Part 3: A conversation between Grace and Paul about their Experience with Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing

Grace is a member of the Catholic Nursing Mothers League board. Here is the transcript of a conversation between Grace and her husband about breastfeeding and child spacing.  Enjoy!

Paul: Tell us briefly about the arc of our eight kids.

Grace: Our oldest is grown up.  It was ten years before we had our second child who will be 18 this fall. We had our children two or more years apart just naturally, pretty much using ecological breastfeeding : basically following baby’s cues, nursing through the night, resting as needed, and really providing the bulk of the baby’s nutrition from breast milk for much longer than six months.

Paul: We did co-sleeping with all of them actually.

Grace: It had huge benefits but one of the side effects is that all of our kids have been two plus years apart.

Paul: So looking at their birthdays, can you give us a picture? 

Grace: October 2004, October 2006, October 2008, April 2011, September 2013, January 2017, December 2018.

Paul: The kids are lined up mostly but there are also some bigger gaps.

Grace: The last two were January 2017 and then December 2018.  It doesn’t seem like that big of a difference but there is some big developmental work that happens in those last two months of your second year.  Babies change a lot.  The really big difference is that our second to last baby dropped off with her nursing by around her first birthday. 

Paul: She has Down Syndrome.  She had heart surgery. She had various health issues. 

Grace: Her health problems did not seem to impact her nursing to me. 

Paul: What do you think caused her to wean sooner than expected?

Grace: We really do not know what made nursing untenable to her.  She latched and nursed in the hospital.  She received all her nutrition from breastfeeding until six months of age and then some.  She continued to get a lot of nutrition from breastfeeding while she tried out solids through 12 months.  Around a year my best guess is she had some really painful teething and somehow the sucking made it worse.  She has always had some sensory issues. All of our kids on the spectrum have sensory issues so it does not surprise me that she has sensory issues that made this unpleasant for her.

Paul: She loves to smear food and play with food.  Everything but eat it.  She can be strangely fussy at meal times like she can’t eat with us and needs to eat separately from us.  Sometimes we need to make her different meals after the fact or just wait for her to get around to eating.

Grace: What I have noticed is that once meal time quiets down, then she can eat. That may be a factor.  In any case, we had this big change.  Then a few months later, I discovered a surprise baby.

Paul: We were literally not expecting our youngest son at all. We were expecting declining fertility actually.

Grace: This was a real shock to me.  I didn’t realize I was pregnant honestly. 

Paul: You knew that you weren’t feeling well but it didn’t occur to you that it would be that.

Grace: I thought they were menopausal symptoms and I went in to see my doctor.  I asked him how I could manage my menopausal symptoms and he said, “Well, you have this baby in there.” So then I thought, “Wow!  That’s exciting!” He was born just about two months shy of that two year spacing mark we always had in the past. Our daughter had met a lot of those two year developmental milestones even though she wasn’t two yet. Very competent in many ways but still needy in a lot of ways. Babies sometimes are just needy when they are two.

Paul: Some of ours have been needy at two, others not so much. Some would just go off to play.

Grace: Our youngest daughter is definitely there now at age five. She was not yet two when our son was born and it has been hard!  

Paul: One child needing that kind of closeness and attention longer and another baby coming sooner than expected.

Grace: We had a greater contrast with our child before her.  He was well past his third birthday when she was born.  He had a lot of independence.  It was not like a competition or an endurance rally. In fact, I was  able to get a lot of rest after my daughter was born.  It has been a long stressful three years with two very young children and it is frankly hard to keep up. At this point, I do have some experience with managing young children. It is just hard to keep up with it!

Paul: You have been slowed down with some health issues. 

Grace: Yes, health and aging.  Those factors are there. But I had some of these health problems when my older kids were younger. It didn’t impact me like this. Some of these things such as parenting goals, my values…I have really just had to let go and let God. Maybe they are going to watch more TV.

Paul: This is getting into the pandemic years when the kids have had less activities to distract them and to keep them busy. 

Grace: We started sliding on screen time even before the pandemic. Suddenly the TV is really just a crutch to help me get through the day.

Paul: The other kids are stepping up to the plate but they are still kids, too.

Grace: When my two youngest were child #6 and #7 - three and a half years apart -  I could strap the baby on a carrier when I needed to make dinner. Child #6 would not even come to find me.  Now with my current two youngest, there was a time I actually had one strapped on me and another I was holding while I was making dinner.

Paul: A lot of our days involve the two youngest screaming or getting into something!

Grace: This change to less than a two year gap from a two or even three year gap is pretty clear.  I know a lot of folks who look to psychology for the best spacing,  Research says a three year gap is beneficial.  I felt in my younger years a two year gap was good because it allowed me to heal physically and the child just ahead of the baby was developmentally in a good spot. I can really see, based on the privileges I enjoy, I have been able to navigate this without some horrific consequences to my children.

Paul: Considering you have been able to be a stay at home mom all these years and not need to work outside the house due to finances.  And that is not true of many mothers nowadays.

Grace: If I had had to go to a nine to five job during these last few years, I would have lost my job.  I could not have kept up.  Very close spacing in very inflexible circumstances can affect your family negatively. It can be too exhausting.  It has not cost us anything dearly, but if my circumstances had been different, it might have.  Needing to modify my values with regards to screen time and lots of outdoor play due to the demands of my two youngest kids may have cost my children something. I think it is important for our country and world to have policies that support mothers, especially poor mothers.  Children of poor mothers need all the support they can get and ecological breastfeeding helps them right off the bat.  It provides full nutritional access to breast milk and closeness between mom and baby.  It also provides rest for the mother.