natural family planning Archives - Natural Family Planning | Fertility Awareness

What Does it Mean to Know My Body?

I recently turned thirty-five. I am engaged, and our wedding is still a few months away. There is something strange about standing this close to marriage and realizing that, if God gives us the child we hope for and I am able to become pregnant, I will likely be thirty-six when my first child is…

St. Carlo Acutis: Patron Saint of the PeakDay App

This October, CCL has a special reason to celebrate. For the first time, we celebrate the feast day of St. Carlo Acutis, canonized just last year on September 7, 2025. And around here, Carlo feels a little like family. When we were developing the PeakDay app, we knew we were taking on something that would…

A Father Teaches Sacrifice

“If there is one thing I could stress to young couples, it’s to learn to love sacrifice.” This comment, coming from Daniel West in a recent PeakDay Podcast with Martha Haenni, got in my head. Daniel continued. “Our broken reaction to any kind of discomfort, misunderstanding, any kind of pain is to say, ‘No, get…

23 Years of Teaching NFP

The Volpes in the Philadelphia suburbs have taught NFP for 23 of their 25 years of marriage, a statistic they can hardly believe. “It’s almost like I don’t need motivation,” says Jim. “The motivation is so inherent.” Jen learned about NFP when she converted from Methodist to Catholic in college. “My grandfather was a Methodist…

A Gift and a Mission

For Maria and Xavier Martinez, learning Natural Family Planning was more than discovering a method. It changed the way they understood marriage, deepened their appreciation for each other, and opened their hearts to a mission they now share with other couples. Maria and Xavier, who live in Minnesota and have two daughters, help with outreach…

Carrying the Mission Forward

When Regina and Alfred Nicolini became a certified Couple to Couple League Teaching Couple in 2025, they joined a tradition stretching back more than five decades. They are among CCL’s newest volunteers, teaching classes while raising a young daughter and balancing the demands of work, mission and family life. Yet in many ways, their story…

The Ripple Effects of NFP

Carlos and Victoria DeBayle are a testament to the fact that NFP has ripple effects into the rest of marriage and that it is a great tool for giving your marriage the best chance for success. When Carlos and Victoria met in a Catholic group in college, they didn’t hit it off. “I was very involved, he saw me…

NFP and Birth Control: Worth Talking About

Elizabeth Timpe is passionate about a few things. Postpartum fertility is one. Helping women understand their charts is another. And then there is the one she recently took to the pages of Denver Catholic: Can we please stop calling Natural Family Planning “contraceptive”? Elizabeth is not afraid to speak about this topic. After years of…

The Gift of a Child

As Mother Teresa said at the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., “A child is God’s greatest gift to the family, to the nation, to the world.” At CCL, we see every child welcomed through the practice of NFP as a beautiful gift from God – both to the family and to the world.…

The Fruit of a Yes

When Carmen and Alejandro learned NFP wasn’t a requirement for engaged couples in the archdiocese of Miami because there weren’t enough teaching couples, they signed up to become teachers themselves. “We prayed about it and said we could, so we did,” they said. “NFP is an important part of our faith that isn’t shared enough.…