Facts About Natural Family Planning You Must Know.

Family planning means good parenting. When parents plan for their family, children are always given the highest priority. Almost all parents want a good future for their kids. Good family planning is needed to achieve this goal.

It is a misconception that family planning refers to birth control. Family planning is about how to give a comfortable life to your family no matter how many children you may have.

This is why choosing a family planning method must be done and agreed upon at the onset of marriage. The following questions may help you decide which of the family planning methods available is best for you.

Do you love your spouse and want him/her to be healthy?
Do you respect your husband/wife and you want him/her to feel that respect?
Do you want birth spacing according to what you and your spouse have agreed?
Do you want to control contraception but still wants to have a satisfying love making?
Do you want contraception that is surely without side effects?

If your answers to these questions are all yes, chances are that Natural Family Planning Method is the one right for you.

If you are interested to know more about it, your doctor is best person to talk to. For the mean time let me give you some helpful facts about natural family planning methods so that you have an idea on the right questions you need to ask to your physician.

What Are the Facts You Have To Know About Natural Family Planning Methods?

Natural Family Planning method is basically knowing when the wife is fertile or not.

When the wife is fertile, she gets pregnant when she indulge in sexual intercourse with her husband. She is most fertile during ovulation.

Natural Family Planning method is a very effective way, not just, of controlling birth but more so of achieving conception.

In fact many doctors advice their patients to know their fertility window and have intercourse during those days to have high chance of conceiving.

Withdrawal is not a Natural Family Planning Method.

Contrary to what many believe, withdrawal is not a natural family planning method even if you are not using a rubber or medicine as barrier to fertilization. Why? Because it is an interference to the natural reproductive process to control birth.

Having an intercourse during menstrual bleeding is not always safe.

Women can still be fertile even they are bleeding.

Understanding the wife’s menstrual cycle is a key step to the natural family planning method.

To know when the wife is most fertile is to know when her ovulation schedule. On a 28-day menstrual cycle ovulation is on the 14^th day. Not all women have the same cycle. Know her cycle. Rhythm Method can be used to do so.

Basal Body Temperature (BBT) can tell if when you will most likely to ovulate.

Basal Body Temperature is the baseline body temperature coming from a 3 to 4 hour sleep. This must be taken the same time every morning after waking up and before going out of bed. Ovulation causes slight rise in BBT. Regularly taking BBT for 3 to 4 months and plotting it on a chart gives a pattern that can give idea on the ovulation schedule. There is a special thermometer for measuring BBT available in drugstores

Billings method is named after its discoverer, Dr. John and Evelyn Billings.

Billings method is observing the cervical mucus secreted in the vulva, the opening of the female reproductive organ. . Smooth, white watery and stretchable mucus means fertility while dry and sticky means the opposite.

Combining Billings and BBT methods is more effective in dentifying fertility window.

This is called Symptothermal method.

You cannot make love 5 days before and 2 days after ovulation.

Ovulation is when the mature egg cell is released from the ovary which normally happens once a month. To prevent pregnancy is to avoid fertilizing that egg.

If conceiving is not warranted, avoid making love 5 days before and 2 days after ovulation. This is because, the husband’s sperm can live within the wife’s body 5 days after the intercourse. Once the wife ovulates, her egg cell can be immediately fertilized by the sperm waiting there in her fallopian tube.

Also, the mature egg cell can wait for a sperm between 12 to 24 hours once it is released, so do not make love 2 or 3 days after the ovulation period to be safe

Some sources say ovulation usually occurs on day 14 of a normal menstrual cycle. Take note also that there are kits available in the drugstore to know when the wife is ovulating.

Using Natural Family Planning Methods encourages couples to give each other love and respect.

Personal Sharing

Let us share with you a video of Cecile Dumdum as she talks about how she learned, applied and became advocate of Billings method. Her sharing is in Filipino /Tagalog and English (Taglish).

For those who can understand Taglish, you can click this link. https://fb.watch/bFeWvEPT5o/ or visit our FB Page : facebook.com/truehomejoy to watch the video.

For those who cannot understand Taglish, please read key points below which are lifted up from the video.

Cecile Dumdum is a senior citizen who currently works for the Philippine Supreme Court. She used to work for a Philippine mission to the United Nations for 10 years.

She is now a member of Parish Pastoral Accompaniment program in the National Shrine of the Mary Help of Christian Parish , Paranaque Philippines. She remains to be a member of the Womb International, a World Organization for Ovulation Method Billings.

She has 2 sons and 2 daughters who are already grown up now. According to her Billings Method is instrumental in ensuring that she have sons and daughters.

After learning that she was using withdrawal method to control birth, a priest during her confession pointed her to someone who introduced her to the Billings Method. She was amazed on how the method can tell whether a woman is fertile or not.
She started studying the Billings method and learned its objectives of helping couples to postpone pregnancy, achieve pregnancy and monitor the wife’s reproductive health.

She also studied how Billings method can help determine or choose the gender of the next baby. She applied it and was able to have an alternate gender sequence for her children. She was able to have a boy, a girl, a boy and another girl.

One reason she got serious on studying the method is that she wanted to stop doing the withdrawal method. She believed that it had adverse effects on her. One, she thought that it was the cause of tremors in her arms and two, she thought that it was the reason for her sensitivity and irritations because she did not feel the love in doing it.

She said that practicing the Billings method was not that hard especially that her husband was cooperative and even helping her in charting.

Learning the method was not that difficult too. She attended a training for two weeks and did few monthly consultations after that. She said that she has done it for 10 years and was very happy with the results.

From then on Cecile started advocating for the Natural Family planning method and had attended different workshops and trainings. She even met Dr. Evelyn Billings, the developer of the method, in a conference here in Manila.