Natural Family Planning International

In the November/December 1971 issue of Nutrition Today, Dr. Otto Schaefer stated that the Eskimos prolonged lactation provided a natural spacing of three years and kept the Eskimo family small (“When the Eskimo Comes to Town”).  “It is this prolonged lactation period more than high infant mortality that kept the traditional Eskimos family small.”  The traditional Eskimo family size averaged 3 to 4 children.   This natural spacing was lost once the Eskimos were exposed to urbanization and the trading posts.  The closer they lived to the trading posts, the closer they had their babies.  As a result there was a “50 percent jump in the Eskimo birthrate in the Northwest Territories alone, and the increase from less than 40 births per 1000 in the mid-1950s to 64 per 1000 ten years later.”  This increase birth rate was due to the increased use of the bottle and shortened lactation.

In a paper presented at the Circumpolar Health Symposium in Oulu, Finland in June 1971, Dr. Schaefer spoke of the traditional lactation effect on postpartum infertility.  The women aged 30-50 years who had reared children in camp life with prolonged lactation conceived 20-30 months postpartum.  The younger women aged 17-29 who were urbanized and used bottles for their babies conceived “2 to 4 months after the birth of the previous child.”  What a difference! 

The story of Dr. Schaefer’s life was written by Dr. Gerald W. Hankins and was titled Sunrise Over Pangnirtung.  Dr. Hankins mentioned in that book that Dr. Schaefer believed that “breast feeding had a greater influence on the life and health of infants than any other single factor.”  Schaefer also wanted women to give up bottle feeding so they would receive a desirable spacing of children with breastfeeding. 

One interesting note was that Dr. Schaefer did not hear of any complaints from mothers who nursed traditionally.  Not as with the bottlefeeders.  However, when he attended the women’s conference in Pangnirtung in 1981, Dr. Schaefer observed according to Dr. Hawkins that:  “Many complained about having ‘too many kids around,’ one of the consequences of giving up breast feeding.  Others found that they had little to keep them busy and that their children weren’t respectful or obedient any more.”

Dr. Schaefer spent 32 years of his medical career in the barren lands of northern Canada, and his research was written up in over 100 papers and publications. He constantly took notes when providing medical care. I was pleased to meet his daughter at a breastfeeding conference in California.  (She was nursing a three-year old.)

Tomorrow:  early solids, bottles and pacifiers
Sheila Kippley
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding

Ecological Breastfeeding spaces babies naturally.  No periodic abstinence is required for this form of Natural Family Planning. I first learned about this in 1964 and wanted to learn more.  I was excited to begin my research on natural child spacing in 1966 at the University of San Francisco Medical Center library.  I continued my research in 1968 at the public health department library in Regina, Saskatchewan.  For fun and for this series of blogs, I reviewed all the research I collected up through 1968.  Here are the totals:  1 study in 1895; 2 in the 1930s; 6 in the 1940s; 7 in the 1950s; and 14 from 1960-1968.  All these papers dealt with the effect of lactation upon the reproductive cycle.  These papers dealt with full or mixed breastfeeding, but none of them dealt with the maternal behaviors which we have found are important for natural spacing.  We teach these behaviors with the Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding.  These Standards will be discussed soon in this series of blogs for World Breastfeeding Week.  The published research for each Standard or behavior required for natural spacing is in my book, The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding: The Frequency Factor.  It is a short book, easy to read and costs little.  We give the book free to every couple who attends our local NFP classes in Cincinnati.

The daily blogs for this World Breastfeeding Week will focus on the research showing that a long absence from menstruation can occur for certain breastfeeding mothers.  Why?  Because a certain type of breastfeeding continues to keep the reproductive system at rest.

Because this information has been made available since 1969 through our books and our NFP apostolates, we are amazed that this information is ignored by most of those in the Natural Family Planning movement as well as by the Church and the government. 

In 1983, Daniel T. Halperin covered this topic for his master’s thesis:  “Infant Feeding in Honduras:  Mixed Feeding, Child Spacing and some Policy Implications.”  He was a strong promoter of natural birth spacing through breastfeeding.  He was exposed to parents and health workers in Honduras who laughed at the idea that breastfeeding could space babies.  “Neither of three family planning officials with whom I spoke believed that lactation had significant influence on fertility.”  Yet the women in Honduras said they would prefer “two years or more” spacing.  This culture, however, favored bottles, pacifiers, early solids, and practices which cause fertility to return early.  Most parents were Catholic and feared “the widely-reported physical dangers associated with birth-control pills, IUDs, injections, etc.”

Mr. Halperin stated that while technological contraceptive devices work “against God’s will,” lactation and its child spacing effect are forms of the natural carrying-out “of His will.”

Tomorrow.  Today we saw a Honduran culture where natural child spacing via breastfeeding was uncommon.  Tomorrow we will see a culture where traditional breastfeeding does indeed space babies.
Sheila Kippley
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding