I don't think you are comparing apples to apples saying the pill and natural family planning have the same effectiveness... The Catholic Church might be cherry-picking its information on this one! This fda chart is old, but has the general idea:
1 yr failure rates (ie. pregnancy occured) for couples using:
regular pill: 5% (typical use) 0.1% (lowest expected rate)
natural family planning: 25% (typical use) 1-9% (lowest expected rate)
But if you compare typical use, natural family planning has a 25 % failure rate, which is too risky for many couples, and is 5 times more risky than typical pill use. If you compare ideal use, the pill is at least an order of magnitude more effective than one would expect natural family planning to be (0.1% vs 1%). And for many couples, the pill will be almost 2 orders of magnitue more effective (0.1% vs 9%.)
The effectiveness of natural family planning will vary a lot with implementation - how diligent is the woman at charting, how regular is her cycle, how much self control does the couple have, how conservative are they in setting safe-for-sex days and no sex days. Obviously if you take natural family planning to the extreme and practice abstinence (an age-old method), then it should be highly effective. The typical use failure rates make this a method best for those that have some reason for not using other forms of b/c, will be very disciplined, and are OK with the higher failure rate of this method. It DOES fit with the Catholic Church's ideology of having sex "open to the possibility of having a child." So make sure that you are on board with that ideology as well
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As for the pill, yeah try changing it up. Pre-pill, whenever I found myself crying I was almost always PMSing. Post-pill, I am just confused when I find myself crying. Are my hormones a wreck because of this pill? Am I gaining weight cause that is what I do or because of this pill? Why crying this month and not the previous 30? Am I stressing for other things and just blaming this. Currently on nuvaring (which I love for convenience reasons) but would like to give up the hormonal b/c just to see what its like without, but we are not ready for a little one yet! Finally, married and out of my 20s, I could consider a less effective method as an unexpected pregnancy would not be a disaster, but I don't think we have the self-control/discipline for natural family planning. Not until we are actually planning to grow our family, that is
1 yr failure rates (ie. pregnancy occured) for couples using:
regular pill: 5% (typical use) 0.1% (lowest expected rate)
natural family planning: 25% (typical use) 1-9% (lowest expected rate)
But if you compare typical use, natural family planning has a 25 % failure rate, which is too risky for many couples, and is 5 times more risky than typical pill use. If you compare ideal use, the pill is at least an order of magnitude more effective than one would expect natural family planning to be (0.1% vs 1%). And for many couples, the pill will be almost 2 orders of magnitue more effective (0.1% vs 9%.)
The effectiveness of natural family planning will vary a lot with implementation - how diligent is the woman at charting, how regular is her cycle, how much self control does the couple have, how conservative are they in setting safe-for-sex days and no sex days. Obviously if you take natural family planning to the extreme and practice abstinence (an age-old method), then it should be highly effective. The typical use failure rates make this a method best for those that have some reason for not using other forms of b/c, will be very disciplined, and are OK with the higher failure rate of this method. It DOES fit with the Catholic Church's ideology of having sex "open to the possibility of having a child." So make sure that you are on board with that ideology as well
As for the pill, yeah try changing it up. Pre-pill, whenever I found myself crying I was almost always PMSing. Post-pill, I am just confused when I find myself crying. Are my hormones a wreck because of this pill? Am I gaining weight cause that is what I do or because of this pill? Why crying this month and not the previous 30? Am I stressing for other things and just blaming this. Currently on nuvaring (which I love for convenience reasons) but would like to give up the hormonal b/c just to see what its like without, but we are not ready for a little one yet! Finally, married and out of my 20s, I could consider a less effective method as an unexpected pregnancy would not be a disaster, but I don't think we have the self-control/discipline for natural family planning. Not until we are actually planning to grow our family, that is
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