by Brigid Kowalczyk

Created on: January 09, 2009   Last Updated: June 05, 2011

Our culture has come to rely upon outside influences (drugs, barriers, abortion) to prevent pregnancy. I see this as a detriment to autonomy and self-control because when you insert a new factor into the equation of your life, you generally lose control, rather than gain control over the situation. For years I have both counseled women about birth control and practiced natural family planning and ecological breast feeding, so I understand a lot of the nuances surrounding this topic.

Women often have very little knowledge or understanding about their bodies. They know they have menstrual cycles and that when they miss one, they could be pregnant. Beyond that, they usually don't understand the hormonal pattern and the signs and symptoms of fertility. Learning about these empowers women much more than popping a pill and hopping into bed for sex. No birth control is ever going to be 100% effective.

Pregnancy suppresses the hormones that result in menstrual cycles. Lactation does the same thing. But unless you are paying attention to your body and the wonderful signs and symptoms of fertility built into your normal healthy self, you will be missing the opportunity to live a natural lifestyle.

What are these signs and symptoms? The mucus discharge that is produced as a precursor to ovulation is one. Another is your basal (resting) body temperature that rises when you ovulate. The third one is cervical changes that are noticeable around ovulation as well. Put these three together and you can pretty much pinpoint when you ovulate and if you get pregnant during that cycle, you will know it because your temperature won't go down again.

Breastfeeding plays right into the natural family planning approach because it is the best way to feed the baby, the best way to space the next child and the best way to get your pre-pregnancy body back. Breast milk is the perfect food, always available, the right temperature and never spoils. When you nurse your baby as he/she demands it, your body keeps the hormone levels elevated that prevent your periods from returning. This delay can vary from a few months to a couple of years, but those nice little signs and symptoms of your fertility (mucus, temperature, cervix) will give you a warning ahead of time so you won't be caught off guard, so to speak.

So, it's not a myth that breastfeeding prevents pregnancy. It's really a misunderstanding of the truth. Breastfeeding suppresses ovulation and without ovulation, you can't get pregnant. Just as you find it helpful to know as much as you can about your computer, your car or your furnace, it's also very empowering to know as much as you can about your body and how it works. The wonderful advantage to learning more about your body is that when something goes wrong (infertility, cancer, etc.) you have some documentation, some information to give the doctor to help you solve your problem. When everything is going right, you know it and that really feels good as well.

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