Natural Family Planning and Dr. Konald Prem

The Sympto-Thermal Method

Konald A. Prem M.D. and the STM. We met Dr. Konald A. Prem through his interest in ecological breastfeeding. He and Sheila were scheduled to be on the “breastfeeding and spacing” panel at the La Leche League convention in 1971. Because a job change brought us to the Twin Cities, we were able to meet with Dr. Prem before the convention so they could decide who would cover what material. When that was done, we asked him if he would be interested in helping us get an NFP organization started, and he was very enthusiastic about the idea. He was already teaching individual couples and giving talks in one parish after another, and he realized that something more was needed. He was well respected nationally, served a term as the Chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Minnesota, and was selected as the advisor to the STM side of the 1976-1978 comparative study in Los Angeles. When I asked him about teaching the temperature-only system of G. K. Doering, he insisted that we cross-check the three days of full-thermal shift with at least two days of drying-up of the cervical mucus—what we label as Rule K— with the K standing for Konald.   The 1967 Doering study is at our website (http://nfpandmore.org/Doering-1967-100315.pdf . This may be the only English translation; we didn’t find one available so we hired a translator.)

Dr. Konald Prem taught us the sympto-thermal method during our first year of natural family planning classes at St. Odilia’s Parish in St. Paul MN. He came to every class each month that first year.

John F. Kippley

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