Archive for 2010

First Standard of Ecological Breastfeeding

Sunday, August 1st, 2010

First Standard of Ecological Breastfeeding

This is the first of seven daily blogs for World Breastfeeding Week.  The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding are maternal behaviors associated with the natural spacing of births.

Breastfeed Exclusively for the First Six Months

Exclusive breastfeeding means the baby receives nothing but mother’s milk directly from her breasts. 

Research has repeatedly shown since the mid-1950s that the introduction of early solids and early liquids to the baby is associated with a very early return of fertility.  Exclusive breastfeeding is an important step for a mother to take if she is interested in maintaining natural infertility after childbirth.  It is the best step to take for the health of her baby.

“This was the first baby exclusively breastfed for six months, and also a true baby-led weaning…I am currently nursing our 17 month old without a return of my periods.”

Sheila Kippley
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding: The Frequency Factor
Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood

Natural Family Planning: The Time Has Come

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

Natural Family Planning: The Time Has Come

Both secular humanists and men of Christian faith in 1929-1930 predicted that the acceptance of contraception would bring social evils.  Divorce rates are 500% higher now than they were before the birth-control culture wars began just before World War I.  Out-of-wedlock pregnancies and births have soared despite universal access to contraception and abortion.  Single motherhood has become the single greatest cause of new poverty households.  Sexually transmitted diseases have reached epidemic proportions.  In short, the contraceptive sexual revolution has denigrated human sexuality, and the social sciences have documented the personal and social disasters.
         The  time has come to return to the biblically based faith that sexual intercourse is intended by God to be exclusively a marriage act, and that within marriage it ought to be a renewal of the self-giving love and commitment of the couple’s original marriage covenant.  For many, this realization of the meaning of the marriage act has been a life-changing experience.
         Natural family planning—whether eco-breastfeeding or systematic NFP—is the answer, spiritually and physically.  Safe, healthy, effective, and morally right, it is the best form of conception regulation when it is properly taught and used.  Unlike unnatural forms of birth control, NFP has no bad side effects.  Best of all, practicing NFP for the right reasons can bring spiritual growth and peace. 
         The time has come to put aside any sort of wishful thinking that the NFP movement consisting of widely different programs and perspectives can have a significant influence on the Catholic laity, even those who go to church every Sunday.  The time has come for the bishops and their priests to recognize that it is an act of love to require their engaged couples to attend the right kind of course on natural family planning.  The time has come for bishops and their priests to realize that the evidence is so overwhelming in favor of the health and spacing benefits of ecological breastfeeding that they will desire these benefits for every family in their parishes.  The time has come.  May every reader of this blog pray that our bishops and priests will love their people so much that they will make the right kind of NFP course a normal part of preparation for Christian marriage—centered on Christ, chaste and generous, life-long and faithful, a true living out of their covenant with God and with each other. 

End of daily blogs for NFP Awareness Week

John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant
Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach

The Right Natural Family Planning Course

Friday, July 30th, 2010

Natural Family Planning: The Right Kind of Course

The right kind of course in natural family planning needs to be faithful to what God has done for us.  The greatest thing he has done for us is his work of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.  This is not just pious talk to fill a column.  Truly Jesus is the ultimate reason for being faithful to your spouse, for loving your parents and your children, and for living a chaste and generous married life.  That means that the right kind of NFP course will include evangelization in the sense of placing the scientific aspects of NFP in the context of Christian discipleship, regardless of who is attending the course.  Protestants and every form of non-Catholic as well as uninformed and/or unbelieving Catholics deserve to know why faithful Catholics believe what the Church teaches. 
         Another great thing God has done for us is the wonderful way he had made us.  People coming to an NFP course, especially one offered under Catholic auspices, deserve to learn all the common but still wonderful ways of bodily human nature.
         God Himself made woman in such a way that the frequent suckling by her baby from her breasts normally postpones the return of her fertility for more than a year in most cases.  Every man and woman deserves to know this part of God’s creation.
         God Himself made woman in such a way that pre-ovulation estrogen causes a healthy discharge of mucus from the cervix and also causes physical changes in the cervix.  Both the mucus and the cervix changes can be detected and evaluated by informed women.  Every man and woman deserves to know these aspects of God’s creation.
         God Himself made woman in such a way that post-ovulation progesterone causes her waking temperature to rise enough that it can readily noticed and evaluated by the informed person.  Every man and woman deserves to know this part of God’s creation.
         Evangelization, ecological breastfeeding, the common signs of fertility and infertility—why would any bishop or priest want to exclude any of these elements from NFP courses taking place in his jurisdiction?  
 
Tomorrow:  Natural Family Planning: The Time Has Come

John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant
Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach