Spacing Children, Naturally

Hi all! I've been away for awhile, but as usual, I have a great excuse! I can't tell you what it is yet, though. Stay tuned to Steindom for a big announcement, coming soon! (Clarification: No, I'm not pregnant!)

Before I begin, I just wanted to mention that I've gotten some great feedback about this blog over the past couple months. Apparently there are a lot of silent readers out there! If you ever have comments, be sure to post them¹. If you have questions, please ask! And, finally, if there's anything you'd like me to write about, just send me a suggestion via the contact form² and I'd be happy to sound off about it!

On to the blog at hand. It's appropriate that I'm writing this blog right now, when Lucia is 14 1/2 months old. For most people, that's not a significant age. But, read on, and I'll show you why 14.5 months is a big number in our famly.

The topic of this blog is perhaps my very favorite in the sphere of marriage, faith, and parenting. It encompasses all three of these realms, and I'd venture to say it's a philosophy for married living. I think that one of the main reasons I'm so passionate about it is because so few people know about it. I'm excited to finally blog about this topic, and it will undoubtedly spawn further blogs.

I'm referring to the ancient practice of spacing children the natural way. I'm not talking per se about Natural Family Planning, which many reading this blog will be familiar with. As an aside, Natural Family Planning (NFP) is a way of spacing children that is indeed natural. It involves charting the natural rhythms of a woman's body to determine when she is fertile or infertile, and using that information to achieve or avoid a pregnancy. The Catholic Church is supportive of this style of birth regulation, to the exclusion of any unnatural means, including, but not limited to, pills and other devices. I'd love to spend time on the topic of NFP, but, as I said, that's not exactly what this blog is about.

This blog is about the centuries-old method of spacing children, before modern science devised the now-popular NFP methods. Before I get into specifics, let me ask a hypothetical question. Doesn't it make sense that our bodies would have a built-in way of regulating births? A way that would prevent mothers from getting worn out by oodles of children and fathers from failing to provide for their overwhelmingly huge brood? If God created us, wouldn't he have designed our bodies to naturally follow his plan for children? We can guess that God didn't make women to have as many babies as she possibly can in the span of twenty years or so. That would be a huge burden on both the mother and the father. I believe that God loves and desires big families, but without any spacing of children, "big families" could mean twenty or more children!

So, it's reasonable to assume that we have been created with a natural way of spacing out births. But what is it, and how does it work? That's what this blog is about. And, I have to warn you, this is going to be another long one!

Here's how it works: natural child spacing through breastfeeding! What does breastfeeding have to do with family size, you ask? A lot! Now, I know that many women of childbearing age out there have been lectured over and over that breastfeeding doesn't space babies. But guess what? It does! The trick is that the nursing mother must adhere to certain principles to keep her infertile for a period of more than just a few months. I'll explain this way of nursing in a moment. But first, a little more about how breastfeeding spaces babies.

Most women who have had a baby know that if she nurses her baby for any period of time, her fertility will not return as fast as it would if she were to give her baby formula. But how long her fertility is suppressed depends on a number of factors, such as how long and how often she nurses. Makes sense, right? The biology, simply put, is that certain hormones necessary for a woman's fertility are suppressed during nursing. Most of us know that even under "normal" circumstances, women are not fertile every day in a given month. She is only fertile a few days out of every month. Her hormones go up and down (everyone knows about that!), and that's what causes the waxing and waning of fertility.

So, back to the nursing mama. It's as though a nursing mama's body says: "you're nursing a baby right now—you're not ready to have another one yet! Let's just keep those fertility hormones at a low level right now, until this baby is a little bit bigger and it's time for another one." This way of spacing babies is built right into a woman's body. Amazing, isn't it?

Okay, so what is this "special way" of nursing that causes breastfeeding infertility? I won't go into too many specifics at the moment, but it is basically this: nursing frequently; nursing exclusively for six months; not using bottles, formula, or pacifiers; and staying very close to one's baby to facilitate this frequent nursing. Many people today might read that last sentence and think that's an impractical way to live. But it's the way that mothers have lived for thousands of years. It's only recently that we've lost this art of spacing babies, thanks to the formula industry and other things that seperate moms and babies so commonly today.

And how long is this time of infertility? It varies due to a number of factors, some controllable and some not, but the average time of infertility is 14.5 months. So on average, a baby is about 14 1/2 months old before mom's fertility comes back. If mom gets pregnant soon after, that's a spacing of about two years between births. As a first-time mom with a 14 1/2 month old baby trying this out, I'll just say: it works!

For more information about this way of spacing children, I highly recommend my favorite book in the whole world: Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing³ by Shiela Kippley. I've read it three times :) In upcoming blogs, I will look more closely at the principles for spacing babies naturally (which is also called ecological breastfeeding, or EBF). But for right now, let's look quickly at the "why" of these principles.

Babies need their moms. It's as simple as that. If moms are relying on breastfeeding to space their babies, moms need their babies too! Many people say that caring for a baby is a one-way street, but it's really not. Moms give a lot, but so do babies! For one thing, nursing times with Lucia are among the most special for me, which I focused on in an earlier blog. But babies also have another special gift for moms: temporary infertility. This gives mom a break (she needs to recover from birth and focus on her baby) and, in turn, benefits the baby once again...giving that baby a chance to "be the baby" before the next little brother or sister comes along!

When moms are spacing babies by nursing, it ensures a tight mother-baby bond. And a tight bond with Mom is exactly what that baby wants the most! I can't remember how many times in Lucia's first year that she didn't want to go to dad—she just wanted mom. But now that she is a toddler, she loves her daddy! In fact, there have been a couple times when she's chosen daddy over me. This transition makes perfect sense...she is growing up, and meanwhile, our family is becoming more and more ready to welcome a new baby into the fold.