Natural Family Planning International

In the spring of 1997 new studies demonstrated that problem solving skills and reasoning are largely established by age one and that the single most important predictor of later intelligence, school success and social competence was based on the number of words an infant hears each day from an “attentive, engaged person.”  That person would naturally be the mother, and breastfeeding provides that one “attentive, engaged person.”

The 1997 discussion centered on the importance of the first three years of life and especially the first year of life when the infant’s brain is growing at a tremendous rate.  Breastfeeding is also the best nutrition for nourishing the infant’s brain.

As a result of this research Newsweek published a 1997 issue in which the entire magazine was devoted to the “critical first three years of life.” (Some of this research is in The Crucial First Three Years available at this website. See below.)  All the research during that year could be summarized by two points.
1) It showed the importance of a consistent caregiver.
2) It showed the importance of breast milk.

Needless to say, prolonged breastfeeding as God intended for mother and baby already provides both the consistent caregiver and the breast milk for the baby. God’s plan is so good!

Sheila Kippley
Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding
The Crucial First Three Years

Just as mother and baby are one during pregnancy, nature intended mother and baby to be one after birth.  Mother and baby are one biological unit.  What benefits the one also benefits the other.  Each provides benefits to the other in the breastfeeding relationship.  (See the many benefits on pages 103-104 in the NFPI online manual, Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach.)

The World Health Organization described this oneness 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.”  (“Infant and young child nutrition,” 55th World Health Assembly, April 16, 2002)  Other researchers have also described mother and infant as one biological system.

This mother-baby oneness or togetherness is the key to natural child spacing and also to better outcomes of all the other benefits associated with ecological or extended breastfeeding.  God’s wonderful plan for natural child spacing should be promoted by the NFP movement and the Church and the government.  

Our society would be better if we made efforts to keep mother and baby together, especially during the early years and during the breastfeeding relationship.  Mother and baby need each other.

Sheila Kippley
Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding
The Crucial First Three Years

I am starting a series on the importance of the mother’s presence to her baby during the early years.  I am aware that this belief goes contrary to our present culture where everyone, including our government, assumes that the new mother should work or continue to work.  But a different voice needs to be heard.

I am also aware that many working mothers have found ways to be with their baby — whether staying at home or working part- or full-time or they have found ways to reduce the hours away from their babies.   I do not plan to go into those stories.

In a culture with unlimited access to bottles and pumps, we can forget that the most important person in the life of a baby during the early years is the mother.  One of the great advantages of ecological breastfeeding is that God’s plan keeps the baby with the mother.  Where mother is, baby is.  Where mother goes, baby goes.  It’s that simple.

God’s plan is good.

Sheila Kippley

Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding
The Crucial First Three Years