Breastfeeding and Natural Birth Control


Both late menarche and breast­feeding contributed significantly to child spacing in pre-industrial Europe and still does in the developing world, for breastfeeding prevents more births worldwide than all other forms of contraception put together.......the west's export and promotion of artificial baby foods, together with the grosser errors in infant feeding techniques disseminated by health workers, have had a serious effect on birth spacing, which is a key factor in both demographic trends and in the well-being of individual women. This method of fertility control had been recognised since ancient times, but its importance was forgotten and ignored during the last two centuries because the changes in social organisation and in breastfeeding practices damaged its effectiveness. A seventeenth-century working Englishwoman married late and had well-spaced pregnancies. She used breastfeeding both to supplement her living and to space and limit her own childbearing. As unrestricted breastfeeding was the normal practice in those days she would have been unlikely to ovulate. Wealthy women were discouraged from feeding their own babies in order to reproduce greater numbers of the nobility. Slaves had their breastfeeding time limited so that they could breed more slaves for their owners. Yet by the twentieth century in Europe the use of lactation as a means of child spacing was not discussed or considered by doctors or advocates of birth control. The Politics of Breastfeeding by Gabrielle Palmer

Most women who are breastfeeding do not menstruate and for thousands of years many have known that there is a connection between the resumption of menstruation and fertility. Certain groups actually shortened the period of breastfeeding so as to increase their birth rate. There has not been a great deal of communication between ordinary women (who may be reticent about discussing their bodies' functions) and researchers who until recently had mostly been men. Consequently this 'old wives' tale' was disregarded for many years.

As long as the baby is suckling at least six times a day, amounting to sixty-five minutes in total and preferably including some night feeding, a woman is unlikely to release a ripe egg (ovulate) from her ovary. Most women do not ovulate until after they have resumed menstruation, though about 10 per cent might do so prior to their first period. This is more likely to happen the longer the lactation lasts, so that women who breastfeed for several years are the ones who  are most likely to have a pre-menstrual ovulation. So for most women, in the early months, as long as they and their babies are together and they can suckle whenever I hey want, infertility is maintained. The factor which dramatically decreases suckling and therefore increases the possibility of pregnancy, if the woman is heterosexually active, is the introduction of supplementary foods to the baby. This means that juices, water, artificial baby milk, gruels, dummies or even mucking a thumb or a blanket could alter the suckling behaviour and hence the contraceptive effect of breastfeeding.