NFP and breastfeeding

the University Concourse
Volume I, Issue 6
April 23, 1996
Table of Contents

This piece is part of a larger section called 'Questions, comments and continuing conversations'.
To see all of that section, click on these lines.

NFP and breastfeeding

I would like to add to the NFP con-versation by discussing breastfeeding as an integral part of "normative" Catholic family life (though I whole-heartedly agree that we must take care to avoid judging individual families.)

There is a way that a couple can be "providentialist" (in the sense of "letting God decide" how many children they will have) and still know that their children will probably be spaced far enough apart that adequate emotional, spiritual and physical resources will be available for each new infant who arrives. Breastfeeding is the key.

Breastfeeding affects the return of fertility after birth. A mother often is consumed with the care and nurturing of her new infant, and cannot adequately care for another in just nine months. By God's beautiful design, her fertility will not return for perhaps a few months. But consistent breastfeeding can suppress the return of fertility for 1-3 years. The more the child nurses, the more likely fertility is postponed. This means that the needy, fussy, colicky infant who wishes to nurse often will tend to delay his mother's return to fertility longer than the content, comfortable infant who nurses less and may wean earlier. In a sense, the infant tells his mother when it is okay for her to have another, and he is most likely right.

More could be said about the benefits of nursing (e.g. nutrition, bonding, security), but my point here is that "natural family planning" involves more than using the Sympto-Thermal Method for fertility awareness. Breastfeeding can be used to space children in a way that naturally incorporates the unique needs of each child. A couple could conceivably (pun intended) throw their fertility charts out the window after the first child, and let the mother/infant nursing relationship determine when fertility (and the chance of conception) will return to the family.

Breastfeeding is a wonderful physical, emotional and physiological act between a mother and her child, and it is Very Natural Family Planning.

Daniel Ellis, Class of '88

Related Articles:
• NFP, by itself, does not compromise the marriage vocation, Kathleen van Schaijik (I,1)
• NFP (1), Carole Brown (I,2)
• NFP (2), Susan C. Fischer (I,2)
• NFP (3), Carol Puccio (I,3)
• NFP and connaturality, Kathleen van Schaijik (I,4)
• NFP and breastfeeding, Daniel Ellis (I,6)
• Abusing NFP, Kathleen van Schaijik (VII,1)
• Beware laxism, John F. Crosby (VIII,1)
• The logic of love, Michael Houser (VIII,1)
• NFP and peace of mind, TG (VIII,1)
• Marriage and the use of Natural Family Planning, Thomas Storck (VIII,1)

By the same author:
• Technology and Simplicity in Catholic Culture, (I,4)
• NFP and breastfeeding, (I,6)
• Subscription renewal, (II,1)
• Inner life of society determines value of economic systems, (V,7)