An honest and raw look at the difficulties of natural family planning.

In the comments on this post at Amy Welborn's.   

The whole discussion is excellent.  Comments from people whose experience was great, from those whose experience was not so great and so they quit, from those whose experience was not so great but they didn't quit, from priests and seminarians, from people with medical difficulties, from NFP instructors.

We've experienced NFP mostly positively, with a few very trying times during my brief periods of lactational amenorrhea.   All our pregnancies were planned, but then, we tend to practice NFP pretty conservatively, and Mark tends to be more conservative than I do about defining the edges of the fertile time (which, anecdotally from talking to people, seems to be less stressful on a marriage than when it's the wife who wants to be more conservative). 

One thing I can say unreservedly is that, although it has at times been very challenging, I don't think we've ever been through a time when contraception has looked like a better option.   I can think of a few times when TOTAL ABSTINENCE has looked like a better option. 

Comments

[mrsdarwin]

I don't disagree with posters on Amy's blog that ambiguous times can be stressful (or annoying, anyway, which is not always the same thing), but in my experience that annoyance isn't going to break a relationship unless one lets it.

Charting and deciphering ambiguous times is certainly less stressful than, say, financial difficulties or serious illness or legal troubles or religious differences (all of which I thank God we don't have to deal with right now). If the hardest thing that happens in a marriage is that the couple has to abstain for a while as fertility comes back, that's really not so bad, you know?

God: "I never promised you a rose garden!"

[bearing]

St. Therese: "But I will, if you ask nicely."