Why talk about breastfeeding in a course on natural family planning? Do couples come to NFP classes to learn about the care and feeding of babies? Granted, breastfeeding has lots of merits, but so do all sorts of healthy practices. Why not teach aerobic exercises? Why not teach good nutrition in detail? Why not teach an introduction to Bible studies? All these things are good, so why not teach them? The reason why we don’t teach these other goods is they are not directly related to natural family planning, and that’s what the course participants have come to learn.
The reason we have taught ecological breastfeeding in books and NFP courses since 1969 is because this form of child care and breastfeeding IS a form of natural family planning. First, eco-breastfeeding is associated with an extended period of natural infertility after childbirth. Second, eco-breastfeeding is the ONLY form of breastfeeding that regularly yields more than a few months of postpartum infertility. For mothers to go one year, two years, or even three years or more without menstruation is the NORM if you take nature as your guide. John and I believe it is God’s own way of baby care and baby spacing. Taking nature as your norm or guide, for a woman to have a period within three months after childbirth should be the exception. This is part of God’s plan, a truth of the theology of the body.
On the other hand, breastfeeding as it is commonly practiced in the West has almost no influence on the return of fertility. My experience in La Leche League as a regular attendee prior to the birth of our first baby and as an active LLL leader for about eight years made me realize that it is necessary to adequately distinguish the baby-spacing kind of breastfeeding from the kind of breastfeeding that has little or no effect on baby-spacing. So in the late Sixties we coined the term “ecological breastfeeding.” It has worked well since that time to make the distinction.
Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo
Preseident of the Pontifical Council for the Family
On Saturday, April 18, I learned that Cardinal Lopez Trujillo had passed to his etermal reward. He was a great friend of NFP, including ecological breastfeeding. He wrote the forewords to both of my breastfeeding books at his own initiative. Here is a quote from each book.
“For many years the value of breastfeeding has been recognized, especially in terms of the close bond it establishes between a mother and her child and the health benefits of a natural form of nourishing infants. It is therefore heartening to see a revived interest in this natural form of nurturing. However, there is another dimension of breastfeeding that is not as widely known, that is, choosing breastfeeding as a natural means of spacing births.”
Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing, 1999
“It is a well-known scientific fact that breastfeeding, and especially ecological breastfeeding, has brought substantiated positive results in babies’ health in defending certain childhood illnesses and in helping infants grow and develop better…Reconnecting with John Paul II’s theology of the body, Sheila Kippley also proposes a few thoughts and meditations for breastfeeding mothers who wish to find spiritual nourishment and encouragement from the Church in their most important task.” (my emphasis)
Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood, 2005
Next Week: Objections to Eco-Breastfeeding
Sheila Kippley
NFP International
Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood and Natural Family Planning (e-book at this website)