“But the Lord said to Abraham: ‘Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I really bear a child, old as I am?’ Is anything too marvelous for the Lord to do? At the appointed time, about this time next year, I will return to you, and Sarah will have a son.’” Genesis 18:13-14

“When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be healed?’” John 5:6

My relationship with Natural Family Planning (NFP) is not straightforward. In fact, when I first got married, I thought we would use it like most people to space our biologically-born children. I never once thought about eventually it being used for my medical issues and as a way to solve our infertility. 

Even reading those words again, I see that I still correlate NFP with “fixing” what is wrong with me. I assumed that once we switched to Creighton and worked with a practitioner and NaPro doctor, we would be “fixed” and move right along in our expectations for a family. 

I never imagined the actual reality: that NFP would become so consuming for me that I fell harder and further into despair and obsessiveness about our infertility. It got to the point where I no longer felt like myself and asked my husband if we could take a break from charting. 

Since infertility isn’t diagnosed until after a year of trying to conceive, we were told that our situation was normal and would most likely sort itself out after a while. But the year went by and nothing had changed, so we started to pursue more aggressive treatments to figure out what was going on. We even switched from a different NFP method to using Creighton because it has the medical component. If you use Creighton, you know that it’s a fairly involved method and that there is a learning curve. 

We worked with a Creighton-trained nurse practitioner for several months, and she strongly suspected endometriosis. We didn’t look into it at the time because we weren’t close to any NaPro surgeons/doctors, and we were looking at moving away to get closer to family. Again, we thought that our family might grow at any point and that we should get closer to family before we started having kids. 

One blessing of moving back home is that I connected with a local NaPro doctor. She confirmed through my Creighton charts that I most likely had endo and that my hormones were not quite right. Through Creighton, we started many different treatments, the most drastic of which was the endometriosis excision surgery I had back in 2020. We once again thought our chances at conception were pretty high after that surgery, and continued to use Creighton religiously in order to time intimacy and work with the most fertile days.  

However, two years after that surgery, I knew I couldn’t keep charting. I told my husband that while we looked at the charts together and talked about what was going on, the bulk of the charting and responsibility fell to me, and I was way too obsessed with it and couldn’t stop thinking about charting. It was truly consuming my life. 

Gratefully, my husband was supportive of our taking a break from the charting, and for the past three years, we haven’t charted intentionally at all. I do use the charts now to track my cycle, but I don’t use it every day, and we are definitely not utilizing it to try to conceive. We’ve remained open, obviously, but my mental health really improved once we stopped the charting, and I don’t see any reason at this point to begin again. 

While I’m grateful to Creighton for helping us pinpoint some initial issues, it by no means “fixed” our infertility. I think it’s tempting as Catholics to feel obliged to utilize NFP and to try to have biological children at any cost. Something our journey with NFP taught me is that while some things are in my control, and I should absolutely take care of myself and do what feels peaceful to accomplish regarding our infertility, I actually don’t have any control with the outcomes. In other words, I shouldn’t use NFP to try to force the outcome of having a child. It’s a worthy goal, but it only led to frustration on my end because no matter how exactly we followed the method we were using, we never received a positive pregnancy test. 

For some, this story ends differently, and praise God! For some, NFP (and Creighton in particular) does lead to a positive pregnancy test, and that is a pure gift and something in which to rejoice. However, I have had to learn that just because I am doing the “right things,” doesn’t mean that I am entitled to a specific outcome. In fact, five years later from my initial surgery, we are looking at a much more extensive and permanent surgery because I have some fairly serious health concerns and our infertility has not been healed and remains unexplained. 

The two Bible verses at the beginning of this post have struck me recently for different reasons. The first one about Sarah feels incredibly relevant and apropos because I recently had a similar reaction when my husband said he still has hope that we might conceive one day. I am at the point where I can’t see healing from infertility occurring because our situation has never improved and doctors have told us our only chance at conception is to use IVF (which we won’t pursue). Thus, the second verse of Jesus asking the paralytic if he wants to be healed really struck me because I realized that I am like the paralytic – ill for so long that I can’t see any other reality. It just recently came to my attention that I don’t know if I even want to be healed at this point (for reasons which I really don’t have space to go into in this post). So, while my husband and I wait to make the surgery decision, I pray that I look to Christ first for my healing and that He would give me hope and courage to pursue healing if that is in His will. 

While healing and NFP often do go hand-in-hand, for those of us who feel like we’ve exhausted the limits and have been told that our case remains unexplained, it’s okay to take a break from the charting and the treatments. Instead, let’s turn to Christ our Healer and ask that He renew us in His love, hope, and grace. 

Merideth Ochs is a Catholic wife and adoptive mother, who thrives on copious amounts of coffee and deeply loves her faith, cultivating holy friendships, and reading books. Merideth writes about infertility, adoption, family life, and faith on her Substack, Manna from the Sky.