“In my 30 years in Brazil, I saw many promising apostolates rise and then fall as they abandoned the charisms of their founders.”—Bishop Karl Jozef Romer, Pontifical Council for the Family, 2002 CCL Convention.
___________________________
Ecological Breastfeeding and CCL
CCL’s Family Foundations deletes “ecological breastfeeding.”
In the March-April 2007 issue of the Couple to Couple League’s bi-monthly magazine, Family Foundations, I noticed something quite strange. In an article in which the author wrote enthusiastically about natural child spacing (she had gone 18 months without menstruating after childbirth), the term “fully breastfeeding” was used. Crediting “fully breastfeeding” or “exclusive breastfeeding” for 18 months of amenorrhea did not make sense. I learned later that the author had written “ecological breastfeeding” twice in her article but that CCL changed her words to “fully breastfeeding” each time. When the author contacted CCL about this change in her text, she was told that this was an editorial Board decision. Because this editing at CCL Central reflected incorrectly upon my work, I wrote the following email to the editor of Family Foundations:
March 20, 2007
Attn: Ann Gundlach
Dear Ann,
The March/April 2007 issue of Family Foundations carried a statement about me that needs to be corrected. Carol Greer’s article stated (page 32): “Sheila Kippley’s Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing reminded me that the average return of menses for the fully-breastfeeding mother is 14.5 months.” That is so far from the truth it would be humorous if the subject was not serious.
“Fully” has already been defined as follows by LLL [La Leche League] in the 7th ed. of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding: “Fully breastfeeding means the baby relies completely on mother for nourishment and for all of his sucking needs.” In other words, “fully breastfeeding” is synonymous with “exclusive breastfeeding.” The Lactational Amenorrhea Method often uses “fully or near fully” breastfeeding to describe exclusive breastfeeding.
Thus your editorial change of what Carol Greer actually wrote falsely infers that I have taught that “fully breastfeeding” which means the same as “exclusive breastfeeding” can 1) be done for 14 or 18 months without harm to the baby and 2) will provide 14 to 15 months of breastfeeding amenorrhea. I know of no responsible breastfeeding advocate who would recommend fully or exclusive breastfeeding beyond six or eight months. It is unfair of you to infer that I have taught such a doctrine.
The truth is that I have spent almost 40 years telling parents and CCL members that fully or exclusive breastfeeding is not sufficient for spacing babies. You owe it to your readers and to me to correct this serious error.
I have been told that the CCL Family Foundations editorial board made the decision to change “ecological breastfeeding” to “fully breastfeeding.” That decision needs to be changed by the Board.
I think you should issue a correction first of all in a message to all CCL teachers and promoters lest they extend this false information. Second, the correction has to appear in the next issue of Family Foundations.
Please let me know by March 28th whether and how you are going to respond.
Thanks.
Sheila Kippley
I was grateful to receive an immediate response from Ann saying, “Sheila, I would be happy to include a correction in the May-June issue. The sentence as published should have never made it through the editing. Thank you for your letter. Ann”
This raises some questions about CCL.
Why was “ecological” replaced with “fully” in the CCL magazine? Was this editorial change just an accident or was it part of a new CCL policy?
Sheila Kippley
NFP International
www.nfpandmore.org
Author: Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood (Sophia, 2005)
Co-author: Natural Family Planning: The Question-Answer Book (e-book
at this website, 2005)