the spacing of children

I have been thinking about this A LOT lately (I wrote this a month ago and am just now posting it...). I'm totally freaked out about getting pregnant now. Know how I just made that post about trusting God with our family size? Yeah well, since then, I'm really worried about it and not because I would be overwhelmed or finances or anything like that... but because I don't want to sabotage breastfeeding for her! I haven't gotten my period back (YAY its been 18 months since I've had one!), but if that happened, I might lose it! Because one usually loses their milk supply during pregnancy (at some point... be it 5 weeks or 35 weeks. and I say usually because a few will only notice a temporary decrease). And, my breastfeeding goal was at least 2 years, but, there is a chance that she would wean once I got pregnant even if she was past 12 months.

I don't know if I'm making an idol (so to speak) out of breastfeeding... but I really think it would be unfair to her if I were to loose my milk supply and have to switch to formula. I don't want to feed my baby chemicals!!! But, then I think about the other baby we would be having (hypothetically) and how I would love it too and ugh. I'm just so confused now.

This all started by the way, at a LLL meeting when someone was newly pregnant with a 7 month old and was asking about tandem nursing and the leader told her most women would have to supplement with a young baby. I LOVE LLL by the way... I go to 2 meetings a month! lol I'm thinking about becoming a leader... I don't really know, I'm not a leader at all, soooo yeah.

We do ecological breastfeeding, which is doing things like not using bottles, pacifiers or cribs and, on average, fertility doesn't return until 14 months postpartum (but that varies greatly... but it is like 98% infertility in the first 6 months or something close to that and then slowly decreases the older the baby). We were already doing most of the "standards" and infertility was just a bonus (I still don't do the napping thing... I probably should, but I have trouble falling asleep). And, it may sound, to some, like not trusting God. I was reading online someone said that they didn't do EBF because they didn't want to do ANYTHING that would prevent a child from being conceived and someone responded and said but, by not doing it you are unnaturally inducing ovulation. hmm interesting thoughts. yes. Not that there is anything wrong with pacifiers or bottles (well, sometimes there is when they cause nipple confusion and I just don't like the idea of a "mama substitute"), but if you are a person of the "quiver-full" mindset, then doesn't it make sense to only use things the Lord gave you for your baby?

So, I was thinking (and talking with Mike) if we would just do NFP again (if my period came back before 12 months or if Faith still wasn't eating a lot of solids after 12 months). Then I started thinking about NFP and how God designed us to know our fertility. Why would He do that? Why would he gives us signs to know when we are fertile or not? To tempt us into using that knowledge for evil? I don't think so... He could have made it so woman got pregnant no matter the time of month. Though... in the Old Testament (someone correct me if I'm wrong), he commands husband/wife to abstain during the menstrual period and for 7 days after, which would put it (on average) right at the time of ovulation. Obviously he wanted them making some babies. But, really how "natural" is it to abstain during ovulation, since its the most "sexually driven" (sorry, couldn't come up with a more pleasant term lol) time of the month? I don't know... I don't know... I don't know...

I probably don't even need to worry about this since she hardly eats any solids and nurses all the time still. And, even if I did get pregnant and my milk dried up I can still bond with her in all the other ways I do now. Maybe it wouldn't be a fate worse than death... anyone want to be a wetnurse? ;-)