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What is fertility care? I’ve had women tell me “I don’t need Creighton. I don’t have problems with infertility.” But Creighton (CrMS) isn’t just about helping couples with infertility (although that’s definitely a component). It’s far beyond that. Fertility care reaches past the confines of physical ailments and encompasses the whole person. Humans aren’t just a body and a soul violently thrust together and forced to live here on earth together until death mercifully allows them to separate. We are a body-soul composite. This is evidenced by the fact that there’s a phenomenon called “the placebo effect” in which the mind believes that something is true and the body behaves accordingly. Similarly, what happens to the body deeply affects the soul. The two are interdependent and inseparable. So to posit that true fertility care can be achieved by narrowly focusing on one part of the person is an error. Then what is fertility care, you ask?
To answer that, I have to take one more step back to discuss femininity. True femininity reveals who we are as women; as a female body-soul union. Distorted femininity is the lie that society tells us of who we *should* be. To fully understand true femininity, it’s important to call out the lies. I believe that one recent movement which, at its essence, brought light to false femininity was the MeToo movement. While it eventually turned into a political game of masculinity-bashing, it rightfully pointed out that women in our society are reduced to sexual objects and are seen as subordinate and inferior to men. Clearly, this pervasive view of women who are paraded out in over-sexualized attire on TV, music videos, fashion sites and blogs is not only erroneous, but utterly damaging. The essence of woman is not reducible to female genitalia. It is not True femininity, but a disparaging shadow of reality. By contrast, true femininity embraces the uniqueness of the feminine intellect, body, fortitude and strength. Women are essential to humankind and provide society with immeasurable benefits. A woman’s body is her outward reflection of her inner beauty. And by this, I don’t mean that makeup and fashionable clothes somehow reflect her essence. I mean that the body of woman reflects the soul of woman. For example, a woman’s physical capacity to become a mother reflects the “motherhood” she provides to others in her care, compassion, service and love.
It is this reflection of womanhood that fertility care focuses on. True fertility care seeks to provide women with a full understanding of their physical, reproductive capabilities and also their spiritual and emotional uniqueness related to it. It empowers women to know exactly how their physical fertility is functioning and enables them to advocate for themselves in medical situations. Other natural methods of family planning look only at a woman’s physical capability of achieving or avoiding pregnancy; allowing couples to plan their families without contraceptives. But in doing this, they ignore women who need physical healing from ailments such as PMS, endometriosis and PCOS that diminish a woman’s quality of life. They ignore those women who suffer from infertility. They ignore those women who have devastating postpartum depression or anxiety. These bodily ailments invariably cause spiritual and emotional distress. By working to correct these physical issues while also guiding women through the spiritual and emotional affects these issues have, fertility care such as that found in the Creighton Model FertilityCare System takes a holistic approach and respects the wonder and beauty of women. It is with this in mind that Groesbeck FertilityCare is dedicated to teaching true fertility care to women.