Do you know this “eat this, not that” series of books? The idea is to help you make good choices in food and drink to avoid hidden calories that will tank your health. Well, Rosie had the thought that we could do something similar with books for the Library Project*.
When you get married, you need to know a few things.
You need to know what marriage is, first of all! That's tricky, because like most important concepts, one learns by living — in this case, ideally from growing up in a good, happy, fruitful, loving marriage — not any easy experience for many to come by. And then, it would be helpful to have the definition clearly stated, and even the best-intentioned books don't do this.
I recently read the proofs of a book about marriage (the publisher was seeking a blurb from me) — about Catholic marriage — that did not mention that it is a sacrament! A whole book! No mention!
Even a book for non-Catholics needs to point out that marriage is a divinely instituted union between man and woman for a purpose greater than the two of them (see the first two chapters of Genesis), and that what God has so joined, man has the expectation of receiving His assistance for.
So don't read those books.
You need some practical insight on how to become virtuous (hopefully, to continue to become virtuous, as virtue is not a project for marriage only). You need to know that people are different in how they express love and in how they feel inside, and that men are different from women, and vice versa. And often we need these books after the wedding, not having gotten the memo before.
Sometimes I see books that are about how to manipulate the other person, how to apply lessons learned from management experts, or how to get the most satisfaction from the other person. But marriage is a journey of sacrificial love, so in the end, those books aren't going to help.
Don't read those books.
You need wisdom, a commodity that is sorely lacking in today's market, including in the marriage-advice category of the publishers' offerings.
So I am going to give you a short list of wise books that I have found personally helpful and that have stood the test of time. They are good for marriage preparation, but they are also good for what I like to call “remote” preparation as well as for any marriage that could use a little remediation, as which of ours can't?
To answer the question: What is Marriage?
I had often seen Fulton Sheen's Three to Get Married, but had never read it. I guess I assumed it was a popularizing kind of book. Now that I've read it, I want to say that it's excellent and by no means lightweight. Three to Get Married is basically the meat of Casti Connubii (On Chaste Marriage) presented in book form.
But it's also very much a “theology of the body” or Christian anthropology — so much so that, as I was reading, I began to think that Saint John Paul II simply scooped up the important bits of this book and used them to work out his opus by that name. The key ideas to be found in John Paul's works are already here (because they were already in Casti Connubii and thus, already in the long teachings of the Church, rooted in Scripture), but I would say, a bit easier to read!
Even so, if someone finds this tough going, it might help to begin on Chapter 18, The Dark Night of the Body, and read to the end, and then begin at the beginning. Or it might be a wonderful work of mercy for an older couple or two to host a reading group with those preparing for their wedding or recently married.
Did you know that the word matrimony means “making a mother”? I think that both the husband and wife would gain a lot from reading Pope John Paul's Mulieris Dignitatem (On the Dignity and Vocation of Woman), as well as his exhortation, Familiaris Consortio (The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World). Marriage is about making a family through the “unity of the two” as John Paul liked to call it.
I have a guided reading of both Casti Connubii and Mulieris Dignitatem here on the blog, and the former is available as a Kindle book (affiliate link): God Has No Grandchildren.
On the reasons for not using contraception, read Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life). I guarantee that any reader will be astonished to find that the teaching against contraception is not a capricious, arbitrary rule cooked up by some bitter old men, but simply emerges from the meaning of marriage itself. Anyone — not just Catholics — can follow the reasoning and come to the same conclusion.
I hope you appreciate just how many Vatican documents I want you to read!
Practical Wisdom.
Now, lots of marriage books are about just how to get along with each other. Once you know what marriage is, you need some practical wisdom on how to actually live together. I never really got that much help from any of the books out there except for these two really stellar ones:
The Temperament God Gave You. Many books make assumptions about how husband and wife will communicate and about what “meeting in the middle” or “meeting each other's needs” might look like. But very, very few take into consideration a basic starting point, namely, each person's temperament. Even a seemingly traditional sort of book like Father Lovasik's Catholic Family Handbook assumes a lot about each spouse's temperament, making it not that helpful if there is a significant deviation.
For instance, what if, far from being henpecked (common enough), the husband is so choleric that he just can't let his wife do anything her own way? I feel that your usual book about marriage won't even imagine this possibility. But if you have the tools to figure it out, namely, knowing that a certain kind of reaction goes along with a certain temperament, you can learn to live peaceably while striving to correct faults.
I actually think that this book is a good one to read long before you begin to date someone seriously. Knowing that people are not necessarily just like you in their reactions to things is huge — it really helps immeasurably to understand them — and to know if you are a good match, or perhaps why you are finding someone frustrating or opaque. Not that two particular temperaments can't have a great marriage, but it's good to know.
As I said to Suki, never in a million years would it have occurred to me that a person might prefer to approach a disagreement by retreating for a while to think about it. Before reading this book, I would have assumed that the person was acting with ill will.
Poor Chief.
The Five Love Languages. This book also really helps to understand yourself, which in turn helps you to understand what you are looking for from the other person. Where I think that the Temperament book is good well before marriage, I think this one might be good for afterwards, as well as in the marriage preparation phase.
People do have different ways of expressing love and affection — giving and receiving. After reading this book I don't think it's exhaustive, but you get the idea. I also think that it could make the point a bit more explicitly that you can't change the “language” a person uses to express love, but you can accept the expression for how it's intended. Sometimes this is actually the sacrifice God is asking us to make, and sometimes it's the one that goes most against our own will.
We read it maybe 30 years into our (37-year-old) marriage, and I'd say that it did two things for us: First, it made it possible for us to simply say what we need to feel loved (“Please turn on the light on the porch for me if it gets dark and I'm not home yet” — me; and “Please say encouraging things to me at the end of the day” — him). But it also helped us to accept that the other is “saying” “I love you” in our own way, since that is always just going to continue as it has. It's not that the person has to change completely — a little understanding goes such a long way!
For a nice vintage read on family life in general, as well as a chapter about very specific issues relating to the marriage act — but put in a respectful and loving way, very much in the context of the personhood of the two (and with no unsavory overtones so often found these days) — I recommend A Marriage Manual for Catholics, written by Catholic doctor and married man, William Lynch.
It's only available used. It's pretty old. But — if a couple is having technical problems, this is the book to go to. Just pay no attention to his diet advice, nor to the advice about breastfeeding, which is sadly typical of the time.
Instead, read Sheila Kippley's Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing. Marriage is for making a family; having children is the goal of marriage. Having a child every year is not the norm if — IF — we shed our modern expectations of how taking care of an infant will go. This book explains how the natural act of nursing the baby will space the children for the vast majority of women. I consider this vital information for every engaged couple! Now, before you get yourself worked up, know that I have a host of nursing posts, so just go check those out, and also this one about how you might not end up with as many children as you feared, but children are good, and not to be feared! Remember: sometimes you just need a book about how things will probably go, not a book about each and every possibility.
Prayer.
When a friend asked me for a list of books to recommend to couples, I couldn't help adding The Little Oratory: A Beginner's Guide to Praying in the Home, written by yours truly and David Clayton, with added charming illustrations by Deirdre Folley (you know, Deirdre). Why? Because when you're getting married, you might not know that you are setting up your own little “community of life and love and prayer” — but you are! You need a little visual expression of just that, and we help you make it. It's a kind of “little prayer table kit” complete with beautiful icons, easily and inexpensively framed, as well as extensive instructions.
Praying together brings the Holy Spirit to help us in marriage and in everything!
Maria says
Ditto on your thoughts about ill will and the preference to retreat+think! My husband is this way, he can’t function in a back and forth argument like I excel at, and I would try and make him, thinking otherwise he was just taking an easy way out that resolved nothing. Neither of us thought to explain to the other how we processed things (me outloud with people, him thinking alone) and came to decisions or conclusions, because no one thought anyone even did things differently! Assumptions, I tell you.. (and I have no excuse, having read several temperament books just for the fun of it in teens/twenties). Good insight. And I’ve amazoncarted several of your recommendations! Thanks!
Wendy-May Jacobs says
I also love The Mystery of Marriage by Mike Mason. We have revisited this countless times during our marriage. It’s so beautiful.
Meaghan says
Seconded.
Claire Rebecca says
To be honest, I’ve always been skeptical of the Sheila Kippley book because she’s got another one called “Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood” which strikes me as spiritualizing the ordinary in a bad way and makes my theology-major heart cringe. Breastfeeding is great. Breastfeeding is not “more Catholic” than formula feeding or donor milk (as one Catholic blogger tried to argue). But I’ve heard so many people recommend it that I’m considering reading it (then again, I’ve had a lot of people recommend a certain book regarding the marital act and I absolutely refuse to read that one).
Leila says
Claire Rebecca — well, let’s see. Kippley’s book is one I recommend because I think that if one is going to live marriage in the way I suggest in the post I link to (the 3rd secret to destruction-proofing your marriage one) — just accepting children — I think that it’s good to know that our bodies are made to space children naturally. This knowledge saves a lot of people a lot of stress. Also, it’s way healthier for a woman’s body not to menstruate all the time.
This brings up the subject of nature and natural and of course, what’s on the margin. Man is a fallen creature, so the body doesn’t always work as it should, and also, it’s not as if we can tout something as “natural” and end a discussion.
On the other hand, there is a nature to things — in the sense of how they work and what their ends are.
So I find it a bit puzzling to say that breastfeeding is “more Catholic” or “not more Catholic” (not to mention the tediousness of having to defend normal things that people have always done up until very recently) — it’s more natural in the sense that we find it in nature and that it is *in the nature of* the female body to feed a child this way. To argue otherwise is to do violence to clear observation.
In that sense, yes, breastfeeding is best — broadly speaking, in the context of what the body is meant to do.
Look at it this way. It would be absurd to argue that ears are not for hearing. That is what they are for — it’s natural, and it’s in their nature, to receive sound waves and transmit them to the brain for the purpose of gathering information. Are there some people who are hearing-impaired? Yes. But hearing is better.
Of course, for a given individual, it might be better to say, “You probably need to give up on hearing/breastfeeding/whatever natural and better thing we are talking about.”
I hope that we don’t have to argue about that.
When we see that things work according to their nature, we delight in that. When we see that in human nature, God has provided for certain things, we know that we are talking about something that is above matter — for created things that are not human live only on the material plane, but man’s nature, while it is material, is also connected to the spiritual plane, because man has a soul. Thus we can never dismiss things pertaining to man’s body as “not important.” And the closer the bodily parts/functions are to the core of man’s being, the more spiritual their significance. Eating has a spiritual aspect to it. The marital act even more so. We would guard even the peripheral activities of the physical brain very assiduously!
We can then see that things having to do with the body, especially those related to the marital act and to childbirth, are not merely “natural” — that is, material, and thus easy to dismiss — according to their nature; they have a givenness and a goodness beyond their functionality. It’s not all one whether a mother breastfeeds or not, just as it’s not all one whether a child learns to walk or not.
In any case, Kippley simply describes the process by which the bond between mother and child (materially speaking and also speaking of the bond of mother-infant love) has this effect, that it suppresses ovulation. She carefully describes to an audience that literally has no clue how to take advantage of this ability that the female body possesses.
I know from experience that this information comes as a huge relief! For most women, just nurse the baby until the next baby comes, and the space in between will be just fine.
I find it interesting that the very same people (I don’t mean you — you haven’t said anything about it) who want each and every person to learn all the technical aspects of Natural Family Planning — sometimes well before the wedding — bristle at the suggestion that God has a plan for spacing children that doesn’t require any particular effort.
As to the other book you are referencing, I’m not sure I get it. I don’t necessarily endorse everything the Kippleys have written.
Claire Rebecca says
I’m trying to find some way to express that breastfeeding is a good, normal, important, natural way that God has given mothers to nourish their children that also is a way of naturally spacing children but that it doesn’t make a person any “more” or “less” Catholic. I guess to go with the ears analogy – hearing is good, normal, and natural, and people’s ability to hear can bring them closer to God, but that doesn’t mean a deaf person is less Catholic than a hearing person. The quote from the inside that worries me from the other Kippley book (which I do understand you’re not endorsing) – Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood – is “Citing priests and popes, author Sheila Kippley here shows that nursing is not only the best way to ensure your baby’s health and proper psychological development; it’s an integral part of your vocation as a Catholic mother.” So out of worry that that sort of mindset was in her other books, I haven’t added the Kippley book you recommend to my reading list. That may very well be a misplaced worry :). There does seem to be a trend right now among some bloggers/writers (and I don’t mean you!) to assign values along a “Catholic number line” to various sorts of actions – so parents who use formula or donor milk or cribs or spanks are somehow less Catholic than parents who don’t. I find this silly and not at all helpful.
On a mostly unrelated to your original post (but somewhat related to your reply) note, I wish there was more teaching of biomarkers/the sorts of things used for NFP to women outside of the marriage prep/avoiding pregnancy context, because catching things like endometriosis and PCOS is good regardless of marital status, and less of “NFP is an essential part of a Catholic marriage” because living marriage and letting the babies come as they may also seems like a perfectly lovely decision.
Leila says
Dear Claire Rebecca,
Maybe it’s a good idea to step back from what those bloggers are saying. It doesn’t seem like a worthwhile way of looking at things, creating anxiety rather than helping us to get on with our lives. I certainly have never entered into those discussions and don’t intend to.
The reason Kippley says that her book helps with living out our vocation as Catholic mothers is that it does! (The “other” book, which we do also like just fine, with a few little caveats, not super important.)
Does it not make sense that if we do things according to our nature (as much as we are able), other aspects of our lives will fall into place with less stress? Mothers have babies — they need to know how to take care of their babies! And each part of “taking care” implies the next part and relies on the previous part — it’s all a whole.
The problem is that we have been deprived of the information.
Many, many women receive advice from doctors and other women and even their husbands and the internet and just everywhere that hinders them in caring for their families according to God’s plan. When the doctor and your mother-in-law are saying “just nurse the baby for 3 months” or “why isn’t he sleeping through the night”, your ability to carry out your motherly duties and experience the joys is going to be impaired.
Many couples, having little to no experience with newborns, childbirth, or parenthood in their circles up to the time they themselves have a baby, are suddenly gripped with fear that while still in the throes of this earth-shattering and traumatic event they will be presented with another of the same! What are they supposed to do? They can’t even chart because most likely the wife is actually experiencing suppressed ovulation. Every single person who came into her room at the hospital, including it often seems, the gal who cleans the bathroom, has asked them what they are going to do about birth control.
Never is a couple more vulnerable to the easy out (but sad lie) of birth control than at this moment.
I truly believe that a lot of the clamor for birth control came because many children grew up seeing their mothers suffer from having a baby every year or even more frequently, all because of widespread bottle feeding. A resentment grew in their hearts, and rather than addressing the efficient cause — the bottle — and perhaps the real catalyst, the father who didn’t protect the mother’s nature, they just went with “babies are scary and wreck everything.”
This goes to the heart of vocation. The vocation of marriage is to bring children into the world lovingly. Every voice we hear is opposed to just that — and as well, even to a calm and peaceful feeding of the baby who has just arrived.
Kippley’s book simply explains how every other culture and time except ours has handled things (speaking of the past 60-70 years, and with the exception of elites/aristocrats who often sent their babies away to wet nurses, giving rise to all our difficulties in the first place, as elites so often do).
With this knowledge, the young couple with their new baby can relax and enjoy the baby, knowing that God has a plan for the next one — and they also have an informed answer to the busybodies who are poised to tell them that “rhythm [so-called] doesn’t work, breastfeeding doesn’t work.”
And that is why I include the book on my list. You certainly don’t have to read it if you don’t want to! Interestingly, I do happen to endorse spanking (see my posts) and even putting that older baby to bed already, but I still think that my ways are Catholic! Well, I think they are reasonable, and thus, are just fine.
Bethanne says
“Every single person who came into her room at the hospital, including it often seems, the gal who cleans the bathroom, has asked them what they are going to do about birth control.
Never is a couple more vulnerable to the easy out (but sad lie) of birth control than at this moment.”
This is true. My dear friend is an interpreter in the hospital for Burmese and Chin families. This pressure to go on birth control is real and purposeful, especially for the poor and the immigrant class. She has been to many births and each time birth control is pushed, and sometimes even sterilization, especially if the birth has been traumatic or difficult. These are new mothers and fathers in a strange land, far away from the culture where they were raised to see birth and child/mother care very differently. They are afraid and believe whatever the authority is saying to them. She struggles daily to tell couples the truth, especially when she could lose her job by sharing alternatives and options.
Mary says
Leila, thank you for this. THANK YOU! “God has a plan for spacing children that doesn’t require any particular effort,” and there needs to be a whole lot more talk about it!
BridgetAnn says
“The Temperament God Gave You” …. SO insightful! For understanding not only your spouse, but, say, his brother or your brother or your husband’s boss or your child or anyone. And yourself, of course. Was given a copy as a gift and my husband and I have both gleaned from it.
shwell says
There is also – The Temperament God Gave your Spouse – which compliments the first book
Emily says
Definitely add to your list ” Marriage: The Mystery of Faithful Love” by Dietrich Von Hildebrand. Definitely in the same class as “Three to Get Married. “
Christine says
I also enjoyed Alice von Hildebrand’s “By Love Refined”… It’s an easy read, in letter format, but full of good marriage advice for a new bride
Rebecca says
I would also recommend this excellent, if old, book republished on EWTN’s website. We read it before we got married 6 years ago and recommend it to every couple we know preparing for marriage. https://www.ewtn.com/library/MARRIAGE/BEGMARRI.TXT
Elizabeth says
Several of these look really good, and I will look forward to reading them.
I would like to add one word of caution about The Five Love Languages: Be careful of the attitude “But you are not speaking my love language, therefore you are not loving me adequately because you know exactly what my love language is now that I have explained it all to you, and yet you continue to fail to speak love to me in the way I can best hear it!”
This book works best if you use it to help yourself hear the language your spouse is speaking more clearly, and speak the language your spouse can best hear. If you use it as an excuse to feel hurt by your spouse’s actions it can cause some major havoc. That said, it can be a very helpful book if you recognize that pitfall going in.
Leila says
Yes, Elizabeth, that is what I mean about my comment that it could be made more explicit that THIS is YOUR spouse’s way of communicating love, and how about just accepting that! This is virtue: to impute to the other his best motives…
So learning his language so that you can “hear” how he is loving you, in his own way.
Heather Bradley says
I also highly recommend By Love Refined : Letters to a Young Bride by Alice von Hildebrand. I give it as a wedding gift to new brides, but it’s applicable to any person living the marriage vocation at any stage.
Mary Eileen says
Great list, thank you Leila!
Reading through your blog has on many occasions made me feel grateful to my mother, who never philosophized about these things or had any visible “plan” for cultivating our sensibilities – she just had/has solid, good instincts. So many of the books I’ve seen on your blog I stumbled across in our basement, or opened on my birthday, or were handed for me to look at with little to no editorial comment. My mother casually gave me Three to Get Married when I think I was a teen! Maybe I was already in college and dating. Anyway, I can’t even exactly remember what it says now (I should reread) but I know it shaped my understanding of my future if I ever married.
In short, three cheers for mothers and for my own mother. And let my own experience be a reminder that it’s not necessary to be always lecturing about the value of this or that book or movie. The good stuff just speaks for itself. It just has to be available!
Becky says
You are so right about understanding different temperaments- especially in regard to disagreements. It took 2 years for my husband to understand that when I said I needed a few minutes, it wasn’t the same as not wanting to talk about something at all. In turn, I had to learn a whole new style of arguing since I am very agile with verbal communication and he favors a more measured approach. i.e. It may take a bit for me to engage but once I do, it’s full on. I could have an entire argument, through to resolution, while he was still trying to understand what we were talking about.
Tyna Begley says
I just ordered the Temperament book. thank you for the reference. My hubby is the choleric hubby who can’t let me to things different than he would do them. I keep telling myself that he is OCD, but that’s not it, really. Looking forward to reading it!
Leila says
Tyna, I hope it helps. I think it’s good to read those two books with each other (I mean, husband and wife read together, take the quiz together, etc) and discuss. Knowing that it’s one’s temperament (or love language, whichever the case is) helps a lot. I know I can work on “not letting my choler get out of hand” vs. “not be nagging” — and I am willing, simply because to me, it’s NOT nagging, it’s that my way seems to me to be the best way, and I’m not afraid to defend that. I also feel that I am open to being convinced that another way is better, which also proves that I’m not a nag! (Convinces me, anyway!) However, people who are not choleric by nature would never think to go over the reasons they do something a certain way — it seems like it would kill them, I guess. Just kidding.
I think these books just take a lot of issues out of the realm of “you don’t care” or “you’re pushy/nagging/critical” or “you seem cold” or whatever and into the realm of “I can work on this so that you know that I love and respect you.”
Hopefully!
Katie says
Thank you for this post. Yesterday I read it carefully while nursing the baby on the couch in a moment of quiet, and it spoke convincingly to me in a way that reminded me of reading another post of yours: the fourth secret to destruction-proofing your marriage, that it is for the husband and wife to be friends. The day you posted that one, I also read it while nursing (different couch, different baby) but it met me where I was and I wept. You’ve written on the blog about making up one’s mind that certain tasks in the family are trying but inevitable, and the sooner one makes up one’s mind to embrace them and improve, the better off everyone will be. I never quite “got it” because managing, say, laundry or cooking has never struck me as insurmountable; but my insight today is that relating well to one’s spouse falls squarely into that same category. The sooner I accept that it is my job, my responsibility, and my calling, and that it isn’t going away, and then get down to business on my own account, the better it will be between us in handling our day-to-day aggravations, and the fallout from our differences in reactions and temperaments.
Here today to say that I have already gotten my hands on a copy of The Temperament God Gave Your Spouse and downloaded and printed out the PDF of the big quiz from the original (just google “temperament quiz” and “Sophia Institute” and there it is–oh the wonder of the interwebs). Wow, but am I a melancholic through and through! Looking forward to further reading, reflection, and discussion with my husband (going to ask him to take the quiz too, though I suspect I can foretell the result to come =) ).
Leila says
Katie, that’s such a good insight! I think we take for granted that we are working at our friendships with our girlfriends — or that obviously, we don’t have to deal with them morning and night and day after day.
Yet, our spouse — that relationship is just supposed to be perfect, with no effort from us!
Thanks for your comment!
Margaret says
I have to disagree with the recommendation of Kippley’s book, which honestly has caused many difficulties in my marriage. I read and believed her book before I got married, and was disillusioned (to put it mildly) when I proceeded to have six pregnancies in the first eight years of marriage, all accompanied by severe illness, and all in spite of so-called “ecological breastfeeding.” I know many other women with similar experiences. It took a lot of soul-searching to realize that just because I “naturally” have babies every 15 months, doesn’t mean that is necessarily what God is asking me to do. I believe she is a good person who means well, but just because hunter-gatherer women have long spaces between babies does not mean the same will be true for Western women with improved nutrition an medical care.
Leila says
Margaret, I hear you. I understand how that can be frustrating. I agree that she is optimistic, perhaps overly so.
That said, I think that this sort of criticism could be leveled at any book for marriage preparation. “Things didn’t work out for me the way this author said.”
When we are preparing for marriage, we want to know how the thing will work according to its nature. Yes, we have to know that not everything will be perfect, but at this stage — and in our current state today — we need to know what “normal” is like.
If there are difficulties, we may have to apply a remedy. The Kippleys also, of course, are big promoters of NFP with their Couple to Couple League (lately, to a degree I don’t agree with, but that’s another story). For more spacing than that afforded by breastfeeding, the couple can use Natural Family Planning and be in accord with God’s plan for marriage — that is, without sinning.
The plain fact is that for the great majority of women, exclusively nursing (nursing! not breastfeeding as currently understood!) in the first 6 months of the baby’s life will give a reasonable spacing of children.
Like all the other generalizations relating to our fallen bodies, there are exceptions. By the way, here is a good reason to abstain completely from sexual intercourse after the baby comes, for 6 weeks, as recommended by the midwife/doctor — so that you can figure out whether you are in this (very large) group of fortunate women who don’t experience ovulation while nursing.
Chances are, the vast majority will be fine, and that’s why I include this book on my list. It’s actually a very important book for newlyweds to read.
Tia says
I think the best way to use this information is to try LAM out and see if it works but be flexible if it doesn’t.
If, for instance, you wind up pregnant 4 months postpartum using ecological breastfeeding, then that means your body is, for whatever reason, primed for speedy return to ovulation. Cry, then love the baby that comes and if you feel overwhelmed, have in your back pocket another method of NFP you have learned to try to increase that spacing. The key here is that, when it’s clear your body is NOT working the way the theories and the studies predict, be willing to change.
The main thing is if you’re open to having babies, then one “unplanned” pregnancy is still a cause for joy and you make room in your life and heart for the little one to come. Then you get cracking on figuring out what to do next time so that you still don’t wind up with 10 kids in 11 years, or whatever that nightmare is that you imagine. If you are stuck on having exactly one or two kids, then yes, this method (like all methods, really) is open to “failure.” (where by “failure” we mean a super adorable baby.)
Leila says
Thanks for a great comment, Tia!
The whole concept of a “planned” pregnancy is one that should be examined — not perhaps in the comments here, and I do have a post about it, the “3rd secret for destruction-proofing your marriage” — because we are too used to thinking we can plan things and that our plans are going to bring us the satisfaction we imagined they would.
That said, people should know that breastfeeding to space children (according to Kippley’s definition) does work for most women, and that for those for whom it doesn’t work, the first cycle is not fertile. So for the vast majority of women, there is time to go to Natural Family Planning if the couple lovingly discern that they need more space between children.
For many, many women, and this is a huge secret, the prospect of another baby soon is a happy one! Shocker, I know.
And another secret: Children who are close in age and grow up in a household with loving, firm parents get along really well and have a blast. Yes, it’s a ton of work for mom early on, but there are many, many benefits — especially in this day and age when people are getting married later and later.
Finally, remember — God’s plans are not your plans. Just think of it this way: What if you can’t have any more children at all? Puts things in perspective, I think.
Hafsa says
This is simply wonderful and I’m bookmarking it for future reference. I have heard of a lot of these books and we actually own Three to Get Married but I haven’t read it yet. Thanks for putting this post together.
Anon for this one says
The Temperaments books has been on my long list of to-reads for awhile, but that description just bumped it up! I, like the commenter above, am married to a man who is very into the details of how to do things around the house, from load the dishwasher to clean the bathroom to putting the baby to bed. Things are much improved from the beginning of our marriage (he’s been much more hands off about how to help the baby sleep, for example), but it is still hard- and, like Auntie Leila said, most marital advice tells the woman not to nag. Which is not only not helpful to me, it is harmful as it makes me think, “See, HE shouldn’t nag! It’s bad!” etc etc.
I can appreciate including the Kipley book. I did not know how well nursing suppressed ovulation for most women, nor that for almost all who did get early cycles back, they experience a “warning period” before fertility returns (and I personally have a warning period and then at least one infertile cycle). This is certainly good information- I have a friend who has two sets of too close together babies (13 months and 15 months, I think) who pumped with each of them. The last she did not pump, just because she was too busy, and didn’t get her cycle back until 9 or 10 months! She, like many of us, would have benefited from this information.
However, there is so much about that way of caring for babies that I wonder about. Yes, as you say above, it is in the nature of things, but what if we, as modern creatures, have personalities that aren’t disposed to caring for babies quite in this way? Or what if are husband’s aren’t? What if the husband (or the wife!) really can’t sleep well with a baby in the room, let alone the bed? Husband and wife sleeping in separate rooms during the early weeks or months might work if its the husband, but this isn’t a sustainable arrangement for the good of the marriage, past the early times. Or, what if the baby just sleeps 6-8 hour stretches in her little bassinet, without much (or any!) encouragement? What if an unruly toddler keeps the mother from being able to nap with the baby?
Thanks. I very much appreciate your reading suggestions and look forward to hearing your thoughts on these matters.
Victoria says
Hi there! Just tossing my own experience with LAM in here. I don’t know what to say about a mom who can’t sleep well with the baby in the room or in bed, since I don’t experience this.
What I do know is that if you put baby in bed with you, baby will start nursing nearly all night long while sleeping. In a bassinet, yes, baby will start to sleep longer and longer stretches. My two babies started nursing nearly all night after a month or two, and I kept them in bed with me until about 12ish months. It wasn’t disruptive to me or my husband because the baby never cries(excepting bad teething days or sick days when babies would be up demanding solace anyway) and doesn’t really move away from the breast, whether nursing or not. Baby and I get into a habit of waking halfway through the night, rolling over to the other side, and baby stays attached to that breast for much of the night. It’s really not disruptive at all; most people wake briefly in the middle of the night anyway, even if they don’t remember.
You also have to nap during the day to get in one extended nurse during the day. My own sleep patterns end up being 8-10 hours of sleep per day (after the newborn period). With 6 or 7 hours at night and 1 or 2 hours in the middle of the day.
I had 15 months of amenorrhea after my first and 17 months of amenorrhea after my second, and I probably would have had more but I start to more aggressively wean at that point because I start to get baby fever…which technically Kippley says to go with the flow of your body more…but we aren’t all perfect. 😉
Leila says
Hi, Anon, good questions.
I think that Victoria’s answer is a good one for one experience — and it’s one I’d say that matches up with mine, except that I did have a baby who just conked asleep for looong stretches both for naps and at night! Right away! And you are right, sometimes husbands can’t sleep with baby in the room after a certain point.
So what to do?
Well, again, check out what your own body does to handle things. Some women experience non-ovulation regardless.
If that is not the case, then do your best for baby, given the circumstances, and either accept the new baby or, after prayerful discernment with husband (who, it goes without saying, has all the facts himself — perhaps has also read Kippley’s book!), use NFP to mimic the natural child-spacing of nursing.
Sometimes if the wife says to the husband, “I need your help figuring this out,” she finds that he really does help her with actual physical help 😉 and also with support. We all have our struggles, so if there is a sense that he is not quite on board, then of course, she puts him first. After the first couple of months, a baby is pretty flexible, and without a father, where is the family? I ask you.
And sometimes yes, the baby is determined to do things his own way. So do check out the Couple to Couple League, or the Creighton method, or any of the various kinds of NFP for that reasonable space between children — but if you’re asking me, I’d say err on the side of having the babies 🙂
Kaitlin says
Learning about he temperaments has changed my life and therefor the lives of just about every single person I encounter. If I make it to heaven, second only to the sacrifice of the cross, this book and implementing its suggestions will be the reason!! (Choleric through and through)
Anonymous says
I hope it’s OK to ask this, but I seriously have always wondered: How do you maintain intimacy with your husband while cosleeping with a baby? I personally don’t sleep well with my babies in bed with me but that would not be enough to dissuade me from cosleeping if I felt that it would not infringe on the wee bit of time my husband and I have to really talk and reconnect at the end of the day.
L.E. says
It can work well to put the baby down for the night in a basinet (in your room or in another room — depending on how light of a sleeper the baby is) and then move the baby into bed at the first feeding. Several of my kids would wake up for the first time between eleven and midnight. My husband and I knew that if we went to bed before that first waking, we could snuggle — for a little while at least! That bedtime reconnect you spoke of has been vital for the health of our marriage. (Newborn babies can be challenging in that regard but once sleep patterns are a bit more regular, it’s easier to figure out a bedtime routine that works.)
Karen says
If you are unable to find a used copy of Dr. Lynch’s book, you may read the digital version on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/TheCatholicMarriageAHandbook/mode/2up
God bless you, Auntie Leila!
Leila says
Oh, good to know!