Natural Family Planning or Hormonal Birth Control

What is natural family planning? What is the difference between natural family planning and hormonal birth control? Is natural family planning a good choice? If you are asking yourself these questions, well, then you’re in the right place!

Our family at Birth Choice is passionate about caring for women’s health and that passion extends to fertility. We seek to empower women through education and in this blog, the topic is NFP vs birth control. Natural family planning can feel like a mystery but we want to shed light on this important subject. So, whether you already know about natural family planning or just have some questions…we think this article will serve you well.

What is Natural Family Planning?

Natural family planning (NFP) is fertility awareness, which is simply knowledge of a woman’s fertility. Practicing NFP is 100% natural — there are no drugs, chemicals or devices involved, which is one reason many today find it to be a positive and refreshing alternative to contraceptive methods.

There are four main ways to understand/track your fertility:

• Calendar charting
• Cervical mucus
• Basal body temperature
• Changes in the cervix.

Essentially, a woman observes the naturally occurring signs and symptoms of the fertile and infertile phases of her menstrual cycle. This information can be used to either aid in becoming pregnant or seeking to prevent pregnancy. If you want to understand more of the many benefits of NFP, you can check out —> https://naturalwomanhood.org/.

What is the difference between NFP and hormonal birth control?

To answer this question, we need to first answer the question “what is hormonal birth control?” There are many terms for hormonal birth control such as “the pill”, “the shot”, and the “IUD”.

The main difference between NFP and hormonal birth control is the negative effects hormonal birth control has on your body.

The Mayo Clinic released a study in 2006 that links the development of premenopausal breast cancer to taking hormonal birth control.

Other side effects that women have experienced include:

• high blood pressure
• blood clots
• strokes
• heart attacks
• depression
• weight gain
• migraines (https://bit.ly/2KxvQ35)

Because NFP is completely natural, there is no increased risk of cancer or other diseases. 

tHE bENEFITS OF nATURAL fAMILY pLANNING

We think it’s a great choice! Couples who practice NFP have intercourse as frequently as the average couple. The timing is more deliberate, but choosing when to be intimate apparently doesn’t make it any less romantic. On the contrary.

Many of these couples report greater sexual satisfaction using fertility awareness. Discussing and planning these moments can make them more special, intimate and emotionally and physically rewarding.

Another benefit is that statistics show that married couples who use NFP have a divorce rate that is less than 5% which is far lower than the national rate of about 50%. Now, if you’re wondering if NFP really helps to prevent pregnancy, we have answers!

Based on the research from the organization Fact About Fertility, NFP’s effectiveness is over 97%, thus has an estimated failure rate for avoiding pregnancy of less than 3% (https://bit.ly/2uqcs1s).

fAMILY pLANNING eDUCATION FROM bIRTH cHOICE

In conclusion, we know that natural family planning is an effective method used to preventing pregnancy and has no dangerous health risks. To us, this choice seems like a no brainer!

We would love to further this important conversation and we have many resources that you can use to educate yourselves. Below you can find our personal information but you can also find more resources at —> www.birthchoice.net. We think you made a great choice to further your education on this topic and we hope it helps you to educate those in your community!

References: https://bit.ly/2bdNEiS, https://bit.ly/2Sy7MV7, Kippley JF, Kippley SK. The Art of Natural Family Planning (Fourth Edition). The Couple to Couple League. 2007; 245, https://bit.ly/2KxvQ35