The Anniversary Day of Humanae Vitae, July 25, 1968
God has wisely ordered laws of nature and the incidence of fertility in such a way that successive births are already naturally spaced through the inherent operation of these laws (Humanae Vitae, n.11).
To draw attention to Natural Family Planning Week (July 22-28, 2007), I am blogging daily on breastfeeding and natural child spacing. I apologize. My blogs for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were not posted in my absence. They went up last night. John is also blogging this week on Humanae Vitae: Monday, Wednesday and Friday at CUF’s new blog site. He will continue to blog on HV the 25th of each month for CUF until the 40th Anniversary of Humanae Vitae (July 25, 2008).
My Mothering Experience: God’s Plan for Me
Things happened in my life that I didn’t realize were part of divine providence until way after the fact. One step led to another. Now I see God’s hand in these events and how these events led me to become a promoter of breastfeeding and natural child spacing.
A good marriage
First, I believe a good Catholic marriage was important for my ministry. I look back at my childhood friends on the block. A friend across the street and one friend who lived two houses up from our home had no siblings. I only had one sister. We were all Catholic. Two Catholic families a short distance from our home, one up the street and one down the street, had three children whom we occasionally played with. It wasn’t until high school that I became close to a friend from a large Catholic family. I was impressed with this family and later wondered if this is why I longed to have a lot of children when I became a mother.
As graduation from college came closer to reality, I realized that many of my classmates were engaged. It dawned on me that if I wanted children, I needed a husband and I began to pray earnestly for that. Early in my college years I decided to date only good Catholic men. If I became interested in someone and he wasn’t Catholic, we quit seeing each other. With prayer and putting a little effort into it (I joined the Catholic Alumni Club in San Francisco), I met John prior to my graduation in 1962. John forgets this, but at the end of our second date, he asked me if I wanted children. The answer was “Yes.” Then he asked me if I wanted a lot of children, and even how many. We became engaged on All Saints Day in Church after Mass and married the following April. We had eight pregnancies, three miscarriages and five live births. I am forever grateful that the Lord brought us together.
A good science background
In my work, familiarity with science and medical journals would prove to be an asset. How I ended up attending school at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco is a miracle in itself. I never desired to go to college in those days. My dad’s philosophy for his two daughters was that we should go to college for one year so we would know what it was like. If we wanted to go to college for additional years, then we were entirely on our own. He would only pay for the first year.
During the beginning of my junior year of high school, I was playing in a tennis tournament at Pasadena Community College. Mother Mary Wilfrid, principal of Mayfield School in Pasadena, liked tennis and came to watch me play that day. She talked to my dad during the match and offered me a scholarship to her high school. The only thing we would have to buy would be a summer and winter uniform. The school was run by the Sisters of the Holy Child and taught mostly girls from wealthy families. In this atmosphere tennis was a popular competitive sport. I took my first plane ride when I competed on this school’s team!
The reason I bring this up is because every graduate from this school went on to college. So I did. But I soon agonized about what I wanted to do with my life. After all, at college you are there for a reason, especially when you are paying for it. I finally made my decision to pursue dental hygiene at UC San Francisco. From then on I went from poor and average grades to all As in the science courses I had to take. I did so well in organic chemistry at UCLA that my professor sent me a postcard asking why I didn’t become a chemistry major. I was rejected from UCSF, however, due to my earlier grades. That soon changed with the improved grades. I received a notice saying that I was now the first one on the list for acceptance and most likely I would be entering next fall. I was elated.
It was at this university that I was required to do assignments using the medical journals at the library. When I became a mother for the first and second time and had many concerns about what was involved with natural child spacing, I made a quick trip to San Francisco and headed for that medical library to begin my research. God was behind all of this. He knew the steps I needed to take in order to be a disciple in this area.
Tomorrow: Where the real research took place for me…
Sheila Kippley
NFP International
www.nfpandmore.org
Author: Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood (Sophia, 2005)
Natural Family Planning: TheQuestion-Answer Book (e-book
at this website, 2005)