Just as mother and baby are one during pregnancy, nature intended mother and baby to be one after birth. Mother and baby are one biological unit. What benefits the one also benefits the other. Each provides benefits to the other in the breastfeeding relationship. (See the many benefits on pages 103-104 in the NFPI online manual, Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach.)
The World Health Organization described this oneness well: “Mothers and babies form an inseparable biological and social unit; the health and nutrition of one group cannot be divorced from the health and nutrition of the other.” (“Infant and young child nutrition,” 55th World Health Assembly, April 16, 2002) Other researchers have also described mother and infant as one biological system.
This mother-baby oneness or togetherness is the key to natural child spacing and also to better outcomes of all the other benefits associated with ecological or extended breastfeeding. God’s wonderful plan for natural child spacing should be promoted by the NFP movement and the Church and the government.
Our society would be better if we made efforts to keep mother and baby together, especially during the early years and during the breastfeeding relationship. Mother and baby need each other.
Sheila Kippley
Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding
The Crucial First Three Years