NFP Success Story #3: Natural Child Spacing
3. Night Feedings - there should be no race to have a child sleep through the night. Sheila recommends co-sleeping as a natural and convenient way to have your child nurse comfortably and frequently throughout the night.
4. Mother and Baby as One - mother and baby have a constant, loving relationship which meets the baby's needs. No mother substitutes, such as pacifiers, bottles, or cups, or mother absences, such as babysitters, are necessary or desirable. No schedules necessary, either.
According to Sheila's (and her husband John's) research, a mother who follows these guidelines can expect to go, on average, about 14.6 months without periods (and the first periods are usually infertile) and to space her children, naturally, about 2-3 years apart.
There are exceptions, however. Sheila's research concludes that the risk of pregnancy prior to the first menses returning runs about 6% for women following the natural child spacing program. Also, some women seem to require more stimulation than others to hold back menses. Sheila gives an example of a woman whose periods returned 2 months postpartum even though she was nursing her newborn, her toddler, and donating milk to a sick baby! "Eliminating one guideline from this book then may shorten or eliminate any natural-spacing plan for a particular woman,' writes Sheila (p.62).
The problem, of course, is that a particular woman may not know that she's the exception until it's too late. As I mentioned in my previous article, "Breastfeeding and NFP," my periods returned at 5 months despite round-the-clock breastfeeding and a general adherence to natural child spacing principles. Based on that experience and a desire to have my children spaced far apart, I would be wary of depending exclusively upon natural child spacing. Each woman will have to decide for herself - according to Sheila's research it certainly seems to work for the vast majority of women who use it.
Whether natural child spacing "works" or not, the subtitle of the book, "The Ecology of Natural Mothering" represents the heart of the program. "There is a gentle, ecological relationship between the breastfeeding baby and his mother," writes Sheila (p.5). The more a baby sucks, the more milk the mother produces. The more physical nourishment the baby receives at the breast, the more emotional nourishment the baby receives. The more a baby's needs are met at the breast, the more a mother benefits from natural infertility. By following a baby's natural pattern, and
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