Advocating for your needs makes for a better life, marriage, and existence.

I'm really excited about all the holiday-related posts we have so far about double peaks, self gift, and charting while traveling. In the...

The Holiday Season is in full force which means things can be crazy. All the school programs. The cooking and baking. Parties and family...

"Can we have sex" on such-and-such day? This question pops up in follow ups all the time. Spoiler alert: if you're married and you're both interested in intercourse on a particular day YES you are perfectly capable and you don't have to ask my permission. (Phew!) Our role as Fertility Care Practitioners is not to tell you when you are or are not "allowed" to have sex with your spouse. Our role is to help you gain a full understanding of your fertility so that you know which

Last year during the holiday season, I wrote about how to handle nosy relatives that butt into your sex life . And last week, Jessica talked about how holiday stress can affect your chart . So what else is there left to discuss about the charting and the holiday season? Alcohol! I'm kidding. Gifts, actually. Specifically, spousal self-gift. In the past, Karoline, has discussed the meaning of sexual intercourse on a natural level . I'd like to dive a bit deeper into her discus

The holidays can be a very beautiful time of the year with all the traditions, time with family and delightful meals. The holidays also...

As a young lady, I believed that having a period meant that I must be ovulating and was able to get pregnant. Many women have had "the...

We've discussed how the Creighton Model is very effective when you are trying to avoid pregnancy . Is the Creighton Model effective when you want to achieve pregnancy? Yes! The Creighton Model is a system of true family planning. It can be used (very effectively!) to either avoid or achieve pregnancy. So let's dive into the numbers! First, let's talk about the effectiveness for achieving pregnancy for couples of normal fertility. This means couples who are not experiencing i

Happy Halloween! I hope that you have fun spending time with your children, handing out, eating candy, etc. or wherever you find yourself this Halloween. Much like Halloween, the Sunday Scaries can be....well...scary. You know the feeling: Sunday afternoon rolls around and you've got a knot in your stomach thinking of all of the things that need to get done throughout the week. Maybe it's the project you've been procreating at work, that difficult conversation with your frien

It was a typical Monday night bedtime routine. I was attempting to lead the kids through their bedtime prayers while my husband was retrieving our oldest from her Monday night activity. Per usual, I was wiped out from a day that became busier than it needed to be and was consequently short on patience, thinking of all the things I still needed to finish before the day was over. So while my other three littles were busy with their typical bedtime antics, I was hustling throu

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. We've talked before about healing after miscarriage and have shared husbands' experiences of loss. We also gave suggestions on how to support a friend after a miscarriage . Today, let's talk about what NOT to say to a friend or family member who is experiencing a pregnancy loss. 1. "How can I help?" You might be saying, excuse me what? How is this not supportive?! Let me explain. The person saying this really has their

This is an excerpt I wrote back in December 2022: “This comes to you after a lot of tears. And I mean a lot. Phone calls, frustration, losing my cool at times. Sometimes suffering and bearing the weight of difficulties is just a lot. Through tears, I’ve been given a lot. In the past few months I’ve made more emergency room visits than I have in my entire life with conditions that just aren’t appropriate to say in a blog. I’ve watched results come back with numbers deceasing,

The hardest time of the year is here...cold and flu season...get all the tissues, electrolytes, soup, but be careful when reaching for...

If you're looking for the right "fit" Natural Family Planning method... here's a bunch of information all in one place about Creighton Model System to help you make the best decision for YOU! What does the term "Creighton Model System" (CrMS) or "Creighton Model Fertility Care " mean? CrMS is a method of Natural Family Planning. Different methods use different signs, symptoms and/or devices to help you track and understand your times of fertility and infertility. At a very ba

Estrogen Dominance is a bit of a catch phrase in the world of women's health and fertility right now. This is because many women suffer from symptoms of Estrogen Dominance, and/or they have been diagnosed with it. In her previous blog on Estrogen Dominance , Daria discussed what Estrogen Dominance is and how to navigate it so I highly suggest you read that blog as well. Today, I want to dive further into Estrogen Dominance and chat about environmental estrogens. No, estrogen

I started to share my story a couple weeks ago. I want to share more how I started teaching Creighton as a Registered Nurse. After I started teaching the introduction to NFP, I started reading more about the different methods . I loved that the Creighton model is based in so much research and that it works with doctors to help women through a variety of health concerns, not just planning and avoiding pregnancy . My husband and I started talking about how we would afford tra

Let’s take a trip down memory lane, to the time of my first follow-up after attending the Creighton Model Introductory Session. This is when Introductory Sessions and Follow-up Sessions were conducted strictly in-person, in that wild time of life known as “pre-Covid”. My husband and I showed up at our FertilityCare Practitioner’s home with our two weeks’ worth of hard-charting effort. He was as annoyingly calm and confident as he always is while I had butterflies in my sto

Have you ever had a profound calling from God you could not ignore? I have been blessed enough, this has happened to me many times in my...

This is a question I get all so often, most especially in the Catholic world. In case you aren’t familiar, normally when people ask me if Natural Family Planning can be used with a ‘ contraceptive mindset ’ or ‘contraceptively,’ what they’re really asking is if NFP can be used with bad intentions. Or, if NFP can be used faithfully by a Catholic to avoid a pregnancy. Sometimes I get asked by people with a half raised skeptical eyebrow, others with a curiosity of how NFP actual

In the world of reproductive health and family planning, the landscape is constantly evolving with new developments. One such development...