First, both acts are necessary for the survival of the human race. Both acts involve loving voluntary relationships. The love between husband and wife brings forth a child and the love of the mother through breastfeeding ensures the child’s survival after birth. Both acts are meant to be pleasurable so that the husband and wife will want to come together and so that the mother will remain committed to the task of breastfeeding.
Both are associated with the reproductive cycle. The marital act puts the reproductive cycle at rest once a child is conceived. The cycle remains at rest (no more cycling) while the child grows in the womb. The reproductive cycle, by nature’s norm, continues to remain at rest with frequent and unrestricted breastfeeding by the mother. According to nature’s norm, to have menstruation return within three months postpartum would be an exception—not the norm. To go one or two years without cycling after childbirth is normal for a mother doing ecological breastfeeding.
In Love and Responsibility, Pope John Paul II has written that in the sexual relationship between the spouses, two orders meet: the order of nature which has as its object reproduction, and the personal order which finds its expression in the love of the persons. I submit that breastfeeding also has two orders that meet: the order of nature which has as its object the completion of the reproductive cycle, and the personal order in which it is an expression of love between mother and child.
Next week: Ecological breastfeeding and the mother being irreplaceable.
Sheila Kippley