile, Frank and I signed up for NFP class. It may sound like an exaggeration, but from the first day we began using NFP everything immediately felt different. Frank would set the alarm, take my temperature, and re cord the numbers on the chart. I felt so taken care of. I felt a tenderness that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I liked that he was learning about my body. It was helpful that he knew where I was in my cycle, especially during difficult days. I came to understand this total love and acceptance in a deeper way.

As we lived the NFP lifestyle, we began to realize that all of our reasons for avoiding pregnancy were “earthly”— we would need a new car, a bigger house, and more money for everything. An unexpected encounter with an old man in a donut shop broke through our hesitation. “So, how many kids do you have?” I asked. “Three boys and three girls,” he responded. I got the biggest smile on my face, called my husband to share the story, and that evening our precious son,Thomas Anthony, was conceived.

It is by the grace of God that we have our children and a redeemed sex life as well. My husband, Frank, and I have learned that our sexual union should be focused on giving rather than getting. NFP provided the environment to live this out. We are so grateful that we now have the kind of marital union that God had planned for us! I t has changed our lives so much that we became NFP teachers to spread the good news.

Now that we use NFP, we see our married life as always having an opportunity to love like God loves. Of course, God provides the grace, and we must choose to participate with Him. I am convinced that there is something about getting the sexual element of marriage “right with God” that ends up affecting everything. Marital union is the marriage vows made flesh and every act of intercourse is a renewal of these vows. Only a union centered on God and His will in our lives will truly satisfy the desires of our hearts!

About the author
Jennifer, her husband Frank, and their six children are from the Diocese of Cleveland.

My Husband the Gentleman

Even before I knew it by name, I have always believed chivalry to be very important. When I was a teenager, it was on my list of characteristics and qualities that I found particularly appealing in boys. This might sound crazy, but “yes,” I really did have a list, and I really did go over it with a pencil and check it off whenever a new boy caught my attention. This li st included everything from “is Catholic” and “has a relationship with God” to “likes kids,” “makes me laugh” and “my parents like him.” Seriously, close to the top of the list I wrote, “is chivalrous.”

In being on the watch for chivalry for so long, one of the first things that attracted me to my future husband, Daniel, was that he was an almost perfect gentleman (I say “almost” because no one is perfect—but I happen to think my Daniel is pretty darn close). When Daniel was with me, I never found myself opening a car door or any other door. If his arms were empty, mine immediately were cleared of whatever they were carrying (except for my purse, of course—he wouldn’t carry that!). As the years went by, none of these chivalrous habits disappeared. Daniel wasn’t trying to impress me during our courtship. He’s just a gentleman, pure and simple.

Now that we’re married, there’s an even more meaningful way that Daniel has been able to be a gentleman for me. In our experience with Natural Family Planning, I can tell you that I feel so respected and well cared-for by my husband in a very big way. He would never treat my healthy body, working perfectly as God designed it, as though it was diseased and in n eed of being “fixed” just to be sexually more available to him at all times.

In addition, Daniel would never encourage me to put my health at risk. Many dangerous side effects result in using hormonal contraception. In fact, something is not quite right when people take a daily pill or wear a patch in order to prevent a healthy reproductive organ from working properly. Contraception is not the way to go and I have a wonderful, chivalrous gentleman who knows that!

This pretty much sums up what I’m getting at: one day over the summer, Daniel said to me, “I’m really glad that we don’t use contraception. I feel like that would really cause me to see you as more of an object. You don’t deserve that.”

That is my “knight in shining armor.” I’m so glad I put chivalry on my list!

This article was adapted from “Sarah’s Blog,” ForYourMarriage.org, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2009. It is used here with permission.

Why Natural Family Planning Differs from Contraception

In 1998 Pope John Paul II wrote a letter to Dr. Anna Cappella, director of the Center for Research and Study on the Natural Regulation of Fertility at Rome’s Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. The occasion was a convention commemorating Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical. Excerpts are reprinted below.

I hope that everyone will benefit from a closer study of the Church’s teaching on the truth of the act of love in which spouses become sharers in God’s creative action.

The truth of this act stems from its being an expression of the spouses’ reciprocal personal giving, a giving that can only be total since the person is one and indivisible. In the act that expresses their love, spouses are called to make a reciprocal gift of themselves to each other in the totality of their person: nothing that is part of their being can be excluded from this gift. This is the reason for the intrinsic unlawfulness of contraception: it introduces a substantial limitation into this reciprocal giving, breaking that “inseparable connection” between the two meanings of the conjugal act, the unitive and the procreative, which, as Pope Paul VI pointed out, are written by God himself into the nature of the human being (HV, no. 12).

Continuing in this vein, the great pontiff rightly emphasized the “essential difference” between contraception and the use of natural methods in exercising “responsible procreation.” It is an anthropological difference because in the final analysis it involves two irreconcilable concepts of the person and of human sexuality (cf. Familiaris Consortio, no. 32).

It is not uncommon in current thinking for the natural methods of fertility regulation to be separated from their proper ethical dimension and to be considered in their merely functional aspect. It is not surprising then that people no longer perceive the profound difference between these and the artificial methods. As a result, they go so far as to speak of them as if they were another form of contraception. But this is certainly not the way they should be viewed or applied.

On the contrary, it is only in the logic of the reciprocal gift between man and woman that the natural regulation of fertility can be correctly understood and authentically lived as the proper expression of a real and mutual communion of love and life. It is worth repeating here that “the person can never be considered as a means to an end, above all never a means of ‘pleasure.’ The person is and must be nothing other than the end of every act. Only then does the action correspond to the true dignity of the person.” (cf. Letter to Families, no. 12).

The Church is aware of the various difficulties married couples can encounter, especially in the present social context, not only in following but also in the very understanding of the moral norm that concerns them. Like a mother, the Church draws close to couples in difficulty to help them; but she does so by reminding them that the way to finding a solution to their problems must come through full respect for the truth of their love. “It is an outstanding manifestation of charity toward souls to omit nothing from the saving doctrine of Christ,” Paul VI admonished (HV, no. 29).

The Church makes available to spouses the means of grace which Christ offers in redemption and invites them to have recourse to them with ever renewed confidence. She exhorts them in particular to pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is poured out in their hearts through the efficacy of their distinctive sacrament: this grace is the source of the interior energy they need to fulfill the many duties of their state, starting with that of being consistent with the truth of conjugal love. At the same time, the Church urgently requests the commitment of scientists, doctors, health-care personnel and pastoral workers to make available to married couples all those aids which prove an effective support for helping them fully to live their vocation (cf. HV, no. 23-27).

My Slogan: “Practice Saved Sex!”

I am a journalist and a convert. That sounds like an oxymoron.

Two years after joining the Catholic Church, my wife and I began practicing Natural Family Planning (NFP). I found that the chastity required to get through the periods of abstinence caused profound changes in me. I stopped daydreaming of swimsuit models, wealth and fame. I became grateful for all God had given me, most of all for my wife. My appreciation for her and all that she gives me grew, improving an already good 20-year marriage.

I was curious to find out if other people had been so affected. This is where the journalist and the convert converged. I interview NFP couples and read thousands of words on conjugal union and the effects of contraception on the relationship between men and women. So for five years I thought about nothing but sex, except during the hockey playoffs. This was a challenge to chastity, but the result was a book, Natural Family Planning Blessed Our Marriage: 19 True Stories (Servant Books).

Here is what I learned. When women took control of fertility with the pill and the IUD in the mid 1960s to the mid-1970s, men said “cool.” Men’s behavior changed, as they no longer felt responsible for their sexual partners. (This can be seen in the disappearance of shotgun marriages.)

There was an accompanying drop in commitment between men and women. Trust between the sexes fell because men no longer acted in expected patterns.

When you add in the increase in women’s wages and the decrease in men’s wages, you created couples who are neither financially nor sexually interdependent. This is why, social scientists say, the divorce rate doubled in that time frame.

NFP can repair the damage. Men acknowledge responsibility to their wives. Commitment increases because the couples know when pregnancy is likely before they make love. Their trust increases: she trusts he will fulfill his obligations when he assents to sex; he trusts she is making accurate observations of her fertility and is keeping him informed.

He develops a sense of awe in the way God made her, and she develops a sense of gratitude that he is willing to sacrifice his own pleasure for her sake. And both grow in their love and trust in God when they see the plan for sex and marriage that He built into their bodies. I have seen and experienced how using Natural Family Planning can make a difference in marriage. That should come as no surprise because it’s God’s way to practice responsible parenthood it’s His design for life and love!

About the author
Fletcher Doyle is the author of Natural Family Planning Blessed Our Marriage, (Servant Books). He and his wife live in the Diocese of Buffalo.

What Does the Church Say About Contraception?

What does the Catholic Church teach about married love?
Marriage is an intimate, lifelong partnership in which husbands and wives give and receive love unselfishly. The sexual relationship expresses their married love and shows what it means to become “one body” (Genesis 2:24) and “one flesh” (Mark 10:8, Matthew 19:6). The sexual union is meant to express the full meaning of a couple’s love, its power to bind them together “the unitive aspect of marriage “and “its openness to new life” the procreative aspect.

What does this have to do with contraception?
The Church believes that God has established an inseparable bond between the unitive and procreative aspects of marriage. The couple has promised to give themselves to each other, and this mutual self-giving includes the gift of their fertility. This means that each sexual act in a marriage needs to be open to the possibility of conceiving a child. “Thus, artificial contraception is contrary to God’s will for marriage because it separates the act of conception from sexual union” (United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, p. 409).

A couple need not desire to conceive a child in every act of intercourse. But they should never suppress the life-giving power that is part of what they pledged in their marriage vows.

Are couples expected to leave their family size entirely to chance?
No. Serious circumstances “financial, physical, psychological, or those involving responsibilities to other family members” may affect the number and spacing of children. The Church understands this, while encouraging couples to take a generous view of children.

What should a couple do if they have good reason to avoid having a child?
A married couple can engage in intercourse during the naturally infertile times in a woman’s cycle, or after childbearing years, without violating the meaning of marital intercourse. This is the principle behind natural family planning (NFP).

What is Natural Family Planning?
Natural family planning is a general name for family planning methods that are based on a woman’s menstrual cycle. NFP methods are based on day-to-day observations of the naturally occurring signs of the fertile and infertile phases of the menstrual cycle. It takes into account the uniqueness of each woman. A man is fertile throughout his life, while a woman is fertile for only a few days each cycle during the childbearing years. A woman experiences clear, observable signs that show when she is fertile and infertile. To avoid pregnancy, the couple abstains from intercourse during the fertile phase. Couples can also use NFP to achieve pregnancy because it identifies the time of ovulation.

Who can use NFP?
Any married couple can use NFP. A woman need not have regular cycles. The key to successful NFP use is cooperation and communication between husband and wife.

How effective is NFP?
NFP can be very effective, depending on how strongly motivated the couple is and whether they follow the rules of the method. Couples who carefully follow all the rules to avoid pregnancy can achieve a success rate of 97-98%.

What are the benefits of using NFP?

  • Shared responsibility by husband and wife
  • Virtually cost-free
  • No harmful side effects
  • Can be used throughout childbearing years
  • Can be used in special circumstances such as post-partum, breastfeeding and premenopause

How can we learn to use NFP?
The best way to learn NFP is from a qualified instructor-one who is certified from an NFP teacher training program. Your Diocesan NFP Coordinator can help you to find an NFP class in your area.

To learn NFP on the Internet contact Northwest Family Services (NWFS). NWFS provides client education in the Sympto-Thermal Method.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops maintains a list of additional correspondence courses.

For more information:

Infertility

In the book of Genesis, we find God’s first commandment to humankind: “Be fruitful and multiply. . .” (Genesis 1:28) It appears that God infused this commandment to procreate into the fiber of our beings. It seems to be written in our hearts, dreamed of in our minds, ached for in our bodies, and yearned for in our spirits. Thus, when a couple is unable to have children, it causes great pain emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually. The feelings of emptiness and loss are overwhelming. The search for reasons and remedies becomes a relentless passion. Doctors, procedures, the time, the cost, the hope, and the hurt are constant companions on the lonely road walked by couples searching for the destination of parenthood.

Statistics tell us that couples do not walk this road alone. According to the United States Centers for Disease Control (2015), one out of every five couples in America suffers from infertility problems. This means in the United States, 7.3 million women and their partners, of childbearing years, are infertile. Infertility affects the male or female reproductive system with almost equal frequency. Infertility affects people from every racial, ethnic, religious and socioeconomic level.

Infertility is defined as the inability to conceive within one year of trying, or not being able to carry a child to live birth. Infertility may occur in a couple’s first attempts to bring a child into the world, or as secondary infertility when they have successfully given birth before, but are not able to do so again. Women who are able to get pregnant, but have miscarriages, are also said to be infertile.

Keep in mind that there are as many roads to resolving infertility as there are infertile couples to travel them. The array of options and medical interventions for a couple facing fertility challenges can be confusing and hazardous. Each route brings many ethical, moral, spiritual, emotional, and physical ramifications. It is important to plan carefully to avoid the potholes and ensure a safe trip.

Start By Becoming Informed

Learning basic infertility information can put you on the road to further discovery. Contact a Natural Family Planning specialist in your area who can help you identify the optimum time for conception. Familiarize yourself with infertility treatment options. Couples who learn about various diagnostic tests, procedures, and medications are better able to make informed decisions.

Get In Touch With Your Emotions

It is important to realize that infertility is more than just a physical condition. It also involves many emotional issues such as intense feelings of anger, anxiety, frustration, helplessness, loneliness, grief, envy, and even depression. All these emotions can be debilitating if you don’t face them and work to counteract them. You may want to seek support from a professional counselor. Through counseling you can clarify your priorities, improve self concept and your coping skills.

Stay Connected To Your Spouse

Coping with the uncertainties of infertility, the roller coaster of emotions, the multitude of medical decisions and moral concerns is challenging even for the strongest marriages. Infertility often causes lifestyle changes, reordering of priorities, financial problems, intimacy issues, physical discomfort, career disruption, problems with relatives, and isolation from friends. Since the stress of infertility can place a strain on your relationship, look for ways to nurture your marriage and make your spouse your top priority.

Maintain Your Social Life

Certain events in everyday life may become difficult. The birth of a friend’s baby or even seeing a pregnant stranger can bring on a flood of painful feelings. Holidays often seem to focus on children, and Mother’s Day or Father’s Day can be difficult. Social functions like baby showers or children’s birthday parties are hard to attend. Many people struggling with infertility problems find it hard to attend religious services, especially ones where there will be baptisms.

Many infertile couples try to navigate the twists and turns on the journey to parenthood without support. Seek out an infertility support group to avoid isolation. Since the number of people with infertility problems is high, you may be amazed at the support that is available.

Prepare a Response To Insensitive Comments

Those who struggle with infertility truly suffer greater physical, emotional, marital, and spiritual pain than most people can imagine. Many parents of adult married children do not realize the pain caused by their questions and prods to conceive grandchildren. Insensitive comments by family, friends and strangers can inflict deep wounds. Prepare a well-rehearsed response. You could take the direct approach and say, “We want children, but are having trouble. We are seeing a specialist and ask for your prayers. We prefer not to talk about it.”

Make Important Decisions and Create A Plan

Construct an overall plan so you know where you are and where you’re headed. Start with the fact that you want to be parents. Then ask what you are willing to do to make it happen. Make decisions that take into consideration your moral principles, family building objectives, money, age and need for control. Find a doctor who agrees with your plan and can help. Be assertive in stating what you want and do not want to do. You have the right to make your own decisions about treatment.

Begin by an honest acknowledgment of your feelings and the medical realities. You and your spouse are different people. You will have different styles, feelings, attitudes and desires. Sharing your perspectives will help you decide which paths to take. Sharing the turmoil of infertility will deepen your commitment to each other, whether you eventually give birth to a child, raise a foster child, adopt a child, or don’t raise a child and spend time serving the broader community.

Answer these questions to help you make your plan:

  • What are you both willing to sacrifice to become parents?
  • Do you know the teaching of your faith tradition on this issue?
  • Do you want to respect the dignity of marriage and human life?
  • How much physical and emotional trauma are you willing to endure?
  • What tests do you want to have?
  • How will you do the tests?
  • What treatments will you explore?
  • How many times will you repeat them?
  • How much money will you spend?
  • What doctor or clinic should you select?
  • Will you put your life on hold as you focus on infertility treatments?
  • When will you decide to quit trying?
  • Is your main goal to be a biological parent or is it to have a child join your family?
  • Are you going to focus on conception exclusively, or will you also pursue family- building through adoption?
  • Would you adopt a baby, an older child or a child with special needs?
  • Are you willing to be a family without children?

Respect For The Sacredness of Life and Marriage

Couples dealing with infertility are often led step by step down a path that may possibly create life. However, many assisted reproduction technologies also cause the destruction of human life. This fact is seldom explained to a couple before the various procedures begin.

Marital stress from the mood swings caused by some fertility drugs can tear apart a marriage that is already stressed from the anxieties of infertility. Tension between spouses and fear of blame, if infertility can be traced clearly to one partner, can be devastating for a couple. Medical practices that undermine the biological, psychological, and moral bonds of marriage, or have the potential to destroy life, need to be avoided.

Use Caution

Couples are sometimes lured to assisted reproduction technology without investigating other options. The experience of infertility has become politicized as scientists, medical professionals, and potential parents confront society’s mores and religious perspectives. The wisdom of past generations is untapped as couples are encouraged to make these major life decisions with little guidance.

Seek Spiritual Comfort and Wisdom

There are many questionable happenings on the road that scientists are paving for those suffering infertility. As reproductive technology blazes trails through uncharted land, we are at a moral crossroads. First, seek God’s intervention before you embark on this challenging path.

Pastoral support and care can offer comfort and helpful perspectives. Discuss options with your pastor, partake in blessing rituals, learn religious teachings, and evaluate your options in light of this information. Seek out faith-based support groups, mentoring and spiritual direction. The faith community cannot take away your tears, but can show you how to make them holy.

Resources:

Elizabeth Ministry International Retreat and Resource Center provides support and assistance in responding to the proliferation of mind- boggling options. (920) 766- 9380, emfounder@elizabethministry.com

Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction provides information on NaProTechnology, a new reproductive science, which does not compromise the sanctity of life or marriage.

More Resources:

About the author
Jeannie Hannemann, M.A. is the director of Elizabeth Ministry International.

Connections: Living Natural Family Planning

For a newly engaged couple, learning Natural Family Planning (NFP) is informative, interesting, at times a little embarrassing, but always enlightening. Living NFP, on the other hand, is a different story. It is a story about connections, unique and fulfilling. It involves the use of information that we then apply to the reality of everyday married life.

At the beginning of our married life, we used NFP to avoid pregnancy, as the time was not right for it. Currently, we are using NFP to achieve pregnancy. We were delighted to find that the two focuses of NFP have made our young marriage both more focused and more intimate.

Unlike contraception, which usually places full burden of family planning on the woman, NFP promotes shared responsibility of the fertility of both the husband and wife. It lends a spirit of togetherness to a marriage. There’s no “Have you taken your pill?” That is, “Are you safe?” In our marriage there’s no holding back that precious part of ourselves–our fertility. Rather than a burden to be dealt with, for us it is a blessing to be understood and respected. The complete self-giving says, “I love all of you.”

The benefits of NFP extend beyond family planning. We’d heard that often the husband will develop a deeper respect for his wife and the gift of her fertility. In practice, we’ve found this to be true. A constant awareness of cycles and phases makes it easier to perceive when to be loving and gentle, extra patient and thoughtful, and when to resume physical intimacy.

Unlike a couple using contraception in their marriage, sex is not always an option for two who are living NFP. That’s a good thing, contrary to what popular culture might imply. By experiencing times when we cannot engage in physical intimacy, the moments that we can are made all the more poignant and precious. Even when we want to engage, and the chart says “no way, buddy,” it lends an element of bittersweet waiting.

After all, consider the alternative: When a woman is on the pill or using some other kind of chemical contraceptive, she’s always available for sex. There’s no waiting, no longing, just indulging whenever you want. Nice at first, perhaps, but over time spontaneity and passion fade all the more quickly by the frequency of the intimacy. Oftentimes sexual intimacy will becomes less mutual over time in a contracepting marriage and more mandatory, and thus less rewarding for one or both spouses.

Periodic abstinence in our marriage has opened up broader channels of communication between us. Like many young couples, we both are currently employed. Commuting, daily exercising, paying bills, preparing dinner, outside commitments . . . all are busy but necessary activities in a healthy lifestyle, but collectively tiresome as well. Tired couples find it difficult to talk in the evenings, and would prefer to veg out. We’re no different.

But, since NFP holds the key to our family planning, we necessarily discuss personal and intimate topics about our fertility that most couples never broach. These NFP talks are springboards to deeper discourses and more personal dialogue between us. We’ve both noticed that with time, open and intimate communication is becoming less a difficulty and more a reflex, and we both attribute that in part to NFP. We’ve found that subjects such as our budget, work, saving for a house, and where we’ll spend Christmas are child’s play after you can discuss mucus and temperatures with a straight face!

Yes, NFP can be a challenge and a sacrifice at times, and we’re not saying it’s always easy, but that is part of true love–a bit of sacrifice for the beloved. We find a noble joy in sacrificing ourselves for each other, even in so private a way as withholding intimacy until the time is right; self-sacrifice is an important root element of love, and it builds respect for each other and ourselves. We’ve also found that a sense of humor helps during the times of no physical intimacy. When the signs of fertility were apparent, we’d jokingly say, “OK, see you in a few days.” We’ve heard some people say they could never follow NFP since they can’t have intercourse during the time that they want. We’ve found that the time of abstinence gives us moments when we can just be together and talk, play tennis, joke, or go out to dinner. It reminds us that we’re much more than just physical beings wanting to satisfy a desire.

We’re both happy to have learned NFP and to be living it. We know that it is enriching our marriage in our every day life and even in ways we probably won’t realize until much later. Knowing that we’re building a strong foundation of love, mutual respect and faith gives us confidence in our future. We’re best friends who love each other enough to want the best for each other and our marriage.