Natural Family Planning:

Effective, safe, and yes, natural!.

Empowering women.

Empowering families.

Alabama NFP

Since I was a young girl I had always had terrible menstrual cramps and PMS. The symptoms were so severe that I would pass out from the pain and have flu like symptoms every cycle. Growing up, I knew that my cramps were severe, but I did not think anything could be done about it. While in college I was missing so many classes due to these horrible cramps that I was on the verge of failing my courses, despite my good grades. I began to look for help, and quickly discovered that mainstream gynecology only offered birth control. This was quite frustrating to me as it did not tell me what was wrong or fix the problem. I was frustrated and complaining to my grandmother that I suspected I had endometriosis and that I couldn’t find a local doctor to take me serious or offer me anything but birth control pills. It was then that I was introduced to The Creighton Model. As it turns out, my Grandmother, whom I thought taught “baby” classes at the local hospital, is actually a FertilityCare Educator training FertilityCare Practitioners in how to teach the Creighton Model. I was amazed that something so simple yet so accurate and efficient was available.

     I began to chart and I sent my charted cycles along with my list of symptoms, etc. to be evaluated by a NaPro Medical Consultant. My new doctor not only took me and my complaints seriously, he used my chart to identify and accurately diagnose me with endometriosis, low progesterone, clinically relevant PMS, a low-grade uterine infection, and an increased risk of miscarriage once I was at the point of starting a family. He was so kind and he told me that there was no reason that I needed to live like this anymore.

 

Fast Forward to the beginning of our marriage. Chris and I felt that because of certain circumstances, we needed to post-pone pregnancy for the first year of our marriage. Knowing that I had a very high risk of miscarriage, it was very important to us that we were able to effectively post pone pregnancy. Once we were ready, our NaPro doctor helped us prepare my body for pregnancy. We succeeded in conceiving the first cycle trying. My pregnancy did not progress like we had hoped and at 8.5 wks we lost our sweet Gianna Emannual. We were devastated. The Pope Paul VI Institute’s staff was extremely supportive during our mourning process and they were the only ones to tell me that post partum depression can occur after a miscarriage( it is after all, still a pregnancy). It turned out to be very important that we knew this. I did develop post partum depression and The Institute’s nurses and staff were there to hold our hands and help treat my post partum depression. Six months later, after working to straighten out my hormones and fixing my newly developed issue with ovulating, we conceived my daughter and her twin.

At 8.5 weeks we could no longer see a heartbeat for one of our babies. We were terrified we would lose the other baby too. After a difficult pregnancy, my daughter was born at 38wks and perfectly healthy. The Creighton Model has been an integral part of our lives for avoiding pregnancy, achieving pregnancy, and treating my health issues. I am so grateful for Creighton and NaPro Technology. They allow us to have a family in a moral and responsible manner, respecting our marriage, and me, as a woman.

     Teaching the System to couples and women is an honor. Whatever help and instruction they need, I am happy to be involved and be able to teach them about their fertility and encourage their love to grow in depth in a way they didn’t know it could. As a Practitioner, I teach couples how to use the system to both avoid and achieve pregnancy, but I am trained to identify biomarkers on their chart that point to specific gynecological and reproductive issues. Because of my training, I can teach couples how to look for many of the biomarkers themselves, thus allowing couples to monitor their health in a way that has never before been available.

Teresa's Story