Here in the Diocese of Richmond,  Diocesan NFP Coordinator Misty Mealey publishes a terrific Natural Family Planning newsletter.  She picked up the story when we first started the Catholic Nursing Mothers League, and sent me a copy and I have enjoyed every edition ever since.  (You can get a free subscription if you contact her at the website.)

When we moved into her diocese, I contacted her just to say hello and within minutes she had me signed up to re-train in the Billings Method and ready to teach in my new parish!  She arranged for all the funding for me and followed everything up.  I'm looking forward to NFP teaching again. She's an NFP go-getter (which is great, because the Catholic population here is pretty small and it's a real mission to get the good news out about natural family planning).

This week, she e-mailed me that a lightbulb had turned on in her mind about ecological breastfeeding as an integral part of natural family planning.  As a mom who struggled with breastfeeding and was very disappointed ultimately in her inability to do it, she nevertheless has enthusiastically encouraged mothers to breastfeed for the good of the baby and for the mothers' good.  But this week she wrote me that she JUST came to understand more fully how important the natural delay in return of fertility works in the over-all use of natural family planning within a family's lifetime.  As a result, she has offered me the space in every edition to do a full-page article on ecological breastfeeding as the oldest and most natural form of "natural" family planning and for information about breastfeeding and return of fertility generally.  I can't wait!

Lately, as I have spoken to people about it, I have started referring to something I think of as "Plan A."  It came to me when reading Dr. Robert Jackson's book (which I also highly recommend), Human Ecology:  A Physician's Advice for Human Life.

Dr. Jackson writes that he believes based on his faith and his medical work, that God intends for couples normally to have babies early in marriage, use attachment parenting techniques, including the frequent suckling, co-sleeping and mother-baby togetherness which results in health benefits to mother and baby AND can delay fertility an average of 14 months ("ecological breastfeeding" - following the LAM method of NFP), and then, IF ADDITIONAL CHILD SPACING IS NEEDED, or if having additional children is inadvisable for any reason, use systematic NFP - i.e., any of the methods that involve charting of one or more fertility signals and periodic abstinence during fertile times. 

Of course, there are circumstances in which some or all of this plan doesn't work.  But Dr. Jackson recommends this plan for most healthy couples. I've been talking about this so much lately, I've starting using a shorthand designation for this - "Plan A." 

It makes so much sense.  Natural family planning is just when we take advantage of natural periods of infertility that God built into our nature to postpone or avoid pregnancy.  For most of human history, the natural period of infertility brought about by breastfeeding was the only form of natural child spacing, and today it still accounts for the greatest number of pregnancies postponed (I read years ago that if all women breastfed their babies for 2 years, that the effect on world population would be greater than the cumulative effect of artificial contraception use.  I'll try to track down that research.)  For most of human history, mother-baby togetherness and co-sleeping with an infant was the norm - cultures hadn't intervened to undermine the human biological norm yet.  Children were naturally spaced 2 years apart with no abstinence on the part of the couple.  (This was still working in the time of my great-grandmother - she did home birth, co-sleeping, extended breastfeeding and at-home mothering when it wasn't "trendy" or alternative... and her 11 children were spaced like clockwork - every 2 years.)

With the decline of breastfeeding in the 20th century (both the giving up of breastfeeding altogether, and the move to cultural practices such as scheduled feedings, encouragement of sleeping through the night and discouragement for mother-baby togetherness in the first three years, which made breastfeeding ineffective at postponing the return of fertility), mothers, especially Catholic mothers who did not use artificial contraception, began having a baby a year with no natural spacing.  I believe this fueled some of the pressure in the 40s and 50s to convince the Church to approve artificial contraception.  With the natural child spacing of breastfeeding undermined, many couples were begging for relief from annual childbearing (blessing though each child was - we had lost the natural bonding and recovery time for most mothers and couples).  

Fortunately, around that time, the rhythm method was replaced by the newer scientific methods of systematic NFP - which allowed couples effectively and morally to space their children when needed through charting and periodic abstinence.  This was a God-send, and it also had the beneficial effects of improving marital communication and decision-making, and providing more satisfying sexual lives by helping couples avoid both the worry about a pregnancy that would over-burden the family AND the need to use unaesthetic and unhealthy (never mind immoral) methods of contraception.   Like breastfeeding, which has both child spacing and relational and health benefits, the new scientific intervention ( the discovery of monthly periods of natural infertility and the ability to identify and use them) that was sytematic NFP had both child spacing and relational benefits.

Monthly abstinence over a long period of time, while manageable and desireable for many couples, is something that most couples desire to minimize.  When a couple is open to life, and practices ecological breastfeeding (a perfect fit with AP - actually it's the predecessor term that encompassed the same practices before Dr. Sears coined "AP"), they get on average 14 months of abstinence-free natural infertility (sometimes less, sometimes more), plus the health and relational benefits of frequent and extended nursing for mother and baby.  After fertility returns, if the couple discern a further need to space their next child (and many find in their childbearing years that they do not need further child spacing), they can use systematic NFP for however many additional months they need to space (or permanently if there is a good reason), and reap all the health and relational benefits of that practice. 

The combination of ecological breastfeeding with the attendant natural infertility AND the use of systematic NFP works together to maximize relational and health benefits AND spaces children effectively with the least total amount of abstinence needed from a couple.  Over a lifetime of childbearing, this combination can make a big difference in the total number of months in which abstinence was even needed (and abstinence is a good and holy thing if undertaken with the right motive), and it makes a big difference in the family's - especially the mother's - health and ability to manage the number of children she has and recover in between.

Plan A works for many healthy couples and is completely moral and consonant with Church teaching.  I keep hoping that we will be successful in communicating this plan to young couples so that they can order their lives in anticipation of using both forms of natural child spacing together - ecological breastfeeding after each baby and systematic NFP as needed before, in between and after -  for their health and their holiness.

Since I will be writing a new column on this for my diocese, don't be surprised if you see more blogging - and do send me your thoughts and experiences!