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.
Influential Persons
In preparing this blog, I thought about people who advocated natural child spacing, who published their research, and whose work went beyond the medical journals. They were true pioneers for natural family planning. Their work and their message reached the common person. In a sense, their “natural spacing” work became an active apostolate for them. For NFP Week, I want to call special attention to two persons who were pioneers with their breastfeeding infertility work, well before I became actively involved with this topic. Both pioneers are now deceased, and I am grateful for the correspondence I had with both of them. Today I will blog on the work of Rose Gioiosa and tomorrow, that of Dr. Otto Schaefer.
Promoting Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing and How to Have a Good Marriage Preparation Program
Rose Gioiosa
In the spring of 1953 Rose Gioiosa, a nurse, conducted a study among breastfeeding mothers at the Catholic Maternity Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her purpose was to show that a mother could “space her babies naturally without the use of Rhythm, Basal Temperature methods, Fertility Testor, or other family planning techniques” (“Breastfeeding and Child Spacing,” Child & Family, 1964). After all, in other countries where prolonged breastfeeding of two or three years was the culture, breastfeeding was valued for the spacing it provided before the conception of another child.
In 1955 Miss Gioiosa’s Santa Fe research was published. (“Incidence of Pregnancy during Lactation in 500 Cases,” Am. J. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 70:1, July 1955). She concluded that avoiding solid foods until the baby is about six months old and avoiding early milk substitutes for nine months while breastfeeding is a natural means of spacing babies with an interval of 18 to 24 months. She concluded that 95% of American nursing mothers would not conceive during the first nine months postpartum as long as the nursing mother did not offer “additional supplementary or complementary formula” during that time, and that the other 5% of nursing mothers who conceived during the nine months postpartum were weaning or offering “supplementary or complementary feedings” (p. 173).
In 1961, the La Leche League Board sent a survey to its members. Part of the survey asked questions to determine if breastfeeding spaces babies (Child & Family, 1964). Rose Gioiosa did a comparison study between the results of the La Leche League survey and her own published study; this resulted in her previously mentioned article (Child & Family, 1964). This article, “Breastfeeding and Child Spacing,” was published in pamphlet form and distributed widely among La Leche League mothers. When I was interested in the natural spacing mechanism of breastfeeding, this article found its way into my hands through my La Leche League contacts in the mid-1960s.
In her comparison study, Gioiosa reached the same conclusion: “The early use of other milks or formulas, or solid foods in the infant’s diet automatically decreases the demand on the mother’s milk while she is breastfeeding. There is a subsequent decrease in the supply of milk available, and this tends to diminish the amount of time afforded by the natural spacing mechanism” (Child & Family, 1964). Rose Gioiosa’s work in the early fifties and again in the Sixties with the La Leche League survey is probably one reason why La Leche League continued to state in its manual the following:
“While a mother is wholly breastfeeding (no solids or supplements), she will most likely not menstruate at all. In fact, the average nursing mother will not have a period for about seven to fifteen months after giving birth. When she does begin to have menstrual periods, at least one and often several of these will be without ovulation, or sterile, in most cases. Only a fraction of 1% of women are likely to conceive while wholly breastfeeding before having any periods” (The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, 1963, p. 49; boldface not in the original).
Gioiosa’s work on natural child spacing helped to inform mothers that pregnancy could best be postponed by nursing for the first nine months or longer without the use of milk substitutes and waiting six months before beginning solid food. Her work supported the bold-faced statement above. In those days—the 1960s and early 1970s—there was very little support for natural child spacing except through La Leche League International. There was, however, an occasional article written to promote natural child spacing. My husband remembers reading when I was pregnant with our first child that breastfeeding would mean having “eight children in 16 years rather than eight children in eight years.” (Mrs. James A. Kenny, Letter to the Editor, America, February 29, 1964, p. 270) The main Child & Family article by Rose Gioiosa bolstered the idea, especially among Catholic mothers, that breastfeeding has something to contribute to the natural spacing of babies.
What’s Involved With a Good Marriage Preparation Program?
Rose Gioiosa wrote me in 1988 reminiscing about her work and promotion of natural child spacing. By then a nun with the Sisters for Christian Community, she recalled her marriage preparation work starting in 1980 in Boston. She coordinated the program which reached 1000 couples during the first three years. The fourth year she restricted the program to 26 churches (Personal letter, August 2, 1988).
There were three sessions with the best time set on Sundays from 2 to 5 PM. At the first session, a priest talked about Church teaching on marriage as a sacrament, human sexuality and responsible parenthood, and communications and adjustments in marriage. Natural family planning slides were shown at this time. The second session was on similar topics but the presenters were married couples. Interestingly, these couples had to have experience with natural family planning and natural child spacing by breastfeeding. The third session was on the spirituality of marriage. It ended with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the blessing of the engagement rings, and with engagement promises.
Educational booklets and books were offered for sale. Natural family planning classes followed and couples were encouraged to attend these classes. Sister Gioiosa reflected that there were many different kinds of marriage preparation programs in those days “with not too much input on natural family planning or breastfeeding and natural child spacing.”(ibid) She retired at the end of 1984.
How did she feel about the marriage preparation programs in general when she wrote me back in 1988? Here is her response: “I feel that a few sessions on marriage preparation are only a beginning. Our couples need the backing and good example of their own parents, relatives and other married couples, as well as good follow-up by their own parish churches and clergy, to support them and to continue this ‘beginning’. ”
Rose Gioiosa was untiring in her promotion of breastfeeding and its effect of natural child spacing. Thanks to La Leche League, she reached many mothers through her Child & Family article. She also reached many couples through her marriage preparation work.
Tomorrow: A pioneering doctor among the Eskimos
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)