The respectful fertility method that helped me conceive my baby

It had been seven years since my husband and I got married, and during all that time, we had been unable to conceive. The doctors told us everything was fine and it was just a matter of time.

We didn’t want to use IVF, so we started the paperwork to adopt a boy from Peru. Unfortunately, the adoption process ended up paralyzed for political reasons outside of our control.

Someone had told us about NaProTechnology, so eventually we sent an email to a center in the United States to ask if there were any doctors with that expertise in our own country of Spain. They gave us the name of Dr. Maria Victoria Mena de Zaragoza. Thus began an exciting adventure that brought us our son Marc.

What is NaProTechnology?

NaProTechnology is a scientific process that pinpoints the exact causes of infertility in the couple and tries to provide a solution that respects human nature.

Its name comes from three words that define it: natural, procreation, and technology. And it is based on a previous understanding of human fertility, according to a natural family planning method called the Creighton Method.

How we beat infertility

In our case, everything went very fast. The doctor asked us for our fertility graphs using the Billings method, which we already knew, and she set an appointment for us on a specific day of my cycle.

She asked both of us for a lot of lab tests, and when we came back afterward with the results, she saw that I was lacking progesterone, which was preventing the embryo from implanting properly.

My husband’s seminogram was also imperfect, and Dr. Mena discovered that he has celiac disease!

For me, she prescribed some vitamins and the folic acid that most women take when they are planning to get pregnant.

And then she prescribed progesterone: it was very important to take it on the fourth day after ovulation, so she gave me some specific guidelines — with regards to the cervical mucus — pertaining to the Creighton method, which is more precise than the Billings Ovulation Method.

She instructed Venancio, my husband, to try to eat gluten free for two months and then add gluten back in to see how it affected him, but he felt so much better on the gluten-free diet that he didn’t add it back in to see the contrast.

After three months without eating gluten, he took the seminogram again and the results were perfect. It seems that the digestive tract has a lot to do with fertility; at least, he was affected by it.

We continued on with these treatments and … I got pregnant!

We were so thankful! We wanted to spread the good news about this in Spain, so we proposed to create a website for NaProTechnology in Spanish.

Those years of infertility were very hard. But it has been a great learning experience to discover that fertility in marriage is not just about fertility — it’s also about our overall health. We’ve also been blessed to help other couples conceive babies.

Naprotechnology is fantastic because, unlike other methods such as IVF, it respects the conjugal act. It’s a treatment for couples who are willing to study their infertility together, find the cause, and try to solve the problem together.

The article was written by Jordan Fabres and Venancio Carrion of the Spanish language blog Naprotec. 

Read more:
The pain of infertility and the indignity of IVF

This article was originally published in the Spanish edition of Aleteia and has been translated and/or adapted here for English speaking readers.