Fertility Archives - Natural Family Planning | Fertility Awareness

Bearing the Light Himself: An Advent Reflection

In our parish adoration chapel, a German leaded-glass window glows softly in the afternoon light. Its warm colors shift across the floor as if alive, but it was a small detail, almost easy to miss, that recently captivated my prayer. The Blessed Virgin Mary stands in the center of the window, robed in sparkling blue…

Quiet Beginnings: The Immaculate Conception and the Incarnation

These sacred December feasts—the Immaculate Conception and the approaching celebration of the Incarnation—invite us to contemplate how deeply God enters human life through the gift of fertility. Both moments are quiet beginnings. They unfold within a woman’s body. Both remind us that God works through the ordinary pathways of human generation, elevating them so that…

Inside PCOS: Understanding the Hormonal Puzzle

“PCOS is one of the leading causes of infertility in women and the most common reason for irregular periods,” said Lauren Rubal, M.D., a reproductive endocrinologist from Newport Beach, Calif. According to the National Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Association, one in ten women have PCOS, but half remain undiagnosed. Recognizing the Symptoms PCOS symptoms include irregular…

Perimenopause and the PeakDay App

Women often wonder when their fertility will begin to change and what symptoms and charting changes they will experience. Many women have very regular cycles and predicable charts that they have relied upon for years, so they become nervous when they start experiencing different cycles and observations during their perimenopause years. In the image below,…

The Sufferings of Miscarriage

Miscarriage is a hard topic. The loss of an unborn child is experienced by many couples and yet, each loss remains entirely unique. It can feel hard to know what to say or do to support a mother and father who’ve miscarried. It can feel hard to do “the work of grief” ourselves. Thankfully, the…

A Reluctant Podcaster

At times we are asked to do things that we know are out of our comfort zone. We know it will stretch us a bit. That was the case for me when asked to host the new PeakDay Podcast for Couple to Couple League. I am solidly a behind-the-scenes kind of person. Researching guests, developing…

God’s Way for Marriage

Stephen and Girley learned about NFP in their marriage prep classes in both the Philippines and the US. Although they were both cradle Catholics, by the time they married, they had stopped practicing their faith. “I wanted to get married in the Church. But, I was stubborn and wanted the freedom to do things my…

Volunteers Plant, God Harvests

Volunteers are the heart of Couple to Couple League. You could even say that while God is the “Lord of the Harvest,” volunteers are the faithful workers that have been sent out to labor in the field of the CCL ministry. The thousands of couples learning NFP each year from CCL all connect with a…

New Tricks

Our instructor with a giant flip chart. A mercury thermometer. Paper charts, easily misplaced around the house. These are my early memories of practicing NFP. The digital thermometer? Revolutionary! Eventually, NFP became so routine that we would just track my biomarkers in a little notebook. Then came the PeakDay app. Mind blown! Who knew tracking…

Embracing the NFP Lifestyle

Josh and Alison learned the CCL Sympto-Thermal method from a home study course, with Alison’s mother, a CCL teaching couple, as a mentor. For Alison, NFP had been a part of her family’s ethos for many years. Josh enthusiastically embraced the lifestyle when they married. He says, “Being kind of a nerd, it was great…