Natural family planning works

The communication also strengthens a couple's marriage

- Design Pics photo Natural family planning creates an essential bond of intimacy.

By RAMON GONZALEZ
WCR Staff Writer
Edmonton

Natural Family Planning is most often associated with avoiding or delaying pregnancy. But local advocates say it also has the potential to strengthen marriage by opening the lines of communication between husband and wife.

LeeAnn Kinderwater, a teacher, trainer and coordinator of the Billings Method for the Prairie provinces, says "NFP is the way to go for strong marriages. It's shared responsibility, it has no side-effects and is completely reversible. It strengthens marriages because for a couple to plan or postpone a pregnancy, they need to communicate with one another constantly," she observed.

"When a couple is working together month by month, cycle by cycle, to postpone a pregnancy they are constantly reassessing: Do we want to have a baby this month? So they are open to life; they have a whole aspect of life completely open to them without any side effects," Kinderwater said from her Stettler home.

She said periodic abstinence, which is part of the NFP process, builds self-control within the couple. Mutual abstinence becomes an expression of love and respect and encourages couples to communicate more effectively with each other. Husbands become more attentive to their wives' disposition on a daily basis.

"When they embark on that kind of communication there is a mutual respect for one another's fertility."

Melissa Lacroix

When a woman takes the pill she doesn't have to tell her husband. "She takes on all that responsibility, all the adverse effects of chemical contraception on her own body," noted Kinderwater. "This can then build resentment in the relationship because she has to take on the responsibility of postponing a baby and they tend not to talk about it."

Billings Method

Kinderwater said the Billings Method is more than 99.6 per cent effective with proper motivation and instruction. A mother of six, Kinderwater has used NFP for 22 of 30 years of marriage. Almost 1,200 people were instructed in the Billings Method in Alberta last year.

Melissa Lacroix, coordinator of Serena Alberta, said the sympto-thermal method, which Serena teaches, is 99 per cent effective if all the rules are followed.

"We use the signs and symptoms of ovulation and the temperature to allow couples to know when they are fertile," she said. "So a man is always fertile and a woman is only fertile for part of the cycle or month and so by using the symptom-thermal method she determines when that time is. The couples then know when they are fertile together."

Lacroix, 30, and her husband Denis, 34, have used the sympto-thermal method throughout their eight-year marriage. They have one child, one-year-old Pascal. NFP has improved the Lacroix's marriage. "It has helped us to be open, to share more of our feelings and to foster time together because if your times of relations or intimacy are limited, you want to make sure you have time to talk throughout the whole month," she said.

Lacroix recommends couples learn the Serena method before getting married "so they know how their fertility works and they can right from the start live in harmony with their fertility and with each other." More than 100 people were instructed in the sympto-thermal method in Alberta last year.

Dr. Mary Ellen Haggarty, a general practitioner in Edmonton, teaches the Creighton Model, which uses observations of cervical mucus to determine fertility. "It is effective in marriages because both people use it and also because it focuses their attention on all aspects of their relationship," she said. "Both husband and wife take responsibility for fertility so that's what helps the couple's relationship."

The use effectiveness of the model is about 96 per cent, Haggarty said. "It's similar to the effectiveness of the pill, without the side effects." Last year she taught about 16 couples and has a waiting list of people who would like to learn the method.

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