I propose that if some one denies me birth control they pay for the pre-natal care through college, since they decided for me to have that child. Otherwise, it's the government that is going to pay for the 40 children my DH and I would end up creating, because we don't have the money for it!!! I have always wanted to be a stay at home Mom anyway. And if you say that we should refrain from sex unless we are trying to conceive, then you are going against family values since it has been said time and time again that sex is important to maintain a close marriage. After a few days of no nookie I feel like I'm back in college again living with my roomie!

You seem to grossly misunderstand the concept of Natural Family Planning. First of all, it is NOT just avoiding sex if you don't want to get pregnant. That is ridiculous and of course sex is important to marriage. NFP simply asks that you refrain from intercourse during the woman's fertile stage of each cycle. In fact, this can strengthen the marital bond as your fertility is not treated as a disease. The periods of abstinence each cycle should be used to connect with your partner in other ways. Surely one can see value in not relying on just sex for closeness. In fact, the hiatus can definitely serve to spice up your sex life as you are both excited for each other. The number of most women's infertile days each month are MORE than the average days of sex couples have.

NFP has many health benefits, as well. First of all, you are not pumping your body full of hormones like with contracaption. The monthly bleeding a woman experiences while on the Pill, etc. is not even her true period! With NFP you track your biological markers of fertility. There is a HUGE amount of health information that can be learned from a woman's cycle. For those that would argue that many take the Pill to regulate or treat menstrual issues, the Pill is not treating those issues. It is just masking them. If you are taking the Pill because of a "problem", ask your doctor exactly what the Pill is doing to fix it.

With everyone hopping on the organic/health food bandwagon (for good reasons), I have a hard time understanding why so many women are okay with popping a pill of hormones each day. Think about it.

The Creighton and Marquette methods of NFP have been carefully developed and thoroughly researched and are as effective as the Pill with perfect use (which is really not that hard to achieve). For those whom the idea of making observations is unappetizing, the Marquette method has steps to use the ClearBlue fertility monitor which you check each morning. Easy to use AND natural.

rark, I'm familiar with NFP, and I can agree with you on some of what you've written, but I also think you sugar coat alot. For example, "the number of most women's infertile days each month are MORE than the average days of sex couples have." But on the pill, I have 28 days per cycle for sex. On NFP, I have 18. I'm either going to make up for lost time in those remaining days, or I'm having nearly a third less sex. (Add a longer, heavier period, and you can make that 13, at least for my husband, and honestly, I don't blame him a bit.) In the pre-ovulatory phase according to the book I read, you had to wait for 6pm so you could check for CF all day, and couldn't have sex two days in a row because the presence of sperm might mask the CF. Don't get me started on the rules for lactating or peri-menipausal women, because I didn't even try to follow all that complicated craziness. Add two full-time jobs and a couple of kids, and I think you can see why so many women might prefer the side-effects and comparatively small daily hassle of the pill.

Never heard of the Marquette or Creighton methods, I'll have to look those up. It was my understanding, though, that a fertility monitor works by detecting the presence of hormones released with the egg. Which I took to mean you can't pinpoint ovulation before the fact with a fertility monitor the way you can using the Sympto-Thermal method of NFP. Sperm can live for up to 5 days in a fertile environment, so how does it help to know you ovulated sometime yesterday, if you had sex the day before? ClearBlue's technology has improved, or is there a calendar somewhere in the Marquette method?

Truly, I think the sympto-thermal is a method that should be more widely known- I did it for nearly two years, and in many ways it was a real breath of fresh air, I didn't find it nearly as easy as enthusiastic advocates present it to be.

So, really, if you can't tolerate the pill, or for some other reason are highly motivated to avoid it and other artificial methods of birth control, that's certainly understandable, and NFP is a great method to read up on and consider, but I would recommend you read a wide variety of information on it and be realistic about the effort, anxiety and hassle it entails.

I don't think the OP was talking about natural birth control, I think she was referring to that oft-repeated gem, "if you don't want to get pregnant, don't have sex."

I thought it was "If you don't want to let me have birth control, you can pay for my kids through taxes." She has a point.

Thank you for your honest reply and criticism. I definitely admit that NFP is not something I'd describe as simple or easy. I didn't mean to sugar coat, but was trying to type a timely reply to some frustrating comments and did so while on the phone trying to cancel flights (yuck!). I'm glad my post was taken seriously and I can clarify and continue the discussion.

I didn't feel alternatives to birth control had been represented accurately if at all in the posts, and wanted to get the basics out there.

Certainly NFP can be frustrating, but it is something that has some significant health benefits and I consider it worth it. I'll admit that given no restrictions on sex, my husband and I would have more sex than we do on NFP. But we have a fun and exciting sex life - there is nothing routine about it, and we stay in close communication as a result of NFP.

As for the rules, yes, you do need to keep to end-of-the-day sex at the first half of the cycle, but not the second. The every-other-day sperm thing is only until you are confident in your ability to not have a false reading the next day. That doesn't take too long to get the hang of (some kegels, basically). I am VERY familiar with the breastfeeding portion of NFP, and it is definitely the most frustrating aspect. However, knowing that I'm not introducing hormones to my breastfeeding baby helps with the frustration. Yes, getting used to the method and the rules can take some work at first, but I have found it to be simple and routine. You check the same way each time you use the restroom and it takes almost no time. Forgetting isn't an issue after the first little while.

I have not used the Marquette method involving the ClearBlue monitor, but am using their in-the-final-stages online charting system (for mucus obervations, the Clearblue monitor, or a combination of the two) and am somewhat familiar with the idea for the monitor use. Basically, you consider yourself fertile 6 days from your earliest peak day in the last 6 cycles until the monitor reads a Peak. Personally, I am comfortable with observations so it hasn't been an issue for me to deal with. I have heard good things about the Sympto-Thermal method.

I understand that not everyone shares my values or views, but I do think that a lot of people don't have a concept of NFP. It seems that the majority of people just take the Pill without thinking, and most physicians presribe it as a cure-all. I think already most people don't think about how unnatural contraception is. Then when an article like Saleton's is posted that further confuses the difference between natural and unnatural, I get annoyed.

And yes, I understand that the original poster did not mean that natural birth control means you can't have sex if you don't want children, but it seems to me there is a lot of misunderstanding about NFP (i.e. confusing it with 60's style rhythm methods) or as church propaganda to trick people into having more kids.

Thanks for the response, rark. Maybe I just had more issues than most. The Clearblue method is a commercialized rhythm method though- look out for that one. Sympto-thermal dosen't rely on what your cycle was last month, it means you observe your fertility signs each month. Taking Charge Of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler is a very thorough guide to that method, for anyone interested in learning further.

CrookedCubed:

I thought it was "If you don't want to let me have birth control, you can pay for my kids through taxes." She has a point.

And her point is what? She's can have her birth control and tax-funded child support, too. My husband and I joke occasionally that instead of working hard and being productive citizens, we could just get a divorce- then I could file for WIC, Food Stamps, Section 8. Instead of making gigantic COBRA payments I could get CHIP. If I got sick, I could go to my city's behemoth tax-funded community hospital free of charge. (To me, that is). And we'd get a larger child tax credit. Sometimes, the laughs aren't too genuine. Btw, what's with the media obsession about having some pharmacist deny your pill scrip? IF that ever happened to me, (and outside of a newspaper,I've never heard of it) I'd pull out my cell phone and call my doctor right there at the counter. I bet dollars to doughnuts she'd be even more pissed off than me.

rark:

church propaganda to trick people into having more kids.

An acquaintance swears by NFP, which she uses in conversation interchangeably with the "Rhythm Method." She and her husband learned about this from their church and have attended multiple "seminars" on it. She has an unplanned toddler now. She and her husband are on government assistance and wouldn't scrape by without handouts from their families.

I like my Ortho Evra patch. I know there's controversy about it, but my husband is a pharmacist and so long as he sees nothing wrong with it, I'm happy as a clam.

thrennion:

An acquaintance swears by NFP, which she uses in conversation interchangeably with the "Rhythm Method."

Yeah, ignorant people screw up all forms of birth control. Spermicide has to be inserted 15 minutes to an hour prior to sex. Condoms have to be kept at room temp and can't be used with oil-based lubes. BCP's have to be taken at the same time every day. These are some of the reasons there are separate columns for user and method failures when tallying various methods' failure rates. Currently, I'm looking into the IUD, and apparently you have to check periodically for the strings, because it can pop out without your noticing it. Lovely, insane complicated shit, here that we all get to live with for something like 30 years of our lives. If you care about your life and plans, you can't afford to get all your info in one place, regardless of your method.

Ortho Evra didn't work for me because it kept peeling off at the corners like a dirty bandaid. Glad it works for you, though, really it's all a matter of individual preference and suitability.

I do hope you're not one of these chicks that wears it on the shoulder with a sleeveless top though. That's got to be my least favorite style expression. :-)

That is why it is Depo-Provera for me! Extremely reliable birth control that I only have to think about four times a year.

Also, I encourage my husband to cuddle up really close to the laptop, to cook them thar eggs good.

One of the possible side effects is amenorrhea. At the risk of angering every garden-growing earth mother who ever fed me organic buckwheat pancakes as a child, thank the gods for hormone therapy.

I have endometriosis, so these shots gave me back almost five days a month. I can hold down a real job. There is just no feasible way to regularly call your boss, tell them you're on the rag, and you need a week off.

It means I have to watch my bone density, and eat a lot of calcium. I have good health insurance and the lactose tolerance of a minor Hindu deity. In the meantime, the age old curse of woman plagues me no more.

I would want to be on this even if I had to use condoms as well to keep from getting pregnant.

Freki

PS on a fairly unrelated note, a childhood friend of mine was born with her mother's (non-hormonal) IUD clenched in her fist.