Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Sick Pilgrim

Home
Catholic
You Are Not Alone: Catholic Women’s Real Life Experiences of NFP, Part IV

You Are Not Alone: Catholic Women’s Real Life Experiences of NFP, Part IV

Last updated on: April 10, 2018 at 1:04 pm by Guest Contributor

You Are Not Alone: Catholic Women’s Real Life Experiences of NFP, Part IV 2018-04-10T13:04:57-05:00 Guest Contributor

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

In anticipation of the 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae this summer, Sick Pilgrim will be featuring a series of essays on Natural Family Planning, the only acceptable method of achieving or avoiding pregnancy according to the teaching of the Catholic Church. These essays will not present ideological stances or theological arguments, but will simply offer unvarnished testimony from individuals who have used NFP. The struggles and sufferings that NFP carries with it frequently go undiscussed, and we wanted to offer a space for honest conversation. The essays are being posted anonymously to protect the privacy of the writers, who otherwise might not feel comfortable telling their stories. When it comes to NFP, “all things conspire to keep silent…half out of shame perhaps, half as unutterable hope” (Rainer Maria Rilke). We want NFP to work, and when it doesn’t, we keep silent and believe our struggles are unique. It is the hope of the editors of Sick Pilgrim that these essays will be a source of hope to those who struggle with NFP, and will convey the message: You are not alone.

***

I wrote our pastor an email with a subject line that read, “Existential Crisis.”

I didn’t know how else to characterize our situation. My husband and I had both gone to an extremely conservative Catholic college and took the Church’s laws seriously. We’d been taught that Catholic doctrine, especially in the realm of “faith and morals,” came directly from the mind of God and passed sacrosanct into the hands of the pope. It was infallible and ultimately for our good.

We followed the rules. Sure, we did it out of fear to some degree, but we also followed them out of trust and love. We were both virgins until we got married, and I tried my best to learn how to do NFP accurately within our marriage (in spite of my terrible math skills and complete lack of stable schedule, meaning my sleep patterns were all over the place). We wanted our life together to center around Christ, and took seriously that that meant going in wholesale on the entire Church package.

Sure, we were scared when I realized I was pregnant, totally unprepared. We were both still in grad school, and I’d grown up an only child—it’s not too much of a stretch to say I knew literally nothing about babies. Looking at the faint pink line on the stick, I knew I should be grateful—new life is a gift, and I had a loving husband who I knew would be supportive (emotionally, at least—neither one of us was in a reasonable position to financially support our book collection, much less a baby). Still, I had more than many women did in the throes of an unexpected pregnancy.

But it wasn’t enough. When our baby girl came, she did all the things mothers are promised when a baby comes into the world: she softened me, changed my priorities, opened up new vantage points through which to view life. She immediately became the most important and most treasured being in the world.

Still, I couldn’t shake my memory from high school economics class, the day we learned about the theory of diminishing returns. There’s only so much risk you can take, so much energy you can expend, and expect a positive outcome. At a certain point, it can all become too much. There’s a point where risk can turn catastrophic, and you lose all you’ve invested.

I love my baby girl, and I rejoice every day that she came into this world. But was I ready for her? No way. I wanted to be steady, to be open and healthy in my own skin before bringing a vulnerable human into this world. When she entered our lives, my husband and I were in graduate programs in the humanities, working odd jobs and trying desperately to learn how to live in healthy relationship as adults. Hell, let’s be honest: I was still learning how to boil water. It was a rough ride.

But I loved learning how to be a mother. Every night, as our baby would wake up every two hours needing to nurse, I would sit up in bed and read my books about breastfeeding and organic baby purees. I wanted to do this right, inasmuch as that was possible. But I could also tell that I was close to the edge. I wasn’t just tired. My hormones spilled all over everyone; I felt constantly overwhelmed, and sometimes I would have to set the baby down to make absolutely sure that I wouldn’t do something I would regret. With every fiber in my being I didn’t want to hurt her, and I knew that I was often not in my right mind. I maintained a delicate balance, and I knew it.

I’d heard of several women who had gone to our college who had had “Irish twins,” that oh-so-Catholic phenomenon of hoping breastfeeding works as birth control, and ending up with one baby in the beginning of the year, and another baby at the end. I knew I couldn’t do that. I would break. Not to mention the fact that we had so little money, we could barely afford a bassinet for this one baby. The choice to breastfeed was largely borne out of a desire to honor the wisdom of the body, but that was not the only reason. Feeding a human life for a full six months for free, simply on what my body already produced, felt both necessary and miraculous. As if by magic, milk would appear just when our baby needed it. It was like manna in the desert—just enough, and the perfect food for wholesome sustenance.

I scoured my NFP books, different texts from different traditions, and my breastfeeding books. I re-read the encyclicals dealing with marriage and openness to life, Humanae Vitae, Evangelium Vitae, Casti Connubii, even. Nothing. There was nothing on how to practice NFP while breastfeeding.

NFP, as any woman who’s tried it knows, is predicated upon being able to read the signs (specifically the mucosal signs, but also sometimes body temperature), produced by your body throughout the course of your menstrual cycle. Having an unpredictable (or non-existent) cycle, such as happens after giving birth and breastfeeding, means there are no signs, at least none such as are described in the NFP books. And while our encyclicals will tell us repeatedly that using artificial birth control offends the natural order of things, they offer no guidance on how to work within the natural order, especially when one has just given birth.

So there I was, faced with the reality that if I were to follow the natural order of my body and continue to breastfeed, I would either have to stay away from my husband and his body, or risk pregnancy, which was both dangerous for me subjectively, based on my mental and financial instability, and dangerous for a woman in general at that stage post-partum, when the body has not yet fully healed.

But I wanted to be a “good” Catholic, a Catholic who practiced everything. So my husband and I decided to stay away from each other for about four months. No kissing, no touching (since kissing can turn into so much more, and we didn’t want to be “occasions of sin” for each other).

Predictably, the lack of physical intimacy took its toll. When you get married, you become one flesh. You are knitted together in a dynamic way that takes practice to continue to grow in a healthy and organic way. Our complete lack of touch started to feel as though we were moving away from one another on every other level, too. My conscience told me that such a dissolution of unity could not be of God. I knew the Church’s teaching on sexuality, that sexuality is meant to bear both unitive and procreative fruits. We had achieved the procreation, but our unity started to slip away. It wasn’t that we were desperate for sex. We thirsted for one another, especially during those trying first months of nurturing a new baby.

Beyond my sneaking suspicion that God desired for me to experience intimacy with my husband, I started to realize that if God made us (and I believe he did), then he would know a woman’s biology. And if he made us to have babies, and allowed our breasts to produce milk to feed those babies, then he would know all about the biological ramifications of our breasts making that milk, that we would cease to produce the signs that make NFP possible.

And so I had to acknowledge what was in front of me: if the encyclicals, which I had been taught to revere as coming from the mouth of God, knew nothing about a woman’s biology and the limits to “natural” birth control, then the encyclicals could not, in fact, come straight from God. I refused to believe that the Holy Spirit knows less about biology than I do.

Hence the email to our pastor with the dire subject line. This was a real testing ground for me: was I going to hold on to the letter of the law for dear life, knowing it might cause a mental breakdown for my mind, a physical breakdown for my body, and a complete impoverishment of our family if I got pregnant? Or was I going to let go of my fear of a rigid, even vengeful God, and choose to believe that God really wants my good, and the good of my family? Could I believe that I could listen to my conscience, and that my reason and desires were given to me by God?

It was wrenching to have to let go of my “Certainty Catholicism,” to let in a God of mystery and process. I mourned the loss of belief in the infallibility of papal encyclicals and complete hierarchical authority.

But I began to know a God of liberation and gentleness, a God who acknowledges limits, and loves me anyway. I allowed myself to hear that I was the “beloved,” in whom he was well pleased, whether or not I stayed away from “artificial birth control.”

And the first night we used a condom, I knew what it meant give myself wholly to my husband and to my God, without fear.

The essays in Sick Pilgrim’s You Are Not Alone series are written anonymously by Catholic women and curated by editor Maren Grossman.

Catholicism

Confession

women in the Catholic Church

Previous Post

April 6, 2018

Dark Devotional: On the Outside with Doubting Thomas

Next Post

April 11, 2018 Depression, Survival, and Unlikely Friendships

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Advent Approaching Mystery art Book Reviews Catholic Ghost Story Catholicism community Confession Current Events Dark Devotional Deconstruction Deconstruction Fellow Travelers I Want To Believe Interview Laudato Si Lent Mary Matthew's Letters Movie Reviews Music Reviews Our Charism Personal Essay Pilgrims Pope Francis Popular Piety Prayer Publishing Richard Beck Saints Satan Sheed and Ward Sick Pilgrim Charism Sick Pilgrim Chats Sick Pilgrim Events Sick Pilgrim Travelin' Medicine Show Sick Pilgrimage to The West Sick Pilgrims Small Joys Spiritual Autobiography Spooky Files of Ave Maria Magazine Spooky October Spooky Pilgrim Spooky Pilgrimage Strange Journey The Inklings Things Keeping Us Going Trying to Say God TV Reviews Uncategorized women in the Catholic Church Wonder Podcast Write the Vision

Select a Month February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 October 2019 September 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Golgotha" mean?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Place of the Skull City of Blood Hill of Sacrifice Holy Mountain