“Many families of ordinary means place their fecundity at the Lord’s disposal, gratefully and delightedly accepting every precious child he chooses to send them. As long as they also follow his plan for nourishing babies, i.e. “ecological” breastfeeding, they generally enjoy a spacing between children of 1½-2½ years or longer. Because of the natural infertility of the human species and the current prevalence of relatively late marriage, most families will have only three to seven children, often fewer, occasionally more, over two or three decades. (The much larger families of the 1950’s and 60’s were usually associated with bottle feeding.) Young couples should be made aware that this openness to children, even if it involves difficulty or material privation, brings great joy not only in heaven but also here on earth.”[1]
NFP is not difficult to learn! Missionaries sent to third world countries have been able to teach illiterate, uneducated couples this method with great success. For the average couple, NFP can be mastered quite effectively in just a few menstrual cycles. In fact, as the months and years go on, couples find that the method becomes second nature and can be done with little or no effort!
If you have a very serious reason for not being open to having another child at this time in your lives then NFP is the way to go.
Natural Family Planning takes a bit of discipline but as a method of natural child spacing, it has been proven to be 99% effective and 100% safe.
[1] White, William G., M.D. (Franklin Park, IL. Homiletic and Pastoral Review, March 2008), p. 5.