A woman wrote us about her search for a Catholic viewpoint on mothering. See below.
I downloaded the manual because I wanted to see what the chapter on ecological breastfeeding said. I have been doing attachment parenting and been interested in LLL [La Leche League], and I wanted to see a Catholic viewpoint on this natural mothering. I was already doing this, but I certainly loved the chapter.
My husband is a Catholic and I discovered NFP [natural family planning] while we were getting engaged in 2006. It changed the way I viewed everything from my body, feminism, Catholicism, etc… Honestly, I am not sure what I believe religiously, but all I am sure about is NFP (or ecological breastfeeding, or basically natural mothering). I am very convicted that that is the way we should mother, and I was especially drawn to the idea of a moral obligation to breastfeed. I do not feel ready at this moment to take the steps to become an instructor. Additionally, I want my husband to be with me on this, and while he is interested, he hasn’t read anything yet. But I am very passionate about the ecological breastfeeding chapter in particular, and I truly believe that we will be called to be involved in teacher training in the future.
I did want to say thank you both for all the hard work and devotion you have given to defending Humanae Vitae and in coming up with the term ecological breastfeeding. I talk to mothers all the time who try to tell me I am lucky that I didn’t get my period back until 15 months or who try to tell me how unreliable breastfeeding is as a child spacer. But I realize that it involved mothering in a totally different way than people advocate here.
In my opinion, it is so natural and wonderful. I love mothering in this way and would not want to mother any other way. I would love to be a part of spreading good mothering and truth. Especially since so many people are spreading the opposite of truth. Even at the last Catholic church we attended before we moved, the mothers put together a child class on Babywise, which you are probably familiar with, and I was frustrated. Why didn’t the Catholic church there want to put together NFP classes instead? They certainly could use a mothering support group for NFP too!
Well, we are in a new city, and not much of anything is going on with the mothers here. I am becoming a LLL leader and will be leading those meetings soon. In addition I have started a mom’s group and I was just having the discussion last week with a mom telling her about Sheila’s book on the 7 standards since I just checked it out and was reading it from the LLL library. I am happy to say that I am advocating good ideas and support here to the best of my ability while still being a mom first, and I will be happy to get NFP going in the local Catholic churches here if possible.
Thanks for your time! I hope to be contacting you in the future for my husband and my’s interest in becoming a trained leader. Until then I say thanks for all your work and I am still working towards spreading the good ideas and supporting mothers in my own way.
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If anyone is interested in promoting ecological breastfeeding in their community or in their Church, contact Catholic Nursing Mothers League.
If anyone is interested in teaching both systematic NFP and ecological breastfeeding in their community, contact us. It is recommended that you have a priest who will require his engaged couples to attend your NFP classes for marriage preparation. Otherwise, you may not have anyone to teach.
Sheila Kippley
Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood