Breast is best!!!

Gone are the days when the first gift you unwrap in a baby shower is a set of milk bottles or a sterilising unit! I remember how sacred these sterilising units seemed to be then to nursing mums! It was fashionable to have several shapes and sizes of cute bottles and teethers and 2-tiered sterilising units as part of your baby paraphernalia. Back then, breastfeeding was seen as old-fashioned and primitive! Well, that was then! Nowadays, breastfeeding is fashionable! In fact, not breastfeeding is almost an anomaly! There's so much swag associated with breast feeding these days: breastfeeding booths in shopping malls, the cute nursing aprons that mums use to get some privacy in the public, the public show of intimacy and affection - the list is ever evolving. In fact, it won't be an heresy to say that, to the public, if you are a nursing mother and are not breastfeeding, you are wrong! And this is a welcome development! This is one trend that I am glad we have re-embraced! The World is celebrating ' World Breastfeeding Week' between the 1st and 7th of August, and I am certain that the media will be bombarded with several programmes to celebrate this week. The benefits of breastfeeding are endless! It enhances mother and child bonding, it increases the child's immunity, provides just what the child needs in the right proportions,reduces the incidence of some allergic disorders, it is environment-friendly, encourages adequate child spacing, reduces after-delivery complications in the mother, reduces chances of Pre-menopausal breast cancer, and the most popular one, it is cheap! In fact, it doesn't cost the family an extra kobo! So why not breast milk? Some women face some form of difficulty initially and they complain that they aren't lactating or the process is too stressful. Here are a few tips to help such challenges: Proper positioning of your infant is important. Your baby should suckle on the areola ( the darker portion around the nipple) and not on the nipple. This enhances secretion and flow of more milk. Let your child feed adequately from one breast before you change to the other. This is important because the constituents of breastmilk differ in their proportions as suckling begins. For instance, fore milk ( the initial milk at the beginning of each meal) contains more water than fat than the hind milk. So ensure that your child has enough quantity from one breast before your alternate. Sore nipples occur the first few days, but this usually resolves with continued breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is supposed to be a fun experience. If pain persists, seek a professional opinion. Some diet like pap, yoghurt, apricot, almonds and tea have been found to be lactogenic i.e. they enhance milk secretion. I could go on and on and on about breastfeeding, but ask any mother ( and some fathers too) and they'll tell you more! So, here's the deal, help increase awareness about the benefits of breastfeeding and encourage the next shy mother you meet who would rather have her child cry his/her butt off than feed in public! Help her realise that breastfeeding is one of the coolest privileges she has!