Natural family planning as contraception?

[Dawnlouise30]

HI,

My Lo is 6.5 months and i am currrently on the pill but my sex drive is zero and i am sure my pill may be to blame. I am thinking of using Natural Family Planning as a way to avoid pregnancy but before i had LO my cycles were eratic, some days 32 - others 50+. I don't know how my cycles will be this time since i went back on the pill when LO was 4 weeks old and don't have a period on it.
does anyone know if Natural Family planning can work if your cycles are not regular (i would be doing temperature, checking CM etc)

Dawn

 

[Reidfidleir]

Yup! I currently doing this along with withdrawal. I use fertilityfriend.com it's well worth the year membership price. I did this for 2.5 years for contraception successfully. We were less than careful when I conceived lo (I knew we should have avoided sex at the time but we did it anyway haha).
My cycles were crazy after coming off the pill for two years. And currently they are crazy because I am breastfeeding. Right now we pretty much always pull out when we dtd because I have no idea when ill ovulate. (Due to bfing).
It is possible!!!

 

[misspriss]

I think it could work, but with your cycles all over the place, it may mean long periods of abstinince.

Personally, all I use is Natural Family Planning, for religious reasons. I am currently using the Marquette Method (breastfeeding protocol, monitor only). It only works with cycles up to 42 days. If the 50+ day cycle was a random one, you could probably use it. I have had a random 46 day cycle, but that was before pregnancy so I have no idea now....

I would look into the sympto-thermal method, which looks at your temperature - you will know when you have already ovulated - after that, it's safe. However, if you are having a 50 day cycle, that would mean like 36 days pre-ovulation, which means 36 days of abstinence, if you now what I mean. If you combine temperature with other indicators such as cervical mucus and/or position, you could probably have intercourse earlier in your cycle.

There are other methods that use mucus only, I could never just do mucus but if your cervical mucus pattern is reliable then you may be able to do that, which would not be as strict but it is also harder to know "for sure" when you have already ovulated.

Personally, I used a self designed mix of calender and mucus before I was pregnant. It worked for us, we avoided pregnancy before we got pregnant and got pregnant our first month trying.

Also, before I had my religious beliefs, we used withdrawal (I am no longer comfortable with that) but we avoided pregnancy for 3 years with it, completely disregarding fertile times or infertile times most of the time. If your OH is comfortable and aware with his body, it can be a very effective way to avoid pregnancy.

 

[DragonflyWing]

DH and I used NFP for almost a year before I got pregnant. We started out using the mucus-only method (Billings?), but I had a lot of uncertainty with that, so we added BBT charting and that worked well for us. When we didn't want to get pregnant, we didn't, and as soon as we wanted to get pregnant, we got it on the second try.

When we took the classes, they emphasized that it will work even if you have irregular cycles. Since it's based on symptoms and/or temperature rather than the calendar, it should work no matter how long your cyles are.