Aug 09
8
Breast Feeding Moms Need More Support
Breast feeding is definitely something that benefits a baby and child in their formative years. It’s been documented over and over how much stronger breast feeding can make a child’s immune system, since the mother passes over valuable antibodies to her child through her breast milk. It also has been noted that breast feeding your baby may enhance it’s brain, motor skill and cognitive development, which is further enticing proof for new moms to breast feed their infants, even though it often comes with several challenges and basically makes a new mom a slave to pumping every three hours, breasts that can be painful and sore, and a host of other issues that can happen to new and not so new moms.
The World Health Organization, or WHO, recommends actually that new mothers breast feed their infants over bottle feeding them formula that is inferior, as much as it tries not to be, to natural mother’s breast milk. They recommend that a new mother start breast feeding her child within one hour of birth and continue for a year at least, if not more, depending on how quickly the mother’s milk begins to dry up and how much milk she is producing, since children tend to eat a lot more as they grow.
In fact, they recommend that a child ingest breast milk and ONLY breast milk for at least the first six months of life, forgoing all water, other fluids and any kind of foods since this is still most beneficial from a purity standpoint. However, even with all these excellent recommendations, new moms often give up out of frustration on breast feeding within the first few months of having their baby. They often suffer from soreness, difficulty in keeping up with the rigorous schedule, difficulty in getting the baby to latch on and keep hold of the breast for breast feeding, and other problems that make it too hard to continue.
Education and support from hospitals could help ease this burden on breastfeeding women. I know from observing several of my friends who breast fed that it takes a lot of hard work and determination, and it’s often frustrating for them to actually follow through with it all the way because it does place a great burden on their bodies. If they had more education and more help to make it easier, lots more women would probably be able to follow through with the recommendations of the WHO, making for healthier, better developed babies with better immune systems, which may translate into a healthier adult.
