Natural Family Planning - To avoid and to conceive

I've been charting for 30 cycles. We started charting because after 10 years on the birth control pill, I and my husband (Frenchie) were thinking I'd gone crazy. The pill is supposed to level your moods, help with acne, and keep your period coming every 28 or so days. So what happens when your moods go all over, you breakout consistently and you're getting more than one period in 28 days? You start looking for alternatives.

My Dr had put me on 3 different pills in the 2 years I was having trouble. Every 4 months or so we would change to another one because of side effects, or there being no improvement. Finally, my husband (fiancé at the time) said enough. He said get off the pills, we'll figure something out.

I turned to Natural Family Planning (NFP) as our alternative. I was tired of stopping my body from doing what it was meant to do. I wanted to stop putting fake hormones in my body and allow it to rest and return to it's natural state. I read the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility front to back. We took the plunge and started charting to avoid pregnancy. We did two months on our own, and then went to a teaching couple I found through Serena Alberta.

The couple was amazing. A husband and wife team taught us everything we needed to know to avoid pregnancy, and how to, when the time came, switch to trying to conceive. The thing I loved was that the husband of the pair of them talked directly to mine. He was adamant that Frenchie learn all the rules and how to read my charts just as well as me. I didn't want to be the "gate keeper" so he needed to know by looking at my chart when we could and couldn't do the deed.

We successfully avoided getting pregnant for almost 3 years. It wasn't hard to do, and although at times it was frustrating, it's a wonderful way to be on the same page. You learn to be more intimate with each other in more ways and enjoy the "honeymoon" phase every cycle.

Fast forward to now. We have now flipped our charts to try and conceive. All those times we avoided, we now look forward to.

I have learned a lot about my cycles and about me as a person. I have learned how stress affects me, that not everyone is an "ovulation at 14 days and period at 28" person. I have learned to see how my cycles change with certain times of life and able to figure out when something isn't quite right. I am so thankful we switched to NFP and I can't see us ever doing anything else.