Natural Family Planning International

Research shows that when a baby is stressed or lacks maternal care his brain is coated with a large dose of cortisol.  Cortisol can shrink the learning center of the brain, and cortisol can cause the dendrites to atrophy.  This helps to explain why cortisol is associated with severely delayed development.  This is why we have seen on television Romanian orphaned babies rocking in their cribs or teens moving constantly in what is called the “dance of neglect.”

That’s the bad news.  The good news is that the mother protects her baby against these harmful effects just by her presence.  With breastfeeding mothers are present and a breastfeeding mother soon learns that her baby thrives on maternal intimacy, that her baby loves to be with her.

One of my favorite books is The War Against the Family by William Gairdner because he states how we can have healthy individuals in our society.  In his opinion, the kind of care needed for healthy individuals depends on the mother providing a care that is uninterrupted, intimate, and continuous for her child during the early months and early years.

This kind of care is almost always provided to each child if his mother breastfeeds him as nature intended.

Next week: Breastfeeding and Crime Prevention

Sheila Kippley
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding: The Frequency Factor, 2008
Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing, 2008, classic 1974 edition
Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood, 2005
www.nfpandmore.org

Our top priority as parents is to raise our children as best we can.  Raising children is the most important work we do as parents.  Almost all of us want children who are physically and emotionally and spiritually healthy.

One of the concerns stressed at a brain-research conference I attended  was that the kind of care you give to your children may come back to you.  It is these children who become teenagers and eventually may become our caregivers as we age.  They are the ones who will be in the voting booth deciding our future.

As one workshop speaker said:  What kind of care do you want in your last years?  Will your face be cleaned with a fresh washcloth or a soiled one?  Will your bedpan be empty or full?  Will you be spanked when you dribble accidentally?

If we want caring children who are also caring as adults, a helpful step to achieving that goal as parents, whether breastfeeding or not, is to nurture our babies well during the first three years of life.  I do not want to rule out the exceptions, the wonderful conversions that occur, but, by and large, the treatment children receive in their first three years has a great affect on their later lives.

A building needs a foundation.  Our children also need a foundation.  That foundation is the first three years of life.  Our job isn’t over after childbirth.  Nor is it over after they celebrate their third birthday.  But experts keep telling us that it’s what the mother (and soon the father) does during those early years that is so important and determines whether we give our children a healthy start or a troubling start.

Next week: Research concerning the early years

Sheila Kippley
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding: The Frequency Factor, 2008
Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing, 2008, classic 1974 edition
Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood, 2005
www.nfpandmore.org

    Probably the most important part of the biological oneness between mother and baby  is their ecological relationship:  what affects one affects the other.  We see this in the many health benefits for both.   By health benefits, I am including the emotional health benefits as well as the physical health benefits. 
   If breastfeeding is shortened and the mother stops nursing during the early weeks or months, then both she and baby lose the many benefits of breastfeeding.  The World Health Organization said it well:  “Mothers and babies form an inseparable biological and social unit; the health and nutrition of one group cannot be divorced from the health and nutrition of the other.”
   In addition, quite often the mother soon loses that physical intimate contact with her growing baby when she bottlefeeds. Rare is the mother who holds her baby during the early years when bottlefeeding. Rare is the mother who insists on doing the bottlefeeding herself and who takes her baby with her, but sometimes it happens.  The first couple John and I knew who took their baby with them to college faculty parties were bottlefeeding.  I admired them because they gave us support for what we were doing with our breastfed baby.

Breast milk or Mother
   The value of breastfeeding is heavily emphasized today.  Because so many mothers work, much attention is given to pumping milk at work and storing breast milk.  This is good, but what gets lost is the mother-baby biological oneness.  You can’t give a talk today without someone asking, “What about the working mother?”  While there are many mothers who have to work for the basic necessities and who would prefer being home with their baby, there are also many mothers who could stay home and choose not to do so.  The pressure today is for those latter mothers to leave their babies and little ones and earn money or follow their career.
   But babies do need their mothers.  The continuous contact with mom during the early years is the first step towards building a good foundation for life and future relationships.  God provides for this essential foundation through the presence of the mother.  How does He do this?  With breastfeeding.  The breastfeeding relationship ensures that the mother will remain with her baby.  As Maria Montessori stressed years ago, prolonged lactation of 1.5 to 3 years is good for the baby because it keeps the mother with her baby. 

Next week: More on this topic.
 
Sheila Kippley
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding: The Frequency Factor, 2008
Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing, 2008, classic edition
Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood, 2005
www.nfpandmore.org