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Natural Family Planning: Best with Ecological Breastfeeding

Sunday, September 8th, 2019

Some Musings on Ecological Breastfeeding    (Tuesday, August 13, 2019)

The other day I attended a book study at a local church.  A fellow mom asked me the ages of my children.  I told her 20, 17, 14, 11 and 7.  She then responded, “You must have planned that!”  Actually, the truth is – I didn’t.  After my first was born and my cycles returned at 21 months postpartum, I was still breastfeeding and did not get pregnant for a few months.  As I had more children, my cycles took longer to come back, and I got pregnant sooner when they did.

So what was my secret?  The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding!  I first read about ecological breastfeeding in Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing by Sheila Kippley while pregnant with my first child.  What a blessing to read such an inspirational book and to have such great information so early on as a mom! It really spoke to my heart.  I can’t remember where I first heard about the book; it was either at my local La Leche League meeting or in the Kippleys’ original NFP book (they have since published a new updated book, Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach).

I planned to stay home full time with my baby, so I knew I could easily follow most of the Seven Standards.  At first, I made lots of mistakes.  Our first week as a breastfeeding dyad did not go well.  I was not latching him well, and so he lost a significant amount of weight.  We worked with an LC and our doctor and things turned around quickly, thank goodness!  One time, I left my son with my mom to go visit a friend.  I lost track of time and was out longer than I had planned to be. When I returned home, I found out my son had been crying for some time.  I felt awful!  Also, I confess I was not very proficient about setting up a safe bedsharing environment in the early days.  My ecological breastfeeding blunder list could go on and on.  New moms are often filled with so much anxiety because we want to get it right!  Eventually over time, I relaxed.  If you are a first time mom reading this, rest assured that you will, too!

The Seven Standards really just became the natural thing to do.  Then, with later children, I was so comfortable offering the breast for nourishment and comfort during the day wherever we happened to be and while bedsharing at night, that my lengths of lactational amenorrhea kept increasing.   After my fourth son was born, I went 29 months without cycles and then 31 months after my daughter was born.

The other day I read in an NFP group how some doctors tell their patients that breastfeeding is not birth control.  I would not call it birth control exactly, but I would call it a loving way to space your family.  It sure successfully spaced my children!  According to Sheila Kippley’s research, it looks like I am not alone in my experience with ecological breastfeeding. She found that…

“About 70% of EBF mothers experience their first menstruation between 9 and 20 months postpartum.  The average return of menstruation for EBF mothers in the North American culture is between 14 and 15 months. For those couples who desire 18 to 30 months between the births of their children, ecological breastfeeding will usually be sufficient.”

Give ecological breastfeeding a try!  You will help your milk supply, bond with your baby, acquire quite a few health benefits for you and your baby, and you just might space your family without needing to chart NFP!

By Gina Peterson
Catholic Nursing Mothers League
https://catholicbreastfeeding.blogspot.com/

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Natural Family Planning: Call to Generosity

Sunday, September 1st, 2019

Being faithful to Catholic teaching requires us to teach “both this and that.”  Both that NFP is not Catholic birth control and that the Church recognizes the moral correctness of deliberately spacing babies via the practice of chaste abstinence during the fertile time— for sufficiently serious reasons.  Also, teaching Ecological Breastfeeding— which naturally delays the return of fertility for, on average, a two-year spacing of babies without recourse to periodic abstinence— is not only teaching a form of parenting that is eminently health-supporting but also is not a form of contraception in the sense in which that term is used in Humanae Vitae and Catholic moral theology.

In our users’ manual, Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach, we present what we think is a faithful approach.  We directly teach, “Systematic NFP is not ‘Catholic Birth Control.’ …Children are gifts from God…”  We note that Genesis 1:28 has not been cancelled.  In a section titled “What does the Catholic Church teach about marriage and having children?” we quote five numbered sections from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  That includes CCC 2368.  “For just reasons, spouses may wish to space the births of their children.  It is their duty to make certain that their desire is not motivated by selfishness but is in conformity with the generosity appropriate to responsible parenthood.” We also include the beautiful statement made by Pope John Paul II at Mass on the Washington Mall  (Oct 7, 1979).  “Decisions about the number of children and the sacrifices to be made for them must not be  taken only with a view to adding to comfort and preserving peaceful existence….”  And he reminds couples of the values of additional siblings.

Fidelity to Catholic teaching requires that we teach the need for sufficiently serious reasons and the call to generosity.  Fidelity also requires that we teach that practicing chaste NFP for serious reason is not a form of contraception or acting with a “contraceptive mentality.”  And for those couples who have a serious reason to avoid or postpone pregnancy, we are convinced that we should give them sufficient knowledge so that they, not the NFP teacher, can make an informed decision about what signs and system they want to use.

John Kippley

 

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Natural Family Planning: Medicine and Morality

Sunday, August 25th, 2019

To a doctor friend John wrote the following:

When the subject of morality and biological/medical education comes up, I think of a day in the medical school education of my second daughter and her future husband.  The University of Cincinnati medical school brought in an “expert” to explain to the future docs about the patients they might be seeing.  People doing sodomy and whatever with, of course, some unhappy physical consequences.  The whole purpose of the day was to instruct the future docs not to be judgmental.

I would like the medical schools to bring in informed Catholics who could help future docs understand why believing Catholics believe that unnatural forms of birth control are immoral and thus help these future doctors not to be judgmental and to think that such Catholics and some others are crazy or Luddites.  We try to do that in Chapter 1 of our natural family planning manual.  Explaining Catholic belief in terms not only of the proscription of contraception but also in terms of a covenant theology of the marriage act might help some of them.  After all, if that theology helped Kimberly and Scott Hahn accept Catholic teaching on birth control when Scott considered himself the most anti-Catholic person at their seminary, perhaps it can help others as well.

Anyone who reads our manual will realize that it does not take many words to explain this sort of thing—the idea that the human sexual act ought to be 1) exclusively a marriage act and 2) a true marriage act, a renewal of the marriage covenant.  That simple idea gives meaning to the sexual act.  It helps people to understand the intrinsic dishonesty of 1) sex outside of marriage and 2) marital contraception.

I think that almost every theist can understand that the acceptance of contraception means the acceptance of the idea that modern men and women can take apart what God has put together in the human sexual act.  A couple of questions suffice:  “Who put together in one act what we call ‘making  love’ and ‘making babies’?”  A thinking theist has to say, “God.”  Then, “What is contraception except the effort to take apart what God has put together?”  Well, what else?  Thus, the acceptance of marital contraception logically entails the application of that “taking apart” to the entirety of imaginable sexual actions including adultery, fornication, incest, and—of course—the acceptance of sodomy, provided only that the parties are of legal age and have given mutual consent.

If you are dealing with a person who claims to be an atheist, it may be helpful to note that no one can prove that God does not exist.  The logicians have long told us that no one can prove a negative.  If you think it might be helpful in dealing with an unbeliever, you can give her or him a brochure I developed (at the request of a prisoner) titled “Why Believe?”  You can download it (free) at http://nfpandmore.org/brochure.shtml .

John F. Kippley

 

 

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