http://youtu.be/0Tqz6aQ2Qz4
In this video, Megan Elizabeth discusses several methods of birth control, including condoms, pills, injectables and Natural Family Planning. After carefully weighing the pros and the cons of each, Megan has selected to use Natural Family Planning. And she has found it to be remarkably effective, and easy-to-implement using a new gadget that she demonstrates in her video.
Condoms are the most popular method of birth control, but they can break, rendering them worse than useless, and even when they don’t break, they can be irritating, and they are sometimes made with questionable materials including animal products. Pills and injectables rely on tampering with one or more of the body’s essential hormones, which can cause mood swings and other even more serious side effects.
Natural Family Planning, on the other hand, teaches you the science of fertility, so that you will know, almost without a doubt, which days you can become pregnant, and which days it is nearly impossible. The key is to find out precisely which day ovulation begins, by taking the female partner’s basal body temperature each morning. Pregnancy is most likely on that day and the five days prior, since sperm can live inside a woman for about five days. If this sounds complicated, watch the video to see how Megan explains it, while showing you her fancy gizmo that reminds her each morning to take her temperature, then it takes the temperature, and displays a green light on days when you are night likely to conceive, and a red light on days that you’d better not proceed to have sexual relations unless you are ready for a new child.
My comment:
I first learned about the Natural Family Planning method of birth control in highschool. At that time, I was told that the Catholic Church does not approve of any other method of birth control because other methods “artificially” interfere with God’s plan for childbirth. That was hardly a convincing argument, so I’m pretty sure that most of my fellow classmates decided not to pursue this method, even though the science behind it is quite good.
When it came time for me to help my first girlfriend decide which method of birth control was best, I asked doctors and pharmacists to recommend good books on birth control, and then I hit the library. I was not completely surprised that none of the recommended books even mentioned NFP. Since my research revealed that no method besides abstinence was 100% effective, and we were not yet ready to start our family (we were in love but a wee bit young), my then-girlfriend and I settled on using condoms and Ortho Tri-Cyclen. My then-girlfriend did experience some mood alterations, which were less pronounced with another brand of the pill that she apparently tolerated better.
Since that time, I have learned a lot more about hormones, and overall I would recommend not messing with them unless you have a some life-threatening condition that your doctor insists can be fixed with hormones. And even then, I think it’s wise to work with your doctor(s) to find a suitable alternative, because while tinkering with hormones, you may fix one essential bodily system while breaking another.
In Megan’s video, she presents quite a compelling case to give Natural Family Planning another look. If you are with someone that would not make a good mother or father, or anyone that you aren’t planning on staying with long-term, I will officially recommend abstinence. But if you have decided to throw away that option, then the next-best option would be to “double-up” the safety by using both condoms and Natural Family Planning. Megan says it in her video, and it may be quite obvious for some, but I’ll repeat it here just in case: Natural Family Planning will NOT protect you from sexually-transmitted diseases. And for the record, condoms are not completely safe in this regard either, hence my number one recommendation would be to wait, and find the right partner. (Which is easier said than done… I’ve invested more than a decade already and haven’t found too many candidates that would help me teach my future children the right values. But I’ll save that topic for another day.)
Be well,
Michael Ducharme
** Megan Elizabeth is the author of three books including You In Bloom, Easy To Be Raw, and Easy To Be Raw Desserts. All three books are available in print form and in an instantly-downloadable e-book.