Barriers to Breastfeeding:
- Women lack routine medical support for lactation in hospitals and clinics due to over one hundred years of history of formula company collusion with doctors for the sake of profits without well meaning modern doctors even realizing it.
- Zealous marketing tactics by formula companies including paying hospitals and doctors to distribute formula to new families undermine a mother’s ability to successfully feed her baby with her own body.
- Motherhood is undervalued by American society, and breastfeeding is regarded as a choice (often an inconvenient choice) rather than a reproductive right.
Why Breastfeed?
- The ability to breastfeed is a mother’s reproductive right that should be supported extensively by the medical community, public policy, and objective science.
- Breast milk and breastfeeding require no manufacturing, shipping, or packaging.
- Breast milk is the perfect concentration and combination of nutrients for a human baby.
- Breast milk contains immunities from the mother’s immune system that pass on to the baby during feedings.
- Breast milk contains immunoglobulin A, lysozyme and lactoferrin which support baby’s immune system.
- Breastfed infants are less likely to die from SIDS.
- Breastfed infants get sick less often.
- Breastfed infants have lower instances of cancer, diabetes, allergies, asthma, and ear infections.
- A baby’s IQ can be up to 8 points higher when breastfed.
- Mothers who breastfeed have a lower risk of breast and ovarian cancer, osteoporosis, and type 2 diabetes.
- The act of breastfeeding shrinks a mother’s uterus back to pre-pregnancy size very efficiently, therefore mothers who breastfeed have a lower risk of postpartum hemmorhage.
- The act of breastfeeding burns extra calories and helps mom return to her pre-pregnancy weight.
- Human Breast milk is the perfect concentration and combination of nutrients for a human baby.
- Human Breast milk contains immunities from the mother’s immune system passed on to the baby through colostrum and milk.
- Human Breast milk contains immunoglobulin A, lysozyme and lactoferrin which support baby’s immune system.
- Breastfeeding doesn’t have to be “all or nothing.” If a mother has low milk supply that cannot be increased by proper breastfeeding management, she can still breastfeed as much as possible and supplement in small or moderate amounts to meet her baby’s full need.
Breastfeeding Links:
International Breastfeeding Centre
The International Breastfeeding Centre offers information and support in multiple languages.
Kelly Mom is an excellent website full of accurate breastfeeding information, answers, and tips.
The Infant Risk Center at Texas Tech Univeristy has a hotline (806)-352-2519 for information on the safety of medications during pregnancy and breastfeeding as well as information on depression, nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, and alcohol and substance abuse during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Numerous articles are available on health benefits of breastfeeding for mom and for baby. If you are breastfeeding and are prescribed a medication that you suspect may be incompatible, call the InfantRisk Center hotline! Don’t assume you need to stop breastfeeding because of a prescribed medication. Many medications, including most anti-depressants, are safe to take while breastfeeding. Certain medications are safer and more studied than others, so call the experts to find out what you should do.