Current Method: Marquette
Previous Method: Couple to Couple League
👩🏾🤝👨🏽⛪🚸📈🌡
- Tell us a little about yourself.I graduated from Benedictine College in 2014 with a degree in Spanish and International Studies. I currently work for our Archdiocese assisting Spanish-speaking families with enrolling their children in Catholic schools. I met my husband while working in a parish office, and we have been married for 4 years now, with two little boys. My husband was born and raised in Mexico but has been in the US for 12 years. We are a multicultural, bilingual family living in the US Midwest. We bought a house for the first time last year, and with that I have discovered I enjoy yard work and home improvement projects, especially when my husband joins in with me!
- What effects has fertility awareness had on your relationship?NFP has been a blessing for us overall, especially postpartum (and beyond), allowing us to find days that we are able to be intimate and still follow the Church and discern what is the best course for our family. It has, however, been difficult at times when cycles run long or are ambiguous, leading to uncertainty. But for the most part, it has been a way for us to share and work together in forming our family.
- Current Method: Marquette - How did you find your instructor?Reference from an acquaintance and through a Facebook group for the method. They did a free consult and then charged $200 for follow-up and guidance through the first 12 postpartum cycles.
- Describe your daily charting routine.I have been charting this method for 3 years (charting in general for 4.5 years). I track temperature and hormones (urine samples). It doesn’t really have an affect in general. I use a Tempdrop for overnight and then use the Clearbluw monitor to check hormones in the morning. Sometimes LH strips in the evening.
- What made you choose this method?It seemed to be more objective in the postpartum period. This has been a huge plus. The downside is if the monitor detects a high at the beginning of the cycle, this can lead to numerous unusable days per the method rules that might have otherwise been available had hormones not surged randomly one day.
- Did you switch to this method from another one? If so, why?I chatted Sympto-thermal prior to getting married and in the first months. Then I got pregnant and soon after having our first, I tried to take a sympto-thermal postpartum class, but it was confusing to me. Marquette was very straightforward and the transition was easy due to my previous NFP experience.
- Previous Method: Couple to Couple League - How did you find your instructor?Found through NFP options given to us during our marriage prep process.
- Describe your daily charting routine.I started with sympto-thermal about six months before getting married. I tracked temps and mucus. It was a little weird to talk about with my fiancé, but it was fine.
- What made you choose this method?I liked the idea if tracking both temps and mucus, rather than just a mucus-only method. It is also cheap, really. Once you understand how the method works, you don’t really need to keep paying for materials or instructors. Nice for regular, straightforward cycles. Not as easy in my experience for postpartum.
- Did you stop using this method? If so, why?I stopped charting when I got pregnant with my first, but once he was born, we decided to switch to Marquette for a more objective method rather than relying on my observations of mucus and random temps (since I was breastfeeding).
