Archive for 2020

Natural Family Planning: An Excellent Home Study Course

Sunday, January 12th, 2020

I have three volunteer jobs.  My favorite one is working with couples who are taking the NFP International Home Study Course.   Here are some of their comments below.

Thank you! It was great working with you. We will contact you if we have any questions.

We have gained a lot of new knowledge and have benefited from this course!

Very in depth, informative, and thoroughly explained with great constructive feedback for each section.    We had a basic understanding of how the cycle worked; however, we were not aware that it was this easily quantifiable and predictable.

Thank you so much for guiding us and teaching us for the future of our marriage. We really appreciate all your help to help us learn NFP.

The course has prepared us for a married life honoring God in everything we do including in the act of marriage.

We have gained an understanding of the teaching of the Catholic Church and a new profound love for our relationship, our bodies, God love for each other and for ourselves as we bear children in the near future.

The course was very helpful having practice charts and examples throughout the manual.

Awesome! Thank you for helping us along in this course. We definitely learned a lot of things throughout this.

We learned a lot as a family and were able to discuss some of the topics in the book.  We have gained a lot of knowledge of the female cycle and how to prepare for our family planning.

Thank you very much. I appreciate you working to get us through this. We had a lot of setbacks in the last few months and we certainly had to play catch up. That being said, it was nice to be reminded that Nate and I are at our best when working together 🙂  (finished in 5 days)

This course has been very eye-opening for both of us. We are very excited to start a family together, and we believe NFP will help us do that.

We both gained more knowledge and feel more educated on Natural Family Planning. We will continue to chart and plan for our children while praying for guidance.

Sheila Kippley
Home Study Course Information Sheet

 

Natural Family Planning: Breastfeeding Spaces Babies

Sunday, January 5th, 2020

Last year the biggest news about breastfeeding was a report on the environmental hazards of manufacturing baby formula and the great benefits of Exclusive Breastfeeding for six months.  What will stand out in 2020?

In addition to the treat health benefits of breastfeeding-in-general, there is also the blessing of spacing births with Ecological Breastfeeding. This natural spacing is all part of God’s plan.  Yet too many Catholics talk only about systematic natural family planning.  Government agencies talk about the need to have a spacing of two years between births, but they say nothing about natural spacing via breastfeeding.

The value of natural spacing with breastfeeding is illustrated by the comments received on January 3 from a grateful mother:

“We practice ecological breastfeeding and spaced our first two 27 months apart with just breastfeeding. I’m in awe of your work and so grateful for all your research and your books. Big fan here. I tell anyone who will listen about your books and the beauty of spacing children God’s way” (my emphasis).

Our two published research papers concluded that American mothers doing Ecological Breastfeeding experience, on average, 14 to 15 months without menstruation after childbirth.  I wrote  The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding to show the research behind each Standard.  Each Standard is a maternal behavior associated with natural spacing.

For couples beginning a family, breastfeeding is an option to consider for the natural spacing of their children, and they should be adequately informed about this as they prepare for marriage.

Sheila Kippley
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding