The objection has been raised that most people don’t recognize or immediately understand the term “ecological breastfeeding,” and that’s true. Most people, including the health care professionals don’t understand “natural family planning,” “sympto-thermal method,” “ovulation method,” “NaPro Technology,” and “The Seven Standards.” It’s the welcome task of NFP advocates, providers and users to explain these things.
The strangeness of the term “ecological breastfeeding” is a great advantage. Honest strangers to the term will admit they don’t know what it means, and then curiosity may be piqued. On the other hand, terms such as “continued breastfeeding” and “extended breastfeeding” lend themselves to misinterpretation. Strangers to those terms will most likely think they know what they mean—the mom keeps nursing. Period. With “continued” nursing, there aren’t any qualifications about the frequency of nursing, use of pacifiers or bottles, etc. It is precisely to ward off such misunderstanding that we developed a term that is both accurate and calls for an explanation, as do all the other specialized terms in the NFP movement.
By the time we wrote the first version of The Art of Natural Family Planning, we had been doing research on eco-breastfeeding for several years. That research was published in JOGN, a nursing journal, in 1972 and was incorporated into all four editions of The Art of NFP under our authorship. The guidelines of 1972 are essentially the “Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding” we teach today.
On April 26 just before posting this blog, Sheila did Google and Yahoo searches on “ecological breastfeeding” and “sympto-thermal method” to determine their relative use on the internet. Google yielded 115,000 for EBF and 42,800 for the STM. Yahoo yielded 332,000 for EBF and 67,100 for the STM. Clearly ecological breastfeeding is the more familiar term.
Expelled: We saw the movie “Expelled” last night. We encourage everyone to see this movie. And, parents, bring your teenagers.
Free breastfeeding brochure: Brochure promoting breastfeeding is available at this website. Published brochure of the “white” image is available in bulk with a donation.
Next Week: Is Breastfeeding the Solution or the Problem?
John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant: A Basis for Morality (Ignatius)
Natural Family Planning: available at www.NFPandmore.org