Off topic fertility issues, skip if bored by it

[Guest guest]

I was planning to breast feed, that if you were nursing,

> you were not guaranteed to be safe just because you weren't having the

> obvious signs of a period. Needless to say, I took precautions with both

> boys.

Sue:

That statement is the truth for most people. And there is a slight, very

slight in my opinion, but slight risk even for people with good fertility

awareness. My mother believed that you could not get pregnant while

breastfeeding and was pregnant three months later. She was nursing on a

four hour schedule which is not a schedule that keeps fertility gone. If

someone knows nothing of fertility signs then they should do exactly as you

did. But with knowledge and experience you can do things very differently.

There is a method of family planning taught in third world countries that

relies on breastfeeding called LAM (lactation amenorrhea method). The ways

of extending breastfeeding infertility are not things that everyone would

want to do either. Basic rules are no bottles, no pacifiers, no early

solids, sleep with baby and all baby's suckling is to be done at mother's

breast.

The Kung of the Kalahari desert have children spaced over four years apart

and they nurse in the normal hunter-gatherer pattern of nursing every twenty

minutes, more or less, throughout the day. Some may prefer to be a little

further from hunter gatherer patterns of breastfeeding and that is fine too,

at least fine with me!

So if you don't leave babies at all practically and nurse them very very

frequently and sleep with them,nursing throughout the night, then you should

be able to maximize your own personal child-spacing, It does vary

enormously from woman to woman, but most women practicing this kind of

breastfeeding will experience a return of fertility between nine and twenty

one months. Some will go longer and some shorter. One friend of mine got

her fertility back five weeks after her baby was born. When she was nursing

that baby and her older baby, her fertiliy came back ten weeks later. It

was twice as long but, um, ten weeks is still not a long time. When I nurse

one child my fertility returns about fourteen months; two children it

returns about two years.

Not everyone wants to do this. Fine. I really don't care. But it does work

well for many women.

I once got a call from a woman who was nursing an eleven month old, her

third child, and didn't want to start solids because she knew her fertility

would return. It always had before. " He's nursing all day and night, " she

told me. Well, DUH! He's hungry! She could sit and nurse that eleven

month old all day and night and she and the baby could be bored sick or she

could feed that poor baby, and have him and her lead a more interesting

life, and have her fertility return. I told her this and she sighed (not

like she didn't really know already) and said she'd feed him. Two weeks

later she called me back and, yup, her fertility had returned. Well, she

did know her fertility signs!

And Jacquie now I'll shut up so you don't write me little private messages!

Salli, breastfeeding and natural family planning counsellor for over

thirteen years