Hello! So Happy to be Here!
Posted by Sara Fox Peterson in News on Monday, September 28, 2009 10:00 AM
Hello! I am so very pleased to be blogging here for such an interested, thoughtful community—thanks for having me!
NFP is a fascinating intersection of biology (my college major and graduate degree) and theology (my college minor) and although I have been teaching, speaking and writing about it for going on a decade now, I have far from exhausted the topic. Because my space here is somewhat limited I have tried to choose topics for these posts that make the best use of that space and address both the biology and the theology of NFP.
By popular request, I will definitely be posting about postpartum/breastfeeding/perimenopausal chart craziness, but some of the other biology questions that you have posed aren’t ones that are best answered in this format. Questions about technical stuff like terminology, the relative importance of different aspects of the guidelines for avoiding pregnancy and questions about keeping or interpreting a chart are best answered one-on-one by someone specifically trained in the method you are using.
These are really important questions, however, and I want to make sure that you know that each of you is most welcome .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and I will either answer your questions myself or put you in touch with someone who can.
With regards to different methods of NFP; there’s one for anyone! Pretty much any method of NFP (even the much maligned rhythm method) will be reasonably effective for women with very regular cycles. All of the modern methods of NFP which involve charting some combination of cervical mucus, basal body temperature, cervical position and ovulation predictor gadget readings will work just fine for the majority of the rest of us.
So in most cases, choosing a method comes down to personality and personal preference. Are you (or your spouse) reassured by the objective feel of a temperature graph? Or do numbers and graphs make you break out in hives? Ditto for electronic gadgets - do you find them comforting or irritating? Are you able to take your temperature first thing every morning after a reasonably consistent amount of sleep? Are you comfortable checking mucus and cervical position internally? Are you breastfeeding, perimenopausal or otherwise likely to go a long time without ovulating (more on why this matters later)? You can find brief descriptions of all of the major methods (and a few variations of each) as well as the most common fertility monitoring devices here (pdf).
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