I have been away from this forum for awhile, just out here lurking.
I am posting today, because a great source of sadness for me right now, at 50, is that, while a NO Catholic, my husband and I practiced NFP. Before converting to Catholicism, we used other birth control methods.
We have 7 children and I love them all dearly, but I wonder so many times how many are not here because of our practice of NFP.
Once I decided that I wasn't going to do it anymore, my children started coming around 2 years apart. I guess I can reasonably assume that my body worked that way. But we didn't throw NFP away until after our 4th child was born...and she was born primarily because I felt unhappy doing all the checking and charting.
I did lose one child in a miscarriage, but before I converted to NO Catholicism.
Would we have had 9 or 10 children? More?
In those days of NO, I knew many women who gave up the NFP and just went to using pills or patches. They reasoned it was all the same and not as gross.
I knew what we were doing when we were doing it. And I felt unloved, because my husband only wanted me when I couldn't conceive.
So I'm not going to argue about what constitutes grave reason or if it even exists. I never had any health problems associated with pregnancy. We did suffer the loss of a job or two during those years, but we always managed financially. And eventually we did buy a 12 passenger van, but I never got to fill it up because I was too old. It fit the 9 of us and our dog comfortably, but there was always room for one or two more.
Forgive me for being overly emotional. I guess I mention it because sometimes one of the spouses in the NFP couple often feels guilty or uncertain, but they are often told they are just being scrupulous, like I was told.
I'm glad we rejected it, but when a woman is 36 she doesn't really have that many child bearing years left. I was fortunate to have 3 more children, but a great many are not that blessed.
Topic: New NFP booklet? (Read 5209 times)