Billy and Janean Doherty, members of St. Jerome, Oconomowoc, have three children and find that practicing Natural Family Planning has strengthened their marriage. (Submitted photo)

TORI FRANKE
SPECIAL TO THE CATHOLIC HERALD

Natural Family Planning is most commonly known as a practice of charting menstrual cycle data to understand a married couple’s naturally occurring times of fertility and infertility.

It is not commonly known as something that makes marriages stronger, but that’s just one of its many benefits.

Billy and Janean Doherty have found that practicing NFP has supported and blessed their marriage in a myriad of physical, emotional and spiritual ways.

Billy, an electrician, and Janean, a nurse, have been married for eight years. They reside in Waukesha with their three children, ages 3 months to 5 years, with a fourth in heaven.

The couple, members of St. Jerome, Oconomowoc, learned about NFP during their engagement. NFP charting information can be used to help a couple conceive a child or space pregnancy, should they have a serious reason to do so.

Janean was vaguely aware of NFP as a nursing student at Marquette University in Milwaukee but recalls, laughing, “I knew of it, but I didn’t know there were different methods. A friend told me about it who had taken one of Dr. Fehring’s classes at Marquette.”

The Marquette Method, one of many excellent methods of NFP, was developed in Marquette’s School of Nursing.

Billy elaborated on the early days of putting NFP into practice and reflecting on the benefits.

“You feel a closeness as a husband because you learn so much more about (your wife) than you would have otherwise. That creates more intimacy in the relationship. And on a spiritual level, you are learning virtues like self-control,” he said.

The couple had spent most of their engagement long distance. Speaking about the shift to being married and sharing a home, Billy shared how they could have inadvertently put exclusive emphasis on physical connection.

“It’s easy to have unbalance in your relationship when so much of it is based on the physical. (NFP and windows of abstaining) really creates so many other ways for you to become intimate with your spouse and to nurture ways outside of and in addition to the physical. That was a really big way that we grew in the beginning and continue to grow. Temperance and self-control are big benefits.”

Some methods of NFP such as the Creighton Model have specific education for couples on strengthening and engaging these other means of connection and intimacy. The SPICE acronym used by Creighton stands for spiritual, physical, intellectual, creative and emotional.

Couples are encouraged to foster each of these means of connection in their marriage as a facet of their NFP use.

Janean recalls physical benefits of charting with NFP.

“I had endometriosis that had gone undiagnosed my whole life. Because we were charting, there were times I noticed I wasn’t ovulating and other things — those biomarkers were really crucial in the diagnosis. I had debilitating pain.”

Even though she had dealt with severe pain that prevented her work and daily activities, it wasn’t until she started charting that she received a diagnosis.

“Because I was charting, I began to see when various symptoms would hit. Knowing when I was ovulating, knowing if I was ovulating or not. I wouldn’t have been able to get my surgery as quickly as I did if I hadn’t had years of documented information to share with my doctor.”

It’s not uncommon for women to wait seven to 10 years to receive an endometriosis diagnosis. In the meantime, they manage monthly pain, bladder and bowel issues, missed work and life activities, and have an increased risk of scar tissue and infertility. Having an accurate account of a woman’s cycle health through an NFP chart can drastically reduce the time it takes to receive a diagnosis and care for this and many other cycle health concerns.

For more information about starting or ongoing support for NFP, visit https://www.archmil.org/naturalfertilitycare or email franket@archmil.com

Tori Franke is the Coordinator of Natural Family Planning in the Office of Evangelization and Catechesis of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.