The
Catholic Weekly
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12 October 2003
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Achieving pregnancy
Dr Kevin Hume and Sr Anne Wood, of the Billings Family Life Centre’s NSW headquarters in Randwick
By Marilyn Rodrigues
When Sr
Anne Wood first began teaching the ovulation method of natural family planning,
all her clients wanted to know how to avoid a pregnancy.
Now, a virtual infertility crisis has turned the tables.
“Now they’re all trying to achieve pregnancy because they’ve tried everything and they still can’t,” says Sr Anne, of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.
“They have treated their fertility like a disease for years and when you take their history, it’s not just one (contraceptive route) they have taken, it’s several.
“The wisdom they get from out there is that you must avoid a pregnancy above all things and you’ve got to get your car, your house, your block of land first.
“But they really don’t know whether they can achieve a pregnancy until they do, and their fertility might be okay, but they also might have left it too late because after the age of 25 your fertility starts to wane.”
Sr Anne was speaking at the Billings Family Life Centre’s NSW headquarters at Randwick, where she works with the centre’s founder,
Dr Kevin Hume, a GP and close friend of Professors John and Evelyn Billings.
There are several other Billings education centres in the Sydney archdiocese.
The Billings ovulation method is not to be confused with the oftmaligned calendar, or rhythm method, which it supersedes.
Since the method was devised by Prof John Billings it has been consistently backed up scientifically, says Dr Hume.
And when used as a tool for avoiding pregnancy it has a failure rate of zero per cent, provided the method is conscientiously followed and has been taught and applied properly, he says.
Sr Anne, a trained general nurse and midwife who has worked at the centre since 1983, says she gets a great cross-section of clients who are not necessarily Catholic.
Some come to her upset and angry.
“The problem sometimes is that, before if they didn’t want any children and they achieved a pregnancy, they would have an abortion,” she says.
“Now when they get to the stage when they want to conceive, they find that they can’t and they really get angry. There’s no one there to pick up the pieces.
“In a way it’s like they have a God complex although they don’t realise it; they want a pill to start and a pill to stop. You feel so sorry for them.
“But we’ve had people come here who have been on IVF three or four times with no success and they come here and learn the method and achieve in their first cycle, simply because they didn’t understand when they’re fertile. That makes me happy.”
Couples using the Billings method are taught to tell when the woman is in the fertile part of her ovulation cycle by noting the presence and quality of her cervical mucus and taking into account the survival time of the ovum and sperm.
They then either time their sexual intercourse with that period or abstain, depending on whether they want to conceive or not.
It differs from the sympto-thermal method of natural family planning, mainly in the way the observations are charted but also by the absence of daily temperature-taking.
“The method has spread like wildfire around the world, it is the principal natural family planning method,” says Dr Hume.
“And the most recent success has been in China.
“The method used about 80 per cent in China is the intra-uterine device, which has many problems. It can cause the problem of bleeding, infection and pain, and has a significant failure rate of 10 per cent per year.
“Since the Billings have been going there, the Chinese have been so enthusiastic about the method that they have 37,000 trained teachers.”
Dr Hume, a Catholic, is the international secretary of the World Organisation of the Ovulation Method, Billings.
He and Sr Anne, with treasurer Beverley Manning, run the centre on a shoestring budget, although they receive some financial support from the Sydney archdiocese and the Federal Government.
They are assisted by 14 volunteer and trainee teachers who are situated all over Sydney and include doctors, nurses, teachers and mothers.
They occasionally work with Prof James Brown, of Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital, who developed the ovulation monitor to assist in identifying couples using Billings who have hormonal problems that may cause infertility.
“In the matter of infertility, Prof Brown says that of the couples who come to him for advice (and) who haven’t had a single investigation, he can get a pregnancy rate of 50 per cent by teaching them the ovulation method and, where needed, some help from the monitor,” says Dr Hume.
“Now the best the IVF people can do is get a pregnancy rate of, at the best, 20 per cent per treatment cycle.”
If a couple is unsuccessful or the method shows that there is something wrong, the centre will refer them on to a specialist, such as a gynaecologist or an endocrinologist.
The fact that the method is also very useful as a diagnostic tool is an “added benefit”, says Dr Hume.
The Billings method just celebrated its 50th anniversary; and John and Evelyn Billings were both awarded papal honours for their work earlier this year.
Sr Anne says that although the method is in line with Catholic teaching on sexuality and the family, she knows that there are couples who come intending to use it as a form of contraception.
“We teach everyone. People want to know if we teach de facto couples and we do,” she says.
“Sometimes when they come to understand their fertility and appreciate the wonderful gift that it is, they really respect it, and if they are in a de facto relationship, they want to get married.
“Of course people can use the Billings method with a contraceptive mentality, but someone’s got to help them, someone’s got to pick them up and take them from point A to point B.”
In that respect, the service also has an evangelistic role, she says.
John and Evelyn Billings will be guest speakers at a Billings method information seminar in Sydney this month. For information, call the centre on 9399 3033 or 1800 335 860.