Family Planning Post #2: Our Story

As you can see, this is a series of posts on family planning. It would be helpful if you could read them in order, so if you haven't read Amber's Story below, it would be good to start there.

And one last time, if you're a teen or younger, please make sure you have your parents read the posts in this series first and get their permission to read them yourself.

Our Story

Before I get started, I'll let you know that this will likely be a little bit long, but it's been a long road with a lot of questions. My attempt is to give an accurate picture of what it's actually been like to walk through this whole thing... not just to give you a quick 30-second overview so you can move on with your day and say "that's nice". These are really tough issues, and I do not want to pretend in any way that we have had an easy time coming to any single conclusion regarding family planning and birth control methods. Likewise, I do not want anyone to think that it's strange to have lots of questions and not know what to do with them or how to begin to answer them. It's tough, especially when most couples often have very little information and don't know what's reliable. With that in mind, here goes...

About two years before I was married (at approximately age 19), I went to the doctor to discuss my irregular cycles. I would have three periods in one month and then go three months before having another one. This had gone on for about two years, so I figured there was something wrong. After about 10 minutes of discussion, the doctor prescribed the birth control pill to regulate my cycles. It remedied the situation, so I kept taking it.

In 2000, Chet and I got married, and I just kept taking the pill. We were both in college, and since we weren't ready to start "trying" to have kids, I proceeded to refill my prescription every month. I didn't have a lot of side effects that I noticed, so I never saw any problem with it. There was just one issue that came up after I was on the pill for about a year. My doctor in our college town was asking me questions about my family's medical history and began to ask me if anyone in our family has ever had problems with clotting (since this is a common risk associated with taking the pill, she didn't want to make a problem worse if it already existed). I told her that MANY people in my family have had clotting issues. Before she would refill my prescription, she ordered some clotting tests. They all came back negative (saying that I didn't have an unusual problem with clotting), so she refilled the prescription. That was the end of that.

Fast forward about 2 1/2 more years. I had graduated from college and was gainfully employed. Chet, however, was raising support to pay his salary as a part-time associate pastor at a church plant in town. He had two other jobs in addition. Oh, and he was part of a band that traveled quite often, especially on the weekends. We were busy, didn't really have "all that much money", and were working to pay off Chet's undergrad student loans. So we still weren't ready to start "trying" to have kids. Our mindset was that, if we're not ready to start trying, then we're preventing and there's no reason to go off the pill. We didn't discuss it much. It was just part of the normal routine, and if I forgot to take it one day, we just made sure we were careful. Pretty simple.

At this time, I was hanging out a lot with a good friend of mine named Angie. We would walk at a nearby park after work quite frequently. She too was on the pill and hadn't thought twice about it, especially since her cycles were strange (this is why it was initially prescribed to her). Her husband heard some stuff about how it was possible that the pill could be an abortifacient (it could cause abortions of fertilized eggs... aka babies). So he started researching. He came to the conclusion that Angie should stop taking the pill immediately. She nearly freaked out! They still weren't ready to have kids because of some circumstances in their lives, so they enrolled in a Natural Family Planning class at the local Catholic church. I basically watched Angie walk through all of this, but I was still a little bit skeptical of what her husband was saying.

That's when I started researching for myself. Any of you who know me well are aware of the fact that I love to learn, and if there's something I don't know much about, it kind of (or REALLY) bothers me. Realizing that this could possibly be a moral issue, I researched with gusto. Angie shared some things with me that they had come across. I forgot to mention that, in the process of all the aforementioned stuff in their lives, they were converting from Protestantism to Catholicism. As a result of this and the fact that they took the class at the Catholic church, most of the resources were produced by the Catholic church. In my mind, there was no inherent problem with the Catholic church producing useful resources that I could learn from even though I wasn't Catholic. The problem I was running into is that, in the things I was reading, most of the reasons why a person shouldn't use the pill were based on what the Pope said and not on what the Bible said.

I continued my research. I basically got online and typed "Oral Contraceptives as Abortifacient" in my search engine window. Immediately, all kinds of articles popped up, and many of them were written by Protestant authors. Wow! Can I just say that this whole time I never knew this was even a question I should be asking! It was just something everyone did. I had NEVER heard this discussion brought up in any of the Protestant churches I had been part of (and for that matter, I had never even heard it as a discussion among my Catholic friends, who were admittedly nominal Catholics, but still... shouldn't I have heard this SOMEWHERE?).

Actually, it was this shocking moment 5 years ago that has prompted countless hours of research, interviewing, praying, thinking, etc. and that has produced in me a great desire to make it known that there is indeed a moral aspect of decisions regarding family planning and birth control methods, and people need to be able to make INFORMED decisions. Further, there have been many people who have come to us asking us to discuss our journey and our findings in the past, and we assume that there are many others that would ask about if they knew it was something to be discussed. Hence the blog series.

Okay, back to my story. I researched a lot. I read the articles from both sides. I read the Physician's Desk Reference listings for all the types of hormonal birth control that were on the market as well as devices like the IUD. After HOURS of reading from both sides of the issue and tossing these things around in my mind throughout a lot of sleepless nights, and after a lot of talking and praying with Chet, we came to a conclusion... finally. We determined that because it seemed very clear that there is at least a possibility that the birth control pill (of any kind) renders the uterine lining so hostile that it could make it impossible for the already-fertilized egg to implant (thereby aborting the baby), we could not in good conscience continue taking the pill. We recognized the IUD as abortifacient right away because one of its main functions is to irritate and thicken the lining of the uterus to "sluff off" the fertilized egg (which is a baby because it's already fertilized even if it's not implanted). That meant that the IUD and other such devices were also out of the question.

So what would we do? Barrier methods don't always have the best track record. We learned that Natural Family Planning (aka, the Fertility Awareness Method or Sympto-thermal method), when done properly, has a much higher rate of success at preventing pregnancy than barrier methods. We looked into family planning classes, and the only ones that were offered were at the Catholic church. They did seem well-researched medically, so we enrolled in the same class that our friends took. While we see Scripture as the ultimate authority and not the Pope, we did learn some very helpful facts regarding various forms of birth control. We also learned a TON about my body and the way it works naturally, including the fact that it was probably stress and nutritional deficiencies that were originally causing my cycles to be so irregular... and that if I had only known more about my body, there would likely be many things I could do without introducing hormones to regulate my cycles.

Can I just say that this was one point of instant relief for me?! Unlike Amber, who had to go off the pill because of what it was doing to her body, I was afraid to go off it for fear of what my body would do without it. I learned that I could find out a lot about my body just by watching for and charting a few easy signs.

All of these things were helpful, but I think that Chet and I would both agree that the most helpful aspect of the class was the call to consider whether or not we were really trusting the Lord. We had to ask ourselves all the same questions that Amber and my brother had to ask. The instructors of our class did not teach that anyone who wanted to use any method of family planning was automatically lacking trust, but we realized as we looked at our own lives that we were indeed failing to trust the Lord. We're both the oldest children in our families and have had some fairly out-of-control experiences in our lives (who doesn't?), so we had learned to be independent go-getters who had to have things in line and all figured out. Of course, the Lord had grown us each in some ways regarding our need for control, but I think this was really the culmination point of that for both of us.

Chet had three random rather low-paying jobs. I had the 8-5 job with the insurance (which by the way I loved). My job didn't pay a whole lot, and we figured out that I would earn about a dollar an hour after we paid for child care, formula, disposable diapers, extra transportation to and from work, work clothes, and the bump up in tax bracket. So could we trust the Lord to provide for our family if I had to quit my job? This was HUGE! We are not people who spontaneously enter into things without thinking through them first, so it was a tough one... for about a month or two.

We realized that part of our problem was that we were overestimating what it REALLY took to take care of a family. Essentially, we weren't frivolous people, but the Lord revealed to us that there were a lot of wants that we could forego in order to take care of real needs. The Lord doesn't call us to provide for all our family's wants... just their needs. Wow! Talk about a paradigm shift when you already thought you had a pretty minimalist perspective. So we stopped freaking out about it so much. We followed the "rules" of Natural Family Planning for two months with the mind that we were preventing pregnancy. And by the third month, we continued to chart for the sake of awareness, but our hearts had adopted an attitude of trust and willingness (and even a bit of a desire) to accept the gift of children. It was that same cycle (the third one) when I got pregnant with Ladan.

I need to stop here and say that going through these stages of the process helped us both to see how gracious and patient our Heavenly Father is. I mean, seriously, we were so ignorant of so many things, and then when we researched and found out, we just didn't want to accept it... and then when we accepted part of it, we didn't want to be totally humble before the Lord fully seeking what He wanted (because we had a lot of ideas about what we wanted). And through it all, He loved us and was merciful to even reveal these things to us in the first place. We could have gone on for quite some time before He softened our hearts to the penetrating truth of his sovereignty, but He chose that time and place to help us. He gave us the gift of Ladan, that's for sure, but He also gave us the gift of understanding what it really meant to trust Him with our lives.

Fast forward to 13 months after Ladan's birth, which was almost 4 years after we were married. We had just moved to Louisville so Chet could start seminary. My cycles finally returned at this point, and I suddenly realized that I was pretty petrified again of the idea of having another kid--and mainly another possible c-section--so soon. After all, I finally got back to feeling like myself when Ladan was a year old, just one month before. Additionally, I was scheduled to travel to Sudan for a couple of weeks the following month, and I didn't want to be going through the early stages of pregnancy while I was there. I resumed charting so I was aware of what was going on in my body, but I was a little bit unsure of what I thought about using even barrier methods. Was I lacking trust as some said? Was I introducing complications as others suggest? Should we just abstain during my most fertile days as our class recommended?

Here was my thought process on that.... I was all about being "self-controlled" and "disciplined", but God designed my body so that I am most interested in even being intimate with my husband on the same days that I'm most fertile. Chet's system is designed to be ready to go almost all of the time. But mine is designed to be particularly ready at the time when I'm most fertile. Clearly, this is one aspect of the female biological make-up that promotes the population of the earth, and He has a reason for making it this way. He also says in His Word that we're only to abstain from intimacy with one another (as husband and wife) for a time of mutual prayer and fasting. Let me just say that I'm not exactly thinking about praying and fasting when I want to be with my husband. I just want to be with my husband, for Pete's sake. So I had to question whether or not it was indeed immoral for me to want to be with my husband and act on it and AT THE SAME TIME come to the conclusion that we could postpone pregnancy for a time and for a specific reason. This is a tough one for me, and it still kind of is sometimes. My reasoning on it at this time is as follows: It does my husband a lot of good if I initiate things because I desire him, and our marriage is boosted as a result. It also does me a lot of good, not just because it's fun, but because it draws me closer to him and our hearts are more unified (this is the purpose of sex, right?). Keeping that in mind, but also realizing that there were seemingly biblical reasons for us to postpone pregnancy for a time, we decided to begin using barrier methods during my most fertile times (fully accepting that they don't have the same success rate of perfect pill use). And it was helpful to us and our relationship.

So we continued to prevent pregnancy using a combination of charting and barrier methods until we knew more about the trip. A few months passed by, and we decided not to worry about getting pregnant for the sake of the trip. But I still had to get used to the idea that I might possibly have another c-section... and another kid to take care of. Add to this the facts that our insurance didn't cover pregnancy or delivery (which is about $20,000 for a c-section) and that Chet only made about $8 per hour at his part-time job, and it was a recipe for a bit of internal freaking out!

Wait a second! I thought I had conquered the trust issue, and I thought I had decided how I was going to handle myself in the future. Nice how the Lord gives us additional opportunities to apply what we've learned, isn't it? (It really is amazing, but it doesn't feel like it at the time.) Anyway, we decided not to worry about it again and determined that there were many ways that the Lord could provide (including a job change for Chet), so we didn't feel like we were reckless even though we didn't have all the answers. We ceased the use of barrier methods and continued charting for the sake of awareness. Two cycles later, I was pregnant with Gabe who was born when Ladan was 27 months old.

Fast forward one more time to when Gabe was 12 months old and my cycles returned again. I had to have another c-section with him despite my great desire to attempt a VBAC. While we had resolved that we would use a combination of charting and barrier methods for at least a few months, we had a new set of things to consider regarding family planning. How many c-sections can my body handle, and what will we do when we've reached that point? Is it wrong to reach a point where we say enough is enough? We know that we will not use the pill or IUD, that barrier methods may not be effective enough, and that I don't know that it's a good idea for me to abstain during the time when I find my husband most desirable... every single month... for another 15-25 years. In light of all this, is it appropriate to consider either tubal ligation or vasectomy? We know that we wouldn't recommend these procedures to most people our age who have so much of their fertility ahead of them, but what if your body is really done? How do you determine if your body is actually "done"? Is there a point in time when it becomes a stewardship issue and we need to realize that we have x-number of kids at home that we are caring for and that the risks associated with further c-sections are too great? What about our friends who've had upwards of 5 or 6 c-sections and are ready for more? If we don't approach it in the same way that they do, are they trusting more than we are? Are their doctors right when they say people over-react to the dangers of multiple c-sections? Are we failing to understand something?

These are all questions that have gone through our minds. Since Gabe was born, we realized the weight of these questions and began reading, praying and interviewing others (medical experts, theologians, friends who have had a wide variety of experiences, etc.). My next post will attempt to outline some of our recent questions, thoughts, and findings. Stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, there is a relatively short article by Dr. Albert Mohler (the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) that I'd like to recommend. Dr. Mohler can pack a ton of stuff to think about into just a few words, so it will be well worth your read. Here it is:

Can Christians Use Birth Control by Albert Mohler

In his conclusion, he writes, "For evangelicals, much work remains to be done. We must build and nurture a new tradition of moral theology, drawn from Holy Scripture and enriched by the theological heritage of the church. Until we do, many evangelical couples will not even know where to begin the process of thinking about birth control in a fully Christian frame. It is high time evangelicals answered this call." Amen to that! May this blog series attempt to help us all begin the process of thinking in a "fully Christian frame" regarding birth control, and may we end up more educated, more unified, and more Christ-like as a result!