Archive for the ‘Ecological Breastfeeding’ Category

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Breastfeeding for Spacing Babies: An Ongoing Health Issue

Sunday, September 11th, 2016

In the United States, 81.1% of newborn infants started breastfeeding, 51.8% are still nursing at 6 months and only one-third are nursing at 12 months.  Rarely do mothers follow the American Pediatric Association recommendations of 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding and the continued nursing for at least one year.

Exclusive breastfeeding offers a brief natural spacing of babies, but ecological breastfeeding offers an extended natural infertility that exclusive breastfeeding alone does not provide.

Reported in secular papers on August 23, 2016 was a recent study in the Maternal and Child Health Journal that offers three risks for premature births: women who were underweight, had poor weight gain during pregnancy, or short periods of time between pregnancies.  The article stressed that education interventions should be given on the importance of birth spacing.  The US has a higher rate of pre-term births than many other nations.  Certainly education about Ecological Breastfeeding can contribute greatly to a desirable natural spacing of babies.

Sheila Kippley
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding

 

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Natural Family Planning with Breastfeeding

Sunday, September 4th, 2016

With the available research and the experiences of many mothers, it is astounding that most Church and NFP teacher ignore ecological breastfeeding to space babies.  Some blogging moms have been so enthusiastic about discovering eco-breastfeeding that they have written their own series of blogs on the Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding—one Catholic  mom in the USA, another in Ireland, and a Lutheran mom also in the USA.

We ask you to pray that someone will make this message known.  Maybe a well-known Catholic or celebrity!  I often pray that Our Blessed Mother will find a way.   Here is the experience of a mother who used breastfeeding alone to space her babies and found this natural way more helpful than using systematic NFP:

“I just wanted to say thank you for your website and especially Sheila’s book, The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding.   I got the book through La Leche League when my eldest child was about a year old and I still hadn’t had a period. My husband and I are Catholic, and so we don’t want to use anything other than NFP.  My experience has been that breastfeeding has been the most effective and least stressful method of spacing our children, much more so than any of the more systematic NFP methods we have tried to learn.  So thank you for writing your book, since it really helped reassure me that I (and my body) were acting in a normal and natural way. It has been 8 years since I read your book, and we now have 4 kids. The smallest age gap between any of them is 2 years exactly, and during all this time, we have mostly relied on breastfeeding alone to plan our family, since I have great difficulty reading and interpreting my fertility charts even after instruction in 2 different NFP methods” (August 2016).

Sheila Kippley
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding

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Natural Family Planning: The Importance of the Mother to the Baby

Sunday, August 28th, 2016

One of the benefits of God’s plan for spacing babies with the right kind of breastfeeding is that the breastfeeding relationship keeps the mother with her baby.  I’d like to share some thoughts on this by Saint John Paul II.

On Human Work: 1981
“To take up paid work outside the home is wrong from the point of view of the good of society and of the family when it contradicts or hinders these primary goals of the mission of a mother.”
“Mothers have an irreplaceable role.”

Address to “Women, Wives, and Mothers,” Familia et Vita, January 1995.
“Women can never be replaced in  begetting and rearing children…  Women as mothers have an irreplaceable role.”
“The children also have a right to the care and concern of those who have begotten them, their mothers in particular.”

The Gospel of Life: 1995
Sincere gift of self by the mother: “daily heroism”  “brave mothers”  “heroic mothers” (86)
Baby: “Every human being” is “an icon of Jesus Christ.” (84)
“The family is the sanctuary of life.” (6, 11, 59, 88, 91, 92, 94)

May 12, 1995 address to scientists at Vatican breastfeeding conference.
“No one can substitute for the mother in this natural activity.”
“This natural activity benefits the child and helps to create the closeness and maternal bonding so necessary for healthy child development….So vital is this interaction between mother and child that my predecessor Pope Pius XII urged Catholic mothers, if at all possible, to nourish their children themselves (Oct. 26, 1941).”

Sheila:  God’s plan for spacing babies has many benefits.  Not only the spacing but also health and emotional benefits for both mother and child.  Let’s pray that our government and our Church with its Pope, cardinals, bishops, priests, and teachers will promote ecological breastfeeding because of these many benefits.

Sheila Kippley

 

 

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