Eight months after her wedding, Katie Parris remembers asking God in prayer if he wanted her to be a mother. She asked him to give her white flowers as a sign.
Days later, a pregnant friend only weeks away from her due date visited the couple, her hands full of white flowers freshly picked from her garden.
Feeling affirmed by this sign, she and her husband Matthew Parris spent another six years struggling with infertility.
“I didn’t tell anyone about it for a long time,” said Katie Parris. “I hung onto that (sign) for years, and God is faithful.”
The Parrises now have six children under age 9: five girls and a boy, who was born earlier this year.
They overcame their infertility with the help of natural family planning, often referred to as NFP.
NFP is a way of regulating birth — seeking to achieve or postpone pregnancy — by monitoring a woman’s biological markers of fertility.
Unlike contraception — which impedes a woman’s natural cycle and is opposed by the Catholic Church — regulating birth based on naturally occurring fertile and infertile times in the cycle conforms to the Catholic Church’s teaching on human sexuality.
“Tracking your cycle is super important because it’s a vital sign of your health. So, if you’re tracking with any method, you’re paying attention and you’re seeing changes and trends. And that’s really important to your overall health, not just your fertility.”
— Katie Parris
Now Katie Parris seeks to help other women by sharing a basic introduction to fertility and family planning at the archdiocesan marriage preparation program, Foundations for Marriage.
As a certified FertilityCare practitioner, she also teaches the Creighton model of NFP.
“Because the Creighton model had such an impact on our lives, I felt like it was something I was being called to do,” said Katie Parris, who received her training in 2018 from the St. Paul VI Institute in Omaha, Neb.
How it works
The Creighton model uses one biological marker to track fertility, a body fluid called cervical mucus.
“We track that in a very detailed way. So, we’re very specific about tracking it, and checking for it, and how you chart it,” Parris explained. Certain changes in the fluid indicate periods of fertility.
Other methods of NFP track different biological markers — such as basal body temperature and hormone levels detected in urine.
But for couples seeking a medical counterpart to their natural family planning method, the Creighton model works in conjunction with Natural Procreative Technology — often called NaPro Technology — to help a couple achieve or avoid pregnancy, as well as to diagnose and treat gynecologic conditions, such as endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and infertility.
NaPro physicians are trained to use a woman’s Creighton charting — her self-observed biological markers — to monitor fertility health and treat conditions.
“They created the Creighton model to track cycles and created NaPro to treat based on the chart,” she explained.
Their journey
The couple met as college students at the Interfaith Center at the University of Louisville and married shortly after Katie Parris’ graduation. Although not in a rush to conceive, the couple was surprised as months, and then years, passed without achieving a pregnancy.
“We didn’t know what to do or who to turn to,” said Katie Parris.
When the couple began to seek medical advice, providers offered the couple birth control and suggested invitro-fertilization, said Matthew Parris.
“I knew that wasn’t the answer,” said Katie Parris.
Unwilling to disregard the Catholic Church’s moral teachings on life, they felt discouraged and stuck, they said.
“Infertility is such an unknown journey. You’re lost and you don’t know the answer. It’s very private, but it’s a public cross,” said Katie Parris.
Her husband said, “For me, the frustration was the medical community,” noting he felt discouraged by the lack of ethical options offered by providers.
After six and a half years of infertility, the Parrises discovered Creighton through a friend and began seeing a NaPro doctor. They began to see a path forward, they said. The doctor helped the couple conceive their oldest daughter through natural methods.
Katie now helps women on similar fertility journeys, often forming a bond with her clients and sharing in their struggles, she said.
“Infertility is so lonely until you find other people who are dealing with it,” she said.
She noted that the Creighton model of natural family planning isn’t only for those seeking to achieve a pregnancy.
“There are many times when couples need to avoid … and the church is supportive of that too,” she said. The church offers “really great options for reaching that goal that are pro-family and pro-woman — that are not destructive of her or her body. They don’t abandon you.”
Matthew Parris added, “In modern society, the Catholic Church gets a bad rep about its relationship to science — the false dichotomy between faith and science.”
But, “the Catholic Church is what is spawning better science in this area than what the secular has to offer,” he added.
Katie Parris noted that current methods of NFP, such as the Creighton model, are research-based.
“This is not the calendar or rhythm method, all NFP now is science-based and symptom-based,” she said.
She has taught more than 100 women and couples how to use the Creighton model to meet their fertility goals and improve their overall health.
“Tracking your cycle is super important because it’s a vital sign of your health. So, if you’re tracking with any method, you’re paying attention and you’re seeing changes and trends. And that’s really important to your overall health, not just your fertility,” she said.
For more resources on natural family planning, or to get in contact with an NFP instructor, contact the Office of Family and Life Ministries at 636-0296 or email family@archlou.org.
