Natural Family Planning Awareness Week: July 20-26
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Natural Family Planning Specifics
- Benefits of Cycle Tracking for Teens and Pre-Teens
- Fertility Awareness for Single Young Adults
- Cycle Tracking for Women Approaching Menopause
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The methods of cycle tracking are highly valuable for young girls. Rather than using the term “Natural Family Planning,” the more appropriate terms are “Fertility Awareness Based Methods” or simply “Cycle Tracking.”
Specifically, for young girls, there are programs offered in which mothers and daughters can learn about the purpose of one’s menstrual period as well as the different changes happening in her body throughout the month.
The benefit of young women understanding their menstrual cycles allows girls to transition through adolescence. For many pre-teens and teens, the beginning of a period seems like the end of the world. While menstruation and associated changes in puberty certainly come with suffering, there is a power that comes with understanding the natural flows of the body and how these cyclical rhythms point to the very nature of women. When young girls begin to understand their menstrual cycles, they can begin to create context for their identity as women. What is truly amazing is that women are designed to tend and cultivate life, regardless of vocation, by shedding what is unnecessary and welcoming what is new. This rhythm is written into the fabric of the woman’s body every month.
Understanding God’s design of women and their purpose is an invaluable gift we can begin cultivating with the young girls of our Church!
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While the onset of puberty is early in the adolescent years, women’s hormones are just beginning to regulate in their 20s and 30s according to the Mayo Clinic. While menstruation-related disorders can be diagnosed before young adulthood, it becomes clearer when there may be underlying issues affecting a woman’s health. Teaching young adult women about their cycles and specifically particular methods of cycle tracking allows for women to identify any abnormalities in their monthly cycles.
One of the aspects of the fertility awareness world is medical technologies such as Natural Procreative Technologies or NaPro. “NaPro is a women’s health science that monitors and maintains a woman’s reproductive and gynecological health” (www.naprotechnology.com). NaPro can diagnose and treat some of the most common menstrual and hormonal-related issues which is incredibly valuable because many of these disorders disrupt daily. When women have a better understanding of their cycle, they have a deeper insight into their overall health.
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Perimenopause is the transitional period between regular menstrual cycles and menopause. During this time, a woman’s hormones are fluctuating unpredictably, and menstrual cycles have not necessarily stopped. Utilizing fertility tracking methods continues to be important in this phase to be able to attain a couple’s goals for pregnancy, whether the couple is seeking to achieve or avoid pregnancy prior to the onset of menopause.
Another helpful element in tracking a woman’s cycle in perimenopause is incorporating technologies like Natural Procreative Technologies or NaPro. When a woman’s hormones are beginning to shift in this transitional phase, NaPro can help providers understand the current hormonal landscape and provide treatments that can assist in regulating the hormones and processes to decrease the symptoms and disruptions that many women experience in menopause. While this is a natural and necessary transition, having a continued understanding of proper hormonal cycles and access to care that can help with regulation can create an overall healthier and easier transition into this next phase of life.
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Brief NFP History
NFP Awareness Week is a national educational campaign celebrating the methods of fertility awareness and the anniversary of Humanae Vitae, a papal encyclical written by Pope Paul VI. This encyclical was a timely proclamation of the Church’s consistent teachings on human sexuality, marital love, and responsible parenthood.
When this document came out in the 60s the culture was in the whirlwind of the sexual revolution and the first stages of hormonal birth control. Around the same time and with much less fanfare, researchers were beginning to gain a deeper understanding of the biological markers that indicate changes in a woman’s fertility throughout her menstrual cycle. The Church has consistently taught that the marital union must be unitive for the couple while simultaneously remaining open to life.The advent of fertility tracking methods did not change Church teaching. Rather, it provided couples access to more accurate data about the wife’s cycle of fertility. Having this biological information enables couples to cooperate with God and his design of the woman’s body to achieve or avoid pregnancy. Natural Family Planning is an umbrella used to refer to fertility awareness or cycle-tracking methods. While the term ‘Natural Family Planning’ would only apply to married couples, it is important to also understand how fertility tracking methods can and should be utilized by women in all stages of life to have a better understanding of God’s design of their bodies and their overall health.
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