Posted on 01/27/2010 10:31:28 AM PST by NYer
I was over a friend's house picking up a buddy of mine this past weekend. He wasn't ready so I ended up hanging out for a few minutes with his wife and her friend. I'd met the other woman before but don't know her all that well. She was talking a mile a minute about how "natural" she lives and how great she feels. Of course, she was telling us that we should be living the same way. She lectured me about different herbs and how she's detoxing her body.
She's been "living naturally" since New Year's Day. (Her words)
She said she feels so much better ("fantabulous!!!" was her word) and she's been doing a lot of reading about all the "unnatural" chemicals people put in their bodies and how harmful it all is.
My buddy came into the room and rolled his eyes but I didn't know her well enough to joke about it since she seemed to take it all very seriously so I listened to her. Actually, I kind of pretended to listen by just nodding my head and occasionally grunting.
In the conversation my buddy joked about me "detoxing" my five children.
"What?!" gasped the woman. "Really? You really have five kids?"
One of the funny things about writing a Catholic blog is you sometimes forget that having five kids is a lot. But around the Catholic blogosphere I read about so many people who have that many children and many more that I forget how countercultural it is to have more than two children.
Then she asked me if I was crazy?
I responded I was. (I mean, how else do you respond to that?)
"My gosh," she said, slowing herself down for a moment. "I couldn't even imagine. One's enough for me. I'm not having anymore. My husband wants more but thank God for the Pill."
Ms. Natural Living is on the Pill?
I couldn't hold me tongue so I just threw it out there. "How does all this natural living coincide with all the chemicals you're putting in your body from the Pill?"
And then she said that she needs to be on the Pill because it allows her to live naturally. If she had more children then she wouldn't have the time to live the way she wanted to live, she said.
I held my tongue after that. Remember, I was the crazy one.
Erin Manning wrote:
What a horrific lie it is, to convince millions upon millions of healthy woman that their bodies' natural fertility is a terrible disease for which a decades-long prescription to a drug engineered to fight against it is not only necessary, but imperative!It is rather an oddity that with all this focus on natural foods that many women still don't consider birth control in the same manner.
Grandpa had about 6 kids with his first wife who died pretty young. Then he had 9 more with my grandmother. So maybe the old guy was just warn out by that time.
Grandpa had about 6 kids with his first wife who died pretty young. Then he had 9 more with my grandmother. So maybe the old guy was just warn out by that time.
Natural and Unnatural (father of 5 shocks mother of 1)
NFP — It Ain’t Your Momma’s Rhythm
Responsible Parenthood in a Birth Control Culture, Part Two [Open]
Responsible Parenthood in a Birth Control Culture, Part One [Open]
Contraception v. Natural Family Planning — Part 5 of 6 [Open]
Journey to the Truth (Natural Family Planning) [Open]
Enslaving Women One Pill at a Time (Birth Control Pills and Natural Family Planning)
New Study Shows Natural Family Planning Technique More “Effective” Than Contraception
Fargo) Diocese set to require pre-marriage course in natural family planning
Making Babies: A Very Different Look at Natural Family Planning
Clerical Contraception (Important Read! By Fr. Thomas J. Euteneuer)
(Fargo) Diocese set to require pre-marriage course in natural family planning
Natural Family Planning Awareness Week, July 25, 2004
IS NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING A 'HERESY'? (Trads, please take note)
Thanks Doc: More (and Younger) Doctors Support Natural Family Planning
Couple say Natural Family Planning strengthens marriage
Reflections: Natural family planning vs sexism
British Medical Journal: Natural Family Planning= Effective Birth Control Supported by Catholic Chrch
Natural Family Planning
(You didn't really have 5 days of safe time unless your cycle was incredibly short. You had 5 days of safe time that you recognized.)
Not only that, temp can be affected by so many things. I would get so many blips on my chart just due to waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom! Temp can be affected by taking Tylenol, Benadryl or even a glass of wine before bed. Then you have to take into account your stress level, which pretty much goes through the roof trying to figure out NFP!
Oh, for spellcheck — which I didn’t use! LOL!
abstain during fertile times.
My wife is a doc -- she says, "If the Pill had nothing to do with sex, it never would have been [FDA] approved"
Doesn’t matter to me right now as we’re in “having kids mode” - but it would take something like that. I just get sick of people claiming that NFP is this super birth control thing that totally works for everyone.
Obviously most days of a cycle, a woman is not fertile. But nfp type material always sounds like you can actually identify which days those are with some degree of certainty, and for a lot of women that’s just not true.
they only abstain during fetile times.
That seems to sum it up pretty well. Except for the mechanics, what’s is there to read up about?
You don’t want kids so you do something to prevent it.
Actually, she's not doing something that would cause it.
That's not quite the same thing, in anybody's morality.
I think you're operating from the tacit assumption that the objective is what determines the morality of an act, but the means by which that objective is achieved also matters.
"Not conceiving right now" is a perfectly moral objective for a married couple in some circumstances. How they achieve that objective is what's at issue.
lol OBIVIOUSLY YOU DON’T HAVE 9 KIDS....
True, true.
Expensive jewelry and buying clothes are usually the price to pay.
My question exactly. I can’t remember the reasoning used during our pre-marriage class (had to do precana because husband to be was Catholic), but it was pretty crazy. It reminded me of the game 6 ways to Kevin Bacon.
I respect your conviction but just don’t share it.
I have 2 — we may have a 3rd at some point. After that, its kinda over (wife’s pulling the plug biologically). Nine is a little out of the realm of possibility.
Not willing to sacrifice my nighttime social agenda, I suppose. :)
SnakeDoc
The 2nd child does work reasonably well.
As one wag put it, "the best birth control is....marriage."
I once thought so, but had the fortune(and sometimes misfortune) of having to eat only food raised/grown, cooked and stored the old fashioned way. No chemicals, processing, freezing, refined grains, refined sugar, etc.
After suffering the first month or so, I realized I never felt better in my life. For nearly 6 months, I didn’t have a single day where I felt unusually tired or “blah”.
Then I (very) distinctly remember having my first greasy fast-food meal after returning to NY. I felt sick throughout my body for about a day and it actually seemed to cloud my brain.
Food production in this country has become too industrialized, powerful and unregulated, IMO. There are too many shortcuts, chemicals and additives that are pressured for approval by the food lobby. I find it sad that it’s nearly impossible to eat now without ingesting man-made chemicals.
I wish I could eat all natural again but it’s damn near impossible if you travel often.
One of my friends just had her 8th child. Her husband has two other from a previous marriage. They plan 1 or 2 more.
maybe you might have talked about it as an alternative before marriage
“Temp can be affected by taking Tylenol, Benadryl or even a glass of wine before bed”
Receptivity can be affected by a glass of wine before bed too.
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