Natural Family Planning: A Unique and Complete Approach to NFP Instruction
Last week we listed some of the factors that make NFPI instruction unique and complete. This week’s blog continues that explanation.
Ecological breastfeeding as a form of natural family planning.
Ecology is concerned with the relationships between two organisms and how each affects the other. Ecological breastfeeding is the form of nursing in which the mother fulfills her baby’s needs for frequent suckling and her full-time presence and in which the child’s frequent suckling postpones the return of the mother’s fertility. This pattern is easily described as the Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding in which each Standard is a maternal behavior that affects this interdependent relationship. Research has shown that mothers who follow the Seven Standards experience, on the average, 14 to 15 months of breastfeeding infertility. This has two great benefits.
• Baby spacing of approximately two years between births, on average, without recourse to fertility awareness and periodic abstinence.
• Maximization of the many health benefits for baby and mother alike. These benefits are dose related; the longer the baby nurses, the more the benefits that both mother and baby receive. However, only frequent nursing maintains the milk supply so that babies can nurse for an extended duration. How long? In 1995, Pope John Paul II endorsed the recommendations of WHO and UNICEF for mothers to nurse their babies for at least two years if at all possible. This sounds strange to many Western ears, but it is based on sound public-health preventive medicine. Just this past week we learned of research reported in the May 2009 issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology. It describes the long term maternal benefits of breastfeeding. We will blog on this in the week of May 10.
Only NFP International teaches ecological breastfeeding as a form of natural family planning in its regular course of NFP instruction. Such instruction does not force anyone to breastfeed for any specific duration, but it does empower couples to make a well informed choice. After all, human persons can choose only what they know.
Modest cost
Because the NFPI service is provided by volunteers who see teaching NFP as an apostolate, the costs for the student couple are minimal. For example, the suggested donation of $70.00 includes an NFP manual, a thermometer, charts, the instruction in three 2-hour classes, continued free charts, and counseling as needed.
Interest in NFPI Teaching? If any couple is interested in evanglizing through the teaching of the covenant theology, ecological breastfeeding, and systematic NFP with its several options, please contact us at nfpandmore@nfpandmore.org.
John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant: A Basis for Morality