Couples promote Natural Family Planning

"My husband and I have a slogan: 'It's a sin to bore a couple with Natural Family Planning,'" Emily Sederstrand declares.

Wait, it's not what you think: Mrs. Sederstrand was making the point that she and her husband, Tom, want their own excitement about NFP to be contagious.

"We want to shout it from the rooftops!" they told The Evangelist.

Catholic option

The Sederstrands and another couple, Michael and Amy Richardson, are parishioners of Immaculate Conception Church in Glenville.

Together, they have just started Hudson-Mohawk Natural Family Planning, a chapter of the international Couple to Couple League.

They hope to teach the techniques of NFP to other couples across the Albany Diocese.

Science

According to the Richardsons and Sederstrands, Natural Family Planning has evolved quite a bit since Catholics began hearing about the "rhythm method" in the 1960s.

Today's "sympto-thermal" method of NFP involves cross-checking several signs of a woman's fertility, including cervical mucus, temperature and changes in the cervix.

"It's been developed into a science," explained Mrs. Richardson. "Your body gives you data to analyze in a scientific method."

Back to Church

Both Mrs. Richardson and Mrs. Sederstrand told The Evangelist they were offended that their doctors never mentioned NFP in discussions of contraception.

Mrs. Sederstrand, who was baptized a Catholic but had joined an Evangelical church, even took birth control pills without knowing they could cause an abortion. In fact, "it was this issue that brought me back to the [Catholic] Church" in 2001, she said.

Someone gave her a copy of "Humanae Vitae," Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical on life issues, including birth control, and his words about the dignity of human life spoke to her.

"He says we're an expression of God's nature in our fertility," she explained. "My eyes were opened wide" upon reading that.

Fertility

From the start of their marriage, the Sederstrands began monitoring their signs of fertility to avoid having children -- particularly important then, since they planned to become missionaries and thought God was calling them to a life without parenthood.

But, as they learned about NFP, said Mrs. Sederstrand, they became open to the idea of children.

Today, they are the parents of four, two girls and two boys. Mrs. Sederstrand said this often happens with couples using NFP: "Awestruck by what our bodies can do," they often change from using the techniques to abstain during fertile times of the month to using NFP to help in conceiving children.

Learning how

The Richardsons, who made the decision before they were married that they would use NFP in their life together, took a course to learn how.

Morally opposed to contraception and concerned about its possible side-effects, they also liked the idea that NFP promotes "creative abstinence": ways for a couple to express love and affection for one another even when they're abstaining from intercourse during fertile periods.

"It's healthier to use natural family planning, and it has an impact on your relationship," Mrs. Richardson stated.

Intimacy

The Richardsons found that using NFP strengthened the bonds between them.

"It opens your lines of communication more. When you have to talk about such intimate things as what's going on with your body, nothing seems too personal to talk about," Mrs. Richardson explained. "When you're on 'the pill,' you don't have to talk about having a kid until somebody wants to. On NFP, you talk about it every month: 'Are we ready?' You're always looking at [that]."

As the Richardsons planned their two children using NFP, the Sederstrands were becoming certified as a "fertility educators" together. The couples met when the Sederstrands moved to the Albany Diocese from the midwest and joined Immaculate Conception parish, and the Richardsons decided to become a "promoter couple," doing public relations for NFP courses that the Sederstrands would teach.

Classes

Recently, the couples formalized this by creating the Hudson-Mohawk NFP chapter.

Although the chapter is just getting started, one course is already underway, and another is planned starting next month at St. Clement's parish in Saratoga Springs.

Each class meets once a month for four months, with the facilitators available in between to answer questions. The Richardsons have helped with a bake sale at Immaculate Conception to raise funds for the chapter and are distributing materials on NFP to parishes.

Women's bodies

"All the reactions I've seen have been positive," Mrs. Richardson stated.

At the bake sale, for example, one senior parishioner told her he hadn't heard NFP mentioned since his own marriage and was excited to hear about the program making a comeback.

"We're way behind in teaching women about their bodies," Mrs. Sederstrand declared. "That makes me pretty mad!"

Mrs. Richardson said that couples don't want to be scolded by the Church for using artificial birth control. She believes that sharing her own NFP experience is a gentler way to show people that another option exists.

The Sederstrands also see the creation of Hudson-Mohawk NFP as a form of evangelism. Said Mrs. Sederstrand: "When you tell people how they're made, you're telling them about their Maker."

(To contact Hudson-Mohawk NFP, call the Richardsons at 399-6269 or email [email protected]. To learn more about NFP and the Couple to Couple League, go to www.ccli.org. Information about NFP is also available from the Family Life Information Center at St. Peter's Hospital in Albany. Call Marilyn Crowther, RN, 525-1388.)

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