Why would anyone want to breastfeed? I mean, you know, be tied down to your baby every hour and a half in the beginning, if not more? And suffer through nipple pain and worry that your baby is getting enough to eat? And have to stave off negative comments from friends or relatives, including one's own spouse? Sounds like torture...to some. So why do it?
That question runs through the minds of most American women who embark on their breastfeeding journey. Why am I doing this? Horror stories, the reality of nipple pain for many Western women and the fear that there is not enough milk for your baby (this is not the way breastfeeding is in the majority of the world and doesn't have to be that way for you). Why would any sane, mature adult put themselves through this? Because breast is best? Excuse me, but will you please define best?
There are numerous definitions, but for starters breastfeeding is intergenerational, meaning that you and your baby reap the benefits of grandmother breastfeeding your mother and your baby reaping those passed down benefits. If the chain has been unbroken, it's not just the isolated benefits you offer your baby; it's hundreds and thousands of years of benefits. Staggering.
Breastfeeding benefits are intergenerational, passed from grandmother to daughter to daughter.
I talked with a woman recently that is part of an unbroken chain of breastfeeding women.
Yes, I am very fortunate. In fact, if you follow the female line, none of us have ever had formula. At a LLL conference, I learned that antibodies are transmitted not only for diseases that mom is exposed to, but also ones that her mother AND grandmother were exposed to, if the line is unbroken. Lucky for my kids, eh?
For the time, my mother was pretty revolutionary. She nursed me for a year, according to what she told me my whole life, but after my nursing baby was a year old, it slipped out that she nursed me at night until 18 or more months old. "Nursing at night in bed," she claimed, "DOESN'T COUNT." I still find that hysterical.
My mother in law, on the other hand, lived on a farm and had four kids. Her first she nursed for a full year, but each of her subsequent kids got less and less until her fourth (my dh) got cut off at 6m. It's hard to remember that for 1970, that was still better than most kids were getting.
Have you asked your mother if she was breastfed? I'm going to call mine tonight. Looking at her absolutely perfect health at almost 85 (please forgive me dear mother for revealing your age. She always said that a real woman never tells her age or her weight. Any woman that does will tell you anything and you can't trust her.)- never been on any medication, never sick and full of energy- I sure hope the answer is yes!
Yes, breast is best, but more important breastfeeding is the foremost way of protecting human beings and all mammals from many more illnesses and diseases than we can even imagine. Just think about what has been lost in the past 100 years when men and women began to trust science over nature- condensed sweetened cow's milk and corn syrup over breastmilk.
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