Boobs & Babies: What Everybody Needs to Know about Breastfeeding
DISCLAIMER: I know your time is valuable and that the internet is a wild temptress full of delicious information and inappropriate jokes... if you are pressed for time I've created a handy little "In A Nutshell" section at the bottom of the page... for people that want to know the full story by all means, read on.
aLso... yEs, this is an article about breastfeeding but that doesn't mean this is a woman's only article. I think this information is essential for men too so that they can encourage and empower their wives, girlfriends, friends and baby's mamas to breastfeed their children.
Boob's and Babies
Boobs and babies go together like peanut butter and jelly, like salt n' pepper, like Siegfried and that other guy. I use to think of boobs as these inanimate sexual objects. As with every paradox of the current female role we are taught to both flaunt them and hide them. And as such, they act as both a blessing and a hinderance. Along with just about everything else, this perception has been dramatically altered with the birth of my son. My boobs have become breasts. I went from looking at them as a nice rack to being the life sustaining source to this precious being. I could go off on the tangent of the very powerful paradigm shift that has taken place with motherhood but that is for another post... what I came to talk about today is the importance of breastfeeding.
If you See a Baby, Make Sure There is a Boob Somewhere Near that Child's Mouth!
Too many women today are formula feeding instead of breastfeeding. It easy to understand why if you see how pushy these formula companies are. Somehow the corporate baby stuff sellers were even alerted to my pregnancy and at around 7 months I started receiving large formula samples in the mail. This would be all fine and dandy if I didn't know the God awful truth, formula could never in a million years replace breastmilk.
"There are thousands of studies to show that formula-fed babies end up with lower IQ's, poorer health, and higher rates of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease than babies who breastfeed. Formula also contains environmental contaminants from cow milk and other ingredients, processing, and packaging. The reality is that contaminants are everywhere, in just about all the foods we eat. By far the safest, healthiest food for you baby is your milk." - La Leche League International, The Womanly art of breastfeeding by Diane Wiessinger, Diana West and Teresa Pitman
I know there are some cases where babies reject their mother's milk or, for whatever reason, women aren't producing enough of their own milk. These woman should first turn to healthy donated human milk. In 1980 the World Health Organization and UNICEF issued the following joint statement:
"Where it is not possible for the biological mother to breastfeed, the first alternative, if available, should be the use of human breast milk from other sources. Human milk banks should be made available in appropriate situations."
Though it is believed to be quite common that women sometimes don't produce enough milk, in reality these cases are few and far between. Even fewer and farther between than you might think or be told. In the past all children were breastfed and if you look into the natural world, all other mammals don't seem to have nearly as many problems breast-feeding as we do. Some hospitals are considered "baby friendly" and advocate breastfeeding but others are not and the doctors act like drug pushers for the formula companies and even try to convince mother's that they aren't adequately feeding their babies when they are. The dangerous part is that your body works like a good economy, supply and demand. When your baby suckles at your breasts it lets your body know what kind of supply is being demanded. It takes time but this order will be met. If you interfere with this by say, supplementing your babies diet with formula or taking the baby away from their mother, then your body begins to actually produce less. Colostrum, one of the most nutritious and potent substances known to man, can be clear and hard to detect at first but if the child is suckling at the breast it is there. Colostrum is so amazing that Olympic athletes and health gurus often take supplements of the stuff.
"Colostrum is also used for boosting the immune system, healing injuries, repairing nervous system damage, improving mood and sense of well being, slowing and reversing aging, and as an agent for killing bacteria and fungus."[ttp://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-785-COLOSTRUM.aspx?activeIngredientId=785&activeIngredientName=COLOSTRUM]
Why Formula Could Never Replace Breastmilk
If they could make a formula as healthy as colostrum or breastmilk you and I wouldn't be able to afford it. Human milk has hundreds of known and unknown ingredients, including interferon and white blood cells, intestinal soothers, probiotics, growth hormones, and everything else a baby is known to need. Babies that are deprived of their normal food miss out on essential immune boosters and their first dose of good gut bacteria. When you think about how nutritionally dense breastmilk is compared to formula then your realize to deprive a baby of their natural food is tragic. However, upon more research I came across another lesser known fact about breastfeeding that blew my mind:
Breastmilk plays a major role in overall happiness and emotional stability in adult life.
Breastfed children are much less likely to become suicidal/homicidal maniacs.
It is well known and obvious that breastfeeding provides a very important and natural bonding between mother and child. (Snuggling up and watching my baby nurse into a peaceful sleep has provided the greatest feeling I've ever known....better than sex and Ben & Jerry's Americone Dream ice cream, combined) What you may not know is that this bonding is not just physical, it is also chemical.
When you breastfeed your child both you and your baby release serotonin, a brain neurochemical transmitter substance essential for healthy brain development. In many studies involving depressed and violent adults they have a found a deficit of brain serotonin. "Serotonin has been shown to be significantly reduced under conditions of failed mother-infant affectional bonding." [...] However, "there is another neurobiological mechanism involved in the development of brain serotonin–tryptophan–a precursor amino acid essential for the development of brain serotonin which is richly present in colostrum and breastmilk but absent in formula milk. " [Breastfeeding:Brain Nutrients in Brain Development for Human Love and Peace By James W. Prescott, Ph.D.~ Institute of Humanistic Science http://www.violence.de/prescott/ttf/article.html]
So basically there is evidence that if you don't breastfeed your baby your are depriving them of both serotonin and the precursor amino acid that allows the brain to develop serotonin.
I apologize but I'm going to continuing quoting from this article for a second because I can't state it any better and you've got to read this!...
"Thus, two distinct and different neurophysiological mechanisms have been identified that contributes to deficits in brain serotonin: a) failed physical affectional bonding in the maternal-infant/child relationship (sensory processes); and b) the amino acid tryptophan present in colostrum and breast milk but absent in formula milk (neurochemical processes).
Millions of years of mammalian evolutionary biology have naturally joined these two different psychophysiological processes together in the act of breastfeeding where they are clearly mutually reinforcing for one another. Only in the human mammal do we find the newborn separated from its mother at birth and the mother not breastfeeding its newborn and infant. We have discovered that such aberrant behaviors which violate millions of years of evolutionary biology and psychobiology have exacted a terrible price upon the physical, emotional and social health of the newborn and infant and as a child, adolescent and adult–depression, impulse dyscontrol, violence and substance abuse." [Breastfeeding:Brain Nutrients in Brain Development for Human Love and Peace By James W. Prescott, Ph.D.~ Institute of Humanistic Science http://www.violence.de/prescott/ttf/article.html]
This preventable epidemic of formula fed babies is so tragic that I honestly feel like simply choosing not to breastfeed a child is a type of abuse. So how did this begin? How did these formula companies ever convince mother's to stop using their god given natural perfect breastmilk and start buying and using inferior products? Let's take a little quick trip down:
Erased Memory Lane
It is a common saying that prostitution is the oldest form of employment in the world, not only is this rather rude it is also incorrect. Long before colonization and lonely sailors created a demand for this type of employment, there were midwives helping to deliver children.
"Until the 1900s, midwives were the primary healers and birth attendants in the US. These healers knew anatomy and physiology, understood childbirth and childcare, and used herbal and traditional medicines to maintain health and to treat illness." -
Around the turn of the century some buisness-savy doctors got together and realized that they could make money if they could convince the population that childbirth was a dangerous endeavor that required medical attention. They began a propaganda campaign casting midwives in a negative light as primitive "witch doctors." Meanwhile, they started implementing dangerous pain relieving techniques that were actually more hazardous than natural home births. The mortality rate for birth related deaths actually increased and in 1915 the U.S. had the highest birth mortality rate in the industrialized world.
In the 1940's and 50's post world war II industrial era and with the baby boom hospitalization birth became the norm. Caught up in the frenzy to journey into the future people started moving away from the natural world and into a new shiny plastic world filled with electric light and microwaves. Somewhere in this race to be modern, breastmilk was sold out by clever formula companies. Woman wanted to be hip and give off an image of wealth. Breastfeeding was viewed as primitive and lower-class.
Thankfully people are starting to wake up and realize the error in their ways. As humans we have spent millions of years inhabiting this planet, thousands of years creating civilization and a hundred years of moving away from the natural world. In this hundred years we have done more damage than previously imaginable, now finally and thankfully there has been a rebirth of natural sustainable living. People are humbling bowing their heads and admitting that mother nature is much more complex, brilliant, and wise than us. Companies are still trying to make a quick buck on our ignorance but the more people start learning, the more things will have to shift back to the non-toxic and natural way they were before. Things that were once the norm and were then sold out and forgotten and are now considered innovative. Hey, whatever it takes.
In a NutSheLL
Breast feeding is the best thing new mother's can do for their children and for themselves. Not only is it so nutritious its miraculous, it also helps create a bond that is everlasting and if deprived could be devastating.
When you breastfeed your child you are giving them ---
*powerful immune boosters (a breastfed babies immunity is almost as good as their mother's... formula fed only, not even close)
*white blood cells
*interferon (a very very powerful anti viral & anti bacterial medicine)
*natural growth hormones (not the kind monsanto is trying to feed you)
* probiotics (babies aren't born with these, they get them from their mother... without these digestion problems and allergies are much more common)
*tryptophan (the precursor amino acid essential to the development of brain serotonin)
*everything a baby is known to need
* and other unknown substances that undoubtably perform a powerful purpose... nature is wild that way and we are still just novices trying to keep up.. the more we learn about breastmilk the more we realize that it is not just a food but a medicine
O.k. So I know what your thinking, that is all fine and great but what's in it for me?
For one breastfeeding will help you lose that extra baby weight! Breastfeeding burns about 500 calories a day. I could feel my uterus contracting as he breastfed and because my little guy was a hungry bear, my uterus went back to it's normal lemon size so fast that even my midwife was surprised.
For more information & support visit : http://www.llli.org/
