Seems like women in the 3rd world have far less and fewer problems with this than people in the developed world. Maybe they have no hang-ups about the detail of what “thick mucous” means or things like that. I would imagine that if the entire child bearing age female alumni of Yale or Harvard where suddenly have to count on NFP for fertility control pandamonium and terror would break out; whereas the mass of women in remote places who work in fields, sweatshops, and other simple dutes in Latin America, Asia, and Africa would take this and use it without a hint of uncertainty.

I had some discussions with such women trained on the simple Billings method. To them fertility monitoring is fairly simple, the only problem is, surprise-surprise, handling the men.

I didn’t want to do this as I thought it might be TMI, but here is an example of my type of headache. This baby I am carrying I conceived on Day 31 (my cycles are 33 days). Granted, NFP is not the rhythm method, and I should have known from the symptoms, but nursing and weaning causes days and days of small amounts cervical mucus. But besides that, I thought I got it “right” that month, because I had very strong symptoms of ovulation around day 14 or so (I am not looking at my chart, but the normal days when ovulation would occur). I had the symptoms, we abstained for the requisite days until the symptoms left +3, and plus some more to be sure. I was so sure I ovulated earlier, I thought I was safe. I had no idea I was pregnant until one day I noticed I was tired, then another day I noticed that although I was I was losing weight through diet and exercise, my arms were getting cut up, my gut started to get larger. I took a test in total denial. I had the hardest time convincing the doctors of my due date because they would not believe that I knew I conceived on day 31 until they did an ultrasound.

Anyway, this is pretty typical of what my life with NFP has been like. I find it puts me in the strange paranoid mind set of constantly obsessing about my fertility. In all fairness, we ecological breastfeed which is very effective for us for years at a time, so it is difficult to go right into NFP when there was little concern at all. It’s not about overscrupulousness, or some impending evil making abstaining hard, or that I think the Pope was out of his mind when he wrote Humanae Vitae. I just have no faith in it. I envy couples who do. The only way in all honesty I feel NFP would work is just to permanently abstain, but that really isn’t NFP, is it? The point of NFP is to not have to abstain for the rest of your fertile life. I think for some couples, the idea of avoiding a child is important enough for them to abstain for very lengthy periods of time. I have seen it in the NFP board and been in the discussions about nursing and NFP. Women saying that they abstain for months at a time when breastfeeding. I am just not that driven.;)

Pansy,

Nope.

Pfoof, 1 extra zero. Does it really matter? (j/k)

Actually, I was totally joking in the last sentence, but when I think about it, if I were putting my own life or my child’s life into my hands, I don’t think I would go with those odds. 50xs larger is pretty big. Would you even buy sunscreen with exposed patches of the same equivalence?

Pansy,

To be sure, the voids that occur in the manufacturing process of condoms can be much larger than the AIDS virus. 700x, though, is a higher figure than any I’ve come across.

The figure I’ve seen cited most often is that these voids can be up to 50 times larger than the AIDS virus.

According to the NEJM study that is the subject of this post, condoms are even less effective at preventing against the male-to-female transmission of HPV (a similarly small virus) than they are at preventing the transmission of HIV.

Many strong providentialists such as yourself worry about the morality of NFP, and I wonder if this is some obsession here by the dark powers. I guess on one’s spiritual sojourne there may be better higher such as pure abstinance or Quiver Fuller-type providentialism, but most of us are not at that plane. You and dear husband have earthy duties to each other and pitfalls are in the way, this is the fact of being human.

I have friends who are full blown providentialists, but I don’t necessarily agree with them in regards to my own life because I am not the type who would avoid conception for reasons like “oh, I just don’t want anymore children”. It would be because I truly feel a strong need to avoid. I do respect many of friends though because their lives seem happy and fulfilled. But I suppose that is why I enjoy their friendship period.

The Church allows for NFP in certain circumstances and so be it. If another couples uses NFP, and if they use it for more selfish reasons, then God will know. But I think NFP is window for other people to look at large Catholic families and say “oh that is just not necessary these days-there’s NFP”.

My problem is simply my charts are very, very difficult to read due to nursing. My NFP instructor gets baffled by my charts. We do not drink. Both my dh and I know alcoholics and my dh will not touch the stuff. I will have wine on a special occasion, he will not even do that. Pornography never appealed to me, even in my less Christian days. I have always been too much of a feminist for that. We lived off-grid for nearly the past two years among the Amish, so we didn’t even have TV.

I do have a problem in general with the concept that every ailment to a family can be remedied by simply not conceiving, and I think there are other ways to solve problems. If it is finances, a second job can help, for example. Again, my point is not to judge couples who use NFP. My point for me is that NFP has has not been the answer to my life’s problems but another frustration, and it is easier to attack the other problems simply by attacking the problems themselves as opposed to fixing them with not having children.

Yes, my prayer life could use more work. It ebbs and flows. Sometimes it is very strong, and others it is very weak. But to me, my goal in fixing my prayer life is to strengthen my relationship with God, not to fix my NFP life. It is just not that important to me.

Where I like now in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, female contraceptives (barrier or hormonal) seem to be unavailable but condoms are at every fruit stand, grocer store, pharmacy, etc. I guess many think this is the answer to many problems.

Pansy, I read your earlier posts on your problems with NFP and since I promote and support NFP I hope you do not mind if I want to make a few tips to you:

I wonder if you are aware of the SPICE program of the couple-to-couple league?

If a couple does not have much of a courtship before starting their conjugal life, pure NFP is usually very, very difficult for them. This often has to be remediated.

Remember to beware of porn, visual for the husband and steamy trash romance stories for the wife while using NFP to avoid conception! And watch the alcohol; the next son could well be named Jack Daniels if you are not careful.

Sometimes a good, well meaning couple has a very disorder prayer life while trying NFP and this is a problem. Eucaristic Adoration helps many.

Many strong providentialists such as yourself worry about the morality of NFP, and I wonder if this is some obsession here by the dark powers. I guess on one’s spiritual sojourne there may be better higher such as pure abstinance or Quiver Fuller-type providentialism, but most of us are not at that plane. You and dear husband have earthy duties to each other and pitfalls are in the way, this is the fact of being human.

If trapped, many providentialists get sterilized, ironically enough!! There is something strangely wrong here. This situation can be avoided.

A condoms is only used once and ironically condoms should be considered for only one-off chewing gum and bailing wire effectiveness against anything, including pregnancy and probably even more so for HIV and HPV. At least that is my attitude towards it. In other words if you are going to rely on condoms to prevent you from getting HIV from an infected person, especially and infected male, they will work once, twice, three times. True, this may look like a good system but statistics will ultimately prevail. From what I understand condoms have about an 80-85% user effectiveness against pregnancy, so why should the effectiveness against HIV or HPV be any higer or as high since pregnancy can occur only about 25% of the time anyway and HIV and HPV infection could occur anytime?
So ultimately one will probably get HIV if they do not make some change in their behavior.