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Archived Catholic Natural Family Planning Columns from Sara Fox Peterson:

Husbands and Daughters
The Pill: Questions and Answers
Heroic Virtue
Not on the Same Page (Part II)
Not on the Same Page (Part I)
The People Who Actually Do This
Sweetness and Light
Freeing Our Consciences
What if It's Too Late?
What's the Difference
Medical Exceptions
Waiting
Fear Not - Five Resolutions for a New Year
An Open Question
Catholic Contraception?
Contraception, Lies and the Truth
Natural Family Planning - Why Not?

Sara can be contacted by email at sfp@thosepetersons.com - please indicate "NFP" in the subject line of your email.

What is NFP?

Every fertile woman experiences recurring signs of her fertility. Natural Family Planning (NFP) teaches a woman to recognize and record these signs so that spouses can identify the days in each cycle when conception can occur and plan the timing of their marital relations according to their desire either to avoid or achieve pregnancy.

Looking for more information on Natural Family Planning?  Visit our Natural Family Planning Resource Center.

Natural Family Planning Method Comparison - a comprehensive comparison of natural family planning methods 

For additional "cyber-support" you are also most welcome to join in the discussions in the Catholic Mom Community's NFP Forum

Surprises Happen

As we prepare to celebrate the completion of perhaps the most famous unplanned pregnancy of all time I thought this might be a good time to consider the fact that sometimes, despite our very best efforts, we are surprised.

How do we respond when talking with someone who says that they tried NFP and it “didn’t work”? Or when we have experienced an unplanned pregnancy ourselves?

When properly taught and correctly and consistently used, NFP is over 99 percent effective for avoiding pregnancy, but while NFP is not difficult to understand it usually does require some formal instruction to learn and use correctly. Often when someone says that they have already tried NFP and it didn’t work, the problem was that they never really learned NFP in the first place.  Sometimes they tried the calendar rhythm method or read a pamphlet or website or book on NFP and thought they understood it well enough to use it. Other couples who have experienced an unexpected pregnancy did learn NFP properly, but later decided that keeping a daily chart was unnecessary or that one or more of the rules did not apply to them or did not apply in the cycle in which they conceived. NFP is not effortless, it does require some dedication and self-denial to avoid pregnancy and there is a strong tendency for couples whose reasons for avoiding pregnancy are less serious to be less careful about keeping a chart or to ‘bend’ the rules every now and then and often they conceive as a result.

When a couple who has experienced an unplanned pregnancy while using NFP has the chart of the cycle in which they conceived reviewed by an NFP teacher they will almost always find that they conceived as a result of misunderstanding or misapplying some aspect of the rules to avoid pregnancy. So the first suggestion for couples who believe that NFP doesn’t work for them is to meet with an NFP teacher and determine whether NFP really ‘didn’t work’ or whether they just didn’t really use NFP.

Statistically NFP is as effective as any contraceptive and true surprise pregnancies (those that occur despite consistent, correct application of the rules to avoid pregnancy) are so rare that they can honestly be considered little miracles, but they do occur and here we come to the heart of the difference between NFP and contraception - the question of who is really in charge of planning our families.

The answer is that it is always and only God who is charge and that He has a specific plan for each of our families that only He knows the whole of. He reveals this plan to us in bits and pieces as it is time for us to act to cooperate with it, but usually He doesn't let us know years in advance exactly how many children He has in mind for us, nor how they will be spaced. What He asks of each couple is to prayerfully and honestly try to discern His will for them and then to cooperate with that plan.

A couple who believes that it is not God’s will for them to have another child at present cooperate with God and do what is right by using NFP to avoid pregnancy. If a couple conceives despite their best efforts not to, however, they can then trust that God is telling them, in no uncertain terms, that His will for them has changed. It doesn't mean that they necessarily did anything wrong in their use of NFP or even that they incorrectly discerned God's will when they determined that they ought to avoid pregnancy. It simply means that right then God is asking them to accept one more child . . . right then.

This can be shocking and upsetting because we are used to thinking that we are the ones in control of our lives. But we aren't really. Ever. In any area of our lives.
 
When scientific literature discusses the ‘failure rate’ of a method of family planning this refers to the number of pregnancies that occur despite correct use of the method and even in this sense NFP is no more likely to ‘fail’ than other methods of family planning. Really, however, there are no ‘failures’ with NFP because even children whose conception completely surprises their parents (and their parents’ NFP teachers) are specifically willed by God. A couple who uses NFP is far more likely to understand this than a couple who contracepts because the cycle-to-cycle discernment process that they must go through in order to continue to avoid pregnancy encourages them to recognize that they are to be cooperating with God’s plan for their family rather than doing the planning themselves.
 
God sees the whole picture and we do not. He loves each of us and each of our children more than any of us can possibly imagine and we must learn to trust Him. And this is what the Catholic Church’s teachings on family planning really boil down to – trusting that God is in control, even as we work to cooperate with His plan for each of us, and that “in everything God works for good with those who love Him” (Rom. 8:28).

Like much of life it's simple, but it's definitely not easy. 

May your advent be filled with His blessings!

For additional "cyber-support" you are also most welcome to join in the discussions in the Catholic Mom Community's NFP Forum

Looking for more information on Natural Family Planning?  Visit our Natural Family Planning Resource Center.

Sara Fox Peterson is a stay-at-home mom and certified teacher of the Billings Ovulation Method of Natural Family Planning.  She holds a BS in biology and an MS in human physiology, both from Georgetown University, and lives in Maryland with her husband and two sons.

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