The Third Prayer

This is Part II in the series on Natural Family Planning.  You can see Part I by clicking here.

 How It Works

(I know each woman is different and has different situations.  What I am writing below is based on an average, normal, fertile woman.)

I can honestly say that I never realized how amazing the human body was until I learned the techniques of NFP.  WOW!  Our body is so incredible! There it is, more proof that God exist!  I’ll come back to this in a minute.

To achieve pregnancy, a woman and man must come together during a woman’s fertile time.  As we all know, men are fertile everyday of the year!  But women, we have a much smaller window.  Most women, produce one egg a month.  The day your egg arrives, ovulation, it appears and then it works its way down the fallopian tube, down to your uterus and see ya later, bye bye.  But here is something a lot of people don’t know-there is more than one day that a woman can get pregnant during her cycle.  Many people are under the assumption that since a woman produces one egg a month, they only have one day to achieve pregnancy.  That is not the case at all.  And now I will explain.

Days before ovulation occurs, the woman’s body produces mucus.  The basic purpose of mucus is to line the walls of the uterus so a fertilized egg can attach and grow into a baby!  (I will talk about this again when I discuss the pill next week.)  Isn’t that incredible??? Talk about God designing the woman’s body for the purpose of carrying a child. 

Frank and I follow the Creighton Model of NFP.  This is nothing like the old rhythm method you have heard about.  This is actually backed with medical knowledge and when used correctly, it is 98-99% effective.  What I do is observe the mucus my body produces everyday of the month.  After my period, I am dry.  I have a few dry days and then I start to produce mucus.  The mucus last approximately five to seven days, depending on the month, and then I go back to dry days.  Next, I start the cycle all over again with my period.  During the mucus days, I know I am fertile.  If we are trying to achieve pregnancy, we unite during those days!  If we are trying to avoid pregnancy, Frank temporarily moves in his parent’s house and I practice SPICE. 

The day you ovulate, you produce the best mucus possible.  Frank and I call it the Cadillac of Mucus.  That is when your mucus is a certain color, length and thickness.  Since sperm can live for three to five days, the few days of mucus leading up to the “Cadillac” day are also considered fertile days.  The three days after ovulation also count as fertile days because that is about the time it takes your egg to make its full journey to your uterus.  Let’s say you notice that you ovulate on a Thursday, your egg can still be in your body on Saturday, working its way down the canal, so you can still get pregnant.

Want more proof that God designed your body to carry a baby at the right time in your life?  When you are under a really stressful situation in your life, you can produce mucus twice that month.  If you avoid pregnancy during the first set of mucus days but ignore the second set of days, maybe thinking it is just left over sperm, there is a good chance you can get pregnant.  When your body is stressed, it can trick you into thinking you are fertile even though you aren’t.  This is because your body is under stress, and knows that you are too stressed to have a baby at this time, so it tricks you.  Pretty neat huh?  That is why when you are trying to concieve, people tell you not to be stressed!  Stress can really mess up your natural cycle and take awhile to get back to normal.

Understanding your mucus is what it takes to practice the Creighton Model of NFP.  Frank and I religiously charted my mucus cycle our first year of marriage.  When we decided to start a family, we used all our fertile days that month and…Mary Rene was created.  I will be honest, I stopped charting once I was pregnant and haven’t gone back to charting.  I know I really need to since I am fertile again (it has been two months now) but I keep forgetting.  But next month, I will start again!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 7:35 am and is filed under Frank & Marriage, Natural Family Planning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.