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Mother and Baby Are One Biological Unit

Sunday, May 28th, 2017

Probably the most important part of the biological oneness between mother and baby is their ecological relationship: what affects one affects the other. We see this in the many health benefits for both. By health benefits, I am including the emotional health benefits 7as well as the physical health benefits.

If breastfeeding is shortened and the mother stops nursing during the early weeks or months, then both she and baby lose the many benefits of breastfeeding. The World Health Organization said it well: “Mothers and babies form an inseparable biological and social unit; the health and nutrition of one group cannot be divorced from the health and nutrition of the other.”

In addition, quite often the mother soon loses that physical intimate contact with her growing baby when she bottlefeeds. Rare is the mother who holds her baby during the early years when bottlefeeding. Rare is the mother who insists on doing the bottlefeeding herself and who takes her baby with her, but sometimes it happens. The first couple John and I knew who took their baby with them to college faculty parties were bottlefeeding. I admired them because they gave us support for what we were doing with our breastfed baby.
Breast milk or Mother
The value of breastfeeding is heavily emphasized today. Because so many mothers work, much attention is given to pumping milk at work and storing breast milk. This is good, but what gets lost is the mother-baby biological oneness. You can’t give a talk today without someone asking, “What about the working mother?” While there are many mothers who have to work for the basic necessities and who would prefer being home with their baby, there are also many mothers who could stay home and choose not to do so. The pressure today is for those latter mothers to leave their babies and little ones and earn money or follow their career.
But babies do need their mothers. The continuous contact with mom during the early years is the first step towards building a good foundation for life and future relationships. God provides for this essential foundation through the presence of the mother. How does He do
this? With breastfeeding. The breastfeeding relationship ensures that the mother will remain with her baby. As Maria Montessori stressed years ago, prolonged lactation of 1.5 to 3 years is good for the baby because it keeps the mother with her baby.
Sheila Kippley

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Natural Family Planning: Mother and Baby Together

Sunday, May 7th, 2017

God planned for mother and baby to remain together in the early years with breastfeeding.  Both the breastfeeding mother and the nursing baby receive many benefits.  The parents also receive a natural spacing of births when the mother nurses her baby following a pattern similar to the Seven Standards of ecological breastfeeding.

Experts for years have stated that the presence of the mother is crucial to the development of her baby.  This fact is usually ignored today in a world which values the mother in the workplace, but it needs to be heard.

Separation of mother and baby is commonly promoted in our society.  After all,  they say, babies must learn to be independent.  The baby should not cling to its mother.  Babies should learn to feed themselves with a bottle, pacify themselves with a pacifier, and sleep for the duration of the night.  This form of parenting, when it works, is very convenient for the parents, especially the mother who thinks she needs time to do other things.

But is this what nature intended?  Does God have anything to say about this in his plan for mothers and babies?  Are mother and baby one unit or are they to be treated separately?  Is the mother as physically close to her baby during breastfeeding, especially during the early years, as she is during pregnancy?  Is there a natural biological oneness during breastfeeding as there was during pregnancy?  Many breastfeeding experts have stated YES to the last question, that breastfeeding is a continuation of pregnancy.  The only change is that the baby is now outside the mother’s body.

There are three physiologic similarities between the two: pregnancy and breastfeeding.
1) With both, the baby is physically close to the mother.  With breastfeeding the baby is often carried on the mother’s body or is in her arms, but now both can interact with each other.

2) As with pregnancy, the breastfed baby is still receiving all his nourishment from his mother and this lasts for about 6-9 months.  After that time when other foods are slowly taken by the baby, the baby still receives much of his nutrition from his mother.

3) The mother remains in amenorrhea (no menstruation) during breastfeeding as well as during pregnancy. Normally a mother receives more months of amenorrhea from breastfeeding than she does from pregnancy if she follows the natural mothering program, i.e., the Seven Standards of eco-breastfeeding.

Sheila Kippley

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Natural Family Planning: The Importance of the Mother to the Baby

Sunday, August 28th, 2016

One of the benefits of God’s plan for spacing babies with the right kind of breastfeeding is that the breastfeeding relationship keeps the mother with her baby.  I’d like to share some thoughts on this by Saint John Paul II.

On Human Work: 1981
“To take up paid work outside the home is wrong from the point of view of the good of society and of the family when it contradicts or hinders these primary goals of the mission of a mother.”
“Mothers have an irreplaceable role.”

Address to “Women, Wives, and Mothers,” Familia et Vita, January 1995.
“Women can never be replaced in  begetting and rearing children…  Women as mothers have an irreplaceable role.”
“The children also have a right to the care and concern of those who have begotten them, their mothers in particular.”

The Gospel of Life: 1995
Sincere gift of self by the mother: “daily heroism”  “brave mothers”  “heroic mothers” (86)
Baby: “Every human being” is “an icon of Jesus Christ.” (84)
“The family is the sanctuary of life.” (6, 11, 59, 88, 91, 92, 94)

May 12, 1995 address to scientists at Vatican breastfeeding conference.
“No one can substitute for the mother in this natural activity.”
“This natural activity benefits the child and helps to create the closeness and maternal bonding so necessary for healthy child development….So vital is this interaction between mother and child that my predecessor Pope Pius XII urged Catholic mothers, if at all possible, to nourish their children themselves (Oct. 26, 1941).”

Sheila:  God’s plan for spacing babies has many benefits.  Not only the spacing but also health and emotional benefits for both mother and child.  Let’s pray that our government and our Church with its Pope, cardinals, bishops, priests, and teachers will promote ecological breastfeeding because of these many benefits.

Sheila Kippley

 

 

Posted in Ecological Breastfeeding, First 3 Years, Mother and Baby as One, Priests & Parishes | Comments Off on Natural Family Planning: The Importance of the Mother to the Baby

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