Ep. 40: We’re engaged! What should we know about family planning?

Welcome back to the Woven Well Podcast! 

Today’s episode is for all the engaged couples out there, deep in the details of wedding planning and marriage prep - and wondering: how should we go about planning our family? 

First of all, congratulations! Being engaged is such a sweet, short season of life. It’s fun and filled with celebrations, but it can also be a lot of work with all the wedding planning and, more importantly, the marriage planning. 

You’re starting to make decisions about things like where you want to live, how you want to manage your finances together, and what you want your family to look like. 

But that last one can kind of come at you fast. It can be hard to talk about, so it can keep getting pushed to the bottom of the list until you’re a month out from your wedding and realize you need to have a game plan ASAP. 

But the fact that you’re listening to this episode means that you’re out there looking for your options! Or, you had a good, true friend who sent you this episode - and I can almost guarantee you it was because she wished that she had this information when she was engaged. 

You may be one of the exceptions (I meet them every once in a while) but for most couples getting married, their pregnancy goal is simple: don’t have one. Not yet, at least! 

I work with lots of couples each year who are engaged and want to avoid pregnancy. And I’ve found that they all have similar questions: 

• What are our options for avoiding pregnancy?

• How can we be sure we won’t get pregnant?

• When do we need to begin?

If those are your questions, too, then this episode is for you! 

What are your options for avoiding pregnancy? 

I like to think of these options in 3 major categories: hormonal, device or barrier, and biological. These are my own categories, but I think they’re helpful. Here’s how I break them down: 

• Hormonal methods suppress the body’s natural reproductive function, including hormones, ovulation, and menstruation to prevent a pregnancy from occurring. Some hormonal methods utilize estrogen, some progesterone, and some a mixture of both. They can be oral pills (like what we often hear of as “the pill” or an inserted inter-uterine device, or IUD, like Mirena). The main function in all hormonal methods is to suppress the body’s natural functioning. What’s advertised as the major benefit to this category is that it’s something that’s fairly easy to accomplish. You have to remember to take a pill every day, at most, or schedule a procedure to put the IUD in once every 4-5 years. The major con would be that you are fracturing your body’s natural functioning. The female body was designed to go through cycles of estrogen and progesterone, and our bodies thrive when allowed to go through this process naturally. When suppressed, there aren’t just reproductive consequences, but physical and mental, as well. Some of the consequences are short term, and some long term. Another major con is that the hormonal method has been shown to be abortifacient, which is a fancy word to say that sometimes an embryo is still created, but is not allowed to implant in the lining. For all those who believe life begins at conception, this is something to seriously consider.

• The second category is device or barrier, and these include examples like condoms, diaphragms, or spermicide. You could even throw having your tubes tied into this category, even though most engaged couples aren’t talking about those more permanent approaches. What unites all these different methods in this category is that there is some physical thing put in place to prevent pregnancy from occurring - whether it’s a material like a condom, a chemical gel like a spermicide, or even a knot like when having your tubes tied. The major benefit of this category is that there are no hormones, and your body is allowed to still cycle in a regular manner. The major downside is that you have to have this available whenever you’re about to have intercourse. Another downside is the potential effectiveness. Even when used properly, none of these are as effective as other forms of contraception for avoiding pregnancy - except having your tubes tied! That’s still 98% effective.

• My third category is a biological method, and by that I just mean that you’re working with your body’s natural fertility cycle in order to avoid pregnancy. This method doesn’t require hormones, chemicals, or to have any product on hand. Instead, it works by your understanding of your body’s fertility and making decisions together as a couple about when to be together based on your goal for fertility. The major benefit of this method is that your body is free to be healthy and function normally, and this is a method that encourages partnership between husband and wife when it comes to the responsibility of family planning. Some would say the downside is that you do have to learn how your body works and be listening to your body on a regular basis. But I’ve got to be honest - that just does not feel like a downside to me!

In my experience, getting to know your body is an incredibly freeing and empowering thing. It opens us up to realizing that we are made with beauty and intention. It gives us insight into the miracles occurring within us every day - ovulation, conception, lactation, and more. These are miraculous things, when we really take a look. And when we do, I think we’re inspired to offer worship to the Creator responsible for this goodness. 

This is just one of the reasons why we teach the Creighton method at Woven Natural Fertility Care. The Creighton method respects the way God designed male and female bodies and works within that design to allow a couple to avoid or achieve pregnancy, based on their current goal. You learn when you’re fertile and when you’re not - that’s right! You can’t get pregnant on any ole’ day. But you don’t learn on your own. You work closely with a Certified FertilityCare Practitioner like myself to learn how fertility works, but even more specifically - how your particular body works. You partner with your spouse to use the system together, and you can use it throughout your life, through all of your reproductive stages (avoiding pregnancy, achieving pregnancy, breastfeeding, postpartum, etc). 

We have more episodes that dive into some of these topics deeper. If you’d like to hear more information on hormonal birth control, for instance, I encourage you to listen to episode 6 of our podcast “The Pill - Facts about Birth Control.” If you’d like to hear more about the Creighton method, or even how your body works, try our BASICS series at the start of the podcast, by listening to episodes 1-5. Every episode is intentionally short format, so it won’t take you long to listen through all of them. We’ve even talked about the theological aspects of family planning in episodes 29 and 34. 

But now to move on to the second question I frequently hear from engaged couples: 

How can we be sure we won’t get pregnant? 

This is such a good question. First, I want you to know that I see you. Getting pregnant before you’re ready can be a really scary thought. And that fear can come from lots of places: does it feel like babies ruin all your plans? Are you afraid that marriage won’t be as enjoyable once children enter the picture? Maybe it’s the pregnancy or labor and delivery that feel the scariest. Whatever the source, you’re not alone in feeling afraid. 

In fact, it’s such a common struggle that we’ve offered a workshop on this exact topic. We entitled it “Mental Health on the Fertility Journey” because it encompasses topics from multiple stages of reproductive life - but it very specifically talks about the fears we’re touching on here. And if you feel like this is you, it may be a helpful place to start as you embrace the possibility of pregnancy after marriage. 

Because here’s the thing: pregnancy can’t be stripped from the gift of sexual intimacy. The world has tried! We’ve come up with every way imaginable to allow a man and woman to have intercourse and ensure no baby is created - but it just can’t be done to 100% effectiveness. And I say, praise God. Because if God has made pregnancy a part of the gift of this intimacy, then there must be something really good there for us. And I don’t want us to miss out on it. 

So we can’t separate them completely. And we know it’s not totally within our control. That can feel scary! But it’s not all left up to chance either! 

There are extremely effective methods of avoiding pregnancy, including the Creighton system that we teach. Creighton is 99.5% effective at avoiding pregnancy. It’s not 100%. But it’s pretty good. 

We want to help you be 99.5% effective at avoiding pregnancy, as long as that’s your goal, by having you work one-on-one with a Certified FertilityCare Practitioner like myself. We make sure you have thorough education, can ask any questions you have, and are using the system accurately so that you can be successful. 

Creighton is a system that husband and wife use together. Not only does it make the daily use of it that much easier, but it also takes the feeling of responsibility off of just one spouse. You are not responsible for whether or not you and your spouse get pregnant. Fertility is a joint venture, and this system honors that. 

Working together allows you to feel confident, partner well together, and continue to evaluate your family planning goals. You may both feel that avoiding pregnancy for the first 3 years is right for your family. But if that desire changes after a year, using a system like Creighton allows you to change that intention that very month. You don’t have to stop hormones and spend 6 months getting healthy. You don’t have to schedule an appointment to have an IUD removed. Unlike those first two categories we talked about, which are only there to prevent pregnancy, Creighton is a system that helps you achieve pregnancy when you’re ready. As soon as you’re ready, you’ll already know the best days to use, and you’ll know if there are any reproductive health issues because of the cycle charting you’ll have done. 

So our final frequently asked question - when do we need to begin? 

I’m going to speak to the last category here, since that’s what we teach at Woven Natural Fertility Care. In an ideal world, we’d have about 3 cycles to work together before you get married. This gives us great time to teach you the system and let you start seeing how your body works from cycle to cycle. You can practice the instructions and ask all the questions with time to spare. 

I’ve even had couples work with me 6 months to 1 year before their wedding, so that they don’t have any confusion or concerns by their wedding day. 

But I realize this isn’t possible for every couple, and it’s not our requirement at all. You may be listening to this and your wedding is next month - that’s okay! Every day we have to learn is worth using. You may not be as easy going as the couples who spent 6 months charting her cycles before marriage, but we’ll put boundaries in place to help you be successful as you learn. 

My best advice is to attend one of our Introductory Sessions. We offer these online, group sessions each month, and they’re a great way to learn what’s really going on in your cycle and how the Creighton system works with your body to help you with your fertility goals. There’s no commitment to it, so it’s the perfect opportunity to learn more and make a decision together. Invite your fiancé, invite your other engaged friends! One of my favorite introductory sessions was a group of 3 engaged friends who were all interested in learning more. They all ended up using Creighton together and were such a support and encouragement to each other over the years. They’ve all been using the system for 5+ years now. 

You’re also welcome to email me personally! I love talking with engaged couples. It was after my engagement that I first googled “are there natural ways to not get pregnant?” We all started at the same place, and I’m happy to answer any questions you have. 

You are also welcome to follow us on Instagram @wovenfertility or @wovenwellpodcast to see what we’re up to and what other resources we’re offering that may benefit you. 

We want you to feel welcome, and we want you to feel supported. You’re entering a beautiful season of life, but one that’s full of new questions and decisions - especially as it relates to intimacy and fertility. If we can help you feel educated and empowered, we want to. 

Thanks for joining us today as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.