Ep. 135: Can I trust Natural Birth Control?

Switching to Natural Birth Control of some type -- like fertility awareness methods or natural family planning -- can feel really scary. How effective is natural family planning anyway? What if it doesn't work? These are fair and valid questions that every woman/couple should ask as they figure out the best option for them. But the great news is that certain forms of natural birth control, like the Creighton Model System, are incredibly effective -- 99.5% for avoiding pregnancy! -- which is higher than hormonal birth control. Still, it can feel scary to trust anything to plan your family in the timeline you'd like. Today's episode talks about this directly, as Caitlin explores how one couple's experience speaks to the reality many couples face: when it comes to family planning, who/what should we really trust? We'll explore the role our faith plays in these important questions and how to know when you can trust in your family planning. 

NOTE: This episode is appropriate for all audiences.

Interested in more conversations about the intersection of fertility and faith? Join us on Substack for free!

Episodes about Creighton Model System:
Fertility Method of Choice: Creighton
Can I really use Creighton myself??
Creighton vs. NaProTechnology: What's the difference?
Choosing a Natural Family Planning Method

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Transcript

Caitlin: 0:06

Welcome to the Woven Well Podcast. I'm your host, Caitlin Estes. I'm a certified fertility care practitioner with a master of divinity degree. Each episode will cover a topic that helps educate and empower you and your fertility while honoring the deep connection your fertility has with your faith. Let's get started. Welcome back to the Woven Well Podcast. Now, when couples come to me wanting to use natural family planning, a hugely important question is, how effective is it? Now with the Creighton Method, I can tell them it is 99.5% effective at avoiding pregnancy. And even for those struggling with conception, it's 80% more likely that they'll conceive within the first year of using Creighton and working with our NaPro technology doctors. But sometimes the answer they're looking for goes beyond the numbers. Even with a method as effective as the Creighton system, it can feel absolutely terrifying to ponder the possibilities of our well thought out plans for our family not going as we hoped. Whether that takes shape as an unplanned pregnancy or difficulty conceiving when we want to. This is an important topic. What kind of control does natural family planning offer and maybe what kind of control are we looking for and why it's worth diving in? And I thought I'd start off by sharing a story. Jamie and her husband had been working with me for almost two years, and during that time, their confidence in the Creighton system has been really high. But Jamie still felt a great fear about the possibility of pregnancy outside of their plan. Okay, I am using this in quotation marks, putting a capital P there. Anything but the plan she was sure would be absolutely terrible for their lives, their goals, and their marriage. Then one cycle she thought for sure she was pregnant. Spoiler alert, she wasn't. Okay, go ahead and tell you that. A funny thing happened though. This was her worst nightmare, the thing that she'd been terrified of since she got married. She thought that she would feel crushed, afraid, and overwhelmed. Instead, she was surprised to find that she was happy, a little giddy and thrilled to tell her husband as soon as she could confirm with a positive test of course, which as we know, there wasn't a positive test. So she wasn't actually pregnant. She just had a longer cycle than was typical for her. But this whole experience really challenged everything she thought she knew about pregnancy and planning for that event. Instead of feeling despair over an unplanned pregnancy, she felt deep disappointment that she wasn't pregnant after all. Now, before this moment, she had a host of reasons why it would be horrible to have a baby right then. But when she was faced with it, without even meaning to, she just made a new plan. She figured out how they would adjust, who could help, where they could get support. So what are they supposed to do now? Does this whole experience mean that they should throw out the original plan and start having babies? Should they be breathing a sigh of relief that they aren't pregnant after all, you know, what do they do with the whole experience? Well, as I told her, it's tempting to attack those practical questions first and just figure out how to adjust the plan. But don't jump straight there and miss the beautiful gift that's given through the experience itself for them. What was once a great, great fear was now joyfully anticipated. Seriously, praise God for that. What was once a great fear is now joyfully anticipated. There is so much fear around pregnancy outside of a perfect timeline. It's easy to see it for all. It could take away from us without ever seeing the other side, that while it does strip away certain aspects of our lives and plans and expectations, it also gives us deep joy and great love. So Jamie and her husband, they didn't even have to have a child to get a glimpse of this truth. Even the possibility of pregnancy was enough to open their eyes to the beautiful gift hidden beneath that fear. Praise God for that. Now, it's certainly worth acknowledging that not everyone is going to have the same experience. An unplanned pregnancy for Jamie and her husband was a surprisingly an exciting thing. They felt joyful, but not everyone does, and not everyone's reasons are the same for wanting to delay or avoid pregnancy. So I'm not trying to say that everyone should fit into that same box, but I am trying to give a glimpse at the possibilities present. Now for Jamie and her husband, they still had some very practical questions to answer at this point. This experience does not mean that they automatically have to start having children. There's absolutely still room for wise discernment about family planning. That is one of the beautiful gifts of family planning that we can have a say when the right time is to conceive. But now they can go about that with a lightness , joy, and anticipation that they couldn't fathom before. And that's what I want to focus on here. Their fear was replaced with hope, and I just don't think that that should go unacknowledged. One thing that this story brings us back to is the idea that we all have this perfect plan in mind for our families. So after working with hundreds and hundreds of couples, I can safely say every couple has a perfect plan in mind when they get married and they hold on really tightly to that plan until the moment they realize they never actually had that kind of control in the first place. I think it comes from a really good place. I love that women are thinking about the family they desire even long before they're married. I love that couples are making adjustments and plans for the children they hope to one day have many make these plans with truly the best interest of these future children in mind. They want to have saved up enough money to provide for their kids . They want to have reached a certain level in their careers so they can devote time to raising their children. They want to live in an area with the best schools and parks and all of the things. These are good, but since when has life ever gone according to our own plans, we have unexpected job changes, moves and home choices, family loss, relationship challenges, illnesses and injuries, etc., etc., etc.. Life never goes according to plan. But somewhere along the way, we got the idea that this doesn't apply to family planning. I'm truly curious where this stems from. Like I, I think it could be worth digging into. But for now, let's just explore together how this plays out in our own lives. So I asked my subscribers on Substack to answer two questions for me. Did or do you have a family plan? And has your family gone according to that plan? Almost 70% said that they started out with a grand plan for their family. But when asked if it actually went according to that plan, not one single person said yes. Not one single person. Now, 31% said somewhat, and 69% said not in the least. So I think this is important data. I realize the sample size is super small. This is not going to be published anywhere, but I do think that it matches the experience of many couples at some point in the last few decades planning out our family has become less of a dream and more of an expectation more than ever before humans have the ability to prevent or create pregnancy on our own timelines. The prevalence of birth control, including permanent sterilization and of course IVF affect our expectations tremendously. Yet, if you ask a group of women about their experience planning their own families, I think you'll hear that it very rarely matches that ideal plan regardless of their use of birth control or IVF. So should we really expect to have control over planning our families? Well, I think there's a difference here between control and influence. As a certified fertility care practitioner, I can assure you that you have a strong influence over whether you will avoid or conceive a pregnancy based on how you use your natural family planning system. The same thing goes for whether you choose to use birth control condoms or have a permanent sterilization procedure. Yet none of these methods produce 100% effectiveness at avoiding pregnancy. The making of eternal souls is not something that you and I are qualified to control, but God in his infinite goodness invites us to be a part of that special process. We are given a say, even though it's not the final say. And I think that this change in perspective from an expectation that family planning on our own terms is our right to family planning as an invitation from God to participate in our good and the good of our family. I think that change in perspective has a monumental impact on our peace in the process and in our relationship with God. When we can humbly embrace that we are less qualified than God to determine when children shouldn't enter the world. There is a trust present that we can't have otherwise. And what once felt overwhelming and fearful because the weight of these things was on our shoulders alone now feels properly shared with the one who is ultimately trustworthy. So yes, we can still make decisions that help us to avoid or conceive, but it's not from a place of control or authority or assumption. Instead, we are open-handed with our family, prayerful about our participation and trusting in the creator of all life. Peace, peace, peace. Behind the scenes of Woven Well is Woven Natural Fertility Care, and we wrestle with these questions. What does it mean for us that God is the creator of all life? Why does it matter that we're made in the image of God? How does our faith impact our fertility decisions of all types of any type? We ask the messy questions and we have the hard conversations because we trust that God will always show up with his presence and faithfulness. Today's topic was originally published and discussed over on my Substack page, which you can find in the link in the show notes. So if you're interested in more honest discussions about the intersection of fertility and faith, I invite you to join us there to ponder together with genuine and charitable engagement with others who are asking the same questions. And be sure to continue listening here as we share more episodes about all things natural fertility, while honoring the deep connection between our fertility and our faith. As always, thanks for listening as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.