CHICK-FIL-A Day: Support them today.
What every woman, man, and Catholic bishop and priest need to know about God’s plan for spacing babies.
God has a plan for mother and baby after birth. It starts with breastfeeding. The mother’s breastfeeding provides nourishment and nurturing for the baby. As a result both members of this symbiotic relationship receive many benefits. In our manual, Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach, we list 27 benefits to the baby and 8 benefits for the breastfeeding mother. Some benefits—for both parties—occur years after the breastfeeding has ceased.
One of the benefits known for years which has been ignored, and continues to be ignored by many in the Catholic Church and other religious bodies, is natural birth spacing with ecological breastfeeding.
Ecological breastfeeding is described by the Seven Standards. These Standards are maternal behaviors that affect, one way or the other, the frequency of nursing that is associated with an extended natural infertility. Those who practice ecological breastfeeding will, on the average, go 14 to 15 months after childbirth without menstruation.
According to nature, extended breastfeeding amenorrhea is the norm. Some eco-breastfeeding mothers will have an early return of menstruation after childbirth but this is the exception. With eco-breastfeeding, only about 7% of mothers will have an early return prior to six months postpartum, well over half will still be in amenorrhea at 12 months postpartum and one-third will still be in amenorrhea at 18 months postpartum. The research has been done. The conclusion from all the research done in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and more recently is that frequent breastfeeding does space babies.
Tomorrow: ecological breastfeeding in other cultures
Further reading: The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding: The Frequency Factor. Both Catholic laity and clergy should read Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood. It applies the papal Theology of the body to the bodily activity of breastfeeding.
Book Sale: 30% off Kippley books in print at lulu through August 7.
Sheila Kippley