One of the books I’m reading right now is Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, by John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman. It’s been interesting so far, even though I’m only 28 pages into it. Something is confusing me, though.
The authors have mentioned a few times how colonial women used breastfeeding as a means of birth control–they’d breastfeed for some number of years and during that time wouldn’t have sex, so that they could space out their children. But the reference to breastfeeding as birth control is confusing me. What is it about breastfeeding that these women used to stop having sex? Did they just use it like “When this kid is done breastfeeding I’ll have another one,” or was it just an excuse (“I’m still breastfeeding this one!”), or was it something I’m missing?
It’s probably a silly question… it’s just been confusing me.
Breastfeeding causes hormonal changes in the body that make ovulation less likely. Some women don’t get their periods until they stop breastfeeding. It’s not foolproof, by any means, but it was the best women could do for a long time.
It’s called ‘lactational amenorrhea’ (‘absence of the menstrual period due to breastfeeding’). Breastfeeding causes the release of hormones that prevent the menstrual cycle from occurring, including estrogen and progesterone; birth control pills contain these hormones or modified versions, so the effect is somewhat similar. (There are other hormones involved, including ones that stimulate the production of milk and the development of the mother-child bond.)
It serves an obvious biological purpose by allowing new mothers to dedicate sufficient resources to breastfeeding their baby without having to allocate resources to ovulation or gestation. As a method of birth control, it’s apparently effective (Wikipedia says 99% in 90% of women) if done correctly, though I don’t know for how long. It seems likely that the method would be at least partly effective as long as the woman continued to breastfeed. Of course, the ‘wouldn’t have sex’ thing is part of it too. It’s possible that breastfeeding itself suppresses sexual desire, and it would provide an excuse to abstain. Historically, women were often expected to be either pregnant or breastfeeding at all times (which is responsible for some of the negative attitudes towards menstruation), and prolonged breastfeeding would allow for more time between pregnancies (with all the risks entailed therein) without violating societal expectations.
It’s not a foolproof method. I understand it’s related to relative body fat as well (if you’re well-fed, it doesn’t work as reliably). Anthropologist Marvin Harris wrote a non-popular (technical) book on the topic, with a high-powered title that I can’t remember right now.
Welll-fed being, of course, less of a problem with these historical ladies. I’ve often wondered, how on earth could women in times of famine keep up the huge caloric intake a breastfeeding woman needs? I know they’d lose their teeth from the calcium loss, but would undernourishment make you lose your milk?
I’m sure these children were smaller than what we think is normal for infants of certain ages; I read once on a Chinese adoption site that you shouldn’t be alarmed that your new Chinese baby is tiny, it’s just that American well-fed babies are historically huge. I suppose there aren’t statistics on this for most of history, though.
And on an anecdotal note, I breastfed three times and each time I had my periods resumed exactly 28 days after the birth, as if the pregnancy were just another period. Do not count on breastfeeding as birth control.
Anecdotally, I still remember doing an insurance physical on a woman years ago. She was actually nursing her baby while I did the abdominal exam! Palpating her abdomen, I noted that her uterus was enlarged! Grabbing the fetoscope, I quickly heard a heartbeat not belonging to mom.
Boy, was she surprised. She thought that nursing was a foolproof method of birth control.
A study of birth control in the past is always somewhat tricky because such things were not usually recorded. Sometimes, women wrote letters, or mentioned in diaries the methods of contraception that they were using, but such records are relatively rare. Probably, most information was conveyed through word-of-mouth.
Withdrawal was probably one of the most common methods, but was the most indelicate to mention in writing. There were also certain common plants and herbs which have contraceptive properties. For women living in urban areas, abortificatients were usually available at the apothecary/druggist, or even through mail order.
Sad to say, you can ovulate before your period returns, and thus get pregnant. Just like it is possible to get pregnant before ever having your first period.
Mine hasn’t returned either, and my kid is 5 mos. I’d like it back now, honestly. It’s nice and comforting in a way.
I have had a tubal ligation, so there won’t be a pregnancy unless the doctor screwed up. However, I saw a picture of my cut fallopian tubes, so I’m pretty sure he did it right.
In re: nursing as birth control : Prolactin kills your libido while producing milk.
Related tidbit:
I hear that because of the (relatively) new availability of powdered baby milk in third world countries, that the women now of course, stop lactating earlier*, and fall pregnant more often. As you can imagine, this is not a good thing.
*No more suckling, no more oxytocin, no more breast milk.
is for Lactational Amenorrhea to be most effective as birth control
*you must be exclusively breastfeeding-no supplementing w/bottles, no baby food, baby’s only food is your breastmilk
*you must be breastfeeding through the night
*the baby must be less than six months old
This effect really varies from woman to woman. For me, even a little nursing serves to suppress ovulation. W/ my third child, nursing only once a day kept me from ovulating until he was 27 months old. (I know I wasn’t ovulating because I was charting my fertility signs of waking temperature and cervical fluid, as outlined in the book above).
This effect has become more pronounced w/ each child, because I’m older and less fertile in general I wonder?
I was told about this by my grandmother. It was the reason why, in the days when contraceptives were outlawed, you’d see a lot of families with appromimately a year between births as the mother would be breastfeeding up to then.
It’s not that you *cannot *get pregant while breastfeeding, it’s that you *should *not, if you intend to keep nursing. The hormones of pregnancy (progesterone specifically) work against the prolactin, and the milk tends to dry up. It’s also exceedingly difficult on the mother’s body to support nursing and pregnancy, as you can imagine! These days, only a few doctors will even let women try it, and then only with careful monitoring and nutritional supplementation. Most will simply tell you to switch to formula. We have this quaint little notion these days that women shouldn’t actually wear themselves out reproducing.
In the Bad Old Days, nursing for a full year or more was the only way to increase your odds that your child would live. Pre-antibiotics and pre-formula, an infant who couldn’t nurse had an excellent chance of dying. Getting pregnant again would mean that, most likely, the milk would dry up. Now you’ll likely lose Child 1 to infection or malnutrition, and Child 2 might not survive the birth, and, childbrith being the risky thing it was, the mother might not survive the birth. If the mother manages to nurse and stay pregnant, the developing infant runs a mich higher risk of low birthweight, which is bad for survival. Any husband who wants to do all he can to ensure his line will avoid his wife’s bed while she is nursing, because it’s best for the nursing baby, any future babies, and his brood mare of a wife.
These days, of course, we have options for contraception to space out our babies and well-designed formulas should they be needed. And, as noted above, we’re far too fat to depend on the prolactin inhibiting ovulation. Estrogen, needed to ovulate, is stored in body fat.
