my NFP story part 1

My first impression of NFP kinda looked like this..

Let me explain. Before I was married. The people at our church who "practiced" NFP, had large families. My mother had never explained any of it, most likely because she had no idea. My parents version of NFP was no contraception, but they felt condoms were ok, because they weren't using the pill. My last sister was an "oops" because she supposedly followed the rhythm method.  I know many families who had oops babies.. (I hate that term too ) by 5-6-7 kids. If you don't know what the result of procreation is.. you still have a lot to learn.

As we started marriage prep, our priest figured, because we came from big, families we knew about NFP, or didn't want to know, or whatever, so he didn't really push it. The more my sister in laws talked, the more I got confused, the more I realized, they really never learned anything. SIL #1 had 4 kids in the first  6 years of her marriage. She bought a NFP book that sat on her shelf, she admitted to never reading it. SIL#2 married 6 months before us, openly used contraception(well not to my in-laws, but to various SIL's ) SIL#3 married 3 months before us, took some of the NFP classes, but didn't finish the series. SIL #1 & 3 both have honeymoon babies.  SIL#3 has made comments to me before, such as, as long as you follow NFP, you can have a kid whenever you want. Hmmm must be why her kid 1&2 are 13 months apart. Realistically the only thing that spaces my SIL's kids is breastfeeding.  She had surgery to repair damages from her childbirth when her 1st son was 2 months old so she had to stop BF for 2 days.. she didn't think it would impact anything. apparently it does. I should mention the only form of NFP taught in our diocese is Symto-thermal. So my husband & I took the classes to become informed. Our class was taught by a husband/wife team that knew our family. The husband ended up teaching 95%of it, because the wife became ill and was unable to teach. Which was kinda awkward learning some of the methods from a man.. So I kinda looked forward to the class being over & done with. I figured we had the basics so we'd be good.

part 2 coming soon.