A fertility awareness organization recently promoted the benefits of having natural cycles because they were trying to discourage women from using hormonal methods of birth control. Never mentioned were the benefits of having a natural absence of cycling due to breastfeeding.
Many women who have used a pattern similar to ecological breastfeeding have gone months and months without cycling, and they are very healthy for having done so. These women may experience a few cycles between pregnancies, and some women may experience quite a few cycles before they are able to achieve pregnancy while breastfeeding.
God’s plan involves a close relationship between mother and baby through breastfeeding. Breastfeeding meets the needs of the baby, especially the need to be close to his or her mother. Ovulation is delayed with this natural feeding, and a breastfeeding mother may go 1 or 2 years—and occasionally a few go 3 years—without menstruation. This is a natural occurrence and is God’s plan for nurturing both mother and baby and for natural birth spacing.
I mention nurturing of the mother because breastfeeding-related hormones help a mother to feel good about being needed in this way. A friend’s relative had all kinds of problems; as a result her children were neglected. My friend had to get those children to school and was concerned about their breakfast, etc. This situation, however, improved greatly when the relative was breastfeeding. God knows that mothering is real work and provides hormones to help.
The option for spacing births through breastfeeding is too often ignored by the Church and by our culture. With an emphasis on money and careers and little on mothering and family, the push is for mothers to leave their babies and go back to work.
I realize that some new mothers have a serious economic need to work soon after childbirth. Still, our government and Church need to promote the benefits of breastfeeding—both short-term and long-term—for mother and baby. They also need to teach the option of natural child spacing as a breastfeeding benefit.
Sheila Kippley
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding